5:27 (1 hour 58 minutes) 7:37 (3 hours 9 minutes) It makes complete sense to me why so many adoptees write memoirs. If you’re a writer with no sense of your own story, you’re practically driven to the paper in order to sort it all out. …

Once upon a time, there was a little duck. The mama duck had left her little duck with a family of turtles and was lost after that. The little duck grew up learning how to hide, living in holes, and being scared of the world. But one day, she looked…

I must have started at least five of these adoptee-themed posts, all different stories, ideas, thoughts. Noteworthy though they all might be, they don’t cut down to the core of why I’ve been going back and forth between the paper and the buzzing in my head lately. I thought I…

You may have thought that you knew what my answer might have been when you asked how I, an adoptee, felt about abortion. …

How do you tell a story with no beginning? How do you celebrate an event without the story of that event? These are important questions for adoptees. I ask myself these questions every year on my birthday, especially now that I’ve slowly begun to come out of the fog, a…

“Don’t ask my opinion / Don’t ask me to lie / Then beg for forgiveness / For making you cry / For making you cry / ’Cause I’m only human after all / I’m only human after all / Don’t put your blame on me / Don’t put the blame…

On the day that my book published, it had been almost two months since I’d looked at my book. Mostly out of fear that I’d find a typo or something I missed. Mostly out of fear that if I found mistakes or missing details that it would be too late. …

Dear 13-year-old Shannon, I know there’s no way in hell you’re going to believe me, but I wouldn’t be writing you a letter if the news wasn’t radical. I am the 29 year old version of you. I have a daughter, we live in a house by a forest, I…

“Cause I just couldn’t open up, I’m always shifting.” — “Hallucinogenics” by Matt Maeson It was a Thursday, the day I submitted the final manuscript of my book. And right on time, I fell apart. I am no stranger to breakdowns. Whether I like to admit it or not, my…