breathe in again

I may be blogged out–

the demons have been expressed, examined and exorcised.  My purpose here has been fulfilled.

Now I’m washed up on the shore of reunion; a story as long as we both shall live…

I’m learning to stand back, to see Joy as her own person, roaming and ranging way beyond me.

We each check things out in our own way. 

I don’t spend a lot of time being serious or worrying, though my emotions get triggered easily.  I often catch myself pursing my lips or raising my shoulders or clenching my pelvis and then I let it go.  I relax and let things be what they are.  When I’m quiet  joy in others and situations circles around in my awareness.  When things get really tense, I can go to a dance class and it’s like an emotional colonic.

I choose to have fun.

I’ve been  criticized for “making fun of a situation”. I have to agree.  If I’m going to do something, I’m going to have fun doing it. Sometimes it means I make fun of things. I would rather have fun. I don’t have a lot of patience for serious and somber.

This has be really challenging in reunion.  I’ve made a lot of  mistakes, been unprepared for a lot of things.

Spending time singing the blues is one way to lift out of them. Combining beauty with pain can transcend to beautiful.   I heard Tracy Nelson cover Memphis Slim’s Mother Earth in ‘69.  I can’t find her version, only hear inside me or I’d share it.

Back to the challenge bit ~ I get distracted easily.  I find delight in my surroundings and my thoughts.  I choose delight rather than doggedly pursue some never ending pattern of despair.  There is no ultimate, final conclusion to this circle of life, except that death bit. Yep, the circle of life – and its abrupt end.  We really don’t know what happens then either.  Hmmmmm, interesting. So, yeah I get distracted. The worst thing my father ever said to me when I was about 15-16 y.o. was, “You’re a dilettante!” He spat it out.  We didn’t know about ADD in those days.  Ritalin was not yet widely accepted, thank God.

The middle school they wanted to test my raised son for ADD, thinking if they could just get him on some meds they could bring him down to their level.  We survived those days drug free too.

I don’t think there really is a significant bottom of things.  They mostly just recycle.  Things need to be expressed, pressures relieved, experiences acknowledged and learned from.  Sometimes I ask for an ear to listen to me.  I need to listen to myself, so that I can uncover what’s inside me. Some things I say are a bunch of hooie.  But I still need to say them to find out what a bunch of hooie I was tending inside. That’s part of learning and growing.

What can I learn from reunion? What can I learn from Joy? How can I go forward, from this point?

I want to flow with whatever is happening with my daughter, without expectations or judging our communication. I don’t want to inflict my point of view.

Can I experience and learn from whatever comes my way? I know that everything that has happened in our reunion can be used to learn. It’s all valuable.  There is great freedom for me in that. I am living freer and more fully than ever before.

But Joy and I are definitely not having a ‘good’ time. I do not want to hurt her.

Lately it seems that everything I say hurts her.  Just my being is offensive to her.  So I’m going to try out being quiet. Here.

taking chances

I’ve been impressed with the importance of showing up lately.  Just show up and see what you can do.  Issycat wrote about reunion-eggshells-and-the-loselose and it provoked some thoughts in my mind that I felt might not be taken well. So I brought them over here. It reminded me of Joy’s and my last face to face. which reminded me of many of our past meetings.  We have done a lot of approach avoidance stuff. I think it comes out of fear/desire/fear that underlies our every encounter.  I don’t really understand it.  I think it weighs heavier on Joy than on me because I think she lost more than I did in relinquishment.  She was the baby. I think I’ve worked out a lot of what I lost, though it sadly took me an awfully long while, which made it even harder on her. All the ego and personality stuff floats on the top and keeps us pretty busy. But down deep, deep there is a lot of love.

Opening Adoption

Even though Joy grew up without me physically, I always knew I was her mother, she was my child.

She “wasn’t looking for a mother” during our first conversation. I pushed that awareness away in an effort to be what she asked me to be. The pushing and pulling at trying to make sense of what happened when a she was taken, to be brought up with more privileges and so called security still tugs at me.

In our closed adoption, in the early 70s, all our worldly rights were severed.  The only right I had was to pray for her. First I had to  bypass the guilt and shame at letting her go.

I looked at adopters as a class above and flirted very briefly with the idea of becoming one, as a way to pay back my debt to society… a fleeting thought. In reality I avoided learning about adoption because it aggravated the wound.

When Joy told me about open adoption, it seemed an impossible idea; to actually know where your baby was and not try to steal her back?  Now I see how it could work if I wasn’t allowed to see her until she was a year old. Then I would have believed she had a life with those special people; security that I wouldn’t have wanted to disrupt.  I could have cooperated with that — I think.

Our reunion was instigated by my grandson’s birth.  It’s still growing and maturing. We quickly passed the stage of not wanting me to be her mother.  We’ve struggled with what being her mother means ~ a lot.

What does it mean to have two mothers? One that “gave you away?”  whose development was arrested at the time of your birth? that tried to laugh off the paralyzing fear of you “disappearing again”?

Another mother that acquired and cared for you? that you have a history and routines with? that you know how to count on and what to expect? that has the stamp of approval?

The past 3+ years reading blogs and forums has opened my eyes. There are so many varieties and degrees of openness in adoption, depending on the willingness and ability of the parents.  Closing open adoptions is frighteningly easy.

Reunion is similar to opening a closed adoption with a huge variety of openness. The parents may or may not cooperate with each other at all. We can continue to be mysterious strangers.

How odd is that for our (adult) children?

As much as we were kind of “matched” back in the day, Joy manages her 3 sets of parents completely separately. Our social circles don’t overlap. Our personal concerns  for heroverlap but unfortunately may also compete with each other.

It’s weird.  Parallel families that don’t speak to each other.

The holidays accentuate all that.  Joy described our holiday visit as a disaster. For me there was a mild disturbance accompanied by a pleasant interaction with Tomtom and her dear SH’s mellow nonchalance.  When I asked last night how she saw it as disaster, she said it was second to our absolute worst visit back in ‘93, 16 1/2 years ago.

Reflecting on that visit, I remember the same pulling away from me. I was terribly shaken that she refused to let me touch her and rejected my affection at that time. My mother had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The two emotional relationships became intertwined for a season of grief.

This time it affected me quite differently. I kept reaching out instead of taking the rejection personally. I still don’t know where to go with what seems to me, like Joy experiencing an overwhelming confusion of desire and fear. What I’ve learned in the meantime, the 16 1/2 year interval, is that I don’t have any choice but to go on.  I may crash against the rocks. I may drown. One day I’ll die. Until then, I’m going to make the best of it that I can. I am grateful for the time I spent with her and her family. Her perfectly made up lips are stuck in my mind.  Tomtom’s sweet and restless affection for her and his appreciation of doodling imprinted in those moments. And her SH’s gentle and unswerving support felt like a gift to me too.

Seasons of Peace

Catching up with my daughter’s recent posts, I was struck by John Lennon references (ie. “War is over, if you want it…) and another song came to me.  But I can’t find the version I learned as a kid, from the Mickey Mouse Club.

Hey there, hi there, ho there, you’re as welcome as can be ~Come along and sing our song and join our company…

I don’t believe in fighting for peace or defending myself for peace.  Peace is my natural state; as a child of a benevolent Creator.

Peace is  eternal. Peace is God, Spirit, the One, whatever we want to call it. It is bigger than our minds can grasp. It just is.

When I don’t have peace, if I stop whatever I have been doing; peace usually  starts showing up.

It begins when I stop and choose toward peace.  Worrying about solving the world’s problems or issues doesn’t make peace. Resisting misery doesn’t make peace. I find my own peace by being aware of the peace that is present, in loving what is present.

The opportunity to be in peace is in every moment, in every choice. You come into peace first with yourself and then by sharing peace with others. I join you in claiming our spiritual heritage of peace and loving. ~ You can be at peace with yourself and still let other people know that they are hurting you. You can say, “Hey that hurts!” and remain at peace with yourself. ~ You take authority over what’s going on with you by acknowledging it. ~ If your authority is that of peace, you bring peace into the situation. – John-Roger (From: Loving Each Day for Peacemakers, Choosing Peace Every Day)

I want to  have peace in my family, starting inside me, with my husband and my children. Most of the time I’m pretty good at it.   I’m getting better at listening, observing my feelings when they start to react and letting go of them. Just watching makes such a difference.  Going back and tracking where they started to shoot off; what is it that upset me? Using my mind to take another look at it from another’s perspective, remembering they’re out to take care of themselves. That’s their job.

If you want to know whether you are expressing peace, it’s really simple. ~ When you accept someone who is different, peace is present. ~ When you move past your emotions and judgments into understanding and empathy, peace is being expressed. ~When you are loving, peace reigns. – John-Roger (From: Loving Each Day for Peacemakers, Choosing Peace Every Day)

Yep, it’s Christmas again. A season of joy and hope tested by the pulls and tugs of idealized illusions of what it’s supposed to be.  I’m going to be seeing all my kids and their significant others! I wish we could all meet together. I am thankful that Joy is coming to town!

I wish we could create, allow and promote peace until it becomes contagious, all together.

We’ll start where we are right now, with what we have right now, and keep moving towards peace.

shame shifting

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

~Mark Twain

That pretty much sums up what I hear from adoptees. Their search to learn to be comfortable in their own skins is poignantly portrayed in fiction but often avoided in real life.  Being an adoptee is such a vivid portrayal of  something everybody has to learn.

Me, I’m getting over trying to explain my bad behavior and recognizing we  each do our best with what we know at the time.

I find myself stumbling on shame, as though the world (or anyone) is deserving of a better person than me is something I share with the rest of the world too. What kind of BS is that? I get over one shame and up pops another one.

For years I indulged in regret, shame  and unworthiness for buying the message that I would be detrimental; that my baby would be better off without me, that an adoptive family would provide a much better life than I would, that  I was  the only loser and deserved the grief.

Clinging to the dream that a “qualified” loving and adoring family was blessed to have such a beautiful being in their life blurred my vision of what her experience actually was.

Really nothing new here.  I was hurt and angry and ashamed of being coerced.  Now I’m in the next part, reunion

My dream of the idyllic loving family was shattered. My daughter was conditioned against me.   Though I sacrificed her against my personal wishes, I was to blame for gaping emotional holes, because I am and always have been her mother. Actions in ignorance returned to me.

Meeting my daughter who was now a young mother, vulnerable and confused, I felt rejected. For years our communication was biased by my self rejection and inadequacy.  How could I be so heartless? How could I be so mean? (so weak, so pathetic?)

I  finally figured it out. I did it by simply vacillating between denial and shame, taking all the hurt and anger and blame against myself. I mowed myself down with it.

What I achieved before reunion was won by crawling up from the depths of abandonment of my daughter and myself, of the rejection of myself and the world. I treasured my family of four. Raising two young children, my primary goal was insuring they knew they were loved. I tried to translate that in reuniting with Joy, to extend that loving to her too, the daughter I had failed.

Our reunion fell into hurtful recriminating patterns.  I couldn’t cope with the blame. I resisted in shame, feeling as helpless as when she was born — the ever present blame of leaving my firstborn to the care of strangers. These strangers …

… were the people that stood in my place. These were her parents. They did their best, just as I did mine.

Beginning our reunion, I couldn’t comprehend the difficulties Joy was experiencing. She had the high moral ground. I took a defensive position. There were huge gaps in our communication.   She had her pride and I had mine. Being raised in silence, being introverted, being the ‘responsible party’, all contributed to keeping my feelings unspoken. Protecting her from my pain and lack of confidence gave the impression I didn’t care.

Learning to be comfortable in this skin of mine, with my experiences starts with facing  all of it.  Communicating with those who understand and accept me is easing me into understanding and accepting myself.  As I come to terms with myself, it becomes easier to accept the various responses I get from others.

Part of a story of closed adoption morphing through reunion to openness.

Scarlet Alphabet

Yesterday I was helping get a mailing out at the botanical garden where I volunteer weekly. There were 7 other people sitting around, two of which know the bare bones of my story. A woman who has been very open with me asked how many children I had altogether and I told her (and everyone else at the table) that I hadn’t raised my firstborn who was adopted. It was the first time I’d even met one of the people there. A ripple of silence went around. Then a woman with a strong leadership style said her friend in birdwatching group recently reunited with her “first daughter” which invited me to share that my daughter and I have been in reunion nearly 20 years, said with a smile, followed by another ripple of silence.

 

We turned to talking about good books and literature which turned to Am Lit and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The woman next to me said she saw someone on Halloween with a scarlet A on her dress and standing next to her a child wearing a B. The group cracked up laughing and I sat quietly not getting the joke. My sense of humor was so absent! Why would Pearl be wearing the letter B?

Later thinking about it, I thought B for *astard, which made sense but the humor in that was a bit too harsh for that crowd. This morning the thought was B as in the second letter of the alphabet. A,B,C indicating the scarlet A no longer had the meaning it originally held.

 

Writing this all out gives me a fresh perspective. They were shocked, startled, to briefly hear my story. They haven’t shared that experience, but the experience we shared yesterday was one of acceptance, even though it took me 1/2 a day to figure it out.

Mean/Grace

In loving, I don’t have to defend anything or attack anything. I fall out of that loving daily. I have put myself on “pause” and re calibrate.  What do I really want here? What does the other person want?

Observing the challenges to my emotional experience, I am  learning.  Inhale, exhale, whoop I’m still here. Every experience is for growing and expanding. The purpose of my life is to turn all experience to good use. 

This every other daily blogging thing is interesting.  Really what do I have to say?

Oh, glory how happy I am

This being adoption month and nablopomo (or whatever) I’m inspired to keep my blog active with little tidbits. Back in November many long years ago I was living in a studio apt with my dearest friend and getting quite a big belly.  We were happy to stay home and teach ourselves to knit and listen to the Reverand Gary Davis.  Joy said she sang about being saved in the blood of the lamb.  When I googled it on youtube look who popped up!

Perhaps she picked it up in the womb.

Oh, glory how happy I am. Wait for it to load and skip ahead to about 2:20.

A Sunday in October

The previous post leaves a bad taste. I want to override it. So looking into unpublished drafts I found this, written just over a year ago. It’s something worth remembering.

I keep telling myself I’m not going to argue.  I’m not going to get defensive.  And yet there I go defending and arguing time and again.  I argue.  I defend.

Joy and I and Ezzy had a fine time on Sunday.  First, Ezzy took me to church with her friend, Mickie.  I called Joy when we went inside to let her know where we were.  I called again when we headed out to eat.  I kept looking back at the door during the meal even though I knew Joy didn’t know where we were so couldn’t possibly be meeting us.  Ezzy said, “Mom, she doesn’t know where we are.”  So I know she saw what I was doing.

Joy called to find out where we were and caught up with us as we were leaving.  She met Mickie briefly.  And we set out to see what we could see.  We casually walked over to Joy’s new place which has gorgeous “bones”.  Then to the library because we all three love libraries.  LOVE libraries.  I tracked down a favorite quote which I read aloud.

Ezzy and I have read to each other all her life.  We like the sound of our own voices.

Then we proceeded to Ezzy’s much less glam home, gently, gingerly trying out the everyday simple activities of daily living together.  Just this is where I live.  This is how I live.  How is this for you?  Simple.  Just hung out for a couple hours and then back to our regularly scheduled lives.  We said goodbye at the BART station.

Ezzy and I went to pour wine at a fundraiser til 10pm.  Back at her place she read poems of Octavio Paz in Spanish to me.  In the morning I went to dance class with Ezzy and took the train back home.

Walked around gingerly for a couple days thinking that went ok.  We’re doing ok.  Then last night I tripped up.  I’m not sure how it happens.  Joy and I were on the phone, talking, laughing… and then things slid down down.  I went back to fretting, feeling disconcerted, as though there was something I should do and I didn’t know what it was.

Figuring out these new pathways, building relationships among familial strangers, I feel so awkward.  Joy and Ezzy have things in common as daughters of me.  I have things I’ve shared with Joy and different things I’ve shared with Ezzy.  I’ve known Ezzy five more years than I’ve known Joy.  I raised Ezzy.  Now we’re learning to share things together.  They’re getting to know each other under the tension of me trying to insure that everything is OK.  As if I could.  As if there was a question whether everything is ok or not.  Everything IS.  We are OK.

Keep Looking

Grown in My Hearts Adoption Carnival this month is about ‘treasured adoption photos’.  This is really hard for me to grasp. Treasured would be something I like, right? The only adoption photos I have are the poorly lit fuzzy polaroids taken of me holding Joy before signing the relinquishment papers. The best one went to her father. I wanted him to have some remembrance as he never saw her.

I’ve been ashamed that that was the best I could do.  She was an absolutely beautiful baby, and fuzzy polaroids  didn’t do her justice.  They are the only photos.

If there are no images of the tender beauty of her infancy, maybe the wrenching separation is my favorite. It is the most impactful. I remember a video of two figures running away from a burning village, one smaller than the other. A sudden violent separation from home through a personal bomb blast.

My British heritage objects to this sensational image. But in closed adoption there aren’t really applicable  “treasured adoption photos”.