Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: Mastery and Control

I love routines. Anyone who has spent any extended period of time with me can attest to that.

There is a profound comfort in knowing that, for the most part, today will follow the exact same rhythm as yesterday. Routine allows me to operate on a healthy form of autopilot—it creates a world where I know the essentials will get done, freeing up mental bandwidth so I can actually breathe and relax.

If you were to look at my average work week, it looks something like this:

• 8:00 AM: Wake up
• 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Check social media and shower
• 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Deep Work (projects, policy memos, emails, core meetings)
• 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM: Lunch break
• 12:45 PM – 4:30 PM: External meetings and continuing morning tasks
• 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM: Wrap up the workday (set tomorrow’s goals, clear urgent emails)
• 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM: Decompress (personal meetings, community clubs, downtime)
• 7:00 PM – 8:15 PM: Gym session
• 8:15 PM – 10:30 PM: Freshen up, make something to eat, eat
• 10:30 PM – 11:30 PM: Wind down, call my partner (if I am not at her house), lights out

Clinging tightly to this structure grants me a profound sense of peace. Knowing what my day looks like before it even begins offers a protective barrier of security. It makes me feel like I am in control of my life.

Reflecting on my owned lived experience, for a former foster youth or an adoptee, no matter their age or where they are on their healing journey, control is not a luxury—it is fundamentally critical. Control is the very thing that was stripped from us at the beginning of our lives, and in more extreme cases, withheld from us for years.

In Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency, authors Sharon Kaplan Roszia and Allison Davis Maxon define control as the baseline sense of agency, security, and power over one’s own life and destiny. They note that every human being requires a predictable level of control to feel safe and emotionally regulated.

I would argue that my personal baseline for needed control is exceptionally high. Living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) means that routine and control aren’t just my preferences, but structural pillars required for me to function effectively. When my routines are unexpectedly disrupted, coping with that sudden instability takes a heavy emotional toll.

As an adoptee, my relationship with control has been warped from day one. To those who know me well, it’s no secret that I was born into the foster care system and that my biological mother abandoned me within hours of my birth. As an infant, experiencing those early traumas from losing that vital, physiological connection to a primary caregiver wired my nervous system in ways I am still navigating today.

You can see the ripples of that early loss directly in my personal relationships. I crave deep connection. I crave the validation of being chosen. I crave the safety that comes from knowing someone will stay, even when things get hard. And when a relationship ends abruptly or someone walks away, my default instinct is to internalize the rupture and to blame myself, assuming I was somehow fundamentally at fault, that I am somehow broken. That response is a direct artifact of lacking control at the very start of my existence.

Yet, as I’ve grown older and developed healthier ways to process these triggers, I’ve noticed a shift. I am slowly transitioning out of a desperate need for control and moving into the territory of mastery.

I no longer allow my internal monologues or sudden moments of dysregulation to plunge me into self-destructive or paralyzing behavior. Don’t misunderstand me: mastery doesn’t mean I’m immune to feeling overwhelmed, nor does it mean I never feel out of control. It simply means I recognize my triggers when they surface, and I have reliable strategies to ground myself and stay in motion. Mastery isn’t a final destination you reach and check off a list – it is an active state of agency that requires continuous work to maintain across different seasons of life.

Roszia and Maxon define mastery as the ongoing process of regaining healthy power, agency, and authority over one’s life. Looking back, I can see that my life since 2020 has been a live exercise in building that exact kind of mastery.

In 2020, I took a massive leap of agency. I uprooted my entire life in the Midwest and moved to Washington, DC, to work directly in child welfare. In those roles, I was able to leverage my lived experience as an adoptee and former foster youth to advocate for structural changes in the system. In doing so, I became a storyteller. For the first time, I claimed full ownership over the narrative surrounding my birth, my upbringing, and my future. Before that move, I rarely had the space or authority to tell my story on my own terms.

Today, while my career has shifted away from direct child welfare, my work as a Director of Public Policy and Finance in Oakland, California gives me a similar platform for agency. Every day, I get to use policy insights, advocacy, and strategy to drive meaningful changes for Oaklanders and the broader community.

My workday schedule in local government is rarely identical from one afternoon to the next. Emergency meetings pop up, legislative priorities shift, and unexpected fires have to be put out. But because I’ve built a solid foundation of daily personal routines and a deeper internal sense of mastery, I no longer crumble when the plan changes. The schedule gives me structure, but mastery gives me the resilience to adapt when life happens anyway. Some days are still harder than others, but through it all, I know I am in control. And while I can’t control what happens to me, I can control how I respond.