Seeking Peace, Finding Kindness.

2008. I’m 40. I write a short story about my search for my birth mother, how in 1998, after searching for six years — after a social worker said it was impossible— I found her but she was already dead. I write about how finding answers soothed my soul at the same time grief shattered it. I show it to a friend, a screenwriter and former New York Times journalist who says, “holy shit, you’re a writer.” It is the first time I’ve shown someone my writing. He suggests I turn it into a screenplay, so with his help and the help of other screenwriter friends, I write a screenplay.

Some people read it and like it and wow, maybe I really am a writer. The news horrifies my husband — a film producer — now his wife is like everyone else in this town asking him to read their script, but he is a good husband, so he reads it and, much to his cynical surprise, he likes it. He sends it to his friend, a big fancy agent. His friend, the big fancy agent, does not like my script.

“She sucks. She should never write again.”

Not “it needs work” or “it’s not commercial enough,” no, the big fancy agent issues an edict, an absolute, a nuclear blast. I’m devastated. But instead of giving up, I say “fuck you big fancy agent” and keep writing.

2018. I’m 50. I’ve been searching for my birth father for 26 years. I’ve followed false leads, DNA tested with the wrong man — thanked a God I do not believe in it wasn’t him — put my DNA on websites and prayed to that same God the right man would one day appear.

That one day is a quiet Sunday morning with an Ancestry.com first cousin match, an unusual last name, two hours on the internet and a call to a stranger in Brewster, Massachusetts. My father. I have two half-sisters. My soul, my broken soul feels something I cannot describe. He tells me he’s not sure he wants a relationship, but the next day calls back and says, “If I would have known, I would have raised you. Let’s stay in touch.”

Six months later, I fly alone to Boston and a white-haired man with shining blue eyes just like mine stands at baggage claim — exactly where he told me he would stand — I hug him and feel his heartbeat next to mine and we laugh and cry and get in his dusty Subaru for the drive to his home on the Cape. In the car, the producer of the television show I’m writing for calls me to give me notes on the episode I submitted that morning before boarding the plane. “I have to call you back. I’m in the car with my father.”

2022. I’m 54. I’ve been on anti-depressants for 3 years. Adoption reunion stirred up trauma and pain and made it impossible for me to muscle through the Depression I’ve lived with my entire life. The medication works. I’m alive, but I long for more than just “being alive.” I long to be present and feel the joy I know exists in the world so I yoga and spin and walk and fuck and eat and shop, but I cannot grasp what others so easily hold.

It’s spring, two years since a pandemic has sidelined life and infected us with more sadness than a virus ever could. A friend gives me a microdose of psilocybin — magic mushrooms — and I take it. It changes my life. I feel the presence and peace that has eluded me for decades. I begin microdosing several days a week, lower my antidepressant dosage with no uptick in depressive or anxious symptoms. I am optimistic, hopeful, able to see the kaleidoscope of beauty in the world and my life.

November arrives and I wake up one Tuesday morning to learn a movie I co-wrote — my original story and script — has been nominated for 11 Emmy awards. It wins four. Take that, big fancy agent.

Giving up is grossly overrated.

The search for inner peace defines my life, and with it, a less healthy search for external approval. If I wasn’t good enough to keep, how can I be good enough at all? That voice drives me to achieve, to persevere, to fight for my place in this world, and sometimes it lets me sit in shit for too long.

Microdosing mushrooms helps me live in the present and living in the present neutralizes my critical, fearful voice — the voice of a newborn alone in the NICU crying out for a mother whose sound, smell, heartbeat she once knew. The voice of a little girl told, “she loved you so much she gave you away” who now believes everyone who loves her will leave her. It is not the voice of an accomplished woman, married 25 years with two fantastic children, a trove of loving family and friends. Mushrooms help me stop judging myself: I am enough because I am.

These days, living in the present is brutal business. It tasks us with finding beauty and joy, peace and hope in a world working against our quest. That’s why I quit Twitter, an absurdly hard decision for me — which may sound trite after all I’ve just shared — but it’s not.

On Twitter, I connected with adoptees from all over the world. We built a community, a safe place for talking about our lived experiences. I shared my work, met writers, became part of that community. I felt at home; a toxic shit show of a home, but home.

Even when I knew it was no longer good for me, I didn’t want to leave Twitter because I didn’t want to lose my community — or my followers.

But like many, after Elon Musk took over, I reluctantly deleted my account and migrated to Mastodon, a decentralized, algorithm/ad-free social media site I had never heard of and didn’t understand, one where I had no followers.

But something amazing happened — is happening. I’m sleeping better. My existential dread is lessening, my hope in humanity being restored. People on Mastodon are kinder, no algorithm churns and amplifies outrage, no advertisers clog my feed, no maniacal White supremacist anti-Semitic billionaire or former President to raise my heart rate. It’s not perfect, but it’s more peaceful.

That’s how life works, right? Sometimes we stay in the wrong place for too long, for the wrong reasons, too afraid of the unknown to shift, too comfortable with our ancient voices to make room for new ones.

Today. 44 days until I’m 55. I watch the new Netflix documentary Stutz, where actor Jonah Hill profiles his psychiatrist, Dr. Phil Stutz. Dr. Stutz describes the laws of the universe as pain, uncertainty, and constant work. They exonerate no one. How we respond to them is what shapes our lives.

He says a lot more, you should watch it (Esquire magazine says, “Anyone With A Brain Should See Stutz Right Now”). But it’s worth watching as much for Stutz’s wisdom as it is for Jonah Hill’s poignant vulnerability. Hill gives a masterclass in being human, what it looks like when you stop seeking external validation for internal peace, when you find it by being kind to yourself.

Sometimes I think about the big fancy agent and wonder if he recalls what he said or if he knows what I’ve written. Sometimes I think about the social worker who told me I would never find my parents. I often think about my birth mother and wonder if — hope she is — proud of me.

But mostly I think about the power of forward motion, the courage it takes to change, and the gift of learning to be kind to yourself.