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My Adoption Story: What's Life Like as an Adopted Child

Table of contents, my definition of adoption and personal story, several advantages of being adopted, some disadvantages that cannot be hidden.

• Increased Opportunities
• Large Family
• Healthier Lifestyle
• Having Time With Parents
• Identity Confusion
• Transitioning to Parenthood
• Tension Between Biological Parents and Adoptive
• Children Become Curious of Who They Really Are

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• Selfishness
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Inspiring Adoption Stories

Stories of adoption show sacrifice, love, and inspiration. Each adoption story is different, but each story is wonderful in its own way.

As a member of the adoption community, I have come across many adoption stories. I find each inspiring. I have seen families being matched with expectant parents and then bring home a new baby. I have seen families foster a child and then ask to adopt the child. I have seen courtrooms of adoptive families being granted their petition to adopt.  I have seen communities come together to support families who are hoping to adopt. There are stories of people adopting a child with special needs , and the adoption is a blessing to all those involved.

Adoption is amazing, and the people involved are amazing. Adoption has helped me become a mother. I am inspired by other adoption stories. 

My Family’s Adoption Story

My three sons were adopted . They have different adoption stories, and they are inspiring in their own ways.

With our first adoption, we decided to go the traditional route. After we submitted paperwork, completed our background checks, endured interviews, passed our home study, and paid an initial fee, we were approved for adoption. The chances of being matched with an expectant parent were better if we told everyone we knew that we were hoping to adopt. Our Christmas cards that year included cards with our picture and information about our profile and blog.

About a year after being approved for adoption, my aunt called me to tell me that she knew someone who was pregnant. She had told this woman’s mother about us and gave her our information. Because of other contacts that did not pan out, we were cautiously optimistic that this would turn into something.

A few days later, we received an email that would change our lives. It was from the expectant parent that knew my aunt. She told us about her situation and the range of emotions she’d felt since finding out she was pregnant. J wrote that she had decided to place her baby for adoption and was hoping we would consider adopting him. My husband and I immediately hugged and jumped for joy. Our relationship with J grew, and we felt close to her, but there was some concern with her ex-boyfriend, S.

S had different thoughts about adoption and was persuaded by his family to change J’s mind. When the baby was born, we flew several states away and arrived at the hospital hours later. The next day we went to the hospital again, and S arrived after to meet his son. He had started to turn his heart towards adoption, but what sealed it was meeting and developing a relationship with us. The hospital staff allowed us to go into another room with S and the baby. He lovingly held his son and asked us questions about our lives and how we would raise his son. Over the next several days, we grew to love S and built a relationship of trust. It was more than we could have expected.

When we signed the adoption papers four days after the baby was born, both birth parents knew they were making the right decision. We embraced them and expressed our love for them. The caseworker commented to us, “I did not know how this adoption was going to work out, but you helped change his heart.” The open adoption we have enjoyed for ten years has been a beautiful journey. 

My Family’s Foster-to-Adopt Story

After our son became a toddler, we decided we wanted more children and for him to be a big brother. Because it had worked the first time, we decided to go on the same path to find our next child. This time it did not work as we had hoped for. Our son moved out of his crib not because a new baby needed the crib but because he had grown. This was difficult for our family because we had envisioned having children close together.

After two years, we decided to pursue foster-to-adopt. It seemed like, this time, there was even more paperwork, interviews, and background checks. The day after we were licensed, we got a phone call from a caseworker. There was a little boy who was almost a year old who needed a permanent home. He was in another foster home, but the family was unable to take in his baby brother, who would be born within a matter of weeks. The state wanted to find a home and family for both boys with the potential for adoption. We felt like this was what our family needed. The little boy was transferred into our home, and three weeks later, we picked up his baby brother from the hospital.

We went from a family of three to five quickly, and the children were all three and under. It was a whirlwind of emotions. It was different from our first adoption because the two boys were still in foster care. The state’s goals were reunification, so the boys had visits with their biological parents. After enduring court dates, state visits, and renewing our license, we were able to adopt the boys when they were four and three years old. Our family celebrated with a big party, and we invited family and friends to celebrate with us. We felt blessed to be a family with all the same last names.

The T Family’s Influential Adoption Miracle

I like to follow other adoptive families on Instagram. They all have unique and beautiful adoption stories. I have been following the T family for years. They have a daughter who was adopted, and they were hoping to adopt another child. It had been years of waiting and hoping. They were scrimping and saving because they knew that they would need to pay the adoption fees if they were quickly matched. Even after trying to save all they could, they knew they were still short of some money.

Her friends and family rallied around them and organized a fundraiser to help them. A few Instagram influencers posted about this fundraiser, and within two days, they raised a significant amount of money. These friends and family stopped by their house with the surprise. The T family was in shock that this had been organized on their behalf. The video showing their reaction was tear-filled and full of gratitude.

The next week a caseworker contacted the T family and told them an expectant mother had seen their profile and wanted them to adopt her baby. She was heading to the hospital at that exact moment to deliver the baby. The T family quickly bought some diapers, bottles, and other baby needs. A healthy baby boy was placed in their arms the next day.

The amount raised by their family and friends was almost the exact amount they needed to cover the adoption fees. It was a miracle. It shows that a community can come together and support a family in a very special way. 

The R Family’s Adoption

I first got to know A from church. She and her husband had been married just a few months longer than my husband and me. My husband and my infertility issues were not a secret, and we shared it with others. She confided in me that she and her husband were also having infertility issues. They had tried all they could to have a biological child but had nothing to show for it.

After taking the time to grieve this, they decided to pursue adoption. They were devastated when an expectant mother chose them to be parents but then chose to parent. A family friend put them in contact with a young woman from another country. She had been in college and found out she was pregnant. This expectant mother decided to place her baby for adoption. The R family took her into their home and developed a great relationship with her.

She taught them to cook dishes from her native country, and they taught her some of their favorite music. They brought her to family gatherings. She became a part of their family. When her baby was born, she placed the baby with them and knew that it was the right choice. She felt peace and love knowing the R family was a good family that would love and support her daughter. 

The B Family’s Sibling Adoption Story

The B family was living in Chicago. He was a doctor, and she was a lawyer. They were focused on their careers but had always hoped they would be able to have children. After years of trying, they were not given the opportunity to be parents. They knew there was a different plan for them.

She contacted a lawyer friend and talked to her about adoption and legally free children, meaning their parents’ parental rights were terminated by the state. One day the friend emailed a link to a sibling group of four in Texas hoping to find a forever family. The B family looked at these children’s faces and immediately knew they would do whatever it took to bring them home.

Even though they were legally free, the B family still had to jump through many hoops. They had to become licensed foster parents in Illinois. They needed to move from their two-bedroom condo to another home that could accommodate four children. They needed to buy a car that could fit everyone. There were also issues with moving the children from Texas to Illinois. But even though it was not immediate, the children were placed with them. The children ranged from four to 13 years old.

This is an inspirational story because many families are unable to adopt four children at a time. These children wanted and needed a family that could open their hearts and home to all of them so they could remain together. The B parents embraced their new roles as mom and dad even while driving a minivan.

The C Family’s Decision to Adopt While Pregnant

I met the C family years ago. They were a young family with three children and one on the way. She stayed at home with the children. The husband worked in real estate.

He was chatting with a couple, and they had a 10-month-old baby. He asked about the baby, and the woman told him they were fostering this child. The baby had been in their home since she was three weeks old. The woman told him the baby’s case was heading towards adoption, but she and her husband were not looking to adopt. The C husband went home that night and told his wife that he thought they should adopt the baby. He felt a strong connection.

At first, the wife was in shock. She was five months pregnant and had three other children at home. But the more the husband talked about this baby, she knew it was something they should consider.

The baby had special needs, so they started researching the therapies she needed as she grew older. They started the paperwork and classes they would need to become foster parents first. After frequent visits with the baby and the state officials, they decided they would adopt her. She came to their home two months before another baby came into their family.

This is an inspirational story because they felt called to adopt this baby. The baby needed them, and they needed the baby. 

Adoptions Are Inspiring 

For Christmas a few years ago, my son’s birth mother made him a sign that said, “Every adoption story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite.” There is so much goodness and hope in adoption stories. Adoptions start from something broken but can be molded into something beautiful. 

Alicia Nelson is a wife and a mother to three rambunctious boys. She is an online teacher and teaches English to Chinese children. Adoption has become her passion. She loves connecting with others on infertility, adoption, and foster care. She enjoys woodworking, being outdoors, listening to podcasts, and reading good books. She lives in Washington state with her family.

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Your Child’s Adoption Story: Document Their Journey

Your child’s adoption story is important

As an adult adoptee, I find myself wanting to hear my adoption story just one more time—although it is more like a million more times. Hearing it was simply never enough. I wanted to have something I could visually remember, or an experience that I could always look back on. I wanted to flip page after page and see how two people, once strangers, took a leap of faith to adopt me and became my heroes. They are my parents. I want to remember the day my parents adopted me—every birthday, every first day of school, and every hug they have ever given me.

Adoption stories are important to adoptees. They are important in helping to foster a connection or relationship between adoptive parents and their adopted child. It is important for a child to know where they come from.

Try these creative activities to build your relationship with your adopted child and help your child understand their adoption story.

Create a storybook for your adopted child

Children’s books serve as a great resource for children to learn to read, laugh, and smile. Creating a children’s book with your child that tells your child’s adoption story will help your child to understand what it means to be adopted, and it will help them to feel more confident and comfortable about being adopted. Begin with simple sentences and easy vocabulary for your child to understand. No worries, you don’t have to be an artist or a published author to create an awesome book that you and your child will cherish forever.

Writing ideas: your child’s birth mom and siblings, where your child is from, why your child was placed for adoption, the hospital stay and birth, how you prepared for your child’s arrival, etc.

What you will need: construction paper, notebook paper, markers, crayons, glue, glitter, colored pencils, hole puncher, yarn, and a stapler (mom and dad should assist).

Allow your child to do the coloring and drawing while you do the writing.

Chronicle your child’s adoption journey with a scrapbook

Scrapbooks are one of the cutest and coolest books an adoptive parent and child can put together. Who doesn’t love looking at pictures, beautiful colors, touching textured items such as a piece of fabric from your child’s first blanket, first teddy bear, or first hair bow?

Your scrapbook chronicles your adopted child’s journey from the time your child was in their birth mommy’s womb to adulthood, covering little moments to major life events. It serves as a great communication tool between you and your child. What makes the scrapbook different from the storybook is that it is more of a photo book that gives you, the adoptive parent, the opportunity to be creative as you tell your child’s story every time they ask to hear it.

What to put in your scrapbook: photos, locks of hair, cards from friends and family, drawings, buttons and fabric from your child’s outfits, stickers, sweet messages from your child, etc.

Remember, it’s your scrapbook. Get as creative as your heart wants to. And remember that scrapbooks are ongoing. I encourage you to scrapbook your child’s and family’s life all the way through his or her adulthood. Imagine how special it will be when your child is an adult and can look back and realize how blessed they were by their adoption.

Keepsakes are treasured momentos for adopted children

I have always believed it is important for adopted children to have a memory of their birth family, such as a baby blanket or a teddy bear; and I have always thought it is important for a child to have a memory of how two families became one through adoption. These keepsakes are important. If there is ever time a child misses their birth mom or birth family, they will always have a part of them.

What you should create and keep: foot prints and hand prints of birth mommy, adoptive mommy, and baby. Create a plaster hand print of your child’s birth mom to help your child feel like they have an identity connection to their birth mom. Use a baby blanket, notes and cards, teddy bear, and jewelry from your child’s birth mom that can be used to create a shadow box to remember her by. Collect souvenirs from cities, states, or countries you may have traveled to adopt your child.

Imagine how special the moments will be when your little one snuggles up in your arms as you share your child’s adoption story. As overwhelming as it can feel at times, the smile and sparkle in your child’s eyes will bring you the peace that made the process all worth it. No one said adoption would be easy, but to be able to look back on the journey through scrapbooks, storybooks, and keepsakes, you will realize how blessed you truly are.

How will you share your child’s adoption story?

Written by Jason Granillo

Jason Granillo

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How to write an adoption story.

• Adopting a Newborn Baby

• Every family’s adoption story is different. Many people decide to include photographs of their child’s birth and early history. If you really want your adoption story to illustrate everything you have been through, include every moment that you find special and want to share with your child.
• The beginning should focus on the time period prior to adoption. To create it, describe the period before you were connected with the birthmother, the delivery and meeting the baby. This way you are going to create an adoption story your child will appreciate the most.
• An adoption story should focus on the child. It is not only a story about the adoptive family’s journey to parenting, although you can dedicate part of it to describe your feelings during the whole process.

Tips for Creating a Personalized Adoption Story

• Create a personal name for your adoption story.
• StoryJumper
• A picture is worth a thousand words, so fill the pages with pictures and descriptions of each. Choose photos that show everyday life with your child. This way your child will be able to make up stories to retell and create a web of memories.
• If you are short on pictures, get creative and draw your own illustrations to present each part of the story.
• Find ways to engage your child in the adoption story. Make it interactive by using games and questions. You can also include pieces of fabric from the outfit your child was wearing when you first met, or details like the hospital wristband.
• Acknowledge the birth family, even if you don’t have a lot of information. Include pictures when possible, and write what you know about them.

All adopted children should have a wonderful momento of how they became part of their family. An adoption story can provide essential information and details about the child’s history and background and show just how much of a dream come true they were.

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Adoption: An Essay

What is it like to suddenly be contacted by the birth parents you've never met.

Posted October 27, 2011 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Adopting an Identity

It's a day just like any other in my freshman year, and my mom tells me my dad cried over the contents of the envelope she just handed to me. I have a hard time believing her, because I've never seen my dad cry and because dads, by the laws of nature, aren't supposed to cry. But the envelope concerns me, and it concerned my dad enough to cry about it.

Pretty soon, I'm crying, and my mom's crying. Our faces are like shiny red beets while tears fall into our open mouths as we try and fail to talk to each other through the tears. We only manage blubbering, guttural noises.

Inside the envelope are letters and pictures. My mom says they're from my biological parents, and that idea doesn't process, because the handwritten letter from my bio-father looks so much like my mom's handwriting that I think she's playing some sort of trick on me. She's not.

I flip through pictures of Chimene and Richard, these accidental lovers, and of the two half-siblings I never knew about. It's surreal; I feel only half awake as I flip among the pictures and wonder who these people are and wonder who I am because of these letters.

I felt out of place in my family. I would see families stockpiled with love. But love felt awkward since I didn't know how to give it, because I didn't, and in some ways still don't, appreciate everything my family does for me.

And I didn't see myself in my parents. They didn't read; they didn't like the kind of movies I like; they didn't share my atheism, my cynicism , or any personality quirks. I didn't understand the concept of all this familial love, because I wasn't sure how to love my parents when I felt disconnected from them.

My mom lingers. I think she feels as though she's obligated to help me along this emotional journey because she's my mom, and that's her job. All I can think about is how similar this is to the moment in the second grade when I was told I was adopted. I laid on the king-sized bed in my parents' room, talking about my day, wide-eyed at the fact that a girl in my grade was adopted. And then my mom told me that the girl and I had similar life stories.

My mom claimed she told me when I was young, but I didn't remember. At 8, I was told I was unique in a way I didn't want to be. We sat in silence for a while, and I wanted nothing more than to go away and cry. So I excused myself and got a Pepsi from the fridge. My mom accompanied me, and I can't remember feeling more sad, embarrassed, and angry in my entire childhood at the fact that she wouldn't leave me alone.

My biological mother uses an abundance of "teehees" in her structurally strange, typed letter because apparently she's funny, and laughter can't be captured on paper. I can't connect with her "teehees." I can't see any humor in the impersonal black ink. I can't connect with a person whose letter is like a resume, a list of altruistic hobbies and likable characteristics. Yet, I look at this paper and see myself in her love of books, her terrible humor. And I feel almost a sense of... relief.

I can't relate to my parents. And now I'm reading about this woman, seemingly so foreign, this woman who's training for the Iraq war and likes to plant, whose first love is God followed by her husband John, this woman who's half like me. Only half, but that's half more than I can say for my parents.

I sift through her computer-paper memories printed in the dull-colored ink. Then I move on to Richard. I already like him. He gave me actual pictures, glossy, without fingerprint smudges, true and genuine, just like his handwritten letter that tells me he took time and effort in this compilation.

I almost feel like an intruder looking at his best friends, his brother, his beard that makes him look like The Dude from The Big Lebowski . Richard begins by feeling obligated to tell me that I wasn't a mistake, that there was a good reason why I was brought up by a different family, blah blah. I don't need comfort from a man I don't know.

But I do know him. It's terrifying to the point where my hands begin to shake.

I know him because I'm the carbon copy of him, from his cheekbones to his aspirations. Our canines are identical, our eyes mirrors, our dimples cousins, our smiles duplicates. As I read the letter, I grow more and more dumbfounded. I want to major in film, and I think NYU is just about the most amazing school there is. So when I read that he majored in film production at NYU, I'm literally scared.

The similarities don't stop there. We're both adopted, we both love movies to no end, we like math, we prefer Judaism to other religions, we're both this, and we're both that. This letter is staring me in the face, telling me that I'm not random, that it's OK to not be like my family because I'm not exactly a part of them.

It's natural to want to believe that humans are independent. We all like to think we have freedom, that we're not controlled by anyone or anything. But science suggests that we are biased creatures with predispositions originating from either our genes or our environments. The nature versus nurture debate has been going since the dawn of psychology. Some say that we are a product of our environments; how we grow up and the conditions we grow up in help determine who we are today. For instance, someone can be a bitter adult due to a poor upbringing or a selfish adult because of a spoiled childhood.

The opposing view of this is that we have genetic predispositions that shape who we are. It's in our genes to like or dislike something; we're already programmed to be a certain way. Scientists have looked into this study by observing twins who have grown up in different environments. Theoretically, if nature wins out, they should be very similar people; however, if nurture is the dominant factor, they would be completely different people.

Homelife, culture, and peers definitely play a role in the makeup of a person. But then there are people like Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe, identical twins reared apart. One was raised as a Catholic and a Nazi while the other was raised in the Caribbean as a Jew. They both liked sweet liqueur and spicy food, tended to fall asleep while watching television, flushed the toilet before using it, kept rubber bands on their wrists, and had quick tempers. When they met, they were both wearing blue, double-breasted shirts, mustaches, and wire-rimmed glasses.

And this might seem like a freakish coincidence, but it's not an anomaly. Among other examples, there are also the two Jims; twins reared apart named Jim who had sons named James, first wives named Linda and second wives named Betty, dogs named Toy, vasectomies, a woodworking hobby, fondness for Miller Lite, chain- smoking habit, and more similarities they shared.

It seems that nature wins this debate. But I didn't need studies to tell me that. I learned it in a letter.

I don't resent my parents because I'm not able to relate to them. What used to bother me was my brother. It's clear to see that Gerald Singleton King, Jr. is my father's son. They have matching hot-heads and hairlines and a knack for business. My brother borrowed my dad's eyes and my grandpa's height to become who he is. And when you turn to my mom, you can see how G.J. has her social skill and empathetic demeanor.

Then there is me. The shortest person in my entire extended family, the only blue-eyed girl, the sort of person to read Infinite Jest for fun while everyone else has a magazine in their hands. My entire family always told me I was an artist, but I'm pretty sure that's because they didn't know what else to call me.

I always wanted to do something different, and I'm not sure if that's because I was already labeled as different or because I genuinely wanted to. But then my brother went to Brown University and then to Stanford. I had no room to do something awesome because my brother was better; my brother was biological.

It took me a while to stop comparing myself to G.J. I stepped back and remembered: Yeah, I'm different. We don't share the same biological source, so how can my brain cells compare to his?

And I have to remember. It doesn't happen often, but I have to remember that my parents aren't useless. I know I take them for granted; every suburban teenager does.

If they didn't raise me Christian, I wouldn't have found my voice through atheism. If they didn't provide for me well, I wouldn't feel the need to provide well for others. If they didn't teach me the laws of the world, I wouldn't know how to rebel against them. While I found solace in the letters, I had to remember—have to remember—that my ability to relate to strangers doesn't compromise the fact that my parents are, and always will be, superior because they raised me.

Richard is rather poignant. All bio-fathers should be as cool as Richard. No one has ever told me that I'm special the way Richard is telling me I'm special. He writes, "Your existence in this world means a lot to me. It's difficult to put into exactly the right words, but it's kind of like... When you were born, it validated my existence. No matter what I did or did not accomplish from that point forward, there would always be you."

I think I needed Richard's letter more than Chimene's letter. Maybe that's because I was able to relate to him so well, and I needed a father figure to relate to. My dad always had my brother; they bonded over sports and muscle. And I had my mom, which was fine.

But I think I rejected my dad a lot, not only because he was sports-crazed, and I wasn't, but also because I only ever remember the bad things about him. Like the time he threw mashed potatoes in my hair at Thanksgiving. Or whenever he would yell something rude at me, then adopt a gentlemanly Southern accent for his customers on the phone. Or when I called 911 when he collapsed unconscious on the stairs and never received a thank you.

I'm not saying I needed a father figure or that Richard would fulfill that gap I (perhaps) have in my psyche left over from an unrequited relationship that was never really formed. The bottom line is, it's nice to hear that I'm special.

My mom told me she's scared that when I'm upset, I lock myself in my room and look at the battered envelope and dream of a life with a family that would accept me. I don't. I hadn't even touched the envelope for a second time until last week, trying to write this paper and remember why my bio-parents are still important to me.

I wanted to meet them when I was younger. I wanted to live a different life when Hinsdale was too small or too dull for me. I dreamed of the day I would turn 18 and find them wherever they were lurking. It frightened me to think that there were people walking and talking and living out there who came together under erroneous circumstances of which I was a product.

I struggled with the idea that I had two sets of parents, four sets of grandparents, double order of everything, and I'd never get the chance to know half of them. It didn't seem fair that there were two people whose blood I shared living normal lives without me. I never grasped the phrase "blood is thicker than water," because I didn't know whose blood ran in my veins.

I understand my mom's fear that I might get along with my bio-parents if I met them and abandon her to have a hunky-dory relationship. But I think my mom's fear is irrational. She's my mom. It's not as though I'd go running off with some woman I didn't know only because she gave birth to me.

My biological mother wasn't the person I talked to every day after school about my day. She wasn't the person that drove me to all the soccer games I never even played in. She wasn't the person who bought my Christmas presents, who wasn't afraid to touch me when I got the flu because I was stubborn and didn't want a flu shot, who searched online for weeks to find a replacement for my striped Ralph Lauren comforter that I ripped unintentionally while taking a nap. Chimene had nothing to do with my life, nor did she have the right to, because she had never been a part of my life.

I don't know whether or not I want to meet them now. I'm not sure I could stand the humility. "Oh, hi, my name is Maz, and I think I'm your daughter." Yeah, I'm sure Hollywood has already covered that conversation.

And I feel as though I'd be an inconvenience. Out of nowhere, a daughter of sorts comes into their lives. I know they basically plopped right down into my life with that envelope, but I needed to know who they were; I needed just a little bit of information about them in order to accept myself and the differences between my family and me.

If we reversed the scenario, if I contact them, I would feel obligated to keep talking to them, or else it would be too awkward to have a potentially life-changing encounter, only for communication to fizzle out after one or two meetings. And I'm sure that's a hassle, for both them and me, as well as my parents. I don't think my mom could handle it; all her fears would come creeping back, and horrid little ideas would form in her mind in my absence.

But, most importantly, I don't see the point in getting to know my bio-parents anymore. When I was little, I nearly begged for a different life. And now I'm off to college in a semester—I'm forced to have a different life. I don't feel that longing anymore, the sort of longing that requires endless amounts of hoping and pining for something not quite in your reach.

Because the thing is, I'm sure my bio-parents are wonderful people. They sound like wonderful people. But I don't need or want their approval. I don't need or want a relationship with them. I know they exist. And that's enough for now.

Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H. , a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a professor of psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center and author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk .

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Being Seen Saved My Life: My Adoption Story

Guest post by Destiny Twohill

The older I get, the more I understand about my adoption.

I’m reminded by God of how much bigger His plans are than mine tend to be, and I like to consider myself a big planner and a big dreamer. And yet there is more.

My adoption story is a big part of how the Lord came into my life. Actually, it’s not part of my story—it is my story. And truthfully, for the longest time, I didn’t realize it. It wasn’t until I was 18 years old about to graduate from high school that I really understood and recognized what the Lord has already done for me.

I was graduating at the top of my class, and when it came time to figure out what I was going to say in my speech, I had no ideas. I looked at anything and everything outside of me and my life. First I YouTubed valedictorian speeches, then I looked at my devotionals and church notes, I asked my teachers, but nothing seemed to fit.

I was encouraged to “just speak from the Word,” but I couldn’t do that, because in my heart I knew I was very complacent with my relationship with Christ at that time.

My dad brought up the idea of sharing my adoption story.

He said, “Why don’t you tell them your story?” “What story?” I said. “Your adoption story.” And that began the work in me with reflecting and understanding why my story is worth sharing.

It wasn’t easy to say yes to sharing at first.

I was very hesitant and nervous, and I didn’t feel like I could share something that I didn’t remember. It almost felt like it was someone else’s story. But after getting to sit down with my family and hear about my adoption story, I realized a few things.

One—I was moved. My own adoption story brought renewed conviction about where I was at with the Lord. Two—It’s not actually my story. It’s God’s story about what He has been doing in my life, and it’s my honor and pleasure to share it.

November 1st, 1998 was the day I was born and also the day I almost died.

Yes, that sounds dramatic, and I would think exaggerative if I heard that too. But honestly, that was my reality.

The first part of the story starts with my birth mother. Instead of aborting me, she chose to give me life, and that was the first time in my life I had been seen. For reasons I probably will never know, she left me on the doorsteps of an orphanage where I was found by a groundskeeper early in the morning. I must have been there a while because I was in a bad shape, and I had hypothermia when they found me.

I was then taken inside and given an examination like all the babies that come in.

As much as the orphanage tried to care for all the babies that came in, it was a poor orphanage with very limited resources so it was normal policy to determine whether a baby is likely to survive or not. The babies deemed unlikely to survive were then placed in a designated room until they passed away. After my evaluation, they decided that I was too sick to save and was placed in a basket ready to be taken to that room.

While I was waiting in the basket on the floor, the director of the orphanage passed by and saw me. And all of the sudden, a commotion broke out.

“This is a mistake! This is a mistake!” she said. “This child is in the wrong line. Look at her face—she has features of the Ming Dynasty. This child is in the bloodline of royalty. She has the face of the king.”

Again, even in my short life at the time, I had been seen. And because that woman saw me and made a choice, I got to live. I was then placed in the room where the babies were well cared for, the place where we were given the chance to thrive.

At the same time as all that was happening with me in China…

… there was a couple in the United States who made the choice to open their home to a baby.

But at first, that baby was not me. My parents had asked to adopt twins. But when the packet arrived from the adoption agency, it just had a picture of little ol’ me in it.

My parents were shocked, and my mother was heartbroken. You see, they had actually built an entirely new section on their house to accommodate twins, with two of everything. The days following the arrival of the packet were filled with conflict with the agency.

They were told the problem was in China. The agency said, “The baby in the packet is yours if you choose to move forward. You need to tell us if you want to proceed.”

My father was all in, but my mother’s heart was wounded. Dad tried to talk to mom, but she was too sad to engage. Finally, the agency called and said that they needed an answer by 9am the next morning. My father told my mother the deadline, but she was still dealing with a wounded heart, so they went to sleep still without an answer.

During the night, my dad had a dream. It was a memory of a testimony a girl had given at their church months before. And the girl’s name was Destiny.

My dad woke in the morning and asked my mom, “What are we going to tell the agency?” Mom just said, “I don’t know.” Then dad shared about the dream he had and went to get ready.

When he came out, mom was sitting on the bed holding my picture, tears streaming down her face. It was the first time she had seen my picture since she first opened the packet.

She looked up at my dad and said, “Destiny Joy Twohill. Let’s go get my baby!”

Not long after that, Cindy Twohill flew to China herself to pick me up and take me to meet my family. I thank God for the choice they made, too. I will always be grateful to my birth mother for giving me life, but I am forever thankful that God planned for me to be adopted and to be given a family that loves me.

So where does this adoption story go from there?

Well, I grew up living a blessed life I could have never had without the Lord saving me from my first day of life. I’m one of three adopted children in my family with three biological siblings for a total of six children, and we’ve all been blessed with a family that loves us beyond measure.

Last May, I graduated from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of FAU with a major in Biology and a minor in Spanish literature. The next goal I’m working towards is becoming a Physician Assistant in the medical field. Such goodness and grace from the Lord and who continues to show us there is more.

From the steps of an orphanage to the path I am on today, I am an example of how God is continually writing our stories.

1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”

This story could have ended the day I was born, but God has seen me from the first day all the way to being here today. And this is why adoption—and my adoption story—helps me understand how much God loves us and cares for us.

My birth mother saw me, the groundskeeper saw me, the director saw me, my parents saw me, but most importantly, God saw me before anybody else did.

He sees the orphaned and the vulnerable and He calls us to do the same. That calling will look different for each of us, but if the story I’m sharing tonight helps remind you of anything, I pray that it’s about our need to see people the way He sees them.

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How to Tell Your Adoptee Story

My definition of adoptee story:.

…the result of an adoptee exploring the story they have been told by adoptive parents, agencies and adoption documents, and instead of repeating this information as their story, start questioning the validity of said information and start adjusting the angle and terminology of the story, to develop a way to tell the story that truly and honestly reflects their own experience, based on the facts that can be proven. In this process, the adoptee becomes the true narrator of their own experience and take full ownership of their own story.

Before getting into the article, I want to preface with the message that even though this title looks like I am going to tell you what to do and how, I am in no way telling you what to do or how. I hope that makes sense somehow.

One of the pillars of my work here with This Adoptee Life is letting fellow Adoptees know that however you chose to tell your story, based on where you are in your journey, is valid. And, I invite you to dig deeper, question more and explore beyond what you have been told. You can tell your Adoptee story* and you have every right to.

I write this to serve as a guide for anyone struggling with how to verbalize your experience and story and building up the courage to speak it out loud. These are the steps that my process took me through, and I want to share them with YOU.

Read them in this article, and then head over to the my latest podcast episode to hear me share the difference in how I tell my story today.

• Read your adoption papers

Chances are you have heard your story, or part of your story, from you adoptive parents. Chances are also that when they told you this story, they added in their own layers from their experience through the adoption process. Maybe they used words meant to reassure you that you were loved, chosen, and wanted.

I was told part of my adoption story, based on what was provided to my adoptive parents and would grow up my whole life repeating the same.

Until one day I realized that adoption papers may or may not be true. And until one day I realized that this story had nothing in it that I had contributed, yet it was somehow my life and my story.

That felt conflicting to me. The solution came when I started picking apart what this story actually was and what parts of it, I could actually stand behind.

• Explore your story beyond your adoption papers

Picking apart my story meant being honest with what I knew to be true from what my adoption papers said. That was a very small amount.

It said that I had been handed over to the police by an unknown woman and that the police had handed me over to the authorities. That was pretty much it.

I stopped telling this as my story once I realized that not only could I not verify who this woman was, but I had no idea how I got into her hands, where she found me, if she found me, if I was ever in the hands of the police, how I got into the hands of the authority.

And behind these questions I found the more important questions like was I found in the street, what happened to my mother, was I abandoned, was I relinquished, was I supposed to have ever gotten into the hands of authority?

On what grounds did my adoption become possible?

I don’t have any of these answers and I doubt I ever will. So, I started telling my story from a different angle. Based on what would have been my perception.

Loss of family.

Loss of country, origin, culture etc.

Being removed from everything familiar and taken to a new life.

• Tell your story without the word adoption

And this overlaps with the third step in the process; telling my story without the word adoption in it. I realized that so much is embedded into the word adoption. For most people, this word is positive. It gives connotations of a child being given love and safety and of a child being welcomed into a family. I think it’s safe to say that most people think of adoption is a solution that awards all parties involved something they need.

Going up against the deeply rooted and established narrative of adoption seemed to be an impossible task.

So, I stopped trying.

Instead of telling people they were wrong in their beliefs about adoption, I told my story with a different focus, my loss.

Doing this, I started getting different reactions. I was not highlighting adoption. Instead, I highlighted what I had lost and the trauma this had caused.

I let people piece together the fact that my adoption was preceded by trauma, caused me an enormous amount of loss, and essentially left me standing alone between two worlds.

• Allow your story to change as your perspective does

As my perspective on adoption has changed so has the way I tell my story. Because I am telling it from MY PERSPECTIVE. The facts are the same, but the focus has changed and the words I use have been updated.

I’ve given this example before and will repeat it here. In the bio on my Instagram page, it used to say “Born in Colombia. Adopted to Sweden. Live in the US.” I changed that to “Born in Colombia. Raised in Sweden. Live in the US.” Today it says “Born in Colombia. Taken to Sweden. Have chosen the US.”

The subtle change of wording between the first and the current description offers a world of difference in perspective and connotation. The latter is how I see my story unfolding. The word taken to instead of adopted to removes the image of all that I was supposedly given and focus on the fact that my life was altered at the hands of others.

To get the full picture of how I have changed and updated the way I tell my story since I started This Adoptee Life, please, listen to the latest podcast episode on one of the podcast platforms or on YouTube.

• Gather your support

This is one of the most important factors when it comes to telling your story. I used to be afraid that no one would read my words, that no one would find my story relevant and that my efforts would be ignored. I was of course also scared that I would be rejected, isolated, and shamed because of speaking my truth.

Neither happened.

But one of the things that I did do early on, was only sharing with people I knew would be able to receive what I shared. This was mainly fellow adoptees.

I launched this blog; I created the social media pages and I remained anonymous behind This Adoptee Life.

With time, I realized I had people showing up in support. I was able to make connections that would be my cushion should criticism come my way. I found my people withing the widespread online world of adoptees. And this has been one of factors that has contributed the most to my ability to push out of my comfort/safety zone when sharing my story.

We all need to feel seen, heard and accepted.

When we have that, everything else becomes easier.

I am here for you in that. This Adoptee Life exists with that purpose at the core. For adoptees to feel seen, heard, accepted, and supported in speaking your truth.

My invitation to YOU, my fellow Adoptee

I invite you to connect with me and to sharing your story on This Adoptee Life Blog. November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and each year, I invite fellow adoptees to write their Adoptee Story and I am happy to feature it on the website.

I believe one of the ways we can take back our power over the narrative of adoption, is by telling our own story, from our own perspective.

And I believe there is power in numbers, so each voice, each story, each experience, and contribution are valid and important.

You are not alone. Your story is important. You voice matters. You deserve to own your story. You have every right to tell it.

Please, see the link to submit your Adoptee Story for NAAM 2021 . And if you have any questions or want support in the process, please, reach out to me.

I thank you all for being here, spending time with me here on This Adoptee Life. 

T o all my fellow adoptees,

PS. Let’s be in this together.

I send you love, compassion and appreciation, ALWAYS!

Amanda Medina

2 thoughts on “how to tell your adoptee story”.

I have recently found my biological parents and I would love to share my story. I just don’t know how. Is this something you can help me with?

Thank you, Tiffany, for wanting to share your story. I would be happy to connect with you and help you do that. You can send me a message via “Contact Me” and we’ll take it from there. Courage, Love & Blessings, Always!

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This Adoptee Life is where adoptees can explore their story, share their experience, and speak their truth, in support and community with fellow adoptees, and the world.

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No Thank You

As a teen, I chose adoption. Why are stories like mine missing from the abortion debate?

I would rather jump through a glass window than talk to literally anyone about reproductive politics.

Church friend from childhood? Glass window.

Tipsy coworker at happy hour? Glass window.

Given the choice between a very normal and appropriate conversation about reproductive politics and a glass window, I will be in the bushes out front, picking glass out of my torso.

That is because when I was 17 I got pregnant by accident and placed my baby for adoption. As such, I have two options during these conversations: Stay quiet about my intimate familiarity with unplanned pregnancy and the difficult choices that come with it, or speak up and make everyone uncomfortable.

By inviting birth mothers into our conversations, we risk complicating the stories we tell ourselves about adoption and the people who participate in it.

If my conversation partner is pro-life, I get to watch their eyeballs spin as they think back over our discussion and try to remember if they said anything suggesting that people like me are irresponsible or immoral. If they are pro-choice, I get to watch steam pour out of their ears as they wonder if it was rude to imply that my 9-year-old son was once a zygote.

The sudden appearance of a birth mother in conversations about reproductive politics makes people uncomfortable—and who can blame them? Usually, if birth mothers get mentioned at all, they are people we talk about, not with. By inviting birth mothers into our conversations, we risk complicating the stories we tell ourselves about adoption and the people who participate in it.

Left Behind

For nine years, I kept my adoption hidden from almost everyone in my life, and it was incredibly lonely. “Coming out” as a birth mother has been a healing journey for me, but it has not made the loneliness go away. In fact, it has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.

That absence can be traced back to some deep-rooted societal discomfort with the institution of adoption. For a long time, stigmas about infertility, illegitimacy, genetics and sexuality drove all three members of the adoption triad—birth parents, children and adoptive parents—to keep adoptions a secret.

Then, attitudes shifted. Today, U.S. culture largely celebrates adoption as a way to form new family ties. Religious communities, particularly Catholic and Protestant Christian, played an important role in normalizing and encouraging adoptive families. Meanwhile, adoption was ensconced in contemporary pro-life rhetoric. If women get abortions because they do not want to be parents, the thinking goes, adoption is a life-affirming alternative.

“Coming out” as a birth mother has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.

But there is a problem. The cultural acceptance we rightly extended to adoptive parents and children was never extended to birth parents. Birth mothers still feel pressure to keep their experiences secret, and that pressure speaks volumes about where our goodwill starts and ends.

While adoptive parents may enjoy telling new friends or coworkers their family’s origin story, I cannot talk about my adoption without sucking the air out of a room. While most everyone can rattle off a handful of adoptive parents or children they know personally, few people can name a birth mother. In fact, I have never met another in person, and I have been one for almost a decade.

Erasing Loss and Silencing Grief

Adoption’s move from hushed-up transaction to mainstream ministry relied on its portrayal as a positive, happy thing. And it is a positive, happy thing. Adoption creates entirely new families bound by a powerful love. But adoption is also a sad thing; a parent and child, whatever the circumstances, are separated.

Some birth mothers willingly relinquish children because they are not ready or do not want to be parents. Others are coerced into relinquishing children because of social pressure from families or communities. Still others are unable to parent their children because they lack resources, lack support or are dealing with addiction or other hardships.

Reckoning with birth mothers in all their complexity is tough. So, we usually do not bother to do it.

Instead, we take the beautiful dynamics of adoption, with its sadness, joy, gain and loss, and package them into simple, one-note stories: A heroic teenager spurns abortion and gives her baby a chance at life. A pitiful, fallen woman abandons her child. A weak-willed teen in an oppressive religious community has her choice made for her. In all of these cases, to introduce a flesh-and-blood birth mother—her grief, her love, her courage—would ruin the story.

While adoptive parents may enjoy telling new friends or coworkers their family’s origin story, I cannot talk about my adoption without sucking the air out of a room.

Other times, we omit birth mothers entirely. We applaud adoptive families for giving children a loving home, forgetting that those children may have had loving homes in their birth mother’s body for nine months beforehand. We ask sincerely why abortion still happens when there are so many couples waiting to adopt, as if placing a child for adoption is a matter of supply and demand.

Even homilies and sermons on adoption frequently leave out birth mothers. The biblical mandate to “love the fatherless and the widow” may feel relevant, but it fails to draw any distinction between orphaned children and adoptees with loving birth parents. Adoption often serves as a metaphor for God’s parental love, as well. But that metaphor gets messy when you introduce a birth mother. If God is the adoptive parent, and humans the adopted children, then who represents the birth mother—death, sin, hell? All flattering options.

Adding a three-dimensional birth mother into our common adoption narratives makes those stories clunkier and more complex. Why did this birth mother relinquish her child, if not from heroism or heartlessness? How did she feel afterward?

Compared to those impossible questions, stereotypes and omissions feel much better. And, for years, I leaned on those shortcuts, too.

Adoption often serves as a metaphor for God’s parental love, as well. But that metaphor gets messy when you introduce a birth mother.

When I was a senior in high school dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the reactions that came with it, the opportunity to present myself as an unlikely hero who marched out of the abortion clinic to give a wonderful couple a chance at parenthood is what got me through a lot of interactions with teachers and church members. When I was a young adult in Chicago nervously telling new, progressive friends about my adoption, I would be sure to put extra emphasis on my evangelical upbringing and devout religious family.

Hero or victim, brave or damaged, selfless or angry. I was a birth mother chameleon, shifting to fit whatever simplified storyline would make me sympathetic to my listeners.

And I really wanted those easy stories to be true. But how could I be a victim when I would never change my choice? How could I be selfless when sometimes I wish the whole thing never happened? How could I be brave when sometimes, I miss my baby so much, I cry really hard in the shower?

I felt I couldn’t mold my experience into something digestible for my parents, my friends, my partner, my coworkers and my son’s awesome mother, so I spent years stripping it of its complexity or hiding it entirely.

That approach has not done me any favors. It has not done any favors for birth mothers, adoptive parents or children, either. It has not done any favors for my spiritual communities. It has not done any favors for the people who want their reproductive politics to account for the real experiences of real women.

So, maybe next time someone wants to share their take, I’ll leave the window intact and share why I decided to place my son for adoption: Because I didn’t want to be a parent. Because I was too young to get an abortion in Ohio without parental consent. Because I wanted my community to accept me. Because I wanted to be a normal teenager again. Because I had dreams that didn’t involve being a mother. Because it was the best option available to me. Because I wanted my son to live, and I had the necessary support to make that happen.

As a birth mother, my perspective is nuanced. And that, I’ve learned, is not something to apologize for.

Making Space for Birth Mothers

If religious communities are going to celebrate adoption, especially as a pro-life talking point, they must seek out and amplify the perspectives of birth mothers.

Those perspectives will be diverse, and they will not always be what people want to hear. But that makes them all the more necessary if communities want to develop a truer, more loving understanding of adoption.

Making room for birth mothers in religious communities may look like expanding and refining grief support programs and resources. Academic research suggests birth mothers experience lifelong, unresolved grief: After their adoptions are finalized, they are expected to move on silently, rather than grieving outwardly with a supportive network.

Consider this: As a teenager, I was on stage at church giving a “testimony” about my pregnancy-and-adoption experience—while I was still pregnant. The intentions were good, but the outcome was bad. In the eyes of my congregation, my story had been wrapped up with a bow before it had begun. Instead, we should:

Treat birth mothers with the care afforded a mother who loses a child . Do not brush the experience away because it makes you sad or uncomfortable. Do not wrestle it into an inspirational tale. Let birth mothers speak openly about their sadness, anger or confusion, if they want to. Sit with them. Cry with them. Make space for their loss and ongoing grief, even as you celebrate an adoptive family’s joy. Grief does not cancel out joy, or vice versa.

[Don’t miss more stories like this one. Sign up for our newsletter.]

Incorporate actual birth mothers into your political conversations about abortion. If you are willing to toss out adoption as an alternative for pregnant women, be equally ready to amplify resources created by birth mothers. Read and recommend books by birth mothers who, like myself, had positive experiences with adoption, as well as books by birth mothers who had terrible experiences. Both will make you more informed and empathetic. Toss in plenty of books by adoptive parents and children, while you are at it.

Think twice before simplifying adoption to a transaction. I hear it all the time: “There are thousands of couples waiting to adopt.” Adoption is an incredibly difficult decision. If you wouldn’t want to take on nine months of medical risk and social punishment to give your much-loved baby to someone else, don’t blithely suggest that others do so.

Examine your reliance on stereotypes to understand birth mothers . Is the birth mother in your imagination a shadowy specter leaving her baby on the steps of a firehouse? A selfless hero, happily relinquishing her baby so someone else can start a family? Or is she a three-dimensional person with a future and a backstory, with a variety of feelings and motivations?

Honor the adoption triad. When adoptions involve three parties, don’t erase birth mothers. We can rejoice with adoptive families without implying that they saved adopted children from their birth families or that those children were unloved or unwanted.

Last, when theological language of adoption omits birth mothers, find a way to reinsert them. Our focus on God as an adoptive parent is valuable, but what about God as birth mother, giving her child to us all?

Even more, what about God as a triad: three entities, all blessed and indispensable. Or is that too much to imagine?

More Stories from America

– I have two kids with Down syndrome. Here’s what I wish those considering abortion knew about life with them. – This Catholic doula wants to broaden our understanding of ‘reproductive justice’ –  White parents adopting Black kids raises hard questions . We can all learn from them.

Tatum Hunter is a journalist, performer and birth mother based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Built In, Salty, American City Business Journals, Reductress and more. You can find her newsletter, Mom’d, at momd.substack.com.

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I was adopted. And my story is nothing like the ones you’ve seen on TV

Randee Dawn is a contributing writer for TODAY and has a new novel out Aug. 23, " Tune in Tomorrow ," about a fantastical reality show run by mythical creatures, for mythical creatures ... but starring humans. She was inspired by her years working in entertainment journalism and peeking behind the scenes of TV shows and movies, some of which has ended up in her debut novel. She penned this essay for TODAY based on her longtime love of all things TV and film — except for one very specific, personal thing.

When I was a little girl and still learning to talk, my mother played a game with me: “Who are you?” she’d ask, and I’d rattle off any number of answers I had learned. I was a girl. I was blond. I was Jewish. I liked to read. And I was adopted.

In my mom’s way of thinking, I might not know what some of those words meant — but by the time I was old enough to ask, they wouldn’t be strange or alien concepts. I’ve always been grateful for that: Adoption was as much a part of me as the color of my hair, or the family faith, or anything else about me.

But if I’d only ever learned about adoption from television and the movies — well, I’d have a hard time believing anyone has a positive adoptive experience. For every nuanced, well-told portrayal today (like Randall on “This Is Us” or Lily in “Modern Family” ), there are older TV movies like “Natural Enemy” or “Adopting Terror” in which any number of horrors come to pass: Adoptee is evil. Adoptee is estranged and resentful. Adoptee was stolen by criminals who now raise her. Adoptive parents are cruel and dismissive. Adoptee totally abandons the parents who raised her in the pursuit of “blood” relations whom she’s never even met.

On all ends of the spectrum, adoption is frequently presented as a gray, murky area full of offensive semantic choices and the suggestion that all adoptees are broken — and might turn on you in a heartbeat. The nuances are much more complicated and deserve better treatment in fictional settings.

I started noticing this more once I began writing about soap operas for an industry magazine, and I saw these tropes play out frequently amid the melodrama. While there are awesome, forward-thinking stories told on soaps — I used some of those tropes in my new novel, “Tune in Tomorrow” — soapy shows are often preoccupied with offspring. Who are the parents? More importantly, who’s the “real” daddy/mama? Which parent didn’t know they even had a secret child? An adoptee’s birth parents come knocking to claim “their own blood!” And a mysterious stranger arrives in town to make trouble, then ends up being related to a key figure on the show — whom they might never have met. What horrible things will they now do to cement their status among a “real” birth family?

TV shows' preoccupation with the evils of adoption is endless, and endlessly exhausting. How often do stories talk about “blood” relatives being the most important in a person’s life? About a sibling who might be a complete psychopath — but you can’t abandon them or turn them in because they’re a “blood” relative? How about older characters who cut out anyone who’s not a “blood” relation?

Of course, this thinking exists in the real world — there’s at least one close relative in my family who was disinterested in me because I wasn’t of his “blood” — but TV shapes our impressions and underscores “blood” or "DNA" as the only way a person can be legitimate in a family. Fortunately, everyone else in my family didn’t give two hoots that I wasn’t “born” into it.

Still, hearing it brought up so often in TV shows is problematic: By using “real” and “natural” to designate biological children, does this mean that I was “pretend” or “unnatural”? Words mean things, and words connote attitude and tone. Children who are adopted or fostered are family; labeling them as “other” is harmful and abusive — something TV show writers should be more aware of.

The truth is that a 1994 study, “Growing up adopted: A portrait of adolescents and their families,” revealed that “most adopted children and teenagers succeed … adopted adolescents tend to do as well as adolescents in general.”

Fortunately, both TV and movies are starting to wake up to the nuances of adoptees and both biological and adoptive families. Every story is different, and every story has its own way of playing out. As blended families become more commonplace, series appear to be phasing out the use of “adopted” as a slur, or as the most important aspect of a character’s personality. Think of “Anne With an ‘E’,” “Parenthood,” “Glee” and “The Fosters” as just a few examples of series trying to push back on the expectation of adoption as tragedy, rather than a chance to reimagine what family looks like.

In “Tune in Tomorrow’s” fantastical docusoap, one actor’s character learns that he’s not actually related to the terrible woman he’s always thought of as his mother. But the fictional show undergoes an upheaval that never lets that revelation fully play out. That was intentional: By using that twist in the story, I could turn up the volume to 11 on what an out-of-the-blue “discovery” might be like — and then insist that it doesn’t have to change everything.

Adoption has once again become a major talking point since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade . The discussion now seems to be that adoption is always an option. It is — for some. And it isn’t — for others. Many people will not choose adoption, for their own reasons that are wide and varied — but may have been influenced by what they see on TV or in the movies. They, and we, deserve to have it presented as a potential happy ending.

Adoption is not a political rallying point, and it shouldn’t be a throwaway plot point to ratchet up drama on a TV show.

Adoption was a choice my biological parents made, for personal reasons. It was a choice my adoptive parents — who are my mom and dad — made, also for personal reasons. It’s not a political rallying point, and it shouldn’t be a throwaway plot point to ratchet up drama on a TV show. Adoption is just one more flavor in the rainbow of ways to raise children. It does change everything — but everything does not have to change because adoption has come into the picture.

It’s just another way for me, and the millions of others like me, to understand: “Who are you?”

“ Tune in Tomorrow ” publishes Aug. 23 and can be found in bookstores and online.

Randee Dawn (she/her) is an entertainment journalist and author based in Brooklyn. In addition to writing for TODAY.com, Variety and The Los Angeles Times, her debut novel, Tune in Tomorrow , about a reality TV show run by mythic creatures, published in 2022. She's also the co-author of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion . When not interviewing the stars or dabbling in speculative fiction, she dreams of the next place she can travel to, or cuddles her Westie. More at RandeeDawn.com .

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Jessica C. Graves, Owner, 7400 N Oracle Rd, Ste 150-403 Tucson 85704, 520.468.3838 - Hablamos Español

My Adoption Story

Written by jessicagrlaw on February 15, 2019 . Posted in Uncategorized .

“Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but still miraculously my own. Never forget for a single minute, you didn’t grow under my heart, but in it.” – Fleur Conkling Heyliger

March 24 th will always be one of the most important days of my life. On this day, almost 29 years ago, I flew from Seoul, Korea, to Michigan to meet my forever family.

As an adult, I know that many stories begin like this. However, as a child, I never thought about what adoption really meant. I’m not quite sure my schoolmates knew either. My classmates just knew me as the girl who always shared cookies, cake, or cupcakes and celebrated her adoption every March 24 th . Each year, my mom or dad helped educate my friends and classroom about my “Plane Day.” We would even bring in little folded handouts to give to everyone.

Then, my parents and I would talk about Korea and my adoption to the class. I would bring in my big Korean book and sometimes even my little Korean outfit.

We celebrated every year that I still lived at home, and still celebrate this day even now. It is a day I will forever cherish because I was, and am, so proud of my adoption.

Nevertheless, it never truly occurred to me the significance of my adoption, nor how special my family is, until I went to law school and became an adoption attorney.

You see, I am not the only adopted child in my family. Both my younger sister and brother were adopted, too. Each of us have a very different adoption story.

My parents knew I was theirs while in utero. I was supposed to be born premature, but, nearly nine months passed before I was born. I spent the first three months of life in a Korean foster-like home before I was flown to the United States. A little bit later, I was legally adopted. I, of course, have no memory of the first three months of my life. However, I do have an area on the back of my head which is flat—likely due to being constantly laid down in the crib.

My Sister’s Adoption Story

My sister’s story is quite different than mine. She was found on a bench at a train station before being placed in an orphanage—a story that may not be unlike other Chinese adoptees, at least from my very limited understanding and knowledge. She lived in an orphanage before my parents flew and brought her back to the United States. She was eighteen months old by the time she reached her forever home.

Flash forward years later when my sister was in elementary school and my parents, along with the assistance of our dentist and pediatrician, discovered she was not actually 18 months old when she came to us. Instead, she was closer to my age. We had grown up believing she was four (4) years younger than me. Now, it seems as if she was only about eighteen (18) months younger. Due to a congenital heart defect and malnourishment, she was small enough to pass as an eighteen-month-old when she joined the family. After much debate, my parents decided not to change her birth certificate date as they didn’t want to take away 2 years of her life.  We still celebrate her birthday as we always do, even though it may be a few months off.

My Brother’s Adoption Story

When my sister and I were both in college, my parents decided to foster an 8-year-old little boy. It was his experiences which spurred my passion for child welfare. Within one year of having my brother placed in my parents’ house, he was adopted. One aspect that struck me about my brother’s experiences was his lack of photos as a child. In fact, he had nothing to account for his childhood except for a plastic bin with a red top. That bin, about 2.5 feet long, 1.5 feet wide, and 1 foot deep, contained the first eight years of his life. Eight years of life was stuffed in a bin. Sure, this is a step up from trash bags that many foster children carry around, but a plastic bin isn’t a significant improvement.

Due to the constant flow of case workers, lawyers, judges, etc., the only person who knew him for the duration of his case was his volunteer CASA worker (Court Appointed Special Advocate), to whom my family was entirely grateful. In fact, she was the only one who had a few photos of his childhood.

Helping Make Forever Families

The timing of my brother’s adoption happened to coincide with my time as a law student. I was inspired by my brother to discover more about foster care and adoption, and I became more interested in child welfare and the issues surrounding it. I took courses geared towards children and the law. I became involved with extracurricular activities that had to do with children and families. I even wrote my substantial paper on child welfare and adoption. As I became more engaged with the legal field, I also learned about “adoption lawyers.” So, upon graduating from law school, I began working as an adoption attorney and now assist families in building their forever families.

Practicing as an adoption attorney really opened my eyes to the different needs in child welfare: birth families, poverty, lack of funding, overworked employees, etc.

The Greatest Gift & Hardest Goodbye

Practicing also gave me a new appreciation for birth parents. Part of my job includes representing birth mothers who are placing their children for adoption. Prior to practicing, I honestly had not even thought about what mothers go through in an adoption. Not many of my friends had children, nor do I. Thus, I did not truly understand how emotional of a decision it is to place a child for adoption. It was not until I met with a mother whom was signing away her rights that I started to grasp the difficulty and emotions. These moms are amazing. They make truly courageous and selfless decisions for their children. I realized then that I am living a full and successful life because of my own birth parents. Without their courage, strength, and belief that I could do great things, I would not be where I am today. These moms and dads want the best for their children, which is why they choose adoption.

But, as many know, adoption, both private and through foster care, is not without its challenges. In the private realm, there are a myriad of unknowns: birth parents consenting, being matched with a child, the traveling, the expenses, post-placement visitation. Similarly, there are unknowns with foster care adoptions: the history of trauma and abuse for the child, the length of time of the court case, the home visits with case workers, social workers, lawyers, the multiple placements, severing of ties with birth families including parents, relatives, and siblings, future services to help with healing from the past. Discussing all the various issues would require another blog post entirely. Ultimately, it is important for individuals to know and understand the possibility of these challenges before deciding whether to foster or adopt.

Fostering Together

I would like to briefly touch on the child welfare cycle for the benefit of those considering either fostering or adopting a child from this system. I am only familiar with two southern Arizona counties, and preface this information with a warning that every state and county is different.

For those unfamiliar with the Department of Child Safety (“DCS”) process, generally, if DCS takes a child from his or her home, the child is usually placed either with family, a friend, or a foster home. The parents then participate in a dependency case. Everyone in the case is given an attorney (mom, dad, child, DCS). Mom and dad are then given a certain amount of time and services to complete to have their child reunified and placed back with them. It sounds easy enough, especially if the parent really loves the child, right?

Well, what if the mom has a substance abuse problem, does not have a steady job or a steady place to live, and just had her one and only support taken from her? Now, she is required to attend court hearings, participate in random drug testing, parenting classes, substance abuse classes, home visits by multiple people, and visits with her child, sometimes supervised by a complete stranger. What if the mom started using drugs because her parents neglected her as a child and so she lacks a strong understanding of right and wrong? What if the mom lived in poverty and she thought she was raising her child better than her parents, the only persons whom she could look to for parenting advice? What if that mother herself had been placed in foster care at an older age (let’s say, age 8), grew up in a group home, and aged out of the system? If nobody wanted you in their family for ten years, how do you think you would feel? Do you think you would be able to overcome all that was thrown at you and succeed? Broken homes lead to broken people.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Not every parent with a DCS case has suffered from a troubled life. Some of these cases involve inexcusable, abhorrent, and unforgivable actions, especially since it will take years of love, support, and services to try to help a child overcome the experiences and live a successful life. I don’t wish to categorize the various reasons for which children are taken from their parents’ homes. I just want to point out that in some instances, these moms and dads who lose their children need support and guidance, too. Trust me, I only want what is best for a child. After all, my own brother, whom I love and support, was one of these children.

Ultimately, we need to think about what we want to support. I know funds are limited and there are hundreds of thousands of organizations who need financial assistance to make the world better for children. However, I also know case workers, social workers, and attorneys who are supporting the families with children in the system are underpaid and overworked.  Judges also play a vital role in supporting the children and families, as do volunteers such as CASA workers, Foster Care Review Board members, and child mentors. Sometimes, the support may even come from their child’s placement, whether it be a family member, a friend, or foster parents. It is a difficult situation for everyone.

There are no easy answers here. There are families struggling, their children are being taken from them, there is still a genuine lack of resources for those impoverished and struggling with addiction, and there are teens aging out of the system without support. A child should not end up being placed out of home simply because of poverty.

The Numbers

As of June 30, 2018, Arizona had 13,670 children who were placed out of home: 5,073 were placed with relatives; 6,369 were placed in a foster home; and 1,665 were placed in a group home. The other 816 children were placed in an institution/residential home, were living on their own in independent living, had run away, were in a trial home visit, or did not have an identified placement. Of the 1,665 who were placed in a group home, 1,590 were eight years and older (95.5%). (source: https://dcs.az.gov/reports-data/dcs-reports , Semi-Annual Child Welfare Report Sep 2018 revised). I chose to begin with age eight because that’s how old my brother was when he was placed with us and I always think about where his life would be had he not been adopted.

Simply put, if we, as a society, put more emphasis on supporting those who need the assistance (teens aging out of the system, those persons living below the poverty line, those suffering from domestic abuse, etc.), perhaps we can help prevent the removal of children from homes. This way, foster homes can be open for children currently in care or in group homes, who need a loving, supportive family to help get them through their time in foster care.

Happy Endings

Now, the reason I love my job is because I can bring families together. Given how important my own adoption day is to my family, I try to celebrate the adoptions of my clients—the adoptive parents. I became a very amateur photographer in hopes of being able to help capture the day for the family. Oftentimes, I saw a family’s adoption being captured on a flip phone… in the year 2017. I wanted their adoption day to be something to cherish and always remember. After all, these families and children had been through so much already. I wanted to be able to capture a moment of happiness—the end of the dependency case and the beginning of their forever home.

As I stated earlier, I was always proud of being adopted. It made me different. I never thought about how others saw my family. We are, after all, a family consisting of three white Americans and two Asian. It is obvious to everyone else that we were adopted. But I never saw the obvious. I just saw our family.

Now, without getting into a nature v. nurture discussion, I do have to say that I share in so many of my family’s qualities. To start, I have an intense love for ice cream. And gelato. In fact, while visiting Italy, I made it a point to have gelato Every. Single. Day. Come to find out, I take after my “Mom Mom” (pronounced “MumMum”), who ate ice cream nearly every day of her life. Similarly, I have her strength and tenacity (though some may confuse my tenacity with stubbornness).

I also have my mom’s feet, my dad’s eyes (and his sense of humor), my papa’s patience, my grandma’s wiggly toes, and my grandpa’s wiggly ears. I am awfully proud to be part of this family and am proud of all the qualities, good and bad, that come with it!

• Birth parents are strong, courageous, and selfless.
• The people working within child welfare want to protect children and make a difference to our community.
• Not all parents in the DCS system are “bad.”
• We need to do more to provide support for our community to help keep families together.
• We can incite change (for the better) to allow permanency for foster children.

And finally…

• My parents are strong. My parents are compassionate. My parents have the biggest hearts of anybody. As cliché as it might sound, without them, I would not be where I am today. I wouldn’t be building forever families like my own. I wouldn’t be part of organizations which support foster and adoptive parents and children, nor families with congenital heart defects. So, thank you. I love you.

About the Author

Arizona Adoption Attorney Jessica Graves is a double University of Arizona Wildcat alumni (Bear Down!), having found her home in Tucson where she lives with her husband and dog. Apart from being an adoption attorney, Jessica is a board member of Congenital Heart Defect Families of Tucson and More Than a Bed (foster and adoptive resource center). She is a member of the 2019 Greater Tucson Leadership Class and volunteers with Lawyers for Literacy each week. You can follow her on Instagram @JessicaGravesLaw, Twitter @JGravesLaw, and like her page on Facebook: @JessicaGravesLaw. For information on adopting a child in Arizona, you can contact Jessica at [email protected] . This article and any communication related to the article is not intended to provide legal advice nor create an attorney-client relationship. All photos belong to Jessica Graves.

Tags: adopting , adoption , adoption attorney , adoption lawyer , arizona , foster care , foster care adoption , jessica graves , jessica graves lawyer , tucson lawyer

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My Adoption Story Belongs to Me: a Guided Journal Where I can Explore My Adoption Story Paperback – November 24, 2020

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• Print length 158 pages
• Language English
• Publication date November 24, 2020
• Dimensions 8 x 0.36 x 10 inches
• ISBN-13 979-8570495463
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• #82 in Adoption (Books)

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Adoption Doesn't Make Our Family Any Less "Real"

We don't deserve extra credit just because our kids have different DNA.

A soccer dad and I were commiserating on the sidelines one afternoon about the challenge of getting our kids to practice and games. Club soccer demands a huge investment of time and money from parents, and some days it feels like a grind.

"I give you and John a lot of credit," he said. "Soccer is hard enough when they're your own kids."

Wait, what? It took me a second to process the subtext:  I give you a lot of credit for acting like real parents to kids who aren't really your own.

I wish I could tell you that I set that clueless dad straight, but after almost a decade as a mom, I've learned to pick my battles. The truth is, when it comes to adoption, some people just don't get it, no matter what you say.

My husband and I are raising three children: our oldest daughter, now 14, adopted from India at age 5, and our son, 13, and youngest daughter, 12, biological siblings who arrived here from Ethiopia at ages 3 and 2. As parents, we make daily sacrifices, just like other moms and dads. We enjoy our kids, but we suffer our share of teenage attitude. We worry about their grades, homework, health, and screen time. We complain about driving them to soccer and struggle to get dinner on the table amid all the weeknight chaos. In other words, our family is ordinary and real.  John and I don't deserve extra credit just because our kids have some different DNA. We chose to be parents, and we're trying our best, just like everybody else.

At the same time, adoption is a real issue in our lives. Our kids weren't babies when we signed on to become their second parents, and it took time, patience, and commitment to turn a collection of nervous strangers into a loving family. Adoption means my husband and I have a responsibility to honor our kids' origins and help them understand and connect to their roots involving biology, race, and culture. We've made an effort to encourage friendships with other adoptees, and have helped them make friends and mentors of the same race and background.  Far from being a burden, adoption is treated as a fact of our common life together, neither dwelled upon nor ignored.

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Sometimes the inherent complications of adoption spur feelings of frustration and sadness for my kids, or for my husband and me. We cope by acknowledging that those feelings are real and normal. Adoption isn't all joy, and it isn't all sorrow. It's a mix, just like any other part of life. Admitting that doesn't threaten our integrity as a family. On the contrary, honesty brings us closer together.

I'm not sure why some people have so much trouble grasping that adoptive families are genuine. Unrelated human beings form lasting bonds all the time — as spouses, as friends, and yes, as family. I don't always feel like explaining the nuances of adoption to everyone I meet, but I'm so grateful for the real and complicated life I lead as the mother of three extraordinary children.

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I Adopted Embryos From the Woman Who Became My Best Friend

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Why Our Kids' Birth Mothers Are Part of Our Lives

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After Adopting Our 18-Year-Old Son, Our Family Was Complete

Just Because I'm Adopted Doesn't Mean I Have to Answer All Your Questions

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Francis Collins: Why I’m going public with my prostate cancer diagnosis

I served medical research. now it’s serving me. and i don’t want to waste time..

Over my 40 years as a physician-scientist, I’ve had the privilege of advising many patients facing serious medical diagnoses. I’ve seen them go through the excruciating experience of waiting for the results of a critical blood test, biopsy or scan that could dramatically affect their future hopes and dreams.

But this time, I was the one lying in the PET scanner as it searched for possible evidence of spread of my aggressive prostate cancer . I spent those 30 minutes in quiet prayer. If that cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes, bones, lungs or brain, it could still be treated — but it would no longer be curable.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information, and I want all men to benefit from the medical research to which I’ve devoted my career and that is now guiding my care.

Five years before that fateful PET scan, my doctor had noted a slow rise in my PSA, the blood test for prostate-specific antigen. To contribute to knowledge and receive expert care, I enrolled in a clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health, the agency I led from 2009 through late 2021.

At first, there wasn’t much to worry about — targeted biopsies identified a slow-growing grade of prostate cancer that doesn’t require treatment and can be tracked via regular checkups, referred to as “active surveillance.” This initial diagnosis was not particularly surprising. Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States, and about 40 percent of men over age 65 — I’m 73 — have low-grade prostate cancer . Many of them never know it, and very few of them develop advanced disease.

Why am I going public about this cancer that many men are uncomfortable talking about? Because I want to lift the veil and share lifesaving information.

But in my case, things took a turn about a month ago when my PSA rose sharply to 22 — normal at my age is less than 5. An MRI scan showed that the tumor had significantly enlarged and might have even breached the capsule that surrounds the prostate, posing a significant risk that the cancer cells might have spread to other parts of the body.

New biopsies taken from the mass showed transformation into a much more aggressive cancer. When I heard the diagnosis was now a 9 on a cancer-grading scale that goes only to 10, I knew that everything had changed.

Thus, that PET scan, which was ordered to determine if the cancer had spread beyond the prostate, carried high significance. Would a cure still be possible, or would it be time to get my affairs in order? A few hours later, when my doctors showed me the scan results, I felt a rush of profound relief and gratitude. There was no detectable evidence of cancer outside of the primary tumor.

Later this month, I will undergo a radical prostatectomy — a procedure that will remove my entire prostate gland. This will be part of the same NIH research protocol — I want as much information as possible to be learned from my case, to help others in the future.

While there are no guarantees, my doctors believe I have a high likelihood of being cured by the surgery.

My situation is far better than my father’s when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer four decades ago. He was about the same age that I am now, but it wasn’t possible back then to assess how advanced the cancer might be. He was treated with a hormonal therapy that might not have been necessary and had a significant negative impact on his quality of life.

Because of research supported by NIH, along with highly effective collaborations with the private sector, prostate cancer can now be treated with individualized precision and improved outcomes.

As in my case, high-resolution MRI scans can now be used to delineate the precise location of a tumor. When combined with real-time ultrasound, this allows pinpoint targeting of the prostate biopsies. My surgeon will be assisted by a sophisticated robot named for Leonardo da Vinci that employs a less invasive surgical approach than previous techniques, requiring just a few small incisions.

Advances in clinical treatments have been informed by large-scale, rigorously designed trials that have assessed the risks and benefits and were possible because of the willingness of cancer patients to enroll in such trials.

I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

If my cancer recurs, the DNA analysis that has been carried out on my tumor will guide the precise choice of therapies. As a researcher who had the privilege of leading the Human Genome Project , it is truly gratifying to see how these advances in genomics have transformed the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

I want all men to have the same opportunity that I did. Prostate cancer is still the No. 2 cancer killer among men. I want the goals of the Cancer Moonshot to be met — to end cancer as we know it. Early detection really matters, and when combined with active surveillance can identify the risky cancers like mine, and leave the rest alone. The five-year relative survival rate for prostate cancer is 97 percent, according to the American Cancer Society , but it’s only 34 percent if the cancer has spread to distant areas of the body.

But lack of information and confusion about the best approach to prostate cancer screening have impeded progress. Currently, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all men age 55 to 69 discuss PSA screening with their primary-care physician, but it recommends against starting PSA screening after age 70.

Other groups, like the American Urological Association , suggest that screening should start earlier, especially for men with a family history — like me — and for African American men, who have a higher risk of prostate cancer. But these recommendations are not consistently being followed.

Our health-care system is afflicted with health inequities. For example, the image-guided biopsies are not available everywhere and to everyone. Finally, many men are fearful of the surgical approach to prostate cancer because of the risk of incontinence and impotence, but advances in surgical techniques have made those outcomes considerably less troublesome than in the past. Similarly, the alternative therapeutic approaches of radiation and hormonal therapy have seen significant advances.

A little over a year ago, while I was praying for a dying friend, I had the experience of receiving a clear and unmistakable message. This has almost never happened to me. It was just this: “Don’t waste your time, you may not have much left.” Gulp.

Having now received a diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer and feeling grateful for all the ways I have benefited from research advances, I feel compelled to tell this story openly. I hope it helps someone. I don’t want to waste time.

Francis S. Collins served as director of the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021 and as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at NIH from 1993 to 2008. He is a physician-geneticist and leads a White House initiative to eliminate hepatitis C in the United States, while also continuing to pursue his research interests as a distinguished NIH investigator.

An earlier version of this article said prostate cancer is the No. 2 killer of men. It is the No. 2 cause of cancer death among men. The article has been updated.

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St. Augustine man sets himself on fire outside New York courthouse seating Trump jury

A man from St. Augustine set himself on fire Friday afternoon outside the New York City courthouse where jurors in the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump were being chosen. 

Officials with the New York City Police Department identified the man as Max Azzarello , 37, of St. Augustine at a 3 p.m. news conference. 

According to USA TODAY , Azzarello doused himself with an accelerant and set himself on fire around 1:35 p.m. across the street from the courthouse, in Collect Pond Park. 

Officials said Azzarello was in critical condition at a nearby hospital. 

USA TODAY reported the incident took place in full view of news cameras shortly after a full panel of 12 jurors and six alternates was seated for the former president's hush money trial. Witnesses told the newspaper Azzarello tossed flyers into the air before dousing himself in fluid and setting himself ablaze.

Witness: 'He pulled out a lighter. And he set himself on fire'

A witness who asked to be identified by only his first name, "Dave," told USA TODAY he watched the victim's actions with a growing sense of panic before the young man went up in flames.

"I heard this clap, and this fellow was throwing these papers into the air," the 73-year-old Manhattan resident said. "He had a can and he poured fluid around himself, and which point I thought, 'Oof, I'm going to see something bad here'."

"And sure enough, he pulled out a lighter. And he set himself on fire."

Max Azzarello manifesto: 'I deeply apologize for inflicting this pain upon you'

In a post on a Substack newsletter called "The Ponzi Papers," victim Max Azzarello said he had burned himself alive to draw attention to the U.S. political and economic system. 

"My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan," the post says. 

Azzarello's manifesto took aim at Trump, President Joe Biden, cryptocurrency and the federal government. 

"To my friends and family, witnesses and first responders, I deeply apologize for inflicting this pain upon you," he wrote. 

Azzarello had lived about three years in a restored two-story apartment building on St. George Street in St. Augustine’s historic district, said Larry Altman, the property’s building manager. He said Azzarello worked from home, doing something online, and had moved in the past few weeks to a home n West Augustine.

”He was just a normal person, nice guy, easy to talk to,” Altman said, but said Azzarello had become focused recently on a belief that a world government was operating a Ponzi scheme against the interests of the public.

“Although I never had a problem with him, he didn’t like authority,” Altman said. “You can’t just not listen to authority and expect to make a change. I think his feeling was that was the only way.”

The Ponzi scheme concerns are underscored in federal court records from New York’s Southern District, where last April Azzarello filed a lawsuit against the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and scores of other parties including New York University and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The suit asserted the defendants “knowingly conspired, participated in and benefited financially from a decades-long fraudulent scheme.”

The case argued “the defendants’ actions have caused significant financial, emotional, psychological harm to plaintiff,” and listed injuries incurred as financial loss due to economic inflation; damage to personal security; psychological damage as a result of intentional media misinformation; and environmental damage due to fossil fuel emissions created in service of the scheme.

The case was dismissed without prejudice in October.

While Altman said he had never known Azzarello to be abusive to anyone, court records reflect moments when he was accused of strange, disruptive actions.

On Aug. 19, St. Augustine police were called to the Casa Monica Hotel about a complaint that Azzarello had eaten dinner in the building’s restaurant, then approached a wall in the lobby where a framed autograph of President Clinton is displayed and threw a glass of wine at it. The wine stained the autograph and surrounding wall, causing damage a police report estimated at $400-$500, according to a police affidavit .

Police and Azzarello were back at the hotel two days later, where an arrest report said Azzarello was “wearing nothing but his underwear , standing on the sidewalk holding a speaker blasting music and yelling.” He was charged with breach of peace and booked into jail but on August 24 he was arrested again on a criminal mischief charge involving damaging a sign at the front of the Little Free Library at 117 Bridge St.

He was placed on probation, court records show.

A man who lives in house close to Azzarello's old apartment, Richard Loud, said he does not know Azzarello but has seen a car outside he believed to be Azzarello's, notable for its abundance of anti-Clinton and anti-bitcoin stickers.

Azzarello's father, Richard, lives nearby on Keith Street. He was home Friday evening but declined to comment when a reporter approached him.

Aysha Bagchi, Kinsey Crowley and Bart Jansen of USA TODAY and Steve Patterson of The Florida Times-Union and Lucia Viti of the St. Augustine Record contributed to this report.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

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Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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NPR editor Uri Berliner resigns after bombshell expose reveals network’s pervasive left-wing bias

U ri Berliner, the veteran editor and reporter for National Public Radio who was suspended without pay after publishing a lengthy essay denouncing the outlet’s liberal bias, has resigned from the broadcaster.

“I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years,” Berliner wrote on his X social media account on Wednesday.

“I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism.”

Berliner wrote that he “cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”

Berliner was referring to Katherine Maher, the chief executive at NPR who has come under fire for a series of “woke” social media posts in which she criticized Hillary Clinton for using the term “boy” and “girl” because it was “erasing language for non-binary people.”

Maher also appeared to justify looting In 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests, saying it was “hard to be mad” about the destruction. In 2018, she wrote a post denouncing then-President Donald Trump as a “racist” before deleting it.

On Tuesday, NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara said in a statement that Maher “was not working in journalism at the time and was exercising her First Amendment right to express herself like any other American citizen.”

Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, called out journalistic blind spots around major news events, including the origins of COVID-19, the war in Gaza and the Hunter Biden laptop, in an essay published last Tuesday on Bari Weiss’ online news site the Free Press.

In Berliner’s essay — titled “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust” — Berliner said that among editorial staff at NPR’s Washington, DC, headquarters,  he counted 87 registered Democrats and no Republicans.

He wrote that he presented these findings to his colleagues at a May 2021 all-hands editorial staff meeting.

“When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile,” Berliner wrote. “It was worse. It was met with profound indifference.”

Maher, who took up the role as CEO of NPR in late March, responded to Berliner’s essay by claiming that the veteran journalist was being “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning” to his colleagues.

She accused Berliner of “questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity … based on little more than the recognition of their identity.”

Berliner also called out his bosses at NPR for their refusal to seriously cover the laptop story — which was exclusively broken by The Post.

The laptop contained emails showing that the son of President Biden was engaged in influence-peddling overseas — though NPR and other media outlets declined to aggressively cover the story in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

According to Berliner, senior editors at NPR feared that devoting airtime to the story would help Trump’s re-election chances just weeks before voters cast their ballots.

Berliner wrote that NPR had deteriorated into “an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience.”

“The laptop was newsworthy,” Berliner wrote. “But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched.”

Berliner also accused NPR of giving disproportionately more attention to allegations that Trump was colluding with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election — only to devote far less resources to Robert Mueller’s findings that there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges.

After the contents of the laptop proved to be authentic, NPR “could have fessed up to our misjudgment,” Berliner wrote.

“But, like Russia collusion [allegations against Trump that were debunked], we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.”

Berliner also called out NPR for pushing other left-leaning causes, such as subjecting staffers to “unconscious bias training sessions” in the wake of the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

Employees were ordered to “start talking about race,” he said.

NPR journalists were also told to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” that were based on racial and ethnic identity, including “Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color” (MGIPOC), “NPR Noir” (black employees at NPR) and “Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media.”

According to Berliner, if an NPR journalist’s language “differs from the diktats of those groups,” a “DEI Accountability Committee” would settle the dispute.

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Man Sets Himself on Fire Near Courthouse Where Trump Is on Trial

Onlookers screamed as fire engulfed the man, who had thrown pamphlets in the air before he set himself aflame. He was taken to a hospital and died hours later.

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By Nate Schweber and Matthew Haag

• Published April 19, 2024 Updated April 20, 2024, 9:24 a.m. ET

A man set himself on fire on Friday afternoon near the Lower Manhattan courthouse where jurors were being chosen for the criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump.

The man, who had lingered outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse earlier this week, doused himself with accelerant at around 1:35 p.m. in Collect Pond Park, across the street from the building. Onlookers screamed and started to run, and soon, bright orange flames engulfed the man. He threw leaflets espousing anti-government conspiracy theories into the air before setting himself on fire.

People rushed and tried to put out the flames, but the intensity of the heat could be felt from some distance.

After a minute or two, dozens of police officers arrived, running around and climbing over barricades to extinguish the blaze. The man was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to a hospital burn unit. He died on Friday night.

The New York Times

City officials identified the man as Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla. Mr. Azzarello had appeared outside the courthouse on Thursday, holding a sign displaying the address of a website where the same pamphlets were uploaded. The top post of the website says, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.”

Mr. Azzarello walked around Lower Manhattan earlier in the week, holding a sign on Wednesday critical of New York University at Washington Square Park before moving on Thursday to Collect Pond Park.

At the park on Thursday, Mr. Azzarello had held up various signs and at one point shouted toward a group of reporters gathered there, “Biggest scoop of your life or your money back!” One of his signs claimed that Mr. Trump and President Biden were “about to fascist coup us.”

In an interview that day, he said his critical views of the American government were shaped by his research into Peter Thiel, the technology billionaire and political provocateur who is a major campaign donor, and into cryptocurrency.

Mr. Azzarello said he had relocated from Washington Square Park because with the cold weather, he thought more people would be outside the courthouse.

“Trump’s in on it,” Mr. Azzarello said on Thursday. “It’s a secret kleptocracy, and it can only lead to an apocalyptic fascist coup.”

Mr. Azzarello arrived in New York City sometime after April 13, the police said, and his family in St. Augustine did not know about his whereabouts until after the incident. While Mr. Azzarello was recently in Florida, he had connections to the New York City area and worked for Representative Tom Suozzi during his 2013 campaign for Nassau County executive on Long Island.

A man at a Brooklyn address associated with a possible relative of Mr. Azarello’s declined to comment on Thursday.

Over the past year, however, Mr. Azzarello’s behavior appeared to become more erratic. He was arrested three times in 2023 on misdemeanor charges in Florida, and he posted online in August that he had just spent three days in a psychiatric hospital.

Later that month, while dining at the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, he threw a glass of wine at a framed autograph of former President Bill Clinton. He showed up to the hotel again, two days later on Aug. 21, stripped to his underwear and shouted profanities at guests while blasting music from a speaker.

Three days later, police arrested him for defacing and breaking signs belonging to several businesses. He took a pest control sign from the yard of one business that had warned passers-by to keep children and pets away for their safety. In comments to the police, he said that “the pest control company was there to exterminate children and dogs.”

His mug shot shows Mr. Azzarello sticking his tongue out.

In addition to his website, Mr. Azzarello was also active on social media, promoting anti-government literature on Instagram. Most of his online posts before the spring of 2022 were of his travels and his family, and he noted that his mother died in April 2022 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

About a year later, he posted a photo of what appeared to be his Covid-19 vaccination card — defaced with the words “Super Ponzi” and the symbol for Bitcoin.

People who witnessed the fire said they were in disbelief as they saw Mr. Azzarello, who was in an area of the park reserved for supporters of Mr. Trump, toss the pamphlets into the air and then flames shoot toward the sky. Mr. Azzarello, who was wearing jeans and dark gray T-shirt, fell to the ground amid the fire.

Some of the pamphlets referred to New York University as a “mob front” and also mentioned former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore and the lawyer David Boies, who represented Mr. Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount. Another pamphlet contained anti-government conspiracy theories, though they did not point in a discernible political direction.

Most officers who responded to the fire on Thursday ran from the direction of the courthouse, which is a couple of hundred feet across the street; some struggled to immediately reach Mr. Azzarello because of steel barricades in the park.

Al Baker, a spokesman for the court system, said the trial schedule would not be affected, though one court officer had been taken to hospital because of the effects of smoke inhalation.

Fred Gates, 60, said he had been riding his bike through the park when he stopped to watch the Trump supporters and saw Mr. Azzarello getting ready to light himself on fire. Mr. Gates said he thought it was a prank or a performance until he saw the flames.

Another witness, Gideon Oliver, a civil rights lawyer, said he saw smoke rising from the park and a court officer rushing from a building carrying a fire extinguisher.

“When I saw and smelled the smoke I thought someone, I assumed one of the pro-Trump protesters, had lit a fire in the park,” Mr. Oliver said. “When I saw police and court officers running, I then thought it might have been a bomb.”

Mr. Azzarello stood tall as he poured the accelerant on himself and then held a flame at chest level. As people nearest him fled, others cried out as they realized what he was about to do.

Screams and shouts — though not from him — filled the air as the flames consumed him and he slowly collapsed.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Wesley Parnell , Alan Feuer , Chelsia Rose Marcius , Jan Ransom , Maria Cramer , Stefanos Chen , Nicholas Fandos and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.

Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

News and Analysis

Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan took a startling turn when two jurors were abruptly excused , demonstrating the challenge of picking citizens to determine the fate of a former president.

Prosecutors argued in court that with a steady stream of social media posts, Trump had violated the gag order  imposed on him seven times, urging the judge overseeing the trial to hold him in contempt.

Our reporter joined “The Daily” to explain what happened during the opening days  of the trial against Donald Trump.

More on Trump’s Legal Troubles

Key Inquiries: Trump faces several investigations  at both the state and the federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers.

Case Tracker:  Keep track of the developments in the criminal cases  involving the former president.

What if Trump Is Convicted?: Will any of the proceedings hinder Trump’s presidential campaign? Here is what we know, and what we don’t know .

Trump on Trial Newsletter: Sign up here  to get the latest news and analysis  on the cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.