“I understood that this sister of mine was going to live somewhere else, away from us...This information did not make me thing of the baby as less mine. She was my sister, like my brother was my brother and my mother was my mother. The adoptive parents' claim on my developing sister did not negate mine, she was not a kingdom or a territory or a thing with a deed; she was a person. This baby girl would be both my sister and these other people's daughter, and my mom's daughter. there would be moments when one claim took focus-- as right now this baby girl was more Ours than Theirs, and one day she would be more Theirs than Ours, but none of those connections could completely erase the others. It would be easier, perhaps, if they could, if after she was gone we could forget this baby ever belonged to us. But that's not how people work.” FamilyBabyAdoptionSistersComplicated RelationshipComplicated LoveAdoption Reunions Book:Bastards: A Memoir Source: Bastards: A Memoir
“But in life, no one is spared, no one is let off the hook. Those buried sensations had to come out, be felt, addressed, and lived through. I wish I could say I let it all out that night. All of the tears, all of the screams, all of the bullshit. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. It would take something much stronger to bring all that out of me. Still. By the time the sun rose the next morning, one thing had changed: I was no longer full of shit... I drove west; needing to escape the gravitational pull of both of my families and anyone who knew them. I needed to wallow in uncertainty, without the balancing effects of religion or school, or friends, or family to cling to. If I was ever going to figure out who I was, I needed to be a stranger again.” FamilyEmotionsStrangerBullshitEscape Book:Bastards: A Memoir Source: Bastards: A Memoir
“Those words hit me like a truck: real family. They brought me back to a day when I was a kid and I had asked Peggy what the word bastard meant. She told me it mean 'illegitimate, like not real.' It has seemed like a toothless insult. But now I understood where the word had bite: if you are not real, you can be dismissed, erased, forgotten. It means the you don't matter.” MatterFamilyBastard Book:Bastards: A Memoir Source: Bastards: A Memoir