“I think being adopted was a gift…” are words that I never NEVER would have imagined saying out loud. And certainly wouldn’t dare utter in mixed company. I’ve learned that most kept people (the antithesis of adopted people) suffer from chronic misinterpretation when engaging with anything adoption-related. And there I was, just a few weeks ago. Saying these words out loud, for the first time. With zero irony and an ease that I thought could have only found me in this tiny Zoom room with other queer Korean and American adoptees who also mostly have estranged relationships with their adopters (it is, indeed, a thing!). Yet there I go again, just now. Saying it out loud. 

“I. Fucking. LOVE. My life. I am in love with my life.” More words that a younger me never could have imagined stringing together in that order. And at this rate, I’m convinced: I might never die. Thirty-three years old, and I’ve only just started living. 

I was born free. 
Free of the guilt and shame that are so deeply rooted within the people who raised me.
Shame that they try so hard to pass on to me. Only because they know no other way.

I am free to choose my family. 
All family is chosen family. We’re just never the ones doing the choosing. 
Most of us don’t know that we have the option to choose. We have the option to choose.

I am free to know true care, devoid of transaction.
Free to make choices from abundance, not fear. Never again from fear.
Free, and unburdened, when you don’t like my choices.

Free to unconditionally love myself, above everything and everyone else.
Free to define what it means to love, and to accept nothing less than what I deserve.
Free to name boundaries. And mean that shit.
Free to refuse abuse masquerading as care.

Free to accept the natural ending of things. 
To trust my body when it shows me that it’s time to move forward. To break with old patterns.
To feel my feelings fully—in all their rage and despair and numbness and elation.
To be messy and to make mistakes. An infinite number of mistakes, if I’m lucky. 
With complete certainty that I will never be abandoned. Because I will never again abandon myself.

Free to redefine who I am. Every hour, of every day. 
Reintroducing myself. Without any sense of obligation. Only curiosity and wonder.
Free to offer you space to choose for yourself.

Free to travel through time. To heal and comfort and hold every part of me. Then, and now, and in the future, and back again.
To thrive in the in-between. Never the either/or.
Free to imagine. And to refuse to live inside of someone else’s imagination.

Free so that you might be free.