The awful legacy of adoption

Lorraine

"The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful, but it all comes from the world to be stored in you."--Claudia Rankine wrote in her book of poetry, Citizen.

Rankine, who is black and was born in Jamaica, was talking about race, but when I read her words I thought how they applied to mothers who relinquished children and the children who so relinquished. We trail our history behind us like a veil that never leaves us, and instead becomes part of us.