This Is Us: Adoptive mom says she's sorry for hiding the truth

Lorraine

Triggers. They are everywhere. We can try to avoid them, but they will keep on popping up like weeds in your yard that you pullout year after year and they keep on coming. Having lived for more than half my life with triggers that remind me of my daughter lost to adoption, I've stopped trying to pretend that I can avoid them. I just go with the flow.

With that in mind I look forward to watching This Is Us, NBC's breakaway hit that has an adoption reunion in one of its subplots. For most of the season, it has been THE story line dominating the series. It centers around a biological father found by his adult son (Randall, played by Sterling K. Brown), an adoptive mother (Rebecca played by Mandy Moore) who knew who the father (William, Ron Cephas Jones) was all along but never shared that information--with anyone, even her husband.

Psychological triggers after stuff happens

Lorraine

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was a movie I wanted to see the moment I heard about it--a woman covering the war in Afghanistan was a movie made for me. I love journalism, I have loved the whole business of it since I figured out what my father was doing every day when he read three newspapers, and set about immersing myself in its craft at age 14, when I had my first byline in my hometown's weekly newspaper.

I came of age in the generation where covering a war was a near impossible assignment for a woman to get, unless she could get there on her own dime and send dispatches back. My own dime was pretty slim, and so that was out of the question. But take an assignment to cover a war, if I'd been able to? I would be home packing to go before my boss heard my YES.