Adoption is Everywhere

Adoptees and birthparents are everywhere

But sometimes it feels like a secret society, this adoption thing.

I’ve been at a writer’s residency the past month at the Vermont Studio Center. As I read from my book manuscript a couple of weeks ago, I looked out at the faces in the audience. I know that whenever I read from my memoir there will be whispered conversations. Later people tell me their stories. Or maybe not the story at all. Maybe just that they are a birthmother or an adoptee.

I’m still thinking of the young man who waited until the day before he left to tell me how much he appreciated the reading. “I’m a child of adoption,” he said. I saw loss and longing and questions in his eyes. The intensity of it threw me off balance. I had one of those moments wherein I tried to say something right and good. But because I was trying so hard, I can’t remember what it was I said.

I would have liked to have said that I’d bet a million dollars that his birthmother loved him and has missed him every day of her life.