A few moments from the conversation:

“The loudest voices in the room are usually the ones that are screaming in pain. You don’t talk loudly about something unless it affects you deeply.”

“Yes, the letters and the visits are incredibly important. But what’s more important is how you speak about and keep that family alive in your house.”

“Over the years my parenting philosophy has evolved: from smothering, to holding them so lightly that I’m willing and ready to let go, and hope that they come back of their own accord.”

The full transcript is on my website, with a link to the original audio:
https://lgiyer.com/wgbb-openness-in-adoption-transcript/

Earlier today my three children each posted a Mother’s Day tribute online. Three different mothers. One from each.

Pattu built a scrapbook page. On notebook paper, she places me around a clipping from a Barbie review that catches the phrase they become. A heart locket pinned into the corner, Kat’s face tucked inside the open hinge. A polaroid strip runs down the center: me on a stage in a green sari, me with my daughters in a hallway, the older two on a hillside in Santa Cruz hoodies. Happy Mother’s Day in cursive on a torn note, fastened with a paperclip and a small gold star. She tags me and her other mother.

Ammu laid out a grid. Eight photos on a gradient with a neon Happy Mother’s Day set in pink across the middle. I am in some of them. The twins as babies, held by Kat the summer they were seven and we drove out to New Mexico to see her, are in one. The girls and me at a restaurant. Me at the water at sunset. The frame is wider than I am. It includes the people who made me a mother. The grid is the sentence.

Laddu cut a music video. Twenty-two seconds, set to Meghan Trainor’s Mom. The lyrics float across the screen in red bubble letters. Have a mom, she might be the bomb. But ain’t nobody got a mom like mine. She picks the photos that show my t-shirts: Roswell, may your coffee be strong, a cup of Tae. She tucks in a selfie with Saathi and me. There I am in a sari, blue and gold, the camera filming up from her hands. She is twelve. She put the video on WhatsApp; she does not have Instagram. Ain’t nobody got a mom like mine. The chorus repeats. It is the whole video.

I scroll back to look at all three. The girls do not know it, but they are the second room this weekend that has known me.

Wednesday at three-fifty I left the house with a small suitcase and the laptop, the conference details loaded on it. On the train into the city, I opened it and read the names of the people whose work I was about to walk into. Sleep researchers. Adopted writers. Food therapists. Lawyers who handle sealed birth records. I had been telling myself for weeks I was going to a conference. It did not become real until I held the list in my hand.

Chithra met me at Penn Station. I learned then that the venue was not in Manhattan but two and a half hours north. We took the shuttle to Grand Central and rode upstate to Poughkeepsie, arriving at the inn at eleven. We talked until three in the morning. The film. The year ahead. The questions we knew would come.

The first session began at ten. A sleep researcher presented data on rest patterns. An adopted writer called her authorship a reclamation. A food therapist described what someone raised across cultures learns when she stands in her own kitchen. A playwright named the line a child draws before she has language for what was done to her.

A panel in the afternoon went through the legal harm done by sealed original birth certificates. It is the door I have been knocking on for sixteen years trying to enroll the twins with their tribe.

A whole field of people are working on the questions I have been living. I had not known it existed at this scale, or how much of what I have been carrying alone is already mapped.

The screening was at seven. I changed into a dress and put a blazer over it. About fifty people came in and clustered around circular tables. I took a seat at the back. The lights came down and Love Chaos Kin started, and I watched the room.

They laughed at the inside jokes and the detached partner. The desperation to have a baby made everyone go quiet. The pain of losing children to adoption brought some women forward in their seats, crying.

When the credits ended, the applause held. The Q&A ran an hour and fifteen minutes. They asked about Pattu and Ammu and how they will feel one day about having said yes to the camera when they were children. They asked about Kat, and how I describe her in our family vocabulary. They asked about the money. Ongoing contact came up too.

The moderator held the mic with both hands and called on every question gently. Kat came in over Zoom from home. Behind my ears the muscles tightened. They always do when I have to account for a life I have intentionally constructed. I answered as honestly as I could.

The room held an adopted person at the front, a birth mother on a Zoom square at the side, and an adoptive mother in a blazer at the back. None of us said it. The geometry did.

Afterward we ordered Domino’s. I ate two slices with my dress still on. The phone lay quiet, charging.

For years I have wondered whether I made the right call when I opened our family to the camera. Wednesday on the train, I had no answer. Thursday at midnight, I did.

This morning there were gifts on the dresser. A bracelet from Pattu. A black bottle with courier new lettering, jasmine and vanilla body mist. A pack of fruit gummies. Saathi gave me a bouquet. I had a box of candy and scented soaps for Amma. We took her to lunch. The kids made themselves pasta.

In the late afternoon, I watched what my children had posted. Over and over.

It is way past midnight, the dryer is still going. My phone is silent. Pattu’s scrapbook page is open in the saved drafts where I keep what I cannot lose. Ammu’s grid is in my photos. Laddu’s video plays whenever I tap it.

Ain’t nobody got a mom like mine.

The day winds down. I let it.

This was originally posted at https://lgiyer.com/three-different-mothers/

It was June 2009, shortly after we had been married nine years, that I keyed “desis adopting non Indian babies” into the Google search bar. We had signed a contract with a local agency, ponied up the money, and were in the process of getting a home study done. That first search turned up nothing. There were a lot of links to American-Indians, adoption in Native communities, but nothing that pointed to someone like me, desi, who had adopted across race and culture. I did not give up. Facebook groups next. Again, I drew a blank. There were plenty of groups discussing white parents raising children of color. The most discussed topic was hair. Next came the white couples adopting internationally. The discussions centered on culture camps and finding the nearest ethnic restaurants.

Then, on adoption forums, I found one woman who had adopted a Hispanic child. I reached out. In her words:

One fine day i caught myself staring at this cute Hispanic baby at Walmart who i thought looked so much like an Indian baby. Our dreams for India adoption had failed as we were then on H1B visa. I rushed home to tell my husband i wanted to pursue Domestic adoption and we could specify a Latino or Hispanic origin baby. Often we’d been stopped at public places and people would think we were Mexicans and say Holla and chatter with us in Spanish!!

We chatted over email, swapping notes on the process and on what it was like to be the only desi in every room we walked into. She moved to India. I went on to adopt our daughters. We have been Facebook friends since.

After my children came home in February 2010, I shared our story openly on my blog in the hope that others like me would find a story they could relate to. Over the years, I have fielded many calls, emails, messages on Facebook, and the occasional Instagram DM. On one such email thread I wrote:

It was not much too long ago that I was scouring the forums, yahoogroups and such… I know I struggled trying to find other Indian…

Some of them went on to adopt biracial children. We briefly had a Facebook group called Bonded by Love. Then, parenting twins and a new baby took my life over, and I disbanded it. Lately, Vinu from that OG group messaged me on Instagram for cdrama recommendations. Padma brings her kids over for Navarathri. Maha comments religiously on most things I post on Facebook. I visit Shankari when I fly to the other coast. We may not chat about our children anymore, but the bonds we built have morphed to accommodate the evolved us.

Those women are my safety net. They are the ones I can talk to without setting up context. They know, they relate, because they have walked the same path. We talk about neurodivergence in the context of adoption, which is a separate flavor of neurodivergence that other parenting groups I am in cannot understand. We commiserate on the questions we field when we visit India. We talk about being the visible family that inverts the trope. The brown mother at the playground, the children who do not match.

One of the earliest moments that gave me pause as an adoptive mother was when I was strolling the aisles of Kohl’s, pushing a twin stroller, looking for summer clothes for the girls who had just turned one. As I stood debating between red and purple pjs, I heard a lady’s voice over my shoulder. “Are you their nanny?” I whipped around, startled by the question. It was another desi. I shook my head no, refused to answer her, and walked away. It was my first reckoning on what people saw when they saw me, a brown woman pushing twin white babies in a stroller. The children were too young to realize it. This was a pattern we would see play out over and over. Turned heads, stares that lingered, the occasional “they are so beautiful,” and the unasked question. Initially, I let it stew in my head. After a few years, I stopped letting it register.

In the years immediately following our adoption, I responded to messages with alacrity. These days I am measured. I ask more than I share. I have them talk through their parenting philosophy. I ask them how much reading and preparation they have done. I point them to resources that I and my group of fellow adoptive moms have vetted. Mostly, I caution them that the act of adoption is not the finalization. It is not the end of the process. It is the beginning of a lifelong change.

If the 2009 me was all about pattu pavadais and rava kesari, the current me is all about letting our children be. If, as a new mom, I was smothering them with love and affection, these days it is a curated dance of holding gently and letting go before they ask. There is parenting and there is adoptive parenting and the two often intertwine.

So, if like me you are keying in these words “desis adopting non desis in the US”, here is what I will tell you. Pause, take a step back, lose the labels. Focus instead on why you want to adopt. Sit down with your partner, if adopting as a couple, and see if your parenting philosophies align. If adopting as a single parent, figure out if you have your village gathered and cheering for you. Most of all, ask yourself if you are willing to go to war for this child that will upend your life.

Originally published at https://lgiyer.com/desi-parents-adopting/

Here is the link to our updated Screening Request Form: Click here

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This year, I have been pondering how my thoughts on adoption have morphed. If the years when the children were little and I was navigating the uncertain waters of openness made adoption the overarching narrative of my life, now it has receded to the periphery. My daughters are older and have their relationships with their birth families without my oversight. I am content to hear what they are willing to share, when they are willing to share. My relationship with my childrens’ parents is separate but equally important.

I no longer feel the compulsion to share my thoughts on adoption. Perhaps it is because the documentary on our family is creating those spaces where these conversations happen in the communities that matter. A large part of it is also that my daughters are now old enough to reflect on their life and share their lived experiences in their own ways.

What has not changed though is that openness is still treated as a marketing tool rather than a mindset that centers children by private domestic adoption agencies. I still get served ads on most social media that assumes I am looking to adopt a child. Most of these ads are hawking a product rather than talking about human lives.

All this to say that these conversations are important and I am happy to talk to anyone who needs a sounding board whilst navigating this rocky terrain.

This year will be sixteen years since I set down the path to grow my family through adoption. I have written on my blog, talked about it in interviews, ranted on social media and now, share my story on the big screen. The only constant through it all has been change. I went from an anxious infertile woman desperate to become a mother to a mother who now questions if motherhood is even necessary. How much of the biological clock and baby fever narratives are social constructs that force women of a certain age to pivot to seeing themselves only as people seeking motherhood?

Yes, I experienced motherhood both as an adoptive parent and through biology. I went from someone eager to help people like me navigate this process to someone who questions everything. I went from viewing choice only in the context of crisis to something that is to be exercised freely by all people at all times. I found community through my words. Now, I am at a point where I am wondering what the path ahead should look like.

For those new to my posts, I used to write a lot about being an adoptive parent. I have written about how our family navigates openness in adoption. I have shared at length my thoughts on how I navigate the complexities in our specific family dynamic. If in my early days as a blogger I advocated for adoption in whatever form, in the recent few years I have largely been silent. In the rare occasion I do talk to men and women considering adoption, I point them to voices far more outspoken than mine. I ask them to pause, read voices from all parts of the adoption triad, question everything they read and read exhaustively - notes from people working in the social reform space.

The mental space I am in now is in flux. I am recalibrating everything I know in theory with what I have seen play out in reality. While our story and my experience may not be the norm, it is one of the many voices out there. I am far more intentional about what I speak, where I speak and how I word things. I am far more aware of how words can be taken out of context, how narratives offered to the public can be slotted to force fit narrow world views. Knowing all this, I am still feeling called to write, to share what I know because of the few lives that it has touched and made a difference.

So, those of you connected to adoption and foster care and questioning everything you know, please connect. I'd love to belong to a tribe again.

What does it take to truly belong?

When an unexpected pregnancy rocks the foundation of a South Asian adoptive family, a 12-year journey begins—one that will unravel everything they thought they knew about love, identity, and kinship.

LOVE CHAOS KIN is a bold, deeply intimate documentary following white-presenting twin sisters of Navajo descent as they reconnect with their white birth mother and, eventually, their long-estranged Navajo birth father. Their journey is raw and revealing—marked by joy, discomfort, class divides, cultural loss, and the relentless search for belonging.

At the center is an Indian immigrant mother navigating the emotional complexities of adoption, race, and motherhood in America. Directed by Chithra Jeyaram (@realtalkies), LOVE CHAOS KIN refuses easy answers, embracing the chaos that comes with loving across bloodlines, borders, and identities.

Gigi and Grandpa E came into our lives in the spring of 2012. They are my older daughters' birth great grand parents. I know it's a mouthful.

It started with one email that burgeoned into over five hundred emails and well over a thousand text messages over the course of thirteen years. Our relationship was one of give and take. I offered an asynchronous albeit steady view into the lives of their great grand children from afar. Gigi filled in the gaps, told me stories about their great grandfather and where he came from.

Her emails were like care packages, full of tidbits, smelling lovely and gussied up in a pretty bow. There were often vintage photos and long, rambling tales from a time before me. I took it all in, knowing that my older girls will someday read through these reams of words and get to know the great grandfather, his daughter - their grandmother Marie and their common love for cars and racing.

Gigi however, did not stop with stories about grandpa E. She offered a window into her life, the lives of all those close to her. It was a beautiful sharing that helped me get to know and understand the people who shaped the people I care about now. Every spring and winter, gifts would arrive in the mail addressed to the Iyer girls. When they were younger, it was clothes, custom puzzles and, barrettes. As they grew older, it was whatever was the flavor of the season. Sometimes, jewelry. Sometimes, K-pop merch.

Gigi and I shared a bond that transcended blood and family. We were kindred souls. We both believed in extending all of ourselves without reserve. If Gigi shared her family with me, I shared mine with her. I sent pictures and videos. I shared tales of my upbringing and what molded me into the person I am today. I wrote long, rambling emails about faith, religion, culture and my belief systems. I sent her birthday and Christmas gifts. I included her in my one big happy family.

Yesterday, Gigi left this world to join Grandpa E. She lived a long, full life filled with love and family. She is a cherished presence in our home. As I tell others often, I know her memory will be a blessing in our lives.

Rest well, Gigi.

Here are some reviews on Letterboxd from our premiere at CAAMFest, San Francisco.

I looked out into the sea of heads before me and felt something akin to an out of body experience. That moment was the culmination of years of anticipation. When I made the decision to share our story, it was fraught with fear. I hoped that by sharing our experience, it would shed light on what a complex journey adoption is. The audience reaction was heartwarming.

Stranger after stranger came up to us to shake hands and share what the film meant to them. We stood in bewilderment as one man wept copiously. Conversations with the audience outside the theater helped me acknowledge that our vulnerability was powerful. This vindicated my decision to go ahead with the film.

Yet another friend pressed a bouquet in my hand and pulled me in for a warm hug. We posed for pictures. We moved to a smaller venue for post cinema analysis and discussion. My children were champs taking the evening in stride.

Check out reviews on the film on Letterboxd

Here are a few snaps from the evening.

For all of you who have been part of this journey, I am super grateful. I hope you will continue to support this film as it goes out into the world.

Love Chaos Kin

I am beyond excited to announce that the documentary on our family - Love, Chaos, Kin will premiere at CAAMFest on May 11th Sunday at 2:00 PM. The screening followed by a Q&A will be at the AMC Kabuki 1 theater in San Francisco. Link to buy tickets here.

This film has been eight years in the making. It has seen my older daughters grow from awkward tweens to graceful teens, my youngest from a baby into a gawky tween. I have gone from being a stay at home mother to switching jobs three times. Life happened as the film took form. This is an incredibly surreal moment for me as a subject of the documentary as well as someone who has had the privilege to watch a film take form from over two hundred hours of footage. So, come celebrate with me. Stay with me as I watch the film take flight.

Synopsis: An unexpected pregnancy compels an Indian immigrant mother to help her adopted twin daughters reconnect with their White birth mother and estranged Native American father, exposing raw class divides while transforming their understanding of identity and belonging.

The CAAM-funded film emerged from director Chithra Jeyaram (Foreign Puzzle) and her desire to adopt. The film weaves together observational scenes, animated sequences, and reflective thoughts. It also unpacks the concept of open adoption, revealing the persistent ongoing effort needed to build authentic relationships between the children, birth, and adoptive parents regardless of race, class, or geographic location. This is a CAAMFest Centerpiece Documentary presentation.

If you are in San Francisco/Bay Area or vicinity and do make it out to the screening, please come by and say hi! Our family will be there. If you plan to be there, let me know. Please share widely in your circles.

Much love,

Lakshmi.

I woke early in anticipation of what this day could mean. Will Chithra come? Will I finally get to see the film that has been seven years in the making? What story will Chithra show? How will I be perceived? The questions were many and my stomach felt unsettled. I worked half heartedly before I logged off for the day a little before noon.

"I'll be back soon."

I tell Amma as I grab the Amazon return on my way to the train station. The return is quick and painless and I reach the station with more than seven minutes to spare. My favorite playlist is on shuffle mode as I wait. The train pulls in and I don't see her. Then, I do in the rearview mirror. I roll down the window and call out to her as she passes my car. It is strange to see her without her camera equipment. We chat as I drive.

Lunch is quick. The kids are just as excited to see her. Not yet, she says when they ask if they can see the film. I clear the table, load the dishwasher and run it. It is a little over 1:00 pm when I sit to watch the film. She sits next to me.

The hour and half flies by. She watches me while I watch the film. I tear up at a couple of places. I am smiling most of the time. This story is intimately mine. I watch as my children grow from 10 month old babies to thirteen year old girls in a span of a couple of hours. It is a lot to take in. Some of my most vulnerable moments unfold on screen for the invisible public to consume and comment on. Yet, I am not intimidated.

All of it feels just right. This story is a snapshot in time of what our journey has been. As people we evolve and grow and change. I hug her tightly after I watch it the first time. I make tea and we talk about the scenes and transitions. She talks about the filmmaking process and the scenes she had to sacrifice in order to keep the narrative tight and focused. I nod along, agreeing with her creative thought process.

What I saw today was the well edited raw footage without sound correction, color correct or added music. I can only imagine how much better it will be when all of that is in place. I watch it again, this time taking notes, paying attention to how scenes are edited and constructed to assemble this particular narrative amongst the many different stories that could have been told. I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Chithra for this labor of love and passion. A project that has been seven years in the making, one micro slice at a time.

A few days ago, I was in the car with my older girls. I was driving and trying to make conversation. If you have a teen at home, you know these opportunities to talk are precious. Conversation veered to how old they would be twenty years from now and what life would be like then. I quipped "I might be a grandmother. Wow!"

The kids ran with it and two minutes later, I was the hypothetical adoptive grandmother of twins. What was light hearted banter suddenly turned serious when one of my daughters asked me pointedly how much it cost me to adopt them. I tried to make sense of how the question was worded and what my response should be. I have been very open with my children and we have talked about the process and what it was like from the moment we heard about them. This was the first time money entered the conversation.

After a significant pause, I qualified my answer with "remember that the money we are talking about here is a fee that people wanting to adopt pay the agency…" Both girls digested the answer and remarked that it was a lot. Before they could ask more and I could elaborate, we were at our destination and I drove back home.

Honesty is hard. Shying away from these questions is harder.

I think about how in most conversations surrounding adoption, we never talk about the money in dollars and cents. We round off. We evade. We deflect.

Money is at the core of all that is wrong with the way adoption works in this country. My experience with the agency we worked with left a bitter taste in my mouth when the dust settled. They held our paperwork ransom and extorted additional money as we dealt with overwhelming emotions on the day we were to meet our children. Before we met our children, we lost many thousands of dollars to scams because of the desperation that is inherent in the dynamic of the adoption process.

In the decade I have had to process everything, it mostly comes back to this. If I had a chance to go back and start over, I might never choose to parent. Having done the work in understanding what is ethical in adoption, there is no easy way to adopt while being ethical and ensuring that adoption is the absolute last resort in the situation. The issues are systemic. They run deep. They are still being perpetuated. Collectively, the government, the brokers, the prospective adoptive parents, the expectant parents all choose to bury our heads in the metaphorical sand claiming we cannot see anything.

There is no point to the post other than to acknowledge the sadness I feel and regrets I have to the universe.

The ring lies on the ledge inside the shower stall. I remember to bring it outside when I am done. I wipe it dry and inspect it in the flickering bathroom light. Teal and silver, it is nondescript. I slip it on my finger, it is loose. I slide it into my pocket when dressed and walk outside. I hand it to my oldest child. The ring is her birthmother's. Ammu treasures the ring in the way I treasure the earrings my mom gave me. I often find it on her bedside table where she puts it before going to bed. Some days, I find it in the shower stall. A few years ago, I would have put it away in my jewelry safe, a spot for all things precious and untouched. Now, though, I let it be, a tenuous connection to my child’s birth mother and by extension her other family.

The chat app on my phone dings. I open it to find a note and a picture. A photo of a side table with knick knacks, I know holds immense value to the sender, my children’s birth mother. Amid the items is a framed picture of our family. A rush of affection for Mommy B overwhelms me. I type back a string of hearts. Over the years, our communication has migrated from leaving comments on blogs, to being connected on social media to now being on favorites list on our phones. My children, all three of them, send her cat memes. She sends them pictures with filters that feature cat ears and whiskers. They connect over visuals, silly jokes and frivolous cartoons.

Shortly after lunch on a Sunday afternoon, my head woozy after a long luxurious hair wash, I want to nap. Instead, I stand in the kitchen baking brownies for the first time. My children crowd around me. One child captures the moment on camera, another hands out ingredients and the third watches curiously. An hour later, warm brownies still in the pan, all of us crowd around the kitchen island to sing an off-key birthday wish to their other mother who lives on the opposite coast of the US. I send her the recorded video and get a response back in real time. The distance is real but technology bridges the gap.

The afternoon mail brings with it a yellow manila envelope. Inside is a piece of cardboard to support a precious sheet of paper from getting bent or crumpled in transit. It is my daughters’ great grandfather's (by birth) death certificate. One that bears his full name, pertinent details about his life and his death. Also, in that envelope are photocopies of important documents from his life chronicling his service and the legacy he left behind. My eyes well up knowing how much this piece of paper will mean to my children when they are adults trying to connect the dots and trace their family history past the immediate generation. Our family is blended, their birth family being the roots and the branches a curious mix of birth and adopted relations.

Most days, the communication is sporadic. It comes in bursts when we have news to share, events to talk about and pictures to show. My daughters have grown up in front of their birth family's eyes. They have gone from toddlers to middle schoolers. I have grown into my role as a mother. The journey has been one of acceptance, discomfort and growth. I have watched my daughters’ other mother grow up as a woman, take a stand, follow a dream, battle demons and bloom where she has put down roots. She is a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mother who roots for our children in ways no one else can.

On long walks around our development, my daughters and I talk about genetics, we talk about how it impacts how they learn, how they grow and what to expect over the next few years. We also talk about nurture and how that could exacerbate or mitigate what genes bring to the table. We talk about race, we talk about puberty, we talk about things mom and daughters talk about. Sometimes, these conversations cause me to stumble as I explain adoption trauma and how it has impacted their brain. I pause, regroup and talk in age appropriate ways about the things that may someday cause them to see life differently than their sister. I talk to them about trust and love. I vocalize love incessantly, repeating and reiterating that Appa and Amma will be there for them no matter what. I know that they need to hear the words, feel that love and know in their hearts that they matter.

I love this easy flow of words without the need to hold back, censor or fudge information rightfully due to my children. We pore over their DNA report identifying which parts of the world their ancestors came from. They delight in knowing they have bits and pieces from so many places around the world. They mock my homogenous report, all one solid block of color when compared to their rainbow chart.

My children sometimes listen silently, digesting things other teens do not have to think about. Some days, they talk with an understanding that makes the mom in me proud. Other days, they struggle with holding too much in their head and hearts. When words fail, we acknowledge the sorrow and end the day with a hug.

We understand as a family that this journey is not the easiest but it can be rewarding. Truth sets us free. Truth permits us space to hold duality. Truth allows us to make space for sorrow within joy and joy amid the sadness. It is truth that will see us through.

This too, is a portrait of an adoption.

Each year as National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM) rolls around, my feed is filled with opinions, thoughts and notes from people connected to adoption in many different ways. In the past I have been vocal about sharing our experiences. Over time, I have grown (hopefully wiser) and have paused to reflect and emphasize the AWARENESS part of NAAM.

I am not a proponent for adoption. At one point, I have had the words "open adoption proponent" as part of my social media bio. As each year passes, I realize I know little to nothing about anything, leave alone adoption. What I do know and in great depth is what it is like to be a women faced with infertility. I know well what it is like to feel desperate and what paths that desperation leads us to. I know well enough how murky the adoptive parent side of adoption industry is. I know well enough what it is like to raise children who are not connected to me by DNA. I can talk a lot about my experience as a parent.

All this then means that there are things I should not be the voice for - like what it is like for my children to be raised by me. That is their story, their experience. I have no idea what it is like to walk in shoes other than mine like those of my childrens' birth families. I have no clue what it is like to be in reunion other than as the mother who watches her children ache and hurt. I cannot say with authority what it is like to be in a closed adoption, a semi open adoption or a fully open adoption because I am not the adoptee. It is not my experience. I can, however talk about what it is like to be be the onlooker, the facilitator of contact and the emotions and complexities that come with being an adult who is responsible for some of it.

I can talk with some authority on how it is like to be part of a family that is multicultural, multiracial and complex. I can talk about how the current climate politically and culturally affect our daily lives. Some of these are tangentially linked to adoption. I can call out stories and news articles that do not speak for my experience. I can comment on views and opinions that give me pause in good and bad ways.

This November, that is what I will be doing. I will be talking about the things I have lived experience of. I will be amplifying the thoughts of those who speak from experience. I will not be sharing or amplifying anything that shows adoption as unidimentional.

As always, I would love to engage with those of you who understand this is about awareness of something that affects a good many of our families.

It is Friday afternoon and my social media feed is already showing Mother's Day ads and wishes. I am irked, annoyed and sometimes, downright angry. My mother lives with me. I raise three daughters. This Mother's day feels like it should be a day for all those who are tangentially connected to the act of parenting to take a day and reflect on the labor that parenting is.

Mother's Day has a long, storied history in my life. There were years I longed to participate. There are years when I have felt torn about how to acknowledge all the Mother(s) in my childrens' lives. There are years when I resented the artifice that accompanies this day.

This year, the day feels poignant as the spotlight on bodily autonomy is on people with uteruses. As rights are being stripped away and the US slips perilously on the path to autocracy, I am thinking of my children, carriers of uteruses and potential Mothers. I am anguished because they will live in a world with lesser rights than the world I grew up in. This is not the world I want to leave for them.

As someone who is intimately familiar with what it takes to build a family through adoption and biology, I worry for children all over this country. My stance is clear. Any person who wants an abortion should be able to make the decision for themselves. People who are alive should have rights on their bodies. Their lives matter.

All over my feed online is the narrative that holds up adoption as an alternative to abortion. I find it abhorrent and vile. Adoption should have nothing to do with pro-life or pro-choice decisions. Adoption the way it is practiced in the US now is a multi billion dollar business. When I see the push to criminalize abortion, all I see are the for profit adoption agencies salivating over a steady supply of babies. The image makes me want to puke.

Having been a mother for over a decade now, I can say with certainty that it has been a roller coaster. This is something I signed up for and, when the going was not great, I could hold on to the dream I once had and tell myself, I signed up for this willingly and whole heartedly. I am trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who is forced to parent or go through pregnancy because a bunch of old white men believe they have the power to do that to me and all I want to do is rage and burn it all down.

I do not believe this country is capable of saving itself. Black and brown women have done enough saving. If the rest of the country does not step up, we will all deserve the fate that befalls us.

This Mother's Day, all I see is the specter of forced motherhood and all the ways it will break us as a society and country.

One of the moments from our trip is this picture of white sand/gypsum flowing freely from my husband's hand. The loose grip, the easy flow, the few grains of sand stuck to the hand after, all gone after a wipe down.

Often in my open adoption journey, I am asked if I worry about my children leaving me for their birth families. My answers range from a simple no to wrangling with why people around me are insecure for me.

We are the products of our upbringing and childhood. Our relationships with our parents and people in our family offer a blueprint for how we navigate our adult lives. Mostly, we tend to repeat what worked for us and stay away from things we resented.

Growing up, I felt cloistered. As a mother I understand why things were the way they were when I was a young girl. Today, I try to parent with a light touch. I hold lightly, hoping they know I have their back. As my children navigate young adulthood, I know there will be moments when I question my parenting decisions. There will be moments when I wish I had held on a little harder, pushed them a little further.

My children are not my possessions. They are people in their own right. As they grow, they will form relationships with other people, they will build their own families. I hope I will be included in their definition of family. The parent child relationship is one way. I longed for my children. They fill up my heart and life with their presence. Some day, all I will have are memories.

I only hope that I hold on to them like sand, loose, free flowing and fully in the knowledge that they are with me for a fleeting moment in the full breadth of their lives. And hopefully, that is enough.

This week feels like how I have imagined tectonic shifts will feel. Plates sliding into each other, deep underground, sending ripples that compound out into the ocean, until meter high waves crash on the shore or mountains appear where there were once plains.

This week's shift has been years in the making. It started out as names in a document, sketchy information on birth history and data. Over the years, the file grew with pictures surreptiously added from public Facebook profiles and any available public information. Then, there was a lull. Nothing.

A chance DNA test uncovered loose ends, tugging on which lead to an unraveling. I sat with the information for over two years, hoping, praying for a moment when my children could see the person that makes up half of them, in person.

That moment may be nigh. I can only pray.

It has taken a lot of people, a whole lot of anguished prayers and the Universe to conspire.

How will the upcoming week play out? I don't know. I am too vested to speculate. All I hope is that we walk away unsinged, whole and happy.