The exponential growth of my concentric circles with each life step, each choice, has been staggering from my early diaper days of immediate family, a circle of five, but this is not extraordinary in the least. It has probably been the same for you.

What also may have been the same for you and fascinating to me, is how many of the people in each growing circle have been related to adoption: either adoptees or birth mothers (I have never met an admitted birth father) or parents who have already adopted or want to adopt. The numbers have been, to me, astounding, especially being that friends who are not adopted claim to know very few people in any of the aforementioned categories. And yet, my fellow adoptee friends all have had this same experience (well, except for one, but mainly because she really doesn’t like people except her family, her few friends, and now, her husband. Otherwise, she prefers animals and those animals just are not talking about their adoption experiences.)

Could it be that any kind of adoption-connection immediately coats each of us with some sort of metaphysical Velcro, either the ‘hook’ side or the ‘loop side’ or, more likely, a combination of both, that then attracts, without even trying, many other folks also wrapped in adoption Velcro? Could this be why no matter how massive life’s concentric circles become, we find more and more adoption-related people attached to our lives and we to theirs?

The end result of all this Velcro-ing onto those of related experience has been that I often feel like I belong to a not-so-secret 'secret society.' I like that. I like the connected feeling not just to the people I know, but to countless others about whom I have no idea.

Maybe even more remarkable to me than the commonality of the adoption topic, has been the way it has come up: at times just through normal conversations in a very direct and open way, at times like a confession, and at still other times via incredibly furtive paths. Perhaps most noteworthy of all is how different each and every perspective and experience has been. Just as there are a million stories in the naked city... there are a million more in this 'secret' society.

Most of my fellow adoptees attached to my adoption Velcro have had quite good lives, adoption having been neither a good or bad thing, but rather just a part of who they are, like brown eyes or red hair or a penchant for taking Oreo cookies apart to eat the cream filling first, lick by lick. There are also, however, many others who feel they fell from the frying pan into the fire by being adopted and/or are unable to find any balance with their adopted reality for many reasons. What I have learned is that I am very lucky to have been adopted by my family so that I could live the life I have. I have also learned that, unfortunately, not everyone has been so lucky.

People I have encountered that have had bad experiences or feel unsettled with their adopted status were most often adopted in the early 80's or before: the age when adoption was generally much more secretive. Now, with changing adoption practices resulting in many open adoptions, there seems to be fewer questions to plague an adoptee. Even when this is not the case, there are more ways to get information and more awareness of how important it can be to know something of one’s background, to understand circumstances surrounding the difficult decision made by one's birth mother as well as the decision to adopt by one's parents.

Over time, I will share both my own experiences as well as some of those that have been told to me with the hope that by bringing up contrasting perspectives, we can explore together some of the issues that affect adoptees… and while we are at it, have some laughs and learn some more about ourselves and those in our circles, attached to our Velcro one way or another.