José Montoya–a Colombian adoptee born in Cali in 1979, adopted at 3 1/2 years old, raised in the Netherlands–is an actor and playwright. I highly recommend your taking the time to watch his play, “To Be or Never Been.” It is autobiographical. Both his acting and his story are powerful. He shares his memories of being in the Casita de Belen orphanage, of his travel to and childhood in a northern Netherlands village, and of his visits to Colombia in search of his family and himself.

The play is visceral, sparse, and riveting. The same can also be said of his incredibly powerful monologue, “Grieving from the perspective of an adoptee.”

Increasingly, and I am thankful for this, the role of grief is being accepted and acknowledged in the adoption community. In the maelstrom of possible emotions around trauma, loss, and love, grief is interwoven in all of it.

In both “To Be Or Never Been” and in “Grieving,” Montoya brings voice to the reality of grief in adoption viscerally and genuinely.

Grief is of course complex. JaeRan Kim, Ph.D., has written and spoken on ambiguous loss in adoption. “Ambiguous loss—a feeling of grief or distress combined with confusion about the lost person or relationship—is a normal aspect of adoption,” she says. Kim is a Korean adoptee, raised in the U.S., and a professor at the University of Washington-Tacoma.

I am currently working on certification in grief therapy for non-death losses through the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. We think so often of grief as being the emotion following the death of a loved one, and of course it is. Non-death losses, such as adoption, can also evoke a grief response, one that can manifest in so many ways. Yes, there can be gains in adoption—and those are complex also. As an adoptive parent, I am constantly looking for better ways to understand adoption, especially through the voices and lived experience of adoptees.

Many adoptees use art as a way to share their understanding of the complexity of their stories. Montoya, for example, is also a visual artist. Inter Country Adoptee Voices has information on a variety of adoptee artists here.

C.S. Lewis said “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.” Shakespeare suggests that we “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.” The Irish rock band U2’s song “Until the End of the World” says, “In my dream I was drowning my sorrow. But my sorrows they’d learned to swim.” The writer and novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells us “There is value in that Igbo way, that African way, of grappling with grief, the performative, expressive outward mourning, where you take every call and you tell and retell the story of what happened, where isolation is anathema.”

Speak (act, draw, paint, compose, write) your truth, even through the tears.