Themed Months
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What to Read If You Want to Understand Adoptees
I was an adopted only child who taught myself to read at the age of three. Books were my world, my companions and my solace. I gravitated towards stories of orphans and foundlings, of characters who were displaced and lost…
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The Blood of My Mother
For as long as I remember, I have had stories in my head and instead of writing them down, I had imaginary conversations with people.
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You’re Not My Birth Mother, But Thanks
But then someone appeared: a woman. Forty-ish. Brown hair. Casual sweater and jeans. An apologetic grimace.
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Call for Submissions: November ’23 Adoptee Awareness Month
We’re accepting essays by adoptees from 11/1 through 12/31. Curated by Lauren J. Sharkey, publication in November 2023.
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Pecking Order
I didn’t feel guilty, not exactly, but I did feel a twang of remorse as we left her by herself.
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Into the Body
These days, I walk down to the river running through the town I’ve made mine. The water’s on the rise.
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Braced and Bedazzled
“This is solid, mostly titanium,” the surgeon says while I’m still groggy in recovery. “You can’t pull it apart if you tried.,” and, almost as an afterthought, “Don’t try.”
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The Dislexic Poit
I always received glowing remarks on my alliteration or understanding of poetic devices, but they were hidden beneath what felt like hundreds of tiny red strikes across misspellings—although my phonetic versions of the words were sometimes genius, and always understandable.
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The Microphone
The ableism of schools as workplaces means that all teachers are assumed to be able-bodied until a disabled teacher identifies their need for accommodations. Schools respond; they do not, to my knowledge, anticipate disabled teachers.
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Outside(r)
I’d never thought of myself as separate from the world I lived in; the Outside I came from was sensory-rich and immersive, there my interactions unfolded organically and overlapped, building intuitively like the scales on a pinecone, rewarding curiosity with…