On the Word “Chosen”

People mean it kindly. “You were chosen.” I understand why it gets said — it's meant to sound like the opposite of being given up, like something intentional and good instead of something that happened to you. And some days it does feel that way. I know families for whom that word carries everything they wanted it to.

But chosen also means someone else didn't, or couldn't, or wasn't allowed to keep choosing. It skips the part before the choosing — the room where a different decision almost got made, the person who made it, what it cost them. A word that starts the story in the middle isn't wrong, exactly. It's just missing a chapter.

I don't think there's a better single word to hand a child instead. Maybe that's the point — maybe no single word was ever going to hold all of it. What I'd ask, if I could ask anything, is just to leave room next to “chosen” for the rest of the sentence, whenever a person is ready to say it out loud. Not instead of. Alongside.

If you're a parent who has used that word, I don't think you did anything wrong. If you're an adoptee who has flinched at it, you didn't do anything wrong either. Both of you were reaching for something true.