Endings are beginnings and beginnings are endings. Ouroboros consuming defined lines, blurring boundaries, making us infinite and divine in our mortal humanity. Another year of daunting challenge and struggle, overwhelming loss, and uncertain paths gives birth to the opportunity to reevaluate and redefine so we can be reborn, not in the ways expected of us by our birth families, adoptive families, or society at large, but in a way that makes us complete and whole for ourselves. 

Nobody told me that healing breaks you down at first. It’s exhausting and often hurts deeper and longer than expected. Like weight lifting, it tears into the very fibers of who you are to the point many don’t continue once they experience how hard it is. And some never start at all. They never get to the part where they understand that those self-inflicted tears are necessary to become bigger and stronger than before. You have to temporarily make yourself weaker to get stronger.

As we transition out of this year, my hope for me, for you, is that we continue to embrace healing: the tears and the tears—that we continue to heal in community, supporting each other through what aches, so we can emerge more powerful with each repetition. So that our voices reverberate boldly, transforming the standard narrative and paving the way toward a future where adoptees are seen and heard, not as burdensome perpetual children, but as survivors possessing unparalleled knowledge of a traumatic, life-altering event.

We have survived a situation so abnormal that people try to hide the truth and erase our experience. Our very existence is divine.