The slow creep started a couple of weeks ago.

I often blame it on the days getting shorter. As summer evenings begin to cool and the days grow shorter, at first I ponder whether it’s got something to do with the changing season or the atmospheric pressure.

Gradually it builds, this feeling of isolation and loneliness. Rejection seems to seek me, and no matter what else disproves it, I only have eyes to see the negative—each seeming to confirm that I don’t matter.

I feel tired. Deflated. Hopeless. Defensive. Friendless. Flat. Numb. Lacking energy.

Did I mention that my birthday is tomorrow?

Like many adoptees, I find my birthday to be a complicated day. I equate it to the mixed feelings many people—adopted or not—say they feel about Christmas. Like Christmas, birthdays get built up as joyous occasions, significant celebratory events. Yet lurking below the surface is often a well of emotions—many of which, if they were to be expressed, wouldn’t match cultural expectations AT ALL and so must stay tucked inside.

For adoptees, our birthdays often remind us of our losses. For those of us relinquished at birth, our birthdays may not be remembered but our bodies and brains hold on to the feelings. Disorienting sadness can overshadow everything, and we can develop a strong instinct to oppose festivities around our day.

Birthdays didn’t always make me feel this way, as you can tell by this gleeful picture taken during my eighth birthday party at The Organ Grinder:

This is partly because we process adoption differently at various stages in our lives. It’s also because my mom was the ultimate Magic Maker when it came to marking special occasions—Christmas always top of the list, but birthdays a close second!

In kindergarten, as in most years, my birthday fell on the first week of school. My mom built up my day by bringing in musical instruments—enough for every student. I still cherish the memory of marching in circles around the rug with my 16 classmates—tooting plastic horns, rattling tambourines, and shaking maracas as we paraded through the classroom to celebrate my big occasion.

This style of lavish treatment continued through college, with giant boxes of presents and handwritten love letters shipped to my dorm, and proceeded into my adulthood—well into it. My mom and dad flew to Seattle for my 41st birthday—unwilling to let the day go by without fanfare.

But then my mom died. Now birthdays are a reminder that I lost not one, but two moms.

Often times, I wish my mom had been able to spot my childhood grief. I wish she had raised me during an era where adoption-savvy information was readily available and she could have known about adoptee trauma and attachment wounds.

Other times, I realize that I had enough of a natural lens for sadness. And I love that my mom had blinders to it—at least on my birthday. The magic my mom created on my birthdays helped counter my sense of worthlessness in ways I only realized after she had gone.

I’m preemptively thanking you for any birthday wishes here, friends, and letting you know that I’m taking tomorrow off from social media to celebrate my birthday, Mom-style. I’m ready to come up out of my dark birthday funk.

I wish you were all here with me in person, and that Covid wasn’t restricting us from gathering together in person, so you could join me in a parade, blasting plastic instruments while shuffling in circles.

But I’m going to imagine my mom leading you in doing that, anyway. And you can imagine me smiling just as freely as I did when I turned eight.