Being an adoptee embarking on a reunion feels like stepping into a world of raw vulnerability—a feeling I’m not used to. I’ve built walls so high they seemed unshakable, but now, faced with so many unknowns and truths, it’s like navigating thin ice. My heart wants to leap forward, but caution pulls me back; every step feels precarious, as if one misstep could fracture everything beneath me and send me tumbling into the unknown.

Without knowledge of my mission, I assimilated into my adoptive family, unintentionally leaving behind my birth inheritance. It is now up to me to embrace this diplomatic task. As a representative of my biological home, I must announce to my host country—my adoptive family—“I am the half-Jewish ambassador to this white Protestant family. And just so you know, I don’t like golf. I like to swim.”

Adoptee losses are ambiguous, too. I’ve heard some adoptees state that they are told to “move on,” or “get over it,” if they are interested in excavating their adoption story. Just as my father suffered a loss so great that it could not be named or talked about, so too have we adoptees experienced loss. For some of us, this loss happened so early in our lives that we might not even realize its impact.

AMS was the first space in which I could talk about my adoption and myself. The conversations I was a part of brought up the complexity of birth parents as well as what our hobbies were. There, adoptees are validated as individuals who happen to share an aspect of their identity.