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Mar 5, 2023Liked by Tony Corsentino

This is wonderful, Tony, and a lot to think about. Right now it resonates with the angry, rebellious teenager I was, who rejected adult authority ferociously because just who the hell did these people think they were anyway? Like how DARE they force me into this life and family I did not ask for and expect me to be grateful and well-behaved?

Most of my adulthood I've been ashamed of that kid with the planet-sized chip on her shoulder but, in my 50s, I've been growing a lot warmer to her. She knew she was expected to form attachments to the wrong people, unsafe people, from the very beginning and she was fighting it with her whole being. She knew attachments were always precarious and she wanted to be unattached from all of them.

Later she had internalized certain common notions about maturity and forgiveness, giving people chances they didn't deserve. And she tried to form attachments, under the premise having relationships of any kind made her a valid person. A person who belonged. By being possessed. And now I'm thinking how I have never thought of myself as possessing anyone, though I'm certainly capable of being jealous and territorial, as most people can be. But I have wanted desperately for someone to want to possess me, and never let me go. That's what I believed unconditional love was and (I now see) it's what adoption wanted me to believe. A "fog" of love, if you will.

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Tony Corsentino

Fascinating as always Tony! I have to slow down and read so carefully because you always articulate new ideas right on the edge of my awareness, so fresh, carving a new edge of adoptee consciousness. Thank you 🙏 . I am currently writing a graphic novel memoir which attempts to come to terms with my own adoptee experience, through the lens of Buddhist ideas , by the way! ( Posting about it as Emma Burleigh on twitter)

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I'm just now reading this, Tony, and I appreciate it greatly.

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Mar 6, 2023Liked by Tony Corsentino

Quoted from and linked to this in my own blog today. I deeply appreciate your perspectives.

https://missingmom.home.blog/2023/03/06/adoptee-perspectives/

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