Today marks four years since Mama (my adoptive mother) passed away. She was 94. I loved her with my whole heart, but our relationship had many complexities, and we were nothing alike.

I could see in my daughter’s eyes that she was on the verge of tears when she called to FaceTime me on a Sunday morning. I asked, “What’s wrong?” She said she was sad and didn’t know why. She thought it was just hormones, but I sensed the underlying cause…

Forty-five years ago today, I gave birth to the first person in the whole wide world who I knew to be a flesh-and-blood part of me. (I was adopted, so this was a huge deal.) Like today, it was a Sunday. The labor was long, and I was exhausted but elated…

Being an adoptee even when I was young, I was compelled to know my biological family, a quality that is absent in many of the adopted people I know. It makes me wonder if my aboriginal Cree ancestry has something to do with my deep need to understand…

A few months ago, I was going through a box of keepsakes from 1973—the year I gave my baby up for adoption. Inside were the treasures I carted first from Alaska to California and then through eleven additional moves over the last 44 years…