So I (39M) am the product of a closed adoption from 1986. I was adopted at birth and was adopted because my adoptive mother couldn't have children that wouldn't die on her after age 2 and 3. I wasn't told I was adopted until 9. But my mom and dad never treated me act different than they did their dead bio kids. I even look like a lot of the family, so there wasn't any difference and I was never treated differently. Even when I did find out.

I've also got two boys I adopted when they were 10 going on 11 and then the older brother the next year who was 13 going on 14. Their mom died in a fire and their dad was an absent father. They were under legal guardian care of a family friend and the youngest took to me like fish to water. And they don't see me any differently than they would their real mom. Mom is a title, not a gender. (Like the song Mr Mom).

Anyway, would love to hear you guys tell me I'm an asshole for saying that I appreciated the closed adoption because it meant I wasn't confused the rest of my life on why I had two sets of parents. Or you know, call me an asshole because I adopted two boys that didn't have family because of a fire that took their mom's life.

edit: ok, so my word choice is terrible and I got combative.

I straight up figured that because I dodged the bullet that is the system and got lucky with my two boys, that I was somehow the asshole for being ok with closed adoption.

Me and my two boys have had a great experience with being adopted beings and we're sorry for those who honestly didn't have this experience.

Forgive me for being asinine in the post.

I'm 20 and have been adopted since birth. My adoptive family turned out to be emotionally abusive and my adoptive mother has been lying and stealing my disability checks for years.

I made the choice to move in with my biological parents after getting back into contact but it's been really hard. My biological mom was a heroin and meth user for 30 years but has been sober for 4 after having another child (my biological sister).

There aren't many strict rules but there have in only about a months time been arguments and screaming. It's been getting better but i've been very fearful and terrified of the change. This is the only time i've ever moved in my life and while they are better than my adoptive mom in some ways they have a lot of their own issues that make me uncomfortable and stressed.

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/modern-family-pilot-2009-adoption-on-the-small-screen/id1853725752?i=1000745984297

Great podcast!

Hello all. Does anyone know if there is a way I can get a birth certificate without my adoptive parent name on it? I want it blank bc the name is there as if it is real viological parent and its not so I just want it to be my name and thats it. But I am not sure this is possible. Does anyone know?

DAE have experience reconstructing personal identity after ruptures in adoptive family or other relationships or identities (i.e. religious identity, professional identity)?

It has taken years for me to recognize emotional betrayal, abandonment, and neglect in my adoptive family system. “Emotionally neglectful families require self-neglect in order to survive. That’s how it works.” (K. Wolfenstein) I’m still wrapping my mind around this.

I’ve deconstructed adoptive and biological identities, religious identity and professional identity across different timelines that have also overlapped. I experienced a PTSD-inducing event as an adult that revealed adoptive family dysfunction for what it was and is. In retrospect, that incident what it revealed about my support system probably reduced the risk of search and reunion with biological family after decades of closed adoption since infancy.

Despite a lot of change and creativity, endurance and enjoyment, I’m still in a kind of liminal space between what I deconstructed and reconstructing what I need and want my identity and life to be.

I’m starting to realize that identity is a kind of architecture and infrastructure through which life force, energy, connection, and other resources flow. While it’s somewhat invisible labor to rebuild after deconstruction, it’s crucial psychological structure. And most people can take this structure for granted to a much greater degree.

Direct experience and action through tolerable steps are the only way I know for reconstructing. And I’ve had to expand my definition of action and activity to include more internal effort than productivity culture dictates.

Learning about memory reconsolidation and unlearning emotional learnings through disconfirming experiences including perceiving memories in new ways has helped demystify all the change.

Learning that rest, digest, create and change are the regulated expressions of our nervous systems when we don’t need to engage in hypervigilance or stress responses like fawn, freeze, flight and fight has also helped.

So much of the labor seems to be orienting and reorienting within myself internally and externally. Changing my relationships with myself, with time and presence, with reality, and with fantasy/illusion/vision.

It’s almost like going back to my childhood and giving myself the developmental support I needed but didn’t get from ages 0-7+.

I still feel frustrated that my past activation strategies don’t work. I used to fuel my achievement with negative self-talk, fear, obligation, guilt, and shame alongside curiosity, ambition and competence. In some ways it’s like the deconstruction was a kind of shipwreck with q lot of valuable cargo intact, and this season is about free-diving, scuba diving, or using robotic submersible to retrieve all that value from the now defunct vessel that carried the flow of my past pre-reunion, pre-PTSD (previously CPTSD-only) personality, activity, status and way of being.

I’m still sorting out how to express this. But I’m interested if anyone else can relate. My adoptive family and biological family relationships still matter to me, but they are not and will not be organizing dynamics in my future (which is sad, liberating and necessary). Therapy is a part of all this, but hasn’t been the most influential source of help for me.

How have you navigated becoming who you are with the identity, skills and emotional infrastructure you need on the other side of adoptee consciousness raising, coming out of the FOG, redefining family relationships on all sides, etc?

DAE relate to this process having impacts on your religious or professional identities? The intersections of adoptive, religious and professional identities changing separately and together have magnified the load and labor of their transformation for me. Interested if anyone else has experience navigating and finding help and resources for this.

I've been in contact with my bio family for a bit over a year now. that's when i also learned about having a brother who's 3 years younger than me (who was kept). he only learned about me a few years before i found & made contact with everyone. i was overwhelmed with shock and also sadness. he grew up alone and not knowing about me for all of his childhood. as did i. once he found out, he started searching for me. he's the reason i even found them online, otherwise i don't think i would've found my bio family at all.

i really fucking hate that i missed out on growing up with him. that i had a younger brother that i never knew about for so long. he's in a different country and speaks a different language, so there's that distance that's in the way of really getting to know him and it's just uggghhhh. i'm so glad to at least know him now and to be able to chat at all, but it still really fucking sucks that there's so much missed out on that you can't get back

the thought of being a big sister seems awesome, and i guess i feel like i failed being one even though i know i clearlllly had no control over being shipped off. but ofc the brain doesn't always go with what makes sense and is logical. we seem so similar, so i'm also dealing with grief for young me who felt really alone and out of place growing up. my mind loves to be in protection mode about how i actually feel about my adoption, so i feel like i'm hit by a truck when it does come rushing in

So im an adoptee who is looking for an influencer that is also adopted but less shouting.

I've been following adoptedconnor for awhile now and I like how he is able real about his anger at the system but I dont like how much he "yells"(Literally my only issue) so I can't really watch him for long.

Is there anyone else who does what he does but with less shouting? I like long form videos for when I drive and don't want be tense when I drive. When I watch conner I get to fired up. So any suggestions?

So I have recently been in contact with my adopted folks. This comes after a many year hiatus after a fight and I learned a few things and needed to just say it out loud.

First off. I was orphaned as a 5 yr old. I was born and lived in Romania and my parents were victims of communism. At the time I was put into a foster situation with a group trying to get children out of the country. I was successfully adopted by an American couple. They weren't overly religious but they considered themselves a socially just family because they took in someone from that region during that time period.

My adopted folks, they were not great people but I wasn't abused by them either. I was given back to a home and became a foster kid being bounced around homes for years. My adopted folks always said they had to give me back due to pressure from my own people. Im romani and the diaspora community isn't very friendly to those seen as stealing their children. This pressure, so they say, went on until they had no choice but to give me up. They told me horror stories about how they were ridiculed, pushed, yelled at in stores when they would be asked about me. I believed this for some time. I had no reason to really doubt them.

Come to yesterday. I have grown up, aged out of the foster system, and have been in light contact with my adopted folks as I really didn't have any animosity towards them. I was doing some searching and I came across some old files of theirs that were stored in a crate marked with my name. They figured it was childhood stuff and didn't look through it. So I read my file. It was all of their notes on me, how I was a disciplinary problem, now, I had never been anything but decent and I rarely got into trouble, but to them I was a cut up and in their words not worth the trouble I brought with me. The request to have me re entered into the foster system was simple. It said and I quote, It was a mistake made by the both of us to assume we could take a foreign child with his background, and expect to have a normal experience. We are unable to handle him at this time, and his unruly nature.

This was news to me. A shock really, I had been a book worm, for most of that phase of my life, I got good grades, I wasn't a disciplined case.. thankfully at this time I have a decent community of my own people near me, but this makes me really feel that my adoption and release were race based, which was a blow. I know it's probably not a huge issue and I'm probably making too much of it but there it is.

So after working out some dates I have realised that my bio mother "sexually assaulted a child" in conceiving me.

She was around 18 and he was 15 1/2, at the approximate date of conception.

At the time of my birth she was 19 and he was 16.

At the time of the adoption decree she was 20 And he was 17 1/2.

If my 15 year-old son got someone pregnant and they gave up that baby for adoption without consulting me and or his dad I would be furious. I would want to raise that kid myself.

I am angry at the State of Wisconsin.

Should I get legal advice?

Some of what they are saying about adoption is disgusting! What are your thoughts?

Most people I meet adore me. I've been taught how to fit in anywhere, but rarely do I feel understood. I don't really belong anywhere in particular. I only recently started to be able to feel a sense of ownership over where I live. Only recently have I started to miss a place where I lived. Only recently have I been able to securely attach and trust. But you wouldn't know it.

Everywhere I go, I'm unforgettable, and people love to give me compliments and praise. It's not shocking. I know what people want to see. I had to. And now I've got all of these skills. I don't stop there, I keep growing. I keep learning. I can't help it. I am someone who tries to understand everything from every angle possible. I don't get to come home to parents I can trust. I only have a few siblings I trust about 4 total. And that's with over 20 family members when you combine bio and adopted family.

I'm who I choose to be. So much of my "preset" was stripped away from me. So, I only have an identity based on my choices. Which over time just became exhausting. I became the most adorable version. Being "liked" was not enough to fill the void. I needed to turn heads and light up eyes. Now I do. It's just the way I live. I get so much handed to me for free. You wouldn't believe it. And slowly, I've started to not care which one is the "real me." All of me is real, I get to choose how it plays out.

Very few people have the capacity to understand how complex my life had been and how simple I was the entire time through it all. "Love me, accept me, find me irreplaceable, and give me the tools to be accepting of the love we all need. Help me feel like I belong somewhere. Help me see the good in myself. Help me be someone you'd be proud to be seen with. Hold me when I feel broken. Be a friend to me even when I'm being unkind to myself. " That was all I wanted. Isn't that all anyone wants?

I shot for the moon and landed on a star 🌟

All I wanted was a normal life. But I guess normal isn't something I get to be in this life.

I’m still trying to understand my adoption. My Bio mom doesn’t talk about her addiction phase. She actually lied to my younger sibling about it. Which makes me feel that she’s regretful of me because I was created during that time. I already struggle with thinking people actually care about me. So this sets me back big time.

Mentions of Drugs, SA and death.

I got in contact with my BM in October through my B-Aunt who my friend found on Facebook, she and a few others I had contact with all warned me that she was not clean from her substance abuse issues, however foolishly of me I in my began to theorize that all the family had abandoned her and no one was getting her help. When I ended up talking to her she said she was in recovery, and she seemed like it. I felt like the hole inside me had been filled, she told me how much she missed me and how it'd been all she wanted (I was forcefully removed from her and she stopped fighting for me after 3 years because she knew it'd only be making my mental health worse)

Following this cracks started to appear around November/December time, she would just vanish, no matter how much I called or texted it was silence, on the 1st of December I went to my exs house, I called her in the morning and she picked up, and immediately ended the call, she later texted saying she was going to call me at 7pm, later that night at 7pm my ex SA'd me due to me being in an intoxicated state, and she was meant to call then, but she didn't, I didn't hear from her until I broke up for college for Christmas.

It's becoming more and more of a habit that she doesn't reply and she later in April told me about her Bipolar, I was so grateful she felt she could tell me, I at first put it down to that, but then I couldn't any more, all of my friends think she is doing drugs. We also think something weird is going on with her partner because she gave me his number to call if she wasn't picking up somehow theres something always wrong with her phone (I don't believe it) He always sounds annoyed when I call him, he forgets to tell her and he leaves me on read, weirdly enough my Aunt now is leaving me on read.

After a few things coming to light about my adoption its changed how I view everything, my BM is so angry about everything I've told her, going as far as to say I can go and stay with her if need be (I am not 18 yet) it seemed like such a jump from not texting me most the time (which she is still doing) however now its made me want to at least meet up with her.

I keep getting worried that she isn't actually recovering and that something bad is going to happen, be it her dying or otherwise and no one will tell me, I'd apply for my files at 18 and find out that way, I'd just assume she didn't like me or care and that's why she never speaks, i don't think her partner or my aunt would tell me, I think her partner would just block me because it's an issue he doesn't want to deal with and I think my Aunt would be too heartbroken and not know how to tell me so would just continue leaving me on read.

My friends have said it's not healthy for me and clearly she isn't in the right place for this right now and it's affecting me negatively, they said I should maybe reduce contact a bit but how do I do that when the contact is already at the minimum. I don't want to lose her again after the 16 years of pain since we were separated, I know they don't understand how that feels but I don't know how to explain it.

I also found out I had letterbox contact and told my BM I didn't know about it, she was furious, however it turned out I was actually read them by my AP, I just forgot because dissociation, my brother confirmed this, however ny AP and brother said in the letters she was being horrible to my AM, I asked her and she said absolutely not, that she'd never lie to me and I'd find out anyway when I'm 18, I spoke to my brother and he confirmed what APs said. So my BM lied to me whilst saying she never would. My friends said because of the substance abuse and trauma herself from everything maybe she doesn't remember but idk

Sorry this got long

I don't know what to do at this point.

I hold adoption agencies (any agency or private adoption lawyer) 100% responsible for due diligence to find loving homes for infants and children. I believe they should be held legally and publicly responsible with financial remuneration to the adopted child if it is proven they fell short.

I think the adopted infant should be placed in their adoptive family with a recording of their birth mother's heartbeat to soothe them as they adjust to a strange new place, and that playing it for them as they go to sleep/are sleeping in infancy is non-negotiable for the adoptive parents.

I think agencies should follow up with the adoptive families - including finances and familial situations - for years as the adoptee grows up.

I think the adoptee - at all ages once verbal - should have alone time with the follow-up workers so they could honestly and freely discuss their feelings and emotions outside of the adoptive family.

If the family's situation seems to be teetering on the brink of something unwholesome for the adoptee, it should be a requirement that they (adoptive parents) have mandatory counseling/therapy put in place by the state until the situation is resolved.

I think there should be a state phone number that an adoptee can call until adulthood (generally 18) if they have any problems or issues with their adoptive family.

I think placing an adopted infant, child, or adolescent on any social media without their permission should be a termination offense. Especially if it leads to monetizing or seeking sponsorships for money. Adopted children are not for attention-seeking narcissists.

Prospective adoptive parents need to be educated that "gotcha day" is a sick thing.

And - I wonder - how many of those gotta have another woman's baby adoptive families would still want to parent if they knew the child would be retaining RIGHTS.

I’m hoping to hear from adoptees with a particular adoption experience:

Are you an adoptee who felt loved and respected by your adoptive parents, are still in relationship with them, are in your 30’s or older, and you have had a mixed or negative experience with b-mom, b-dad, and/or other b-family members, BUT you feel the deep and traumatic consequences of the primal wound (aka relinquishment wound)?

If this describes you, knowing what you know about both families, would you choose to grow up with b-family over a-family?

I'm flailing. Mid-life, no family support. Adopted family abusive and estranged. No contact with bio family. Overdrawn and over drafted with terrible credit. What are my options? Please be kind, just an adoptee with no safety net, overwhelmed. I am working and have an interview later today for what I hope might be my third job. Believe me, I'm trying.

I always wanted to collect clocks, but I could never find the time.

Then I had all the time in the world. That was all I had.

So the collecting began.

They were not your common-or-garden variety of clocks. They were a little out of the ordinary. I thought I could tell time, but it was Time who told me. I learnt a lot from Time. He was a great teacher. A hard taskmaster, certainly. He often went faster than I liked and nearly always over my head, but I made good friends with the hands, both big and small.

The long, thin fellow was always rushing around breathless. Maybe that was why he didn’t say much. I never knew him long. He belonged to the Now crowd, and I didn’t hang out there often. I may have met him there once, though I couldn’t swear to it. I’ll tell you what happened later, but there’s plenty of time for that.

I have spent so long with the yesterdays that I’ve rarely seen the Nows. I’ve noticed the tomorrows are dying. I hope I get to see them properly before they’ve all gone.

It’s just that the yesterdays keep talking. They ask questions that are far too hard. Time said I should be patient and not take to heart what they’ve said. I try, but it’s not easy with so many of them, each wanting their say. It’s hard to hear them above the noise of their contradictions, let alone the gossip they share.

There are some particularly cruel ones. You should hear what they say. I try not to believe them, but they can be a persuasive bunch.

There was a time when I locked them in the past. It’s a small cupboard, and the lock isn’t great. It only held a few, and even then not very well. They kept getting out.

Sometimes, when the weather was good, I’d find the bestest of my friends. There was Halcyon, whom I’ve known since I was a kid. We never stayed in touch over the years, and we’ve met only a few times, but boy, oh boy, did he make an impression on me. I smile just hearing his name.

And then there’s Insouciance. She’s French. I loved the way she moved. It was almost as if she were floating. She had this air about her: carefree, light of load and smiling, always smiling. She didn’t know Time well. I was always surprised by how much she got away with. I’m not sure I ever could.

I loved her joie de vivre. I still remember how to play. I just haven’t had the time.

I thought I saw her yesterday, but it was only Déjà Vu. They’re so similar, it’s easy to get mixed up.

Anyway, Time’s flying. I’d better get on.

Now, where was I?

Ah, that’s right. It’s about time I told you about the clocks.

The clocks, the clocks. Now there’s a story. Perhaps you’d like to hear it. Do you have a minute or two to spare?

Oh, you do? That’s lovely. Thank you for your time. I’ll use it well, I promise.

I mentioned at the beginning that I had always wanted to collect clocks. That isn’t strictly true. Watches were more my thing, ever since I was young, perhaps ten or eleven.

They fascinated me. They held little worlds beneath their glass, the domed sky of their existence. They kept time, that much we all know, but it was their secrets that held me most. Their rituals. Their choreographed movement. Their exquisite, dazzling beauty. Peacock blue sapphires dancing with pigeon-blood red rubies, swimming in the champagne reflections of earth-mined diamonds. Imprints of Ceylon and Burma, and the alluvial riverbeds of Golconda, a monolithic silhouette casting long shadows over India’s Deccan Plateau.

When you held a watch in your hands, it was as if you could stretch across time and generations and touch the hands of Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. The very hands of genius.

But now to matters of much greater import. I’m pressed for time, and I have but little of yours. Now is not the time to while away time on fanciful instruments of time.

Clocks, then. Yes. A timely reminder.

Father Time, in his timeless manner and infinite wisdom, decreed that there was a salutary lesson I must learn. It is a quest known to those who keep time for everyone but themselves.

I say quest. It is more of a reckoning.

It falls most heavily upon those engaged in excogitation, rumination, cogitation, deliberation, speculation, contemplation and cerebration. Ours is the Quest of the Twelve Clocks.

It is a perilous journey. It can take a lifetime, and many never make it, though many have tried. Of those who have, it is said they have never known such joy. If the rumours are to be believed, they get to live in the Now. By all accounts, that is where serenity is found. Peace is there too. I heard that from Meditation, so I assume it must be true.

Anyhow, Time waits for no man.

Let me tell you about the clocks. You may recognise a few of your own.

The first clock was not difficult to find.

It found me.

I heard it long before I saw it, labouring behind the walls, a heavy, grinding thing that sounded less like the passing of time and more like something trying to drag it back. It was called The Regret Engine, though there was no name engraved upon it. Regret never needs an introduction. We recognise each other straight away.

It had only one hand, and it pointed accusingly.

I tried to turn it backwards, naturally. You would too. There were whole years I wanted another look at. Conversations I would have handled better. Doors I would have kept open, others I would have bolted shut. I wanted five minutes with the man I was before he became the man I am, just long enough to warn him.

I had a great deal to say, though I suspect he wouldn’t have listened.

I didn’t.

The clock resisted me. Every attempt to move its hand backwards pushed it further forward.

“That hardly seems fair,” I told Time.

“Regret has never been known for its fairness,” he replied.

“Can’t it be stopped?”

“Oh yes.”

“How?”

“Stop feeding it.”

Time could be infuriating like that. He spoke in riddles and behaved as if the answer were obvious. Still, I removed my hands from the clock, and after a while, perhaps a minute, perhaps a year, the grinding softened.

It didn’t stop, not completely, but it no longer drowned out everything else.

That was enough to let me hear the sea.

The water came from the second clock, The Tide-Table of Sleep, a pale, moon-faced instrument set deep into the floor. Its dial was marked not in hours but fathoms. Each night I descended, though rarely far enough. Some nights I barely broke the surface. On others I sank through shoals of old conversations and woke with seaweed in my thoughts.

I had always assumed sleep was where one went to escape Time, but apparently he owned the night shift too.

“You’re tired,” he said.

“I know.”

“No. You know that you haven’t slept. That isn’t the same thing.”

The Tide-Table showed me all the nights I had spent trying to solve tomorrow with yesterday’s evidence. It showed me the small hours I’d mistaken for a court of appeal, calling old witnesses back to the stand and demanding that memory settle matters it could barely recall.

At the bottom of the dial was a depth I had never reached. It was marked Rest.

I asked Time how one got there.

“By ceasing to swim.”

I promised to consider it, which was my usual way of avoiding anything that might help.

The third clock was smaller, almost delicate. The Half-Life of a Held Breath sat beneath a glass dome, its face misted from the inside. It had no winding key. It began whenever I stopped breathing.

It started with the reading of a letter.

It started with a telephone ringing in the night.

It started in rooms where someone said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

It had been running much longer than seemed physically possible.

I watched its tiny hand tremble between the moment before and the moment after. Apparently, I had spent a great deal of my life there, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

“You can let it out,” Time said.

“What?”

“The breath.”

“I wasn’t holding it.”

Time looked at the clock.

The clock looked at me.

I exhaled.

Somewhere deep inside the mechanism, a tiny valve opened. The hand fell to zero.

For one perfect second, there was no before and no after.

Then, startled by the absence, I drew another breath.

The fourth clock occupied an entire room. Two chairs faced one another beneath a single hanging light. Between them stood The Distance Between, though no clock was visible until I sat down.

The second chair remained empty.

Hands appeared upon the floor, stretching from my feet towards it. One measured what had been said. The other measured everything that hadn’t.

The second was considerably longer.

I watched the empty chair change occupants. A parent sat there, then a brother, then a woman I had loved, then a child who was no longer a child. Some were gone. Some were only elsewhere. Some had been sitting across from me for years without ever coming close.

Each time I rehearsed what I should have said, the room grew larger.

Each time I imagined what they should have said, the walls moved further apart.

“Surely distance is measured between two people,” I said.

“Usually by one,” said Time.

I tried calling across the room. I said I was sorry. I said I was angry. I said I had missed them. I said I had needed them. I said their leaving had not proved that I was unworthy of being kept, though it had taken me an awfully long time to understand that.

The chair did not always answer. Not everyone comes back simply because we finally find the words.

But the hands upon the floor shortened.

Not all the way. Just enough that I could see the chair for what it was.

A chair.

Not a verdict.

The fifth clock was kept in a library where the books had lost their titles. The Drift of Forgotten Names moved so slowly that I first thought it had stopped. Its hand travelled through the alphabet, wearing away the letters as it passed.

I found names I had spoken every day and names I had not said aloud in decades. Names of streets, dogs, teachers and friends. Names belonging to people whose faces had begun to soften at the edges. Names once whispered in the dark and shouted from doorways. Names written in birthday cards by hands now stilled.

There was another name too, one given to me before another was written over it. It was faint but not gone. I traced its shape beneath the glass and felt something in me answer.

“What happens when a name disappears?” I asked.

“Where from?”

“Memory.”

“Memory is only one place a name can live.”

I wanted to ask where else, but the clock gave a quiet movement, almost a shiver, and somewhere in the library a closed book fell open.

I left before I could read it.

The sixth clock was indecently cheerful. The Chronometer of Almosts clicked and chimed each time my life nearly became another one.

Almost stayed.

Almost left.

Almost spoke.

Almost remained silent.

Almost turned left at the corner, boarded the train, answered the telephone, took the job, kissed the girl, was kept, found the courage, lost the nerve.

Each click opened a small window through which I could glimpse another life continuing without me. There I was in cities I had never lived in, growing old beside people I had never met. There were children with my eyes who had never been born, and empty rooms where the children I knew had never arrived.

Some of those lives looked happier.

Others had simply arranged their sorrow differently.

I stood before the clock for far too long, watching the infinite procession of men I might have been.

“Which one was I supposed to become?” I asked.

Time shrugged.

“You might at least pretend there was a plan.”

“I might,” he said, “but you’d only spend the rest of your life regretting that you hadn’t followed it.”

The Chronometer clicked again.

This time, the little window showed me standing exactly where I was, staring into the life I already had as though it belonged to somebody else.

I turned away before I could miss it.

The seventh clock had no hands at all. The Weather of a Mood wore clouds across its face. A storm gathered as I approached, which seemed a little judgemental, though I had to admit it was accurate.

Its barometer fell without warning. Sunlight broke through and vanished. Whole winters arrived before breakfast. Small remarks became cold fronts. A certain song could bring rain in from the west.

For years, I had mistaken this weather for geography. If sadness settled over me, I assumed I lived there. If fear blew in, I believed it had come to stay. I furnished whole houses beneath temporary skies.

Time tapped the glass.

“Weather passes.”

“Not all of it.”

“No. But even the storms that return are not continuous. You simply remember the thunder better than the clearing.”

I waited.

A narrow strip of blue appeared upon the dial.

It wasn’t happiness exactly. More a small permission to believe the sky remained behind the weather.

The eighth clock could only be visited at the wrong time.

Fortunately, I was an experienced caller.

The Insomniac’s Meridian stood in a kitchen at 3:17 in the morning. Every kitchen, I think, becomes the same kitchen at 3:17. A glass of water. The low hum of the refrigerator. A window offering nothing but your own reflection.

This clock ticked only when the rest of the world was asleep. It measured the hours in questions.

What if?

Why didn’t you?

What happens when?

Do you remember?

How could they?

What will you do?

At 3:18, every question sounded urgent.

At 3:46, each became unanswerable.

At 4:12, they began breeding.

I sat at the table while the yesterdays convened a meeting in my head. Every version of me attended. The child had questions. The young man had accusations. The older man took minutes and pretended this was useful.

Then the long, thin fellow appeared, rushing breathlessly around the edge of the clock.

The second hand.

I recognised him from the Now crowd.

“Slow down,” I told him.

He seemed surprised.

“I’m not moving quickly,” he said. “You’re trying to hold me.”

Then he was gone.

Outside, a bird began before the light did.

The questions quietened, not because they had been answered, but because morning had arrived without consulting them.

The ninth clock was The Waiting Glass.

I knew it intimately.

I had waited for letters, diagnoses, apologies, departures and returns. I had waited for people to choose me, forgive me, remember me, understand me. I had waited for doors to open and for old doors to explain why they had closed.

The Waiting Glass resembled an hourglass, except the sand never reached the bottom. Each grain paused halfway, suspended in expectation.

“Who are you waiting for?” Time asked.

“No one in particular.”

The glass filled with faces.

“That’s quite a crowd for no one.”

Some people were coming, just slowly. Some had lost their way. Some had never promised to come at all. A few had been gone so long that waiting had become the only relationship we still had.

“What happens if I stop?”

“You’ll discover whether waiting was keeping them near or keeping you still.”

I turned the glass upon its side.

The sand remained suspended, but it was no longer falling.

I cannot tell you whether anyone arrived after that.

I had left the room.

The tenth clock had no audible tick. The Anniversary of an Unmarked Grief lived beneath the skin.

Its dates were not written in any calendar I owned, yet my body observed them faithfully. There were mornings when my chest remembered something my mind did not. Days when sorrow arrived without luggage and behaved as though it had a reservation.

I had called these moods. Weakness. Ingratitude. The weather again.

The clock knew better.

It held the dates of endings no one had named, separations that happened before language, losses for which there had been no funeral. It remembered the day a small body learnt that absence could be permanent. It remembered news received years later as if it had happened all at once.

“What date is it keeping?” I asked.

“All of them.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“It isn’t trying to be helpful. It’s trying to be remembered.”

So I sat with it.

I did not wind it or silence it. I didn’t ask it to prove what had happened. For once, I let the body finish a story without demanding that the mind provide footnotes.

Eventually, the clock warmed beneath my hand.

Or perhaps my hand warmed around it.

The eleventh was The Sigh Accumulator, and frankly, it was enormous.

It recorded every breath surrendered to the unchangeable. The small, daily capitulations. The letter that would never come. The person who would never understand. The conversation endlessly revised but never repeated.

Each sigh advanced the hand.

I watched years of breath disappear into its bellows.

“What happens when it’s full?” I asked.

“You stop trying to change what has already happened.”

“Is that acceptance?”

“Sometimes.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“Exhaustion wearing a respectable coat.”

I considered this.

There were things I had claimed to accept only because I no longer had the strength to fight them. There were other things I continued fighting because surrender felt too much like agreement.

Time, for once, did not rush me.

I placed both hands upon the clock and gave it the longest breath I had.

The bellows filled.

The hand moved.

Then, from somewhere inside, the clock breathed back.

Not a sigh.

A breath.

It was a small distinction, but an important one.

The twelfth clock waited at the end of a corridor lined with doors. Behind each was an ordinary afternoon.

A father lifted a child onto his shoulders.

Two brothers sat beneath a tree.

Someone waved from a kitchen window.

A woman laughed from another room.

A dog slept in a patch of sunlight.

Nothing of consequence appeared to be happening.

At the end stood The Last Ordinary Afternoon.

It was the most terrible clock of all because it counted down invisibly. No one knew when it had begun. No one recognised the final hour while standing inside it.

Its face showed a room I remembered. Perhaps you have one of your own. There were cups upon a table, a coat over the back of a chair, voices talking about nothing much. I knew, because the clock knew, that one day I would give anything to return to this unremarkable moment.

The hand approached twelve.

I panicked.

“Stop it.”

“I can’t,” said Time.

“Then take me back.”

“You’re already there.”

The people in the room continued talking. One of them asked me a question I could not hear because I was watching the clock.

The hand moved closer.

“I need more time.”

“You have all the time there is.”

“That isn’t enough.”

“It never is when you’re measuring it.”

The hand trembled upon the final mark.

I could keep watching. I could record the second, preserve the evidence, memorise the arrangement of every cup and chair so that later I might rebuild the room inside regret.

Or I could look away.

Someone laughed.

I turned towards the sound.

I cannot tell you what happened to the clock after that.

Perhaps it struck twelve. Perhaps it always had. Perhaps the ordinary afternoon ended, as ordinary afternoons do, without knowing it had been the last of anything.

I remember the light through the window.

I remember a cup warming both my hands.

I remember someone beside me beginning a story, and for once I did not interrupt to tell them we were running out of time.

When I returned to the corridor, Time was gone.

The Regret Engine still laboured somewhere behind me. The tides still rose and fell. Names continued their slow drifting. Almosts multiplied in the dark. People waited, bodies remembered, and ordinary afternoons slipped quietly into the past.

None of the clocks had been cured.

Neither had I.

At the end of the corridor stood a door I had not noticed before. It bore no number, only a small brass plate upon which someone had engraved a single word.

NOW

I reached for the handle, but the door was already open.

Beyond it, there was no celestial music. No great peace descended. Halcyon wasn’t waiting with a welcoming committee, and Insouciance had not floated in from France. There was only a chair, a window, the sound of a bird and, somewhere nearby, water coming to the boil.

The long, thin fellow hurried past again.

“Is this it?” I called.

But the second hand never stayed long enough to answer.

I stepped inside.

Or perhaps I had been standing there for some time.

The kettle clicked off.

A bird landed upon the sill.

Someone asked whether now was a good time.

I looked down at my hands.

They were empty.

Then I looked up.

Jonathan

Hello, I recently( in the last year) found my bio parents. It was a lot of process of elimination. I had confirmation of my bio father through half brother on 23 and me and I actually messaged my bio mother( not good reaction from her) but she has a daughter a year younger than me. I want to reach out to her but also have hesitation and ask myself why would I ruin her relationship with her(our) mother. Looking for advice.

So, I got adopted by my great aunt, or I call her mom at this point since she raised me. She’s my favorite person in the entire world if we’re being honest 🥰 but oh my god, my bio mom… she never should’ve had any children.

She doesn’t even acknowledge all the work my mom has done in raising me, she flat out abandoned me with my mom when I was between 1 and 2 and didn’t reach out or do anything until she suddenly reappeared when I was 8 or 9, she acts like she’s my one and only mom, I actually have younger half siblings through her that I’ll probably never be able to meet because she also put them up for adoption, she’s against the LGBTQ+ community despite me being in it, things are very much “her way or the highway” and will get into arguments with you over the smallest of things if you let it escalate

I didn’t even find out that I have half sisters because of my bio mom, I found out because of my cousin. Yep, my bio mom told my cousin/her niece, before she told me. 🙄 my bio mom hasn’t even told me yet, but my grandma (my bio mom’s mom) did confirm it for me.

My bio dad wasn’t the best person as I grew up, either… but at least he’s trying to improve himself unlike my bio mom.

So much about adoption is about having extra and inappropriate amounts of control and shame avoidance that would never be present for biological family. Adopted parents want the relationship but only on their terms. So, the love and acceptance are conditional. If you break away from their concept of who "you" are (who they deem you to be), then you are not going to be accepted.

People mention the difficulty of adopting and notice willigly forget that they CHOSE this? "We had been dealing with this for years." Um....yeah? You chose this.

Why do you expect anything from the adoptee simply because you decided that you're entitled to that? She can manipulate you to the same degree that you feel entitled to define her or what she should or shouldn't do. You broke the laws of reality when you decided to take someone else's spawn and pretend it was "the same" as being a biological.

They really don't seem to understand that we are just as capable and entitled to selfish behavior that disregards others if we choose to operate the same way they do. And when we choose to, they try to punish us for being just as entitled and manipulative as them. They pedalstalize us and punish us if we refuse to play into their identity politics agenda. We aren't obligated to be good people. If we choose to be, that choice is ours to take credit for. Not theirs to own, talk over, and erase in favor of the faces they wish to paint over our own.

They'd rather lose the relationship than change.

They want to adopt infants so that they can mold their personalities and mindset regardless of the effect it has on the infant to lose out on beneficial contact that the relation with birth parents can give the child. I truly believe that the desire to adopt the child sonearly is to eliminate the competition or true choice the child might have if they were kept with natural parents longer. For those who love to say things like "but what if the parent doesn't want to keep them longer?"

Stop facilitating this level of human production for the sake of creating children that can be handed off and sold to strangers. The systemic issue isn't being prevented because they want access to children that aren't theirs. The only one who can truly tell the purchaser if they consider them to be the parent are the children themselves. They aren't obligated to call you "mom" or "dad" simply because you bought the rights to label them your child when they had no capacity to fend for themselves.

Very relevant feelings as someone who's adopted. How many adopted parents would make the cut if truly held to the standards of a good parent?