I’ve had this imaginary blog post floating around in my head where I’d write an extended thank-you letter to Adoption Knowledge Affiliates for allowing me the honor of helping lead the non-profit in continuing their important work explaining why I must step down, take an extended break from the work. But honestly, I’ve been too tired for too long so it’s going to come out differently than I’ve been envisioning it. It’s not that I’m not thankful for them and all the experience I gained being a part of the board, I very much am; it’s just that I wasn’t properly aware of what would come after the publication of my novel and now here I sit, five years after I’d first begun the project, a completely different human. 

And that’s kinda where all this started, the public part of it, anyway. In January of 2020, I was in the middle of my Master’s degree, researching the legal history of Edna Gladney and, more largely, Texas adoptions when I was given the opportunity to write and publish a book. I was also working full-time, part-time and buying a house. In a way, the pandemic saved me from the overload I’d signed myself up for, and I fell into myself writing my novel. I’d committed myself to doing the academic work of adoption study alongside the emotional deconstruction of it with my therapist and thought a book would help clear the storm in my heart. So, we moved into the new house and I wrote Rose’s Locket. 

I marketed and fundraised hard in the fall to cover the publishing costs. I was on my hometown radio, featured in my school newspaper, and all over Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. I started writing on Medium. I called every person I had a phone number for. And when the book was published, I was on the map in a small way. At least to my small communities. It was a start. 

I don’t remember how I found out about what was going on in Austin, but I do remember telling my advisor about it and her immediate response: “You need to write about it. Submit an op-ed.” So, I did. I like to think that the recently published novel in the byline I submitted along with my piece helped get my words the attention they deserved. “Adoptees’ right to their birth certificates is long overdue” was published in the Austin American-Statesman and before I knew it, the executive director from Adoption Knowledge Affiliates was in my DMs, asking if I’d like to come protest with them at the Capitol. At lunch afterwards, she asked me to submit to their yearly conference, to come be a guest book club author in the summer. I was swept up into the community like a cow in a tornado. 

I finished my Master’s thesis and went to my first Narrative conference the first half of my first year as a board member, after that. My writing on adoption continued, but I was no longer in school; just a mom with a full-time job and volunteer hours with a non-profit. The normal stuff. Two full years of being a normal human. 

I couldn’t take it. But I did try. I don’t quite know how to sum up those two years between graduation and my reentry into academia where I am now. But the summary is both mundane and appalling. I continued to work full-time, raise my daughter as best I could, I presented at my second and third Narrative conferences as an independent scholar, I volunteered my free time to board activities, committee meetings, and networking. I organized two of the AKA conferences, but the second one broke me. Well, not just the conference, a confluence of things. 

The summer of 2023, was it? The one when I met my dying mother. When work was at its craziest. When the conference work quadrupled. When I started getting sick from the stress. When I didn’t understand what was happening nor feel comfortable mixing what I’d classified as community work and my current personal issue of meeting then losing my mother all in the span of four months. Never mind that the community I worked for was the exact place I needed to be for support. But it seemed too late for that; I’d moved straight from nothing into community leadership. I did what I always do: I painted my face and I stumbled on. 

I left work. It seemed the only thing I could set down at the time. I intended, at first, to find similar work elsewhere. I was so resigned to having to participate in capitalism, to keep my mortgage, to live my stupid normal life so that I could avoid the pain of what I really am. But it was Thanksgiving and I needed a break. So, I mourned my mother and wrote a poetry book. 

I didn’t know what else to do, how else to cope. So, I self-published a poetry book in memory of my mother. I half-ass marketed it. I raised exactly enough to publish and not ten dollars more. It was welcome enough. Poetry is hard to sell. But it helped me heal so it’s out in the world now. Just my bleeding fucking heart for sale. 

Finally, a mix of Anne Heffron’s Quarterly Education Meeting hosted by AKA and my third Narrative conference knocked me in the head. I’m not supposed to be in the private sector, in a corporate environment. I’m also not built to be in the public eye so constantly. Sometimes, yes. But I also sometimes need no. But I am supposed to be writing. That’s my focus. I used to think I could do it in every genre, and I think my CV speaks for itself when I say I really tried. But favorites are beginning to emerge. Things like this, things like articles, things that blend my emotionality and intellectual curiosity. 

So, I decided to sign myself up for the PhD program in Rhetoric. On my knees, hoping that I can find a direction that fuels me, that challenges me, that is open enough to accept me as I am, that will help me point my words in the directions they should go. 

I finished out my service with Adoption Knowledge Affiliates as I began my classes and part-time jobs at the school. I’m only saying goodbye to an era, not a community, saying see ya later to the whole whirlwind of the past five years which Adoption Knowledge Affiliates was a significant part. They welcomed me into the community, listened wholeheartedly to the things I had to say, and appreciated me for the labor I contributed. I grew as a human in their care, but community work is hard on the heart. I don’t think anybody will disagree with that. 

It’s strange to mark the five-mark anniversary of when I started writing Rose’s Locket. I was such a different human, then. Unaware of what the world would become, how I would change after years of hiding in my house getting to know myself in a whole new way. And doing so relatively publicly. I was lit by a fire of rage, creativity, and desperation to be understood back then. But now, I am a quieted version of myself, crawling through as best I can, holding my head up high despite the messes I keep finding myself in. There have been so many victories along the way, along with so much heartbreak. So many realizations. 

I still have dreams of releasing a second edition of Rose’s Locket that would include more engaging back matter for book clubs and educational spaces and probably an updated or new author’s note to give the book more context in the way of its writing and its genre. I also want to record an audiobook version of it to make it more accessible. But I am in no position to take on any of these projects, not yet, as I thought I’d be by this point. 

All I can say is that I’m here. It’s been a long five years. But I’m here. And I’ll still be here. I’m just fine-tuning my voice and healing my heart. I have to. Or I’ll never survive the next five years.