I Hate Paper Mâché

Written by Peace Kinsella

In first grade, I was assigned a big art project: recreate your face using paper mâché.

I hated every inch of this class, from drawing pastel sunsets to making our own paper using sopping wet pieces of pulp. But this one…this project was the worst. I remember my nose was wrinkling due to the plastery smell, and the kid beside me kept splashing the muddy water, so it splattered all over my front. It was so nasty! It got absolutely everywhere; I was picking dried pieces off my uniform for days after. My monstrosity never made it to the school bulletin board. 

I remember when the teacher first demonstrated the task. I was fascinated by how the straight paper slowly transformed into moldable mush, relenting in her hands as she built a bigger picture.

As a college student reflecting on this, I can see how it was a perfect metaphor for what it means to build one’s identity. 

Though we all build our sense of self from scratch, as an adoptee, I’ve always felt I’m building from shattered pieces. I dip each piece, each experience, in the water and add it to the mold myself. It’s messy, unsure, and, I pray hopefully, worth it. I have already pivoted from the life imagined for me by my birth parents, so it’s terrifying to realize that I must make this one my own. The surface-level relationship I share with my birth mother and my nonexistent one with my father has left me pondering who I’m supposed to be. The one I’ve forged with my adoptive parents has left me wondering what I’m supposed to be.

And I’ve contentedly resolved that I have no idea.

For many adoptees, it’s easy for our sense of self to be forgotten in the moment we were given up. I want to remind us that we are whole people—we are human! That means our hurt, joy, safety, and uncertainties are valid. 

Our grand dilemma that we are faced with is to figure out how to forge our own path. There are few rules and even fewer structures to guide us. Alongside our adoption, we are each so uniquely molded by all of our experiences. Whatever we choose to do with our lives, whether it be a moment of surviving or thriving, is unapologetically our own. The memory of my first dance class shaped who I am just as much as the panic attack from my first therapy session. That friend breakup and becoming a summer teacher are just other bits of me at the end of the day. Those epiphanies and hurts are beautiful, disgustingly, gooey pieces being added to the final portrait. But I couldn’t put all of this in my paper mâché’d mask. Maybe that’s why I struggled with the assignment?

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. Spaces like these are vital because the focus on that part of our identity is so small. But more importantly, the connection we share with one another is powerful. Adoptees from across the world, a multitude of stories, are brought together. AMS is for adoptees by adoptees. Meaning that it’s not just happening to you. You can reach out, and a hand will always be there. It is a place where you can bring every part of and be every part of you without judgment.

I decided to become an ambassador because it’s so important to me that adoptees are seen as more than just adoptees.

No matter what stage we are at with our adoption, we wish to be seen as more than just that one part of ourselves. We want to know that just being us is enough. And it is. Peel back our layers and attempt to know each piece.

I have so much more living to do, but I do know two things: One, you are so much more than your adoption, and two, they can never make me like paper mâché.