I've got some Big Thoughts rattling around in my brain today, and under the theory of better out than in, I'm going to try to throw them out here. This is gonna be a thread.

You may already have questions. How long? What's it about? Do I have to slog through 80 tweets first thing in the morning? Will it make sense? Will it all tie together somehow?

Here's my answer: I have absolutely no idea! It could all go well, or it could go sideways!

So you know, mute or whatever. Or come along for the ride and peek into mah brain. It might get messy. That's all part of the excitement!

Sometimes I see APs and HAPs ask #adoptees what they can do to help their adopted kids. Often, the subtext there, the part that remains unsaid (usually) is "...so they don't turn out as angry and bitter and fucked up as YOU..."

I never know how to answer that. So when it's 2 a.m. and I can't sleep, I think about it a bit. And for me, the beginning point always seems to come back to "quit telling people that we're adopted."

I don't mean don't tell US - while I am not myself a Late Discovery Adoptee, I have fellow adoptees who were never told they were adopted, who found out later in life. This approach causes problems, to put it mildly. They can speak on those, they have that knowledge.

I was told from as far back as I can remember that I was adopted. There are five kids in my family - four of us are adopted, one is bio. All of us always knew. For my sister and one of my brothers, it was obvious. For myself and my youngest brother, white, it was not. We passed.

Or we could have, had our parents (especially my mom) not taken every opportunity to tell anyone she knew/met that 4/5 of us were adoptees. That fact always made its way into her conversations at some point.

I was born in 1966, pre-Roe. What that means for all practical purposes (and as far as I know from the little research into my history that I've done) is that I was/am a bastard. My bio mom was not married at the time of my birth (she was actually a widow).

In the documents I was able to see, there was no father listed. My bio mom was far older than the norm - it's been a minute since I've seen the info, and much of it has faded for me, but what I do remember is that she was older. Very much older. Mid 40s older.

She was not the bio mom that people imagine when they think of a pregnant woman pre-Roe. She was not young. She was not a young girl who found herself "in trouble". But, she was unmarried, which makes me a bastard in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of society.

Does being a bastard impact my life in any way? Not as far as I can tell.

Except...

When everyone who ever met my mom is told that I am adopted - that means that everyone who's ever known me or even known *about* me (through stories from my parents) --

-- KNOWS this piece of information about me. It's never been stated, but they can do the math and assume the circumstances. Pre-Roe babies, well of course they're bastards. Of course they are, because nice married (white) women don't give up their babies!

Nice married (white) women don't have their babies taken away by social services! Nice married (white) women have nice (white) extended families who can help them if they find themselves in hard circumstances financially, emotionally, mentally.

Nice (white) families don't let go of the babies born into their family.

Nice (white) babies born to married people are good and innocent and loved and wanted. They are not let go. They are not given away to strangers.

Babies born pre-Roe to unmarried women though...well, that's different. We are assumed to be conceived in sin. That's always the first assumption. Of course we are bastards, how could we not be?

Our mothers broke the rules society had in place. Our mothers sinned.

And we are irrefutable proof of that. We are the living embodiment of that sin.

We are born stained with that sin. Oh, people pretend that isn't true. They talk of adoptee babies as though we are innocent and good and loved and wanted, just like babies born to married couples.

They say that no one blames us, no one holds our beginnings against us. That we are not at fault for the circumstances of our birth, that we are not stained by our mother's sin.

Maybe they even believe they are being honest when they think that.

Maybe they even believe that *we* think they are being honest about how they see us.

Except...we don't.

Sure, as children we believe that. Kids are fairly literal, and up until a certain point in development, it doesn't occur to us that adults lie.

That they can say one thing out loud, but think or feel an opposite thing in their minds, their hearts. Kids are generally all in with their thoughts and feelings - they aren't shy about telling you *exactly* what they think or feel at any given moment in a day.

Their inside thoughts become their outside thoughts. They assume this is true for everyone. They have no understanding of the concept that people can be saying one thing while thinking another thing. At least, not when they're young.

But, kids grow up.

They become more aware of nuance. They become more sophisticated in their thought processes. They become more attuned to the concept that what people say on the outside is NOT always the same as what they say on the inside.

They begin to be aware that even though mommy or daddy SAY they're not mad, they're kind of ACTING like they're mad. They start to understand that sometimes, adults do actually lie, or at least, not tell the whole truth.

They start to watch for it. For the signs of it in adults.

Adoptees are especially tuned into this kind of dissonance. When adults find out that we are adoptees, we SEE it happen. We KNOW it's happening.

(Thread break now. Go get some water or eat something, it's probably time for that now. Part 2 will come, whether you want it or not.)