Here is a portrait of Charlie, the youngest volunteer for this project. They are someone I just recently connected with as I was searching for volunteers. In a very short time, I found Charlie to be one of the smartest, most creative, articulate and interesting people I have ever met. Here are answers to the two questions I asked:

1. What in your lifetime has been challenging for you, what have you overcome and/or what about your journey to authentic self would you be willing to share?

I am a transnational, transracial adoptee- I was adopted from Bogotá, Colombia when I was an infant (just under two months old) and brought to Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised by two white people. They did their best to implement Colombian culture and heritage into my life growing up; I took Spanish classes in school, I danced in a Colombian dance troupe in middle school, I went to a day camp for latin american adoptees for a week every summer, they answered any questions I had, we cooked Colombian foods, and still, I have always felt this sense of unbelonging; when I am with my nuclear adoptive family, when I am in a room of other colombian adoptees, when I am with my extended adoptive family, when I am in community with other latin americans. There is this expression in spanish, "ni de aqui, ni de alla," neither from here nor there.

A big part of my search to be my authentic self has been the search for my birth mother and pursuing reunification. My adoption was closed and also international, meaning that when I turned eighteen I was allowed to access my adoption records and begin to actively pursue the search for my birth mother. Nancy Newton Verrier's The Primal Wound explains being separated at birth from one's mother as a "primal wound" that skews an adoptee's sense of self. I found my birth mother in April 2023 (long story short, happy to elaborate on what this looked like) and we are in reunion (we text sometimes). I haven't met her in person and hope to go back to Colombia in the near future to do so. Verrier describes reunification as a "coming home to self."

On top of being in reunification with my birth mother, I am also actively processing the grief of adoption. Being adopted means that I was surrendered by my birth mother, and chosen as a solution to my adoptive mother's infertility. My adoptive family has raised me as their own, and I am eternally grateful for that, but I still question their motives. They chose to adopt from Colombia because it was a quicker process than the U.S.. Having access to my adoption records, I see a lot of their reasoning being rooted in white supremacy and a sense of superiority. I am actively grieving and unpacking the grief around being torn from my country, heritage, and language.

I am also a trans, queer, butch dyke. I have done a lot of work to feel authentic in my body. I was born female and always admired queer people. When my body started maturing during puberty, I started experiencing dysphoria- I have concrete memories of asking my adoptive mother if I could get my tubes tied when I started menstruating. I had top surgery (double mastectomy) in December 2019, just after my 19th birthday. I came out as queer and trans at age 16 (2016). My adoptive family has always been supportive of my identities. I'm not entirely sure what I would label my gender as at this point in time, and I don't particularly care to. I feel at home in my body.

I am also neurodivergent and probably autistic. A lot of the past couple of years has been me navigating what it looks like to show up authentically- what it means to unmask, what it feels like to do so, what accommodations I can offer myself. Currently, this looks like setting boundaries in social scenarios and being honest with myself and others about my capacity to show up. I do see myself as a recovering codependent people pleaser.

I see these identities as intersectional and I use art as a way to navigate and express myself through them. I am currently working on my first artist's book, which will look similar to an adoption file and instead be individual pieces (letterpress, screenprinted prints, poems, among some other things) that all represent my fragmented and evolving understanding of the circumstances around my adoption and how I process the grief around it.

2. Is there anything you'd like to share about your journey that might inspire others or that they could learn from?

I was (am) a Nancy Drew kid. I grew up with a healthy dose of youthful cynicism and curiosity for why things are the way that they are. I encourage and admire that mentality in others as well. 

Though the topics of my art are typically quite emotionally vulnerable or intense, I'd like to think that my artistic practice is rooted in play and joy. Art is a powerful, beautiful tool for self expression and navigation.