What I Would Take In My Backpack: 2025 Holt Adoptee Scholarship Essay

Congratulations to Abigail Grace Perissi for winning a 2025 Holt Adoptee Scholarship. Read her winning essay!

Every year, Holt awards scholarships to three adoptees graduating high school and planning to pursue further education. We ask them to submit work based around a question or theme relating to the adoptee experience and encourage them to interpret the prompt creatively — whether through an essay, digital art or any other form that inspires them. This year, applicants responded to the prompt, “What is one thing you wish your family, friends or society knew about the adoptee experience?”

In response, Abigail Perissi wrote the following essay:

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to apply for the Holt Adoptee Scholarship. I am Abigail Grace Perissi and I was adopted out of the foster care system in the state of Indiana. In the fall of 2025 I am enrolled to be a freshman at Western Kentucky University and pursue a degree in social work, which as you read you will find could be a full circle experience for me. See I started this process with social workers removing me from a home only to help me find a new home and that’s what I want for others. So here’s what I would take in my backpack… 

As I thought about your question to this year’s applicants I really wish everyone understood just how much healing it takes. It’s certainly not a quick fix after you’re adopted and I want to use my experience to help others. I can remember showing up on the doorstep of people I didn’t know in just an old t-shirt and marker all over me. My younger sister was with me and she might have just had a pull up on and she was covered in marker too. I think we were giving each other tattoos. I avoided the adults and immediately heard a dog and just randomly started opening doors to find it. I wasn’t scared because I later learned through therapy that it was common for me to be randomly put at others homes. I had nothing to connect to at home so I just tried to connect to whatever would give me attention at that time. I believe it was a form of Reactive Attachment Disorder. It turns out I would be walking through that same door every day for the next 14 years. We certainly didn’t get there quickly and there were huge adjustments but we continue to be a work in progress as we became a family. 

Even though I have had 14 years of building a family of support I know that I will have years more of healing. 
That’s why I am pursuing a degree in social work, it will be a full circle for me. My parents have provided me with opportunities that I would have never had if they weren’t part of my team, if they hadn’t accepted me and the item in my “backpack.”

Therapy was huge for us, within a few days I looked great, no more tattoos, clean hair and even styled, with clean clothes that fit me. But as I learned in therapy the healing on the outside is nothing compared to the inside “goo” that I was carrying. My inside “goo” took years but as I got older and could learn to trust the people my foster parents were putting around me as part of my team and working with my therapist I was working on cleaning my inside too. The title of my essay comes directly from one therapy session that I remember clearly. It had been almost 2 years and I was in a therapy session with my foster parents at the time who were planning to adopt me. I had a drawing of an old bedroom and next to it was a drawing of my current bedroom. The therapist had me draw a backpack and said anything in this old room you have can be put in the bag and you can take it to your new room. I remember they gave me time and I drew something and stopped. The therapist reiterated that you can take anything because even big things fit into our magic backpack and I reassured her that I was done. When they ask, “What’s in your backpack?” I simply replied, “My sister.” It’s the only thing I wanted from my old life. I can remember not a dry eye in the room and I thought I might have hurt someones feelings, so I said, “Well she kind of annoys me now but I still would want her in my backpack.” The mood changed and laughter replaced the tears. After working hard to get rid of my “goo” I realized at such a young age… that she was the only thing I needed from that old life. 

I want others to know that it is possible to heal but it will take years. As I got older I did question things and asked why a lot. When I was 16 we got word that my birth mom had died and a whole new set of emotions appeared. All of my “what ifs” or “maybe one day” changed to “I will never get that answered.” I didn’t realize that news about a person I barely remember would affect me like that. My dad took my sister and I to a nearby camping site for a hike and we wrote messages on rocks and tossed them into a stream, hoping for some closure. That was him doing what my parents have always done, trying to heal our inside “goo.” See, even though I have had 14 years of building a family of support I know that I will have years more of healing. 

That’s why I am pursuing a degree in social work, it will be a full circle for me. My parents have provided me with opportunities that I would have never had if they weren’t part of my team, if they hadn’t accepted me and the item in my “backpack.” I would greatly appreciate being considered for this scholarship because college is expensive and anything I can do to return the favor to my forever family is appreciated. 

See this year’s other winning Holt Adoptee Scholarship submissions!