Truthy Tuesday, Adoption Stigma

I am so tired of the trope that all adopted persons are damaged, other, not like us.

This rant follows an evening of Law & Order: SVU. I started the episode halfway through, after the revelation that the adopted child had orchestrated the murder of her younger sister, the biological child of her adoptive parents.  The adoptee had been abused by her bio dad, and was taken away as a pre-teen and then adopted by this family. She was portrayed as a sociopath, describing herself as dead already.

I have no doubt that childhood abuse can break people, can create a blackness so deep that the real person never emerges. But adoption is often shorthand for damaged, rejected, defective.  How messed up do you have to be for your parents to give you away?

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Ke$ha

My 5 year old child and I listen to Ke$ha together. 

I know, just bear me out. 

Stressin’

I am working on a few time-sensitive things this week and I’m feeling the pressure.

For me, it manifests as a full feeling in my head, like all the words describing what I need to do have materialized as letters and are filling up the space between my brain and skull. The itch in my brain that says I forgot something important, missed a deadline, lost a vital document.

I know in my heart that everything will be OK.  But I also need to remember to be gentle with myself, something that has been challenging in the past.  To love myself, and be as kind to myself as I would to my friends or loved ones.

How do you deal with stressful times?