Adoption Reunion & Identity Development

2010-05-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

The years are like floating dandelion seed stars; they float on the air and disappear without even noticing their absence. I’ve made a decision this year and that decision is to write a book on adoption and my story. There are so many stories out there and each so valuable in their own unique way of weaving and unfolding their adoption experiences.

I want to share my process of healing and use words that are spiritual and not heard enough in our regular experience of the world. I don’t want to edit my healing process and yet I don’t want my story to be about the trauma of it all…but about the joy of it, the challenge of it, the overcoming in it, the growth from it, the learning of myself through it. It feels big in that the story has such wiggly edges and it seems hard to move it into one format.

In my writing group where I have begun to share my writing I am full of feeling when I read my writing. Others in the group don’t always understand. I am trying to give them context of the triad experiences and information about reunion etc. They are slow at learning and that is all right. My heart just gets vulnerable in the process when they read what I write and say, “This is what women experience in general.” And I know they don’t understand.

I ask myself if my book is for the layman or is it for “us”? I want to speak to other adoptees who know my language…who know the journey…who know the inner world of this experience. Sometime my writing group member’s words feel as if they were throwing stones at me without even realizing it.

Maybe writing a book will help me see that they aren’t throwing stones…but that they just don’t understand. It doesn’t matter if they understand…what matters is that I understand the journey and the pearls that came along the way…and that I speak to those who are like me and who live inside the same warp and weave in the texture of their lives.

A New Month ~ A New Year

2009-01-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

New thoughts on old themes scatter themselves where pine needles dropped after the tree had done its job.
Moments in the evenings around those glowing tree lights ~ twinkling and sparkling ~ invited inner ponderings.
Reflections brought me to my heart with glistening tear wetted cheeks and gratitude ~ for they live hand-in-hand.
Love is so imperfect. Love of self, love of others, receiving love, giving love. These all wear foibled garments.
When I look at family I see up and down and inside and out now.
It used to be that I was only able to see how I had failed; how I had brought my own set of imperfections to the mix.
Or how I used to and still fall prey to seeing all those things that others have taken from me or refuse to give.
My lament so often has been: “Please…just let me love you.”
In this there is a certain expectation that lies just under the surface and that is that I am unlovable and so no love returns.
I’m learning to see love. Love doesn’t always come the way I imagine it will…wrapped in the paper that my imagination would like to have it arrive in.
But love does arrive and so often in the past I haven’t answered the door or recognized that it has come to me from another’s heart.
This is the year ~ in this new month ~ this new year ~ that I am choosing new eyes to see with…to look a little closer…to unclasp the grip of fear of being unloved…
Long enough to see how I am loved.
He placed my full suitcase on the guestroom bed just where I like it so that I can unpack slowly with lots of room. He unzipped the case and spread it wide open for me.
This is love. This is being seen.
She saved all of my letters ~ even the silly ones from camp when I was only 6 ~ and gave them to me in an envelope this year marked: Gwendolyn.
This is being treasured.
She found me in a sea of people and energetically greeted me. Said she had missed me and could we have coffee or get together some time.
This is being appreciated.
He calls out to his mum and points his 2 year old finger out the car window with enthusiasm and says, “Go Grammy’s! Mommy, go Grammy’s!”
This is being wholly loved.
I curl up in my big comfy sofa with my little dog and look around me ~ I whisper to myself of my gratitude for my life and quietly take inventory of all that I have become and all that I have valued and brought into my life that I find of deep worth.
I embrace myself and in this I know that this is indeed a new month ~ a new year.

ReShad: A Reunion Through Art

2008-03-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Can You Relate????

2007-11-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

Who do you ask when you want to become your whole self in order to reach your full potential?

2007-11-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

Watch the video!

So often it is our hearts that have the answers if we would but lend it an ear.

Link to YouTube for Video on Open Records

2007-10-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyu4E9Bhi9E

Created by Mia and her friends. Mia is an adoptee.

This video is a nonprofit effort to raise awareness on the issues regarding opening records.

Powerful change can happen at the grassroots level.

Be a part of this change by posting this link where ever you can in order to raise awareness.

Thank you...

Shadow People

2007-10-13T23:39:00.001-07:00

October 14, 2007

Dear Ted,
Thank you for thinking of me on my birthday and sending a card my way. You always remember this both for me and for Terry. I’m not sure if you send one to Daniel or not as I have not asked if he receives cards from you in remembrance of the day he was born and in recognition that he is your first born son, but I know how much it has meant in the past to Terry.

I have always shared my process and thoughts with you through the years and so, I share my process now with you. Remember that I love you and this fact will never change.

This will be a difficult letter for me to write and I have spent the past while in tears as I begin. Life asks us to grow up in so many ways as we age and we are forced many times to, as they say in the 12 step programs which my friend always quotes, “to accept life on life’s terms”. For me this means accepting things as they really are without the frosting our imaginings and longings will add to what is.

Last fall when I received the DVD from your brother’s memorial service the truth of things really hit me full force. Two things struck me deeply. The first was the fact that you informed me of your brother’s passing after the funeral and memorial service which left me no option of being part of this family’s loss or gathering in recognition of this loss or to mourn with others the passing of a man who was my uncle. There was also no recognition on your part that I might have felt excluded or that this was a blatant exclusion. The second was that because of that choice that you made of excluding me in this family event… I recognized my true place in the family. I think viewing the group photo on that DVD ranks up in the top 5 most painful things I have experienced in my life as an adult. Looking into all of those faces of people who I am blood related to…who are part of my genealogical history…my clan for lack of a better word…and to know that I will never know them…never be connected to them or embraced by them as one of them…or that I will never be in the hearts of those who I belong to…simply tore the truth into an understanding for me.

I have loved shadow people for far too many years. I have longed for shadow people who will forever be shadows. You are a shadow to me. You flicker into my life as a card or a gift box or a picture on my wall. My pictures of you which I have kept framed and hung in a collection in my bedroom for years are more real to me than you are and this truth is difficult to face. But…in my heart I believe that in the end the truth will be more gracious than flickering shadows that offer false hope.

Shadow people live in the background. They do not come directly into your life nor do they share any part of your real life…like the hard times, the boring times, doing the dishes or having a barbeque…the good times…the births, the deaths, the accomplishments, the failures. Shadow people disappear easily and reappear at night when your heart hurts and you wish that they were more. Shadow people wear cut out clothes like paper dolls that I make for them so that I don’t see what is really underneath…smoke and mirrors…and my own wishes.

I had hoped I would be embraced by you and yours in a real way some day. What I know now that I am stronger of heart is that this simply will never be. When one is loved and embraced by someone’s heart…they do not show up in their life as a shadow person. They show up as the real deal. They show up when it is hard to show up…they show up when things are happy…they show up and spend time…they invest themselves…they show up in person.

I am tired of dancing with shadow people…it is too painful. I am not angry. I am not deeply wounded. I am sad that you could not be more than a shadow person for whatever reason in your life. I am sad that you missed out on me…I would have shared so many joyful things with you and I waited to do this for so long. Time, distance, location and lack of something (not sure what) simply made you a shadow person.

Recently a dear friend of mine said that love is fragile…if you do not invest in it and tend it…it dies. Love dies when it is not tended. Love is a fragile gift. Maybe one day you might want to be in my life as something other than a dancing shadow in my imagination. I won’t hold my breath nor place any bets. Let’s just call it like it is so that we can let go of the past and live in the reality of this moment and what simply is…which is not enough…and that is okay too…growing older allows us tougher skin to recognize the truth of a thing and to stop investing in things that yield no substantial return.

I once saw into the heart of a man…who was my father. It was a heart so tender and yielding. I remember that ferry ride with you. How I saw your vulnerability and loved you for showing its face to me. I saw the depth of your heart and this seeing of you kept my heart ablaze for so long. But there were never any more moments like this…no more real moments where father and daughter meet and see in tenderness the heart of the other…you did show me what it was to feel loved when I was a child and this has been the single thing in my life that has saved me…because I knew that there was love in life and so I could expect more. Oddly enough here I am…knowing that love can be this deep and delicious thing…real…and present…and when it is less than this…then it is something one must let go of if it doesn’t grow under the watering of our efforts and attention. Perhaps this is what a father does…we learn to love beyond our fathers…and to see them as the human beings that they are.

It’s unclear to me now why it has all unfolded the way that it has….but I find that at my age that investing in those relationships that nurture me in return are the most valuable and that shadows simply don’t offer up enough to keep a lively and healthy love present in one’s heart.
I always wish you well in your life. You will forever be the silent talkie projected in my mind’s eye…in flickering lights…the shadow father that I longed for…searched for…found…and learned to become strong enough to let go of and to let you be who you truly are and in that process find my own truth about my life experience and find acceptance and willingness to be honest about it to myself and to you.

I never wanted you to be a shadow person…ever…this was the shape you chose from the beginning. If you ever find that you might want to connect out of the shadows…I am here…but I will not pretend that shadows are the real deal.

Lovingly,
Gwendolyn

Heart Talk

2007-09-22T10:50:00.001-07:00

Today snuck up on me. We've decided to sell our house, but that is another story. I mention it so that you can picture me amid paint cans and cardboard boxes feeling surrounded. I woke up today and waded through the cardboard and home improvement tools and ignored them. Instead I chose to settle in my office which is off limits to the accessories of Better Homes and Gardens' home decor upgrades. I have closed the french doors and locked away all of the shifts and currents that have engulfed my life for now.

How rare and lovely now to be here...alone with my thoughts and the keyboard.

My sister and I have been connecting regularly in the last several months. I find this to be a wonderful new turn of things. She was older than I was when we were adopted into different families and so she has more memories of our younger years.

She remembers and she cannot decide if this is a blessing or a curse. I recognize the demons she struggles with as they have come to sit beside me at times and breathed hot green air on my state of mind. We have found the value in each other after years of longing and reaching for love from biological parents who simply have never stepped up to the plate. I suppose we had to venture down that path until we simply gave up with the recognition that time and history has poured over and down the waterfall and blended in with the landscape of what has unfolded in our lives and who we have become. For both of us we find we are no longer tethered by the longing for mother and father or by finding self fulfillment which seemed only to be satisfied by them. We are finding our whole selves along the way. We are beginning to dance openly with our authentic selves and what has come from this letting go and sensing our truer selves is our turning to each other. We are now available. We now have no angst between us. We can simply say I love you and not be fearful of what that means.

If feels as if the hand that I have outstretched for so long has finally been grasped and my heart has settled into the hold that it has found through the love my sister offers me and the love I offer her. There is equal energy in the giving and the receiving and this must be a rarity in the world. At least I have found this to be true in my world. Our hands, entwined in the fingers of sisterhood, have linked me to my history, my genetic heritage, and to the heart of my family.

Reflections on Reunion

2007-04-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

Teresa & Gwendolyn Ray

Sandy Ray's Home

Tomorrow is May Day. This day has meaning for several different things. It is a day celebrated in different countries and hold meaning for Pagans, naturalists, workforce rights, and the simple marking of spring. Pagans thought May Day to be the day that marked the middle of the year, a sort of half way point of the calendar. At this time the winter is seemingly over and spring is beginning to bud. On May Day fires are lit to lend energy to the warming sun as it lights the flame of life to plants and wildlife.

Perhaps this is how my life feels right now.
A halfway mark in the year.
A new beginning.

A week ago I returned from visiting my sister. I spent the first five years of my life seeing her in spurts between foster placements. We reunited in 1986, again in 1992, and now in 2007. We were both surprised to add up the years between this current and last visit as 16 years had passed. That is a very long time. She lives in Alabama and I live in Massachusetts. Our lives are very settled where we are and include children and grandchildren. We both feel a sadness that this distance separates us.

If you looked at our lives you would find differences and similarities. We both want deep connection with family and have yet to really find that completely. We both are artistic and are dedicated to developing a spiritual life. We both, at times, feel lost in regards to who we belong to and who belongs to us and strive to fill the chasm between these places with some sort of sense of surety. Adoption is indeed a lifelong quest. Looking into my sister’s face I have a knowing that I am loved by her in a way that only my brother and she feel and in this I find great comfort and gratitude. I think the struggle for me comes in the missing of this in my everyday life. I often wonder what it would be like to have my sister as part of the fabric of my life and my wonderings lead me to a sense of loss in this that I simply must sit beside without dwelling on it.

She is a strong woman, and laughs loudly like I do. She is easily kind and easily frightened like me. She is generous and hardworking. She is loving and tender. She is needy and vulnerable and I love her deeply. I miss her and I so long to have her near.

We scattered the ashes of our birth mother into a running stream and watched them settle on to the bedrock below; watching her life come to its own finality there in the water. My mother had a hard life and yet she found gratitude for it and courage in it in her own way. My sister and I talked about the mysteriousness of her illness and of her death and the fact that she died from an allergic reaction that wasn’t caught and eventually killed her in a nursing home.

My heart sinks every time I think on this because I was in a place finally to go and see her again. I had been communicating with her regularly and was ready to make flight arrangements when she suddenly became ill. She had had a stroke and was recovering and dealing with this in healthy ways. Suddenly her face and body swelled and she had trouble breathing. She had no history of emphysema, lung disease, or asthma. She was put on life support machines until they removed her from them and she passed peacefully.

I don’t know how to feel about the idea that she was killed by an allergic reaction that wasn’t tended to. I feel angry and that an opportunity to connect with my mother in a safe and loving way was taken from me. My sister and I said prayers for her as her ashes spilled over the wall and into the running water. I guess we found a sense of peace in that she was now free from the human conditions that her life put on her plate which more often than not were difficult to bear.

I think it takes great courage to live in poverty in this world and to live with a mental illness. She lived in a pink and broken down trailer for many years. She was known as “the crazy lady”. She glued beads in her hair as decoration and used Sharpie markers as lip and eye liner. She simply couldn’t stay here in reality. Life can make us disappear sometimes and retreat into the hallways of our own minds.

I don’t think that she wanted to die the way that she did…she was strong and healthy…she was a fighter…I hope that her final days were not torturous knowing that perhaps the situation could have been avoided or changed. That would be horrible and I would never wish that on any human being.

So, I returned to my original root family. I did so calmly and unswayed emotionally, which was a great relief as these situations can so easily undo me. I found such comfort in knowing that I am stronger and more centered inside and that as a woman moving into the “second half” of her years I am going with some lessons learned and some wisdom gleaned.

I feel whole. I feel the loss of these things, but they do not influence who I see myself in the world as or who I know myself to be. They do not take greatly from my sense of self or add greatly to who I will become. These family connections and experiences are simply part of who I am, a vital part, but they are old friends and they are very familiar. They are integrated into the fabric of my sense of self and this growth has been hard earned. It is completely satisfying to find myself in this place.

Tomorrow is May Day,

a mark for the second half of the year to unfold

bringing sunlight, warmth, and the promise of newly growing life.

Reunion Post Reunion - 16 Years Later

2007-04-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

Terry & Me in 1991

There is a raging storm coming up our way from New York. The weather reports gale winds of up to 80 miles per hour and in some places flooding and 2 to 3 feet of snow. Tomorrow I leave for Alabama; Birmingham to be more precise. The storm’s arriving as I leave to see my birth sister doesn’t surprise me. It’s been sixteen years since we’ve seen each other. The first time we were separated it was 25 years between face to face encounters. I am excited and nervous at the same time. We are so alike in many ways especially when it comes to laughter and entertaining each other with antidotes. She is a guitar player and singer and performing with these has peppered her life. She in many ways is an artist. I admire her ability to sing and play and perform. I simply admire her. There is no one like her in my life and I am flooded with the feeling of such joy at seeing her again and also with anger and frustration at the loss of her in my life. How can one hold these two conflicting emotions at the same time? It feels rather confusing.

I am flying down to see her, meet some more birth family members, and to scatter the ashes of our birth mother. Ohhhh…there go the butterflies in my stomach. It will be quite sad and perhaps it will be freeing as a last goodbye. I am not sure.

Does anyone ever have a sense of emptiness around their reunion experiences? It’s been 20 years since my first reunion experience. So many things got better inside of me as a result of the reunion process. What has never quite gelled is the relationship piece with my birth family. Sure we write letters and sometimes talk on the phone, but it often feels like the surreal connection that exists on some foreign planet that I will either never visit again or so rarely it feels almost easier to forget about them.

This trip to Alabama is a diving in again with all of the issues. Sometimes opening the door to all of this is a little intimidating. I don’t know how other triad members feel, but feelings and issues really have the ability to side swipe me when I least expect it. Not often, but when this happens it has a feeling of detestation that arrives with it. Often it will take me a week to move out of the feeling clouds. I think because of this I have a little bit of trepidation around visiting my sister.

I have high hopes that this trip will be wonderful and that I can at last, once again, embrace my big sister and share a moment of her life.

gwendolyn

First Family Reunions 1987 & 1991

2007-02-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

Siblings reunite after 25 years.

This is my brother Dan, my sister Terry, and myself at the airport reuninting.

We were actually on that night's evening news in Las Vegas where we put a call out to our birth father in an effort to locate him. Two major Vegas newspapers ran our story as front page news.

This is me and my birth father in 1997.

Our Vegas reunion with my neice Jamie.

Reunion with our birth mother in 1991.

My birth mother and me.

1991.

My sister and our birth mother.

1991

My sister and myself during our reunion with our mother.

1991

My brother with our birth mother during our reunion.

1991

My Birth Family

2007-02-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

Gwendolyn Ray...born October 8, 1959.

Sandra and Theodore Ray

My birth Parents

Before my adoption: a last visit at my maternal grandfather's home.

My First Family 1959

Teresa, Daniel, and Gwendolyn

(I am the baby)

My Adoptive Family

2007-02-04T15:12:00.000-08:00

This photo is of my visit to the house I was adopted into 34 years after my adoption.

Our family moved away from this house in 1970 and so my stay here

only lasted about six years, but holds many childhood memories for me.
This picture was taken in 1998.

My brother and I on the day we were adopted.

This is the house I was adopted into from

The Children's Aid Society Orphanage in 1964.

This is my adoptive family three years after my adoption.

The year is 1967.

This was a family portrait.

My Family

2007-01-20T09:54:00.000-08:00

Family has been in the forefront of my mind lately. This January my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Perhaps this is why I am quietly reflecting upon family and family history now. I know that I am not alone in the experience of step parenting. I married a widower with three children when I was 22. The children have always felt like my own. How could they not? Most of my life I felt like I was hatched and not actually born; leaving me with a sense of belonging to those who chose me. When I got married I felt connected to this little family because I chose them. The people around the family saw my attachment and bond to my children much like they saw my attachment and bond to my adoptive family: there was always something not quite “true” about it. This included my adoptive family who, bless their hearts, never totally embraced my family as they did their biological children and their offspring. This too I learned to accept and excuse with the faith that they “didn’t mean” to exclude or to support their biological children more than me. Later in my adult life I came to accept that, even if unintentional, that this was a dismissal of my place in the family; just as my role as mother has been dismissed so many times by mother and father in-laws, and other biological relatives of my children. When I was 14 years old my niece, my sister’s daughter, came to me on her own when she was 5 years old and said, “You’re not really a Sampson are you?” Truth, as we know, flows freely out of the mouths of babes and there was no exception here. I would always prefer the truth because at least if you have the truth you can settle on a committed response to it that is real. I got a clue to the whole adoption deal early on as a result and decided that bread crumbs, and at times whole loaves, were better than the lot I began life with in my biological family and acceptance came along with the hurt that this experience created. Now, at the age of 47, I realize that I have had to try and find my place in the world through family where the recognition of my place has always been questionable. My commitment to belong and my need to be recognized has brought me much lamenting. I wanted so much to be recognized for my belonging, my effort, my love of my families and it has been long in coming. I have lost the dream that I will ever be wholly invited in. The grieving for this lost place has been deeply felt. My age and years of experience have taught me acceptance, but mostly I recognize that my history with both my adopted family and my stepfamily has given me the right to a place in both of these families. Perhaps each member will not fully recognize my place and that is indeed their right, but I recognize my place and this is where the healing lies. Years ago I was in a women’s group and it was there that I got it for the first time that I belonged. I realized that I got an invitation to the party of life from the man upstairs just like everyone else and I didn’t have to say I was sorry for existing and beg to be embraced and included. It was very freeing. I still grieve about my children though. They are older and I have 5 wonderful grandchildren. We are closer as a family than ever before, but there is still this unstated piece around my place as mother. A few weeks ago I ran into an acquaintance. She knows my husband and me through my husband. She asked me how I was doing and we caught up on surface doings. She then asked me, “How are Fred’s kids?” I wanted to melt into a puddle. Why would she ask this? Would any human being ask a biological mother how her kids are by naming them as their father’s children? I think not. Invisible. Invisible. Invisible. My insides were crushed and for the first time I got angry about it instead of feeling powerless and nonexistent. I know that this woman simply did not understand what she had said and I excuse this behavior to a certain extent. The healing work is changing the button inside my heart and grabbing my belonging like the oxygen mask on a descending plane bound for some disaster. I told my son that he truly was my son; not through birth certainly, but that I had only known family through my heart connection to them and not a blood connection. I have little positive emotional knowledge of that experience. How could these children not be my children? We have loved each other for a quarter of a century. I have tended, embraced, encourage, taught, loved, and wept for them. What is a mother if not these things? I am clear about how I feel about my birth mother…there is an aching…a longing…unsatisfied in my case…but real and emotionally tangible. Even though my birth mother did terrible things to me and my siblings, I love her desperately. My children must feel this about their mother who died when they were all very young. Two of them have no memory at all of her because they were so young. Can the heart make room for two mothers? It must be such a dilemma for them to try and place their loyalty when society and family do not embrace my place in the family. My answer is to keep on loving. Somewhere, somehow there will be a day of recognition. These have come in many ways through the love given to me by my children…they speak of my place in their hearts without ever knowing they are giving it away. This is what I hang my heart on; this is where my belonging lives.

Grampa and Owen

Owen is our oldest son's little boy and Miranda is his daughter from his first marriage. Owen is now going on 9 months old. Fred plans on marrying his partner, Jennifer, next fall. Looks like we will be making wedding plans asap!

Summer Boating with grandkids

This has been my absolute favorite pass time in the summer. We anchor off the coast line in our special spot and play in the sunshine and water for hours, then grill burgers and goodies, and as the day comes to a close we watch the sun set and feed the seagulls. What a complete wonder and balm for the soul this is!

Two granddaughters Miranda and Alyssa

This is Alyssa and Miranda. Miranda's mother lives in Florida and my son has "custody" of her. The cost of adoption has stood in the way of this process being completed. I wish that there was more monetary support for kinship adoptions. My son met Miranda's mother when she was pregnant with Miranda and stayed with her through her pregnancy and delivery. They married and my son has commited himself as a father to Miranda. Their marriage lasted several years and then they grew apart. Miranda's mother simply hasn't been able to solve the challenges in her life, but we stay connected with her and Miranda and I talk about her mum and this relationship. I watch my granddaughter struggle in her life with all of these issues of belonging and wanting to know who she is and where she belongs. She and I are tremendously close. She has been the biggest gift in my life and she has taught me how to receive love as she offered it so unconditionally and freely ever since she was a small baby. She is an absolute wonder with tremendous inner strength and the greatest sense of humor.

Natusch Family 2004

Sadly, we don't have a more recent family photo. We all have such scattered lives these days and when we do get together we don't remember to get a family photo. I am thinking we need to schedule a studio session and that way it will get done.

Three Siblings - Alyssa, Brendyn, & Bryan

(Our daughter Carrie's children)

Carrie has been married close to 13 years now. She and her husband own and operate a fencing and landscaping business here on the island. They do quite well. Her husband's family, like Carrie's father, have been long time residence of the island. Bryan is particularly gifted with telling stories of island people from current and from the past. My husband was born and raised on the island and his ancestors date back to the first whaling captains some 300 years ago. He and I couldn't be any different in this regard and I often wonder what it must feel like to be so deeply rooted in one place...and in the world as a result. Alyssa is very interested in costumes and acting and art! This grammy's dream come true. My grandson is thrilled by improv acting and we have begun to explore this arena together. It will be such joyous adventure watching our two newest grandchildren blossom into individuals as well!

Uncle Adam with Brendyn

(lovingly known as "Unc")

Side Bar: Adam is in Vietnam right now. He is actually living in Thailand for the winter. We have been traveling along with him via his My Space. It has been so cool to be a part of his travels in this way as he regularly posts photos and writings of where he is and what he is up to. In Vietnam he and his girlfriend are having clothes tailor made for them for the price of a song. How amazing that they are seeing such a different kind of world. Adam is into studying the Vietnam War right now and plans on visiting the Vietnam war tunnels and other places in the area connected with the war. Adam is a devout bachelor and claims that marriage will never suit him. All we want is for him to find happiness and satisfaction from the choices he makes. He is really one of a kind!

Post Reunion Integration

2007-01-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

My thoughts have been meandering to places inside me in reflection of my post reunion experiences. What has come clearly to me is that at this time, the year following my reunion, I began to partake in different aspects of my self. I believe it was the self that I had abandoned so long ago in order to function safely within my adoptive family. My birth parents are creative people. My adoptive family are educated and intellectual people. Post reunion I began to write poetry as a means of understanding my experience. I also began to create art. Although not a particularly talented artist I began to understand my art as a healing tool that opened up the secrets of my past to me in regards to loss, trauma, and reclamation. I also began to write.

Within that first year post reunion I painted, wrote poetry, and wrote and created a 2 and half hour variety show as a fundraiser event that was focused on creating activities and programs for teens on Martha’s Vineyard. The variety show was a historical perspective of history, fashion, dance, theatre, and music. It covered the decades from the 1920s to the 1970s.

At the time I was very active as a costume designer through several venues. I had a very large costume inventory and business. In fact my collection was the largest, at the time, of any on the Cape and Islands. Within my costume inventory was a large collection of vintage costumes going back to the early 1900s. These inspired me like paint pigment inspires a painter.

I spent 4 months researching the history of the 1920s to the 1970s as well as the dance and music through these decades. I knew the costume, hair, and makeup and so the history and study of the dances of these times filled my days.

The show format was within each decade I created a video montage and narrative script to go with it, a costume showing, a dance presentation, and a theatrical short that reflected the decade. There was a live band that played music from each decade throughout each decade’s presentation. The decades were all tied together creating a trip back in time. It was an amazing experience to envision this show, write it, and then have it come alive on stage.

What my mind has been thinking about in regards to post reunion is that I find it interesting that I would, in my newly impassioned creative state, choose to create a variety show about history.

I have a guess as to why I needed to do this…and what I believe is that after finding my birth family I had many questions answered. Placing my self for the first time in a completed context I think the creating of this variety show was an attempt to place myself in the world.

Post reunion for me was about integrating new truths, new awareness’s, and this new permission I had to fully be that secret self that I had stuffed down for so many years. Creating this show was literally creating my own context for being in the world. It was as if I could actually feel that I was born into the world and not secretly hatched by aliens. I was a human being with a right to a history and the right to find my place in the broader context of the family of man.

Adoptees as Nomads & Gypsys

2007-01-15T19:37:00.000-08:00

Nomads & Gypsys & Soft Sculpture

There is an author out there now who has written an article mostly pointed at international adoptees, but I think some of her points are true for adoptees adopted domestically as well. Her name is Mary Watkins. She writes, "What matters is what we do with what has been done to us. Identity reflects the influences of both those who have tried to make the adoptee one of their own and those who have sought to exclude them." These influence our sense of self and our core working identity.

She writes about nomadic identities of adoptees and how we have multilayered selves and that we are a continual "self in process" or a continuous becoming that moves against the fixing of identity. In general experts have seen sameness as conducive to self esteem and as a protective factor for psychological resilience and protection from psychopathology. Difference has been seen as the opposite, bringing a lack of a total sense of one's self or identity. This idea of sameness being the best choice is changing.

Watkins calls adoptees pilgrims who are unconventional in their sense of self. Adoptees are the "ensembled self" that in our multiplicity resists cultural norms. This unfixed sense of self encourages the adoptee to pass beyond easy identification and thus allows us to cross bridges and gaps among different groups of people of all kinds. It allows us to see a deeper human being and a more unique life and identity...one that is not based on cultural norms, but moves beyond these into individuation that is on a different path from sameness.

Adoptees live on the boarders of family and often feel trapped in between and are denied the identification of either family, birth or adopted. Adoptees are nomads of the world and can claim their own unique citizenship while shifting and changing how they perceive their connections. The search for self is an odyssey in which the adoptee discovers and understands the multiple roots of their own identity and the process of repression and exclusion of themselves (Watkins).

I’d like to think of us as Gypsys. I connected this image as a result of the idea from another adoptee who shared it with me after she read my post on Chosen Babies about adoptees being nomads. Gypsys are nomads. I have always been drawn to them. I like the idea that I could be comfortable anywhere in the world. I would venture a guess that a lot of adoptees don’t feel pinned down to any one place and have a speckled and creative history of living situations and places. It would be a gas to do a study about where adoptees lived at certain ages and see if any patterns emerge. At any rate I have put my soft sculpture gypsy at the top of this post. I love her…she took 22 hours to make and is completely hand crafted from top to bottom. She has on pantaloons, a petticoat, and an over skirt, a hand made shawl, a blouson blouse, and an embroidered vest. She is one of a series for sale that I call Gypsy Mysteries. Corny, I know…but it’s great to have a little corn every now and again!

My life was gypsy like until I was 22 and married. We moved a lot in the early years of my marriage, but have lived where we are now for 18 years. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this month and as retirement approaches we are planning on making a move…a real life change. It’s time…for me it has been time for quite a while…I have itchy feet and am ready to see a different part of the world…meet new people…see new horizons and watch the sun set from a totally different perspective.

Images of the Artificial Self

2007-01-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

Images of The Artificial Self

These are paintings of paper dolls. I adored paper dolls when I was young, but today they take on a different meaning in regards to adoption and my search for authenticity.

I Am

I am the abandoned child
The one left in a bus station
Not in a pretty basket with caring note
I am left with my brother and sister on a cold bench
All the strangers stare at us as they quickly walk by
They glance at us and continue on their way
Not letting our truth touch them

I am the unwanted child
Spun from slaps and inappropriate touches
Forced acts and deep soul screams
Locked in small places looking at my siblings scared faces
My hunger grips me and I beg for the uneasiness to go away

I am the foster child
Swept into the system
The giver of relief upon my placement
The answer to someone else’s need
These strangers want me to call them mom and dad
In the end they send me away
Because my tears won’t stop flowing

I am the adopted child
After awaiting my acceptance of people who will choose me
I travel to my new home
Here I have learned is where happiness lies
My “specialness” replaces my calling to my real mommy
My fairy tales are spun of gold
And my forgetting pouch is full of old memories
It hides all the horror from me.

I am the child whose gone away
To private schools
To life alone
I’ve given the gift of going away to my adopted mother
I learned long ago to do this
And now it seems an easy gift to give
To the one I’ve learned to love and call my mom

I am the child woman
All alone in my pain and confusion
It is only through inebriation now
That talk of my life’s truth is spoken
My forgetting pouch emptied that way only once
Carefully I put the pieces back and tied the strings tightly closed

I am the child stepmother
Creating the family I could never have
And the family that I lost
The family that couldn’t be
I am left with fractured families
I am left with the knowledge that it is too late
For that dream family

I am the woman standing on my own horizon
I am unsure if the sun is rising or setting
There is hope here
And there are blood red colors of pain and abuse
Yet blues and purples promise things to come
It seems as though my journey
Through the ashes of my childhood
Has yet to be fully traveled
I await with trepidation the emptying of my forgetting pouch

Gwendolyn (Ray) Natusch
(I wrote this poem in 1992 immediately post reunion)

The artificial self rises with the red pheonix to become from those ashes the authentic one who embraces and melds the one who was false.

Paper dolls, costumes, and masks have all been donned as a means to survive and as a means to protect my authentic self. Both my inner self and my outer self have developed in strong ways and in parallel to each other. Now, in my late 40s, I realize that I am fully integrated. I have embraced both the secret self, the adoptee, and the unwanted one. I have let go of the mask and the costumes and the false self in exchange for my own authenticity. I am no longer a paper doll made of cardboard bits and bobs decorated in fanciful colors, nor the mannequin that I have costumed for decades. I no longer need these tools as I no longer need to live in a one dimensional cardboard created world where all those I love are kept from my whole self, my real self. In seeing and living inside my own wholeness and authenticity I have become available to see who others are and to interact from a place that is not motivated by the fantasy paper doll I called my self. I’d love to know how other adoptees have experienced this sort of thing in their lives.

In my adoptive family they were intellectuals in many ways and education was a large focus. I did the college thing and am still doing the college thing after several degrees. They were also teachers. This was a big thing for the women in my adopted family. So, I became a teacher, but while I was teaching I became an artist underground. My birth parents are very different than my adopted family. My mother is a writer and artist. My birth father has a huge passion for theatre. The artificial self blossoming.

As a professional I became a teacher and “after hours” I became an artist, costume designer, and writer. The secret self claiming her space.

As a professional I am both a teacher and an artist. I am no longer teaching full time in the public school system. I teach art at a Charter School and do some tutoring. I create art around healing and am moving into being active in the adoption arena.

My heart and my professional life have blended. I am no longer compartmentalized, but living every aspect of my life out loud. No secrets…none….no shame in being who I am completely. It has been a long road to this place and I still am practicing staying here…but the view from this vantage point is indeed lovely.

Post Reunion Art

2007-01-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

(This art piece is done on reverse glass.)

The following are art pieces that I created post reunion with my birth family. The majority of them are from my art sketchbook or what I like to call my art journal. I don't see them as great works of art nor are they intended to hang in frames. I have shown a couple paintings here that I have framed because of their emotional significance for me. These art bits and bobs show my process of integrating new truths, my journey through blending my two selves, and my inner push to reach for a higher and freer sense of my self as an individual in the world.

http://autobiographyartexhibit.blogspot.com/

This is my blog address that shares my art exhibit

around telling my life story and my journey

as an adoptee.

MTV Makes a Reality Venue on Adoption

2006-12-23T03:44:00.000-08:00

TRUE LIFE

This new series on MTV is facinating. I am sure that there are adoptees and first/birth families who could possibly be completely offended by this, but I personally feel that it is a fabulous idea. This venue has the potential to show the real deal and I embrace the real deal completely. However there is the opportunity here for all of the nuance and unique individual experiences for triad members to be lost. There is also the potential to place this experience in a totally inappropriate frame. The risks are definitely present, but so is the potential in reaching mainstream with the very core issues and experience around reunion and adoption. I hope this effort moves towards the latter!

It is my hope that issues will be raised in an appropriate light and that further information will be provided by including an expert somewhere in the show so that a model might be provided on how to get assistance, heal, and integrate the reunion experience in a healthy manner. It would also assist in bringing up issues, treatment options, and a more holistic presentation of the reunion and adoption experience.

I also feel that once again the media is focusing on the drama of adoption and reunion when the focus that is so needed is about healing and integrating these experiences as well as a moving through the grief process. How I wish that there was a strong focus in the professional community on integration and relationships post reunion. There is beginning to be and I hope that trend continues.

Anyway, for those of you interested in what MTV is doing then read on...

MTV's True Life Presents

In this new, short-form online series from True Life, people like you will share their stories with millions of people at mtv.com, in a format so new we’re not even sure what to call it. In True Life, with a camera in your hand, people will tell us what it’s like to live their life. Our audience will watch their clips, feel their anxiety, and cheer them on.

Here are the stories we are looking for:

I'M ENLISTING

I LOVE AN ADDICT

I'M ADOPTED

I'M IN LOVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND

I'M ELOPING

I'M ADOPTED

Were you adopted and are now ready to find your birth parent(s)? Have you already located your birth parent and are about to meet for the first time? Or has a birth parent recently located you and requested a meeting? If you are interested in sharing your story as it unfolds, read on…

If you…

• Appear between the ages of 18 and 28

• Are currently engaged in or ready to begin the process of finding your birth parent(s)

• Want to share your story with us

Then email us at adoptee@mtvstaff.com with these details

-how and why you decided to take this step

-your expectations and fears

-how this reunion will affect your adoptive family

-special dates, meetings, or plans relating to the process of finding your birth parent(s)

-include your name, location, contact number, and photo if possible

This informaiton is taken from the following website: http://raleigh.craigslist.org/eve/248898322.html

A Prayer to My Sister

2006-11-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

(This is my most recent painting. Mermaid's Embrace, 2006)

The journey seems to continue through this mirad maze called adoption reunion. There is nothing I am more grateful for than the finding of my sister, Terry. We connected in 1987 after 22 years of separation. I spoke with her on the phone as our first connection and her voice was exactly like mine. It took my breath away. We spoke on the phone last week for the first time in quite a long while. Physical distance will do that to relationships I am sad to say. As she spoke to me of her sadness at losing our mother and then her adopted mother (all in a 10 week period) I realized how much challenge this has been for her. With regret I realized that I had not taken this in at the time. I was caught up in assisting my brother who needed me and with my own grief. I left her afloat really to deal with it on her own. My apologies are in order certainly and my presence in her life will be much more constant.

She has never met my family nor has she come to visit me in my home. This has been a source of hurt for me and I think that I with held my connection to her because of this hurt. I have decided to let those petty kinds of things stand aside and just love my sister and reach out to her.

Her greatest fear, now, is that she will become like our mother who suffered greatly from mental illness. The thing is she already isn't like our mother, as a dear friend pointed out to me in that phrase. Don't you wish we could love the fear out of those we care about?

So the mermaid is present...the ever loving representation of the Great Mother who births life from the watery abyss and who I suppose takes us back again when we have completed this life journey.

As my sister grapples with her own demons I ask the spirit of the mermaid to embrace her...that larger mother who begat the soul in us and to give her new eyes and the energy and imagination to move beyond her fears and limitations into a life that is soulful and nurturing of her precious self.

Post Reunion Poetry

2006-10-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

This is a painting I did in 2002 entitled "Woman in the Moon"

It is my interpretation of a Native American art piece depicting the feminine moon spirit.

______________________________________________________

After my reunion with my birth parents it felt like the world had been ripped from beneath my feet. In retrospect, after reading Betty Jean Lifton’s latest book, I realized that the 18 months of confusion and heart wrenching pain were about my attempt to integrate my old abandoned self and the truths that this part of myself brought to my consciousness through this reunion experience with the adopted self and woman in the present. Letting the truth in and the reunion experience in fully meant that I had to feel all of the feelings for that child who went through abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It was overwhelming to say the least. What I found was a doorway through it all through my poetry, art, and therapy. Time is also a great healer and I am ever grateful for its medicinal powers.

The following is my poetry immediately after my reunion from those months of feeling lost and broken into a million pieces. It is my attempt to find those shattered pieces of my self and to make sense of them as I put myself back together again, this time with all of the pieces and not my make believe stories that filled in the gaps.

Song and Dance of the Dead

I call out to the soft side of myself
Beckoning the touching hand of compassion
Over and over I break into my desperate song
Whistling and whooping with melancholy whimpers

Who allowed the weakest part of myself to dance in the open
Casting shadows upon my heart
Halting my search of self protection
And illuminating the sores of that small one called child
Welling up to the top of my consciousness?

Again and again I put it away
Close my eyes and pray
Pray it into the deep void in my belly
Still it burns and bubbles
Until its black babblings cause my attention
To focus crystal clear on the moment

Open eyed and stunned I watch
The bounty of my hurt, blame, and shame
Dance unabashed before my eyes.

________________________________________________________

Ten by Twelve

The days, the days are numbered by ten
And I know this to be Gwen
Ten by ten and multiply more
Which way to open that closed door
Dance in a flurry
Fear in a worry
Hope seems dead
I’m full of dread

The years, the years they are played out by twelves
Looking at my many selves
Wandering lost
At a great cost
Hunker down into my soul
Knowing this my ultimate goal

The power of ten, the power of twelve
Into my strength I need to delve
Finding myself inside the dark
Seeing me, the whole divine spark

Note: A few years after writing this poem I wondered why I had chosen the numbers ten and twelve to express this journey into these divided and compartmentalized parts of my self. In math wherever ten is found the completeness of order is seen. Ten implies completeness of order, nothing lacking and nothing over. It signifies that the cycle is complete and that everything is in its proper order. Thus ten represents the perfection of divine order.

In ancient Egypt twelve was the number of cosmic perfection. Its surface form, the dodecagon, is nearly a circle. Circles have great meaning to me as they represent completeness, the feminine, the unconscious (Jung), and hold great meaning in Native American spirituality. What is also interesting is that eleven is a number between 10 and 12. It is a number of the inner fight and a number of transition and change. In my understanding of these numbers in my poem I see that it is the soul and the personality attempting to integrate and make meaning of a deep well of experience as an adoptee who sees herself as both human and divine.

_______________________________________________________

Pieces of the Puzzle

I am a presence unto myself
And in this meeting
I am baffled at the strangeness
Of my face

This part and that part and hidden parts
Are the whole of me
Yet I have been unfamiliar with the whole

I speak in part and know in part
And wait as a silent witness
For those secret compartments of me
To suddenly flash before my inner eyes

When they come it is a surprise
And I am taken aback with the knowledge of them
For this part and that part I took as the whole
Yet it is only in part that I perceive myself.

_____________________________________________

Retrospective Birthing

Eased into grace
As I see it
Eased into space
So be it
I grip tight
Want to take flight
See the steeple top
And point to the sky

Ah…
My soul knows how to weep
Keep the sweeping
Hand of God
Beneath, above, around
Until I’m clean, washed pure

I have suffered
And my suffering
Stands alone
As one who is brittle
Gotten hard as a steal drum
With hypnotizing tones.

Soft Sculpture Characters

2006-10-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

This is the mermaid soft sculpture character that I made several months ago.

I put her in the agricultural fair here on the island and she won first place.

She speaks to me of the feminine creator and how I need to embrace

her and to accpet the softness that life has to offer my soul.

Art and Me and My Mothers

2006-09-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

Last year I had some time off from my usual crazed schedule. My winter months were peppered with time in my art studio. I began an art series on mothers, mostly designing the art pieces and the messages in each piece. I sketched, dreamed about them, and began collecting the assemblage bits for those pieces in the series that would need them. I begged off from actually settling in and engaging in creating the actual pieces and found excuses that kept me from the process. Things like doing the dirty dishes, needing to run to the post office, having to have a nap, and other absurd excuses became major priorities as a means for not beginning the project for real. Once the lame excuses ran out I simply started other art projects. The first distraction was the creating of soft sculpture characters. One of the characters was a mermaid sitting on a very old shell. The shell was one that I have had for years and got at a yard sale. She is sitting on the shell with long wavy hair, iridescent tail, and sea treasure jewelry. I put her in a local shop on consignment and after several months she didn’t sell and I brought her home. My next art distraction was creating an acrylic on canvas of three mermaids on the shoreline with a huge moon gazing down upon them. I am not an airy fairy kind of person. I am not into goddesses, divas, or maidens. Many of my repetitive motifs are of the moon, night skies, and females. Why mermaids have been coming to me was a mystery, but if you are an artist like me in any way there are motifs and symbols that come and pester and pester until you give them life through art. This was the case with the mermaid deal. It would not be my first choice for a paintings theme…but there ya have it. This fall the whole mermaid thing intensified. I began running into pictures of mermaids in magazines, on post cards from friends, on book jackets, greeting cards, I accidentally knocked one off a shelf in a gift shop, I was given the book the Mermaid’s Tale, and then the movie was on television. It finally occurred to me that there was this repetitive image of mermaids coming to me in these myriad ways and that it was really in my face sorta shouting at me and I hadn't really been willing to listen. When these sort of message or symbols come to me repetatively and I recognize it I stop and listen. The mermaid took some time to sink in for me as at first it seemed such a trivial and shallow image.

“Okay,” I said to the higher ups, “I will stop long enough to look deeper into this symbol and the archetypal meaning.” In this case I decided to look into myths around mermaids. I wasn’t ready to settle with the sexy diva commercial version of today’s mermaid and figured if this archetype was coming to me that there was a reason. I couldn’t imagine what it would be. It seemed childish, sexist, and down right silly to me…a mermaid…indeed! In the Greek myths and in most cultures we hear of the mermaid and her siren song…calling one to the dangers of the rocks where one meets their demise. The stories of the seamen who respond to the siren call and crash upon the jagged rocks and perish. The danger of the feminine. But if you go back further you find that the myths have traveled away a bit from the original archetypal meanings. Mermaids show up in many cultures. Ireland, China, India, North America, Europe and others have had in their recent and ancient history images and myths of the mermaid. In fact I ran into a whole article on Starbucks choice of logos, which was the two finned mermaid, with her two fins spread wide apart. As a result Starbucks was made to tighten in the camera shot of the mermaid so this obvious spread eagle scene was obscured. They were sending a very sexist image in this and rather vulgar to some. The point being that the mermaid still speaks quite loudly as an archetypal image even today in her artificial, sexist way showing us what our society seems to value most in women and what her power is to entice, sell, and enhance.

Ancient folklore tells us that mermaids are spirit and matter fused. They gesture back to the beginnings of life; which began at sea. The mermaid is the water mother. All the Great Mothers are born from the primeval ocean or the watery abyss, the primordial womb of life from which all created forms emerge. The mermaid inspires imagination and passion and when responding to this call one walks on the edge of the abyss courting both potential and disaster. The mermaid beckons you to transform and to touch your spiritual life newly with new eyes.
In the culmination of pieces of these small tid-bits of the image and symbolism of the mermaid the mermaid message came full circle to me. I have been given these images of the primordial mother…the Great Mothers birth place…through the archetypal image of the mermaid. You see I was afraid to begin my art series on motherhood. So afraid was I of the feelings that would engulf me in the process that I kept the process at arms length. The universe is bringing me to readiness slowly and showing me through these mermaid images and meanings that there is mother that birthed me, mother that raised me, and the Father-Mother-God that loves me and holds my true being which is vaster than one life time experience of a mother…or in my case…two mothers. I have set down this inner pressure to complete this series in a hurry…as it has felt like I have needed to start right away…heal right away…grow right away by creating this art series…but the artist is not ready and the universe is right here with me giving me clues and supporting my process towards readiness.

I think that the universe is giving me an opportunity to dance with motherhood in a safe arena. The arena of creation where motherhood isn't attached to a person or personality, but to the soul and the universal creator and creation. In this way perhaps when I am doing this art work on mothers I will have a safe place to go to in the image and message of the mermaid. The mermaid says to me that I am beckoned inside myself to go towards the rocks...to the place that I am most vulnerable...and that is the pain around my birth mother and my own mothering mistakes of my children. Mothering has equaled pain in my belief system and I am called by the siren song to venture closer, to peer deeper first at this larger mother who holds my soul self and then at the mother who held my infant self and then at the adopted mother who molded me into the woman I am and then at the wounded mother I became. Mermaids are spirit and matter fused so inside of me there must be a larger mother who is all loving, who can and does rise above the limitations inside one's self. The mermaid whispers to come to my own transformation and to see my spiritual life with new eyes. It is the dance of courtship between my potential as a human being to move beyond the limits of the pain I hold inside of me and to sit beside it with full awakeness and walk through the fear of being undone by this act. Walking through the fire I walk towards the freedom that comes when one chooses to release fear and embrace a new way of seeing.

So...for now I will embrace the mermaid...got a hankering to paint another acrylic of a mermaid that began to pester last week...won't leave me be...guess I'll be doodlin and paintin mermaids agian this month...looking for what she has to teach...

Things NOT to Say to Adoptees & What to Say Instead

2006-06-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

Things Not To Say To Adoptees

(Please Add Your Thoughts and/or response in

the Comment Section at the bottom of this posting)

1. You're special because you're adopted

What you could say instead: You are adopted and this means you are now part of our family and we embrace you. You are a part of your first family too and maybe someday you will meet your first parents.

2. You were chosen

What you might consider saying instead: You were given to us to be our child to raise by your first parents because they didn't have the tools when you were born to take care of you. Your first parents thought that we could help you and love you and raise you because we have the tools now to take care of you and to help you be the best you you can be. This doesn't mean that your first mom and dad don't love you. All babies and children are loveable. For now as you grow up we have the privilege of raising you as our child and some day, if you want, maybe you will meet your first parents.

3. Your mother loved you so much that she gave you up

A more compassionate and honest response might be: Your mother loved you and I know that if she could have kept you that she would have kept you. Your first mother will always love you and think of you. For now she just isn't able to take care of you. Her choice to give you to us to raise is not a reflection of who you are or a measure of how much you are loved. You are loved and there are two families now that embrace you. One could tell more of the birth story here...And about the birth mother...

4. You're lucky

Things to consider: Luck has nothing to do with it. Saying you're lucky is like saying it is a wonderful thing to not know where you come from and then consequently not know who you are as the history and heritage stories and knowledge are absent. What should be said instead is a sharing of information in an effort to educate others. For the adoptee one should never say this to them, but instead an inquiry to them of something like the following might work: What do you think or feel about being adopted? What has been challenging in your experience being adopted? What has been hopeful? What has been hurtful?

5. Being Adopted Doesn't Matter

What a way to make someone feel invisible by discounting their experience and life circumstances. Say...being adopted must matter; how does it matter to you?

6. You should be angry.
Oh REALLY????

Things to consider thinking about and saying instead: Being angry is a healthy thing as it empowers one to come to terms with their life circumstances. It is natural to be angry in a situation like this as decisions were made that affected the adoptees whole life and internal world and sense of self. Yes, anger comes with the territory and if expressed and channeled in a healthy manner can indeed empower the individual to change, understand, and strengthen their sense of self and the control in their own lives. How about asking: Has being adopted made you angry?

7. You shouldn’t be sad.
Well, we all know that no one likes to be “should” upon. There are no shoulds when it comes to feelings. Feelings are what they are. Asking an adoptee not to be sad is denying them the grief that they need to express as an outcome of the adoption experience. Being sad and expressing feelings of grief is the healthiest thing one can do. To deny them this process and emoting is to deny the tremendous losses that come with the adoption experience. As the adoptee finds their first families new losses emerge in their consciousness and new grief is experienced. As one goes through their life course and experiences things like the birth of a child, the birth of a grandchild, marriage, health challenges or other experiences these feelings of loss and grief resurface. Feelings of sadness come out at unexpected times, in reactions to things that make adoptees feel puzzled, and even when one is still and quiet and the feelings have no concrete preceding cause that makes sense. Grief and sadness are part of this experience and expressing and feeling these lessens their grip on us. I feel that the grief piece will never quite disappear, but by expressing it we lessen its grip and depth.

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief”

–William Shakespeare

One could ask instead: Have you had to grieve because of losing your first family? How has being adopted made you sad? Has adoption made you sad?

8. By finding her you are invading her life.
Perhaps. And yet without finding her I might never find my self. My birth brought our lives together in a intertwining that holds us together stronger than any other connection I may have in my life. The invasion happened when I was severed from her and adopted into another family and made to adapt and bend to find success in that family. It would be surprising to find that in some way and on a very frequent basis, the memory of my birth and existence doesn’t invade her on some level. She gave birth and for this she forever has the responsibility to respond in some way to the child she brought into this world. This is called taking responsibility for my actions. One could ask instead: How do you think your first mother will respond to your contacting her? Will she be surprised or feel as if her life will be interrupted after so many years after relincquishment? The question asker should also do some inner pondering if they have a negative stance to adoption, reunion, or birth mothers. What is it that disallows them empathy and compassion in these questions?

To be continued...

(Things Not To Say orginated on the Adoption Crossroads website. I have reprinted it in part here on my blog with Joe Soll's permission. I have added the response alternatives to the list.)

Why Do We Cut Off From Each Other?

2006-06-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth,

complete and staggering by instant illumination.

Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a

small scale, by successive developments,

cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”
~Anais Nin

Lately I’ve had time to browse through After the Search and Chosen Babies triad online forums and listen to what adoptees and first mothers are pondering, struggling with, and searching for in their experiences in the arena of adoption. First mothers are always intriguing to me as it is a real opportunity to hear them speak and to share their issues as it sheds light on what my first mother must have struggle through. What I hear again and again from both adoptees and first mothers is the pain that comes when an adoptee cuts off contact or a first mother cuts off contact. In one of the online forums a first mother shares her deep concern in regards to her first child shutting her out after months of what felt like a happy and connecting reunion. The following is my response to her not understanding why her child would make this choice.

Mary,
Gosh, I just have to respond to this. I am an adoptee and I, too, limited contact with my first mother after contact for about 8 months. I empathize with how difficult giving up a child is and the long term grief and loss that accompanies it. I think that I can empathize because I experienced the other end of that loss. They are different experiences however. As an adult or adolescence giving up a child comes with having developed cognition and social experiences as an adult or young adult. You have a base line of identity and self development that an adoptee lacks when it comes to dealing with the grief and loss from the separation of mother and child. Cutting off communication on both sides is common in the reunification process. What I also hear often is black and white thinking on both sides. It's all or nothing many times. I believe this is why so many professionals recommend preparation for this reunion experience. Why would anyone going through this expect that it would be easy, think that it would go smoothly, or expect those involved not to have huge issues to deal with; which by the way we all do differently. The adoptees need to turn inward or to cut off communication is a way of reclaiming power once again in their lives. It is done in the way it is done often; without communications or finesse because the experience for adoptees most often is a preverbal experience; which leads the adoptee to have periods of overwhelming and confusing emotions around these issues. It is also totally blanketed in survival issues. It is base in this way. For adoptees our survival came into play and we questioned our very existence and the physical and emotional stability and trust of our experience. Some compare the separation of child from mother for the infant as a sense of falling into an abyss with no ground under their feet, no world to hold them safely. So, it confuses me when first mothers demand so much from them when adoptees turn inward and take back their own power and control from this situation. Adoptees need to emotionally sever ties often in order to gain a sense of control and safety around these experiences with their “lost mother”. Often first mothers internalize this turning away as a personal affront, as if the adoptee is so one dimensional that they suddenly don't love them any more. It is not this simple; how I wish that it was as this would have made my life tremendously easier. I love my first mother and father like NOTHING else in this world. In fact, I am baffled by this very thing in my life. I was adopted when I was five, was removed by the state for neglect and abuse, and then I was adopted. I have many reasons to dislike my first mother, but these things and memories and deep wounds do not negate the eternal love and connection that I organically have for my first parents. Perhaps it is these very feelings that make processing what reunion and first mothers mean to us that makes us turn inward and away until we figure it out. It is not a swift process. We as adoptees need to rebuild or build for the first time after reunification a solid sense of self. In this process we learn to incorporate our first families along with our adopted families in new ways. Our loyalty and risk of abandonment from our adopted families lies prominently in the picture and the risk of challenging this family connection is real when embracing or coming to terms with how to embrace both sets of parents without hurting or threatening anyone involved. It is a precarious load for the adoptee; to keep themselves safe, to preserve the connection with their adopted family, and to become brave and courageous enough to embrace our own overwhelming feelings of love and risk for our first parents while trying to integrate our new sense of self with all of the life perspective changing information coming to us. For first mothers it is reconnecting with the past, a past self, a great loss of a child, integrating this truth into their current adult life...risking being honest and being courageous enough to live with the consequences of honesty in their lives, these are huge, but they don't address survival issues in the same way that adoptees feel it. I believe that these core survival issues and emotions and the other pieces of the process demand that the adoptee pull back and/or pull inward to make meaning and to regain control of their sense of safety and survival. I think first parents would help so much if they could recognize the pulling back as a survival and integration process and that it is natural and organic in this process of reunification instead of being mad at them, or giving up, or taking it as a personal affront. It isn't meant that way. Adoptees, too, have had to live with the loss of their mothers This is the greatest loss that makes for a life of self doubting and fear. Let us have our fear as we have let you have a life without us. Don't pull away in anger and self doubt. Find your motherly strength to not take it personally and prepare yourself to have limits in healthy ways that opens doors for love, support, and healing for yourself and for your child.

gwendolyn

Soul of Adoption Ring

2006-05-29T23:41:00.000-07:00

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A Life Time of Tools

2006-05-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

As I woke up this morning the title for this blog entry came to my mind. Last weekend I went to Joe Soll’s Adoption Healing weekend. It was embracing to the heart and a balm and salve to the soul. There were seven of us huddled around a coffee table for almost three days talking, sharing, and learning about ourselves and our experiences in this life circumstance we call adoption. In Joes small cabin by the lake we peered inward at ourselves and each other. The window was open to the soul and the invitation for our authentic selves to come and try out our truths. Joe’s healing tools focus on inner child work. This work became known and popularized from the work of John Bradshaw back in the early 90s, but according to Joe’s sources inner child work is not a new concept. The term inner child work might be however. I recommend this healing workshop for birth mothers and adoptees.

The question I came away with from the weekend was “What other tools have I used in my life to support my inner effort toward the reclamation of my self and my soul? This is what this blog entry is focused on and in a way it is the advent of looking inward once again as I traverse up and climb towards my authentic self.

I think that inner child work is a process of reclaiming those lost or stuck selves that have had to stay behind holding our memories, our pain, and our wounded selves. As adults we can reach back and hear, hold, and harbor those lost selves. This is the power of inner work.

The Native American’s call this work soul retrieval. Other therapies might call it reclaiming our unconscious memories. Whatever the term it is a process that heals and one that can take many forms.

What tools have I used in my life to reclaim myself and live in the world fully in my own empowerment and solidly in my authentic self? Granted this question makes the assumption that I am totally in this place and in a variety of ways I am, but there are still hidden doors to be opened and growth to be made.

Tools That Have Healed Me Through the Years of My Life:

1. When I was two and in an orphanage I remember being in a crib. It was night time and the moon was casting shadows of the crib bars on to the bed clothes and the floor. The light was silver and the night’s darkness made the room glow. I had been separated at this point from my mother, father, sister, and brother. I was alone. This dawning realization came over me as I sat there and my little mind was ablaze. I knew then in no uncertain terms that I was all I had and that my survival meant that I had to depend on my self. This is a big thought for such a little one, but there it is. I think back on this, as I have many times, in my adult life and know that there is a pure trueness in it. I think this was a thought from god. This presence that came to me in the night through the moon light stayed with me for all of my childhood. I felt guided by some unseen hand and presence. If you are abandoned by everyone and everything you know and a thought comes and says that you have your self and that with this knowledge you can move forward and survive then how could that knowledge not be from some other larger source? This strong little baby self in that crib is like the seed of the oak tree where all of the potential lies dormant and its only need is to find strength where ever it lands and begin to grow there. My first tool in life was the gift of my self and inner dependence and strength which included the strength of god for I was indeed a falling seed.

2. Therapy – This has been a life time tool. I began therapy work when I was 27 years old as a means to navigate through my experiences as a stepmother. The challenges in this arena were too great for me to handle on my own and so I searched outside of the family for assistance, information, and support. One-on-one therapy has truly been a life saver for me and has guided me through times when left to my own devises I would have devastated my life completely. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder when I was in my 30s – which in my mind is a means to describe my inner experiences as an adoptee – do I have a chemical imbalance…perhaps…but I lean more towards the idea that the imbalance about my identity, place in the world, and belonging are what have kept me off balance and have created a need in me for most of my life to have an outside support and guidance system such as counseling. Tools such as guided imagery, cognitive behavioral therapy, talk therapy, and art therapy have made all the difference in my finding a solid core and a stable sense of self. I have been fortunate enough to have women therapists who I worked with for 7 and 8 year stints allowing me to develop healthy relationships and consistent guidance where they knew my history and who I am. For this I am entirely grateful as family hasn’t always been capable of meeting the needs or passion for healing my inner world.

3. Prescription medication – I have tried many meds for bi-polar and interestingly enough my body developed adverse or allergic reactions to ALL of them. I was able to maintain Prozac for about 8 months which also brought with it an extra 50 pounds which I have never been able to lose permanently no matter what I do. I do not recommend medication before other types of assistance such as therapy or group therapy. However, I am aware that medication for those who have chemical imbalances is absolutely essential for moving to a healthy place of healing. In my case I have not had the success in finding out if medications would assist me and make life less of an inner struggle due to how my body responds. Currently I have been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and have been successful so far in taking the medication to address this issue. The most successful use of meds for things such as mood disorders, thought disorders etc. is medication and therapy. Having personal insight allows for healing and choices that create change to happen.

4. Books or as some might say…Bibliotherapy…has always been present in my life. In high school I began reading on Plato, Socrates, poets, Aynn Rand, Mary Baker Eddy, Mister God this is Anna, and others. My reading moved on to Shirley McClain, UFO, Seth, Aurthor Ford, Ruth Montgomery, Theosophists and Madam Blavatsky, Ramtha, The Gospel of the Essenes, Past lives and reincarnation, Wayne Dyer, UFOs, ghosts, numerology, astrology, tarot, intuition topics, psychic energy, life after death with Dr. Moody’s work, Michael Newton, Deepok Chopra, and on and on and on…always the search for our purpose our soul connection and my identity beyond this physical form. If I couldn’t connect as a human being…then perhaps I could find some connection as a child of god and unravel this mystery and the coiled up pain that seemed to live inside of me. There is so much to read now…and so little time to read them. However the search continues. My focus now as an adult is through more grounded feelings and issues. When I was younger they were wide open thoughts and information. Now they are more specific readings…how to garner tools to live in this moment in this day with real people and with myself.

5. Group Therapy – I have been a part of the twelve step programs in regards to co-dependency, sexual abuse group therapy, group art therapy, and women’s group therapy. I highly recommend group therapy and support groups. Not only do they lend the intimate feeling that we are not alone in what we are experiencing, but they connect us to others who offer empathy and compassion and VALIDATION.

6. Healing Workshops – Going to workshops that focus on healing has long been an activity that I have invested in. I have attended workshops for forever. Topics have been on drumming, past lives, hypnosis, healing through chakra work, healing through physical challenges and safety found in obstacle course and outdoor activities, and many more.

7. Intuitive Guides, Psychics, and Healers – I have been guided by a variety of individuals who work with what many might refer to as the 6th sense. I have worked with a shaman for over 8 years, an intuitive seer for 7, and have sought out Native American medicine men, psychic readers, and intuitives for guidance for many years. These have helped me in deep ways. However, I have never given up the choices, directions, or decisions in my life to these supporters in my life. They are guides and assist in gaining insight into my life in a way that I could not do on my own.

8. Native American Teaching and Ritual – for many years I worked with (and still do) a group where we journeyed through the Michael Harner method. We incorporated Native American traditions in drum guided meditations that gave voice to my internal world and images. The body and organic system that we all have is always speaking to us as a means to heal and create the prime potential in us. This tool of journeying assisted me in hearing and seeing my own internal world and responding to and with it. The process of soul retrieval is also part of this work and many split parts of myself were welcomed back to my life. In trauma parts of ourselves can pull back and it is like losing a part of our identity as a means to survive the trauma. This work allowed me to begin true reclamation of my self.

9. Art. I am an artist and the symbols and images that flow onto canvas, paper, and photography have spoken deeply of my truths, shadows, and healing. I have found that paintings and drawings have come to me and I did not understand them in the moments of creating it; might even hate it upon completion only to find several months later that it held clues, signs, and symbols of healing and emerging truths to come. Art has readied me. Art has taught me of my inner world. Art has spoken to me of my soul and my authentic self. You don't have to be an artist to delve into what your own personal imagery can show and teach you. You just have to be willing to put pen, brush, or collage to paper. Jung spoke of inner symbols and their power of healing. I believe he was right on. There is in each of us an organic movement to reach our greatest potential. Your inner world of images will be the ferry that will take you there if you give the process time and attention.

Poem

2006-05-27T05:32:00.000-07:00

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies
and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world
offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting--over and over
announcing your place in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver.

This poem has long had great meaning to me. Allowing me to see my belonging in a broader way. Who do I belong to has always been my question as an adoptee. When I began to embrace the idea that I belonged to the universe and was embraced by the natural order of things there grew in me a sense of myself and the dropping of the tethers that kept me in a state of nonattachment. I share these words by Mary Oliver hoping that they will touch you as well.

Letters From My Birth Mother

2006-05-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

Sandra Ann Estes Lumley

1941 - 2005

My birth mother was a freelance writer and an artist. Her work actually won her awards. She was skilled at her craft. She died exactly one year ago. Today I accidentally pulled out her file of letters to me dating back to 1992. Letters that I could only read with half of my attention. Mostly as I received and read her letters through the years I did so with the belief that she was insincere. As much as I wanted to I could never open up to her or trust her words, feelings, or intentions. Too much water over the damn. Her mental illness made this process of reconnecting even more difficult.

Today as I reread many of them I find my head in my hands and tears pouring down my face. I wonder what might have been if I had been able to be more open and trusting with her. What if I had tried being closer to her? I wish so much that I had had a stronger heart, soul, skin so that I could have gotten to know her better. I guess I do not have the stuff inside to reface her after the first years of so much neglect and misuse of my innocence and babyhood.

She wanted to know me. Her letters are so full of questions about me. I don't remember what I wrote her in return. I am sure that I wrote something. I did always keep the door open to communication. My heart feels so broken in regards to my mother. I have always wondered what it would be like, feel like to be wanted in the way a mother wants her child. I have letters...I have words that I want to trust in these letters...I have memories that tell a different story than these letters. I still have that little girl who longed so for her mother. Somehow I don't think this little girl will ever not long for her. I wonder truly if we can talk to those who have passed away. Does she know that even at this adult age of mine that I can simply fall into a puddle of feeling around her? Does she know that despite everything I love her with every bit of me? Funny the way that works.

I hope when Danny, and Terry, and I made the choice to take her off life support at the end that she knew we wanted her not to suffer and to go in peace. Did she hear us all forgive her? This is the first time I have cried about her dying...one year later...all because I accidentally pulled out her letter file. Mom...I never ever called her mom...couldn't...she wanted me to...I just couldn't...but I say it now because I am not within her reach I suppose and a sense of safety in that rises in me...Mom...I love you...I hope you can hear me...

This weekend I travel to New York to do an adoption healing weekend with Joe Soll at Adoption Crossroads...this falling file is no accident...the one year anniversary of my mother's death coinciding with this healing workshop is no accident...I'm bringing the letters with me...am going to read them with braver eyes...

2006-05-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

Relationship in Reunion Research Project

2006-05-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

These are my answers to a research project being done by Barbara Free from Operation Identity in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I will update this blog entry as I complete the questionaire which includes over 40 questions. If you are interested in participating in this research project and are a member of the triad group or connected to adoption then contact the following address: Barbara Free 1818 Somervell NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87112.

Relationship in Reunion Research Project Responses

Gwendolyn C. Natusch

Adoptee

1. What is your current age?

I am 46 years old and was born on a Thursday; October 8, 1959. I was adopted when I was five. Most of my life a little ditty played in my head “Thursday’s child has far to go.” Before I found any of my biological family the subject of my adoption was quietly taboo. My parents believed that my past could be prayed away and that all of the experiences I had had prior to becoming their adopted child would simply not be of importance. Their intentions were truly good. They didn’t know better, had they known better perhaps they would have made different choices. This family stance meant that my first five years of life were this mystery peppered with the ugly memories that went with them. When I was 23 it occurred to me that I did not know what day of the week I was born on. I had not had the advantage of having my birth story from my birth mother. I decided I would go to the library and search newspapers on microfiche. This was a few years before home/personal computers made the scene. I went to our library in small town Meredith, New Hampshire to begin this search. It would be the first real evidence that I was actually born. When I arrived at the library I was informed that there were no newspapers on microfiche available. We lived in a rural area and this library was my best choice. I asked what my options were for looking for information from October 1959. I didn’t tell them that I was looking for the day I was born as this would sound ridiculous and open up a conversation that would make everyone squirm. They were happy with this limited information and told me that I was welcome to go up into the library’s attic and search the newspapers compiled in bound formed large books. I was warned that it was dark and dusty in these attic eves. I agreed to go on the search. Actually, I was passionately motivated to dig through whatever I had to in order to claim this information. Up I went, climbing multiple staircases. When I got into the attic the sunlight was coming through the boards and scattering light on the dusty faded wooden floor. The books were scattered in piles willy-nilly. There was no order or reason to their placement. I rolled up my sleeves and began to paw through the books. Thirty minutes later I came upon the local newspapers 1959 bound printed news pages. I quickly looked for October 8th. My search was rewarded with the confirmation that I was indeed born on a Thursday in the year 1959. This would be my first act of reclamation of my past and my story.

2. Are you currently Married, single, divorced, or in a committed relationship?

I am currently married. I am in my 25th year of marriage and tied the knot on January 4th in 1982. I married a widower with three children ages 7, 8, and 10. I am now a proud grandmother of 5 sweet children.

3. How long have you been reunited?

In 1983 I began my search for my biological family. This search journey happened just a year after I got married. My husband questioned my desire to find my biological sister. Thus my search began. It was a 5 year process which culminated in a reunion with my biological sister and maternal grandfather, uncle, and step grandmother who knew me as a very small child. It would be another 6 years of searching and gathering identifying information that lead me to my birth mother, birth father, three half sisters, one half brother, and two uncles. The whole search and find process took ten years.

4. What is your position in the adoption triad?

I am an adoptee.

5. Did you search for the other person or did they search for you?

I was the one who began the search for my birth family. My birth father tried to find his three relinquished children for about a year after the state of Michigan took us as wards of the state due to neglect and abuse. My birth mother never tried to find us and never acknowledged our existence to anyone. My birth mother did however have an on and off again relationship with my biological sister who I was separated from for 25 years as she was adopted by our maternal grandfather.

6. Approximately how long did the search take before locating each other?

I began my search in 1983 and my search ended in 1992. I found my sister in 1987 and we were reunited within a few weeks from contact. My initial contact was the Children’s Aid Society. I made contact with the social worker who had placed me in foster homes and ultimately in my adoptive family. She refused any identifying information stating that the history of my childhood treatment stood in the way of her making that decision as she felt it would not be in my best interest. Another few years went by and I contacted the Children’s Aid Society again. The social worker, who by the way had the same last name as my biological last name, retired. (The last name piece really confused me and initially I thought my adopted mother had lied to me about my birth sir name.)It would then be my luck to contact the social worker who had replaced her. This young social worker was more than willing to help me locate my sister. In 1992 I made initial contact with both my biological mother and father. Within a few weeks we were reunited. My birth father lived only 2 hours from my biological mother. This reunion included my biological parents and half siblings.

7. Did your search involve a search intermediary, a search group, or the internet?

The reunion with my sister involved a social worker. The social worker from Children’s Aid Society called the number in my file that was my maternal grandfather’s number at the time of my sister’s adoption by him. After 25 years he still lived in the same house and had the same phone number. The social worker called him to make sure that the desire to contact was mutual. It was and I spoke to my grandfather on the phone about a week later. It was only a few weeks after that that my brother met me in Michigan from California and I flew from New Hampshire to meet my grandfather and step grandmother in Southgate, Michigan. My grandfather had wanted to adopt all three of us when we were little, but the state of Michigan wouldn’t let him based on the size of their home and the fact that they already had three children. In the end he adopted Terry my biological sister. My grandfather told us while we were with him that “all I wanted before I died was to find Danny and Gwennie.” He died less than two years after we wre reunited. He tried to bring us all together in a family reunion before he passed away, but it never happened. We did not go to his funeral. My sister Terry did. He was in his late 70s when he passed. He made many 8mm films of us when we were young and these films are squirreled away in his basement. He made a film for me complete with his own narration and background music. I think part of him lived deeply in the past. He longed for his first wife and the family that would have been together had they not divorced. He was a loving man.

The reunion with my sister happened in Las Vegas of all places. It was the most surreal experience in the most surreal location one could imagine. My brother and I called her from my grandfathers and then flew from Michigan to Nevada.

The social worker came with us to my grandfather’s to oversee the reunion. I am not really sure why she felt she needed to chaperone this event. Perhaps the Children’s Aid Society had a policy in regards to this or perhaps she was just a really caring social worker. We have her in our pictures and the video my grandfather shot. I don’t remember her name. I am sure it is in my extensive files of paperwork that I tend to be unable to really look through with any amount of total focus. It’s like going over to a compost pile that has several maggots crawling on it. You get in and you get out before anything gets too close.

We stayed for a week in Vegas. We did reunion along side of cheap buffet dinners and the sound of one arm bandits being pulled and the smell of cigarettes and booze. All of which were washed down with big crocodile tears. In a way I was really grateful that the reunion took place somewhere that was bigger than life. It was a distraction from the ripping feeling that was happening inside.

When I found my birth parents I tried for several years to piece information together with my sister and information that my grandfather had of my mother’s whereabouts. My mother was married 5 times so I tried tracking down her old husbands; the two that we were able to get names on. I had my father’s and my mother’s birth certificates, their marriage certificate, my birth certificate, and all of the court records that told of the process of my siblings and my self becoming wards of the state of Michigan. Don’t think I have read through all of them yet!

I joined an adoptee/birth mother support group. It was a lay lead group that was formed to assist in searching and finding. I was 30 years old when I had my first conversations with other adoptees. It was an amazing experience to look into the eyes of others who lived in similar life circumstances. I could speak of my experience and someone else understood. Actually just speaking out loud of my life experience without couching it, closeting it, or apologizing for it was miraculous. The group helped me gather more information, supported me through a couple of phone calls to people in my mother’s past in order to discover her address. They also supported me through the reunion and helped prepare me for the experience. I was so fortunate to have had this support. My brother nor my sister had this kind of support and this made the journey much more challenging for them.

In the end I decided that I would never be able to gather the information needed to find my birth parents. I did want to find my birth mother and eventually I wanted to find my birth father as well. I hired The National Locator out of Florida who did my search for both my bmother and bfather for $300.00. I thought it was a steal of a deal. Within two weeks of hiring them they had found both of them.

Now, as many will remember, searching and finding in the 80s and early 90s was not easy. It was totally illegal and many fought against those trying to get identifying information to adoptees and birth mothers. During the time our group was meeting a woman in Florida who was helping triad members in tremendous ways to search for identifying information. At that time shw was arrested and put in jail as a result of her attempts at obtain identifying information. I don't recall the details around this but I do remember the whole deal casting a rather dark shadow over my own search process.

The National Locator took similar risks. One of the things that they requested of those who hired them in regards to the triad search and find is that I send photos of the reunion. I indeed complied with this request. About 8 months later I received a phone call from the National Locator. They were calling in a request from Melissa Gilbert who had identified my reunion pictures and earmarked them for a book she was publishing on her own adoption story and other more politically motivated information included in the book. However, I have yet to find such a book and I fear that it was never published. If you or anyone else knows about this book I would really like to know about it.

Currently I have plans to begin a lay lead discussion group here, where I live, that continues the first group I belonged to. This search group was called Open Circle and it welcomed everyone to come from the triad. My group, which I plan on beginning in the fall, will be called Full Circle. It will focus on post reunion experiences and how individuals are integrating this experience into their lives and their sense of self.

8. Were you involved in an adoption issues support group at the time of the search? Please describe the nature of your involvement.

Yes, I was part of a support group as an adoptee and because I described this in the last question I will spare you from reading it again here. I will add that the woman who lead the group I was in during my search and find journey was actually the biological daughter of an adoptee. She began the group because she wanted to assist her mother in her search for their biologcial family members. She since has become an extremely gifted genealogist. We had an over 90% success rate in finding. The group had two birth mothers and about 8 adoptees in it. The stories we uncovered and remembered and let rise again to our consciousness were quite breath taking, sad, and full of longing.

9. Are you currently involved in an adoption issue support group at the time of the search? Please describe the nature of your involvement.
I was involved in a triad support group called Open Circle. The group was comprised of adoptees and bith or first mothers. In the next few weeks I will begin a discussion group for first mothers and adoptees and will act as facilitator. There is a triad group already where I live, but it is comprised of adoptive parents and I do not feel comfortable attending this meeting. I have been asked on more than one occasion to speak at this meeting.

10. Have you been involved in any professional therapy prior to the search, during the search, or since the reunion? Do you feel your therapist had an understanding of lifelong adoption issues?
I have been involved in some kind of therapy since I was 27 years old. I also had a brief connection with a counselor when I was 13. The therapies that I have been involved with include: sexual abuse group counseling, one-on-one therapy for over 18 years, adoption support group, healing weekends/workshops on many different topics of self help and healing, sand tray therapy, acupuncture, massage, and chiropractor therapy to assist with physical aspects of my emotional life, shamanic drumming meditation groups based on the work of Michael Harner, hypnosis, and biblio-therapy in the self-help and spirituality genre. My therapists have been very good. One was a grief counselor and was an expert in this field. She was extremely helpful to me. My current counselor is an adoptive parent and we are working quite well together. I did have a therapist for several years who didn’t know about adoption issues and it was not a completely successful working relationship. I always felt she somehow missed the heart of my needs. However we were able to do some important work around my career and work goals and personal growth in the work place. I have also worked with a shaman (Foster Perry)
for 8 years and also an intuitive that has shed much light on issues needing to be healed. The work of Michael Newton has influenced me greatly and I have had life between lives sessions that have also shed light on healing in my life. Most currently I attended Joe Soll’s Healing Weekend for adoptees and first/birth moms.

11. At the time of relinquishment, what was the age of the birth mother? What was the age of the birth father?
They were both in their mid to late 20s.

12. If you are an adoptee, at what age were you adopted? Were you in foster care before being adopted?
I was adopted at the age of 5. Between ages 0 to 5 I had (including my adoption placement) 31 different placements from mother, to father, to aunts and uncles, to foster homes, and orphanages.

13. If you are an adoptive parent, what age were you when you adopted? What was the age of your spouse or partner at the time?
N/A

14. If You are an adoptive parent, do you have other adopted sons or daughters or offspring to whom you gave birth?
N/A

15. If you are an adoptee, do you have siblings with who you were raised? Are they also adopted, or your adoptive parents’ birth children? Please explain clearly.
I was adopted with my biological brother who was 18 months older than I was. I was 5 and he was 6+ when we were adopted together from the Children’s Aide Society in 1964. Our original birth family consisted of three full blooded siblings…me, my brother, and my sister (she was the oldest and I was the youngest of my first family). When I was adopted my adoptive parents had three birth daughters. They were 10 to 12 years our seniors and were in high school and off at college when we came to live with our adoptive parents.

16. If you are a birth parent, did you have other offspring, before or after you relinquished? Did you adopt any children, or have any stepchildren? Please feel free to explain.
As an adoptee who knows my birth parents history I will relay what I have heard from my birth parents and what I know of their marriage/family history.
My birth mother…who has passed:
She had several marriages and one miscarriage after she relinquished her three children. She kept us all, but my sister Terry, a secret.
My birth father…who is still living and is in his late 60s:
My father remarried right away after relinquishment and had four more children. He divorced this wife years later and remarried a woman who was a birth mother who had relinquished and found her birth son. My father was a stepfather when his wife’s children were older so he never took an active role as a father figure. He is still married to this third wife.

17. If you are the person who searched, how long did you contemplate searching before you actually started?
Not long. My husband asked me, after my adoptive mother told me that I had a birth sister (which I knew all along…but had never felt allowed to talk about her) which my adoptive mother thought was a big revealing. After she told me this I felt that I had permission of sorts to search for my sister and began searching within a couple of weeks. My search was halted by the social worker at the Children’s Aide Society who had been my social worker at the time of my relinquishment and adoption. She had known me since I was an infant. She refused to give me any information saying that it was a protection of me and my brother not to know or connect with my birth family in any way.

18. What was your primary motivation in wanting to search?
At first is was to find my sister. I was a newly married wife with three instant step children ages 7 to 10. My mind wasn’t really focused on searching. I made the first contact because I thought it might be interesting to find my sister. Later, when I began searching more seriously it was to know my roots and to uncover the mystery of the first five years of my life and become more whole. It was to fill in the missing pieces of my history. It wasn’t until later that I began to want to see my mother’s face and even later before I even contemplated the idea that I could or would search for my father. I attended an adoption triad support group, did some reading, and was very into self healing and growth and searching and finding was a logical thing to do given my stance towards life.

19. Until recently, many states required a “good cause” such as needing medical information in order to allow a person to search legally for a birth parent or relinquished offspring. Was this a factor in your search or not?
I suppose it was to a degree. The aspect of not being allowed my personal and historical information made it more secretive and dark and it supported my adoptive parents desire to keep it under the rug as it wasn’t really that important to who I was as their child. The triad support group I was in in 1989 to 1991 talked a lot about the “illegal” aspect of gaining and obtaining information. Some activists in the political arena for unlocking adoptee information were arrested during these years and this certainly placed a dark atmosphere around searching and obtaining information. In the end I hired the National Locator to find my parents. This took a lot of the angst or search secret out of the final stages of search for me. I was able to obtain a lot of information though throughout the ten years that I searched. I got my father’s birth certificate and my mother’s as well as their marriage certificate. When I contacted the Children’s Aide Society in 1987 to attempt once again to find my sister my social worker has retired and a new young social worker had taken her place. She was gung ho for me to connect with my sister and open doors within two weeks of our initial contact with each other. Having a sibling search made all the difference for me as my birth sister was adopted by my maternal grandfather and had known my birth mother off and on during her life. My sister had a lot of knowledge accept where our birth parents were at that time. The courts gave me all the documents that told of the relinquishment and attempt at kinship adoption for us. Of course all of the identifying information was blacked out with a big black marker. The courthouse told us that I was lucky to have gotten this information as they were scheduled to destroy these old space taking documents. It is similar to today’s threat of electric document keeping which will destroy these important original documents so wanted and needed by adoptees and birth parents. I guess most of my search was done outside of the regular search via documents mode. After I got married I wrote for my birth certificate using my married name and requesting the document in my birth name. I got it no problem and have done it a couple of times since then. I have also written with my married name and requested my adoption birth certificate which was amended in 1964. I have had no problem looping through the system in this way.

20. What kinds of expectations, hopes, fantasies or plans did you have before, during, and after the search?
This is quite a complicated question to answer, but I will give it my best shot. I was adopted at 5 so I remember my mother; not in detail parse, but I remember her blond hair and I have memories of being with her…some good and some really horrific. When I searched I knew that I was going to find someone who most likely was broken to some degree. My sister had filled me in on her life and some of my father’s life as well from her memories. She held and holds a lot of memories from our past. When I was a child I never fantasized about finding the perfect mother. I knew that my adoptive home was a safe haven and that it was indeed very much improved from the chaotic and abusive care taking or lack of care taking environment found with my birth mother and father. I still longed to meet my mother and to look into her face. My sister had pictures of our mother and father. I was an almost exact copy of my mother only she had blond and I had brown hair. This made me very curious. I was reading recently about how adoptees who are adopted at older ages sometimes make contracts to find their birth siblings or birth family. This was totally true for me. I had an internal drive that was very passionate and powerful to pull my original birth family back together. In fact I believe that I married a widower with three children due to this unconscious contract that I had made to myself as a child. This drive to reunite my family was the fuel that pushed the finding and reuniting of my birth family. I didn’t care about medical records nor did I care about having a close relationship with any of my birth family at the time of search. All I thought about was pulling us all together and finding them. My search took 10 years so the search motivation took different shapes at different times and it was a slow, thank goodness, process.

21. If you are the one searched for and found, did you ever contemplate searching? What were your reasons for wanting to or not wanting to? What were your own hopes, fantasies, or expectations concerning the other person prior to your being contacted? Please answer these questions in some depth, using the back if needed.
N/A

22. If you are an adoptive parent, what were your thoughts concerning search and reunion? What were your expectations, hopes, fears or fantasies regarding the birth parents? What information regarding the birth parents did you have prior to reunion? Pleas answer in as much detail as you wish.
N/A

23. Please describe as accurately as you can remember what it was like at the time of initial reunion and shortly after, for you, for the others involved (as far as you know), and for other family members, such as spouse, siblings, parents?
In 1987 When I met my sister, grandfather, step grandmother (who knew me as a child), half uncle and some older relatives (all on my maternal side) it was joyous and lacked any emotional angst. I actually hadn’t seen my brother in a few years so in a way it was a reunion with him as well. We met my grandfather and extended relatives in Michigan (the state that held us as wards) and spoke to my biological sister via the phone from there. We, my brother and I, then flew to Las Vegas which is where my sister was living at the time. It was exciting. When we reunited we instantly contacted newspapers and the local news stations. We felt that we wanted other people to be aware of reunions such as ours and we also wanted to use the media as a means to find our birth father. Being in Vegas made the whole experience really surreal. It was in the conversations that we had that brought up more questions of who am I and who are my birth parents.

Quite honestly I hadn’t really had those thoughts until I actually met my birth sister and she shared memories. It was the hearing and recalling memories that made life difficult for me following the reunion. I felt that with the truth came the pain of childhood and so I did indeed feel new feelings. In my life personally I felt fairly lost in general and the challenge that came with being a stepmother at such a young age took a lot of my focus. My sister and I kept in touch, but it was at a distance as I lived in New England. We wrote letters and spoke on the phone now and again. She was busy with my brother who had packed up all of his things and moved in with her. My brother was challenged with mental illness and his life had been in turmoil always. He was desperately looking for family and belonging and felt that he could find it with my sister. It all took a really bad turn and it threw my brother into a deeper state of drug addiction and illegal behavior. She asked him to move out and he did and after that is when he went down hill. There was little I could do about the situation except fret and pray. With my brother taking all of the focus because of his great need I fell into the background and I guess was contented by sporadic contact from my sister.

My grandfather however was very thrilled to have found us and said, “All I wanted before I die was to find Danny and Gwennie,” and 18 months after our reunion he did indeed pass on. Before he did however he was able to make a video from his 8mm films of us when we were little. He narrated them through the haze of beer and elevator music. It broke my heart as he too had been fragmented by the loss of us and with his experiences from WWII he suffered greatly from depression in his life. He also wanted us to have a reunion again with him and that never did happen. I think the story of his daughter and the loss of his grandchildren really did break his heart. He was the one who wanted to adopt all of us, as it says in the court records and as he tells the story, but the courts wouldn’t allow him to because he had three children and his home wasn’t large enough to accommodate three more. Thus, he only adopted my sister. There is a sad and tragic love story that goes along with my grandfather and my grandmother as well. Again, trauma, poverty, and the strictness of the times played a large role in the disruption of the families from my mother’s side.

During the time I was at my grandfather’s home for the reunion the social worker came with us at the beginning. She was very involved and excited about our reunion. She was very kind. Other relatives came to meet us. They were very different. Most of my relatives on my mum’s side are from Alabama. I have always adored southern cooking which has never made sense to my middle American palate. Lima beans, corn bread, grits, sausage gravy, black eyed peas, collard greens, and coleslaw are my favorite foods. On both of my parents side there is Native American blood and more specifically Cherokee from both sides. I have never searched for this part of my heritage. I am not sure how and I sense that there are no records to be found and it feels like too much to take on and perhaps I have all the answers I can deal with in this life time. The southern connection is very deep in my genes, I guess is my point. This spring my sister has asked me to come to Alabama, which is where she lives now, and meet the remaining relatives who are quite old. We are going to do a family pilgrimage of sorts I suppose and I look forward to being with her and rediscovering my family. Perhaps now that I am through the emotional veils of my search and find experience I can be open to enjoying the process from a strong place.

The reunion with my mother and father happened within a 10 day period. It was 4 years after my reunion with my sister and my mother’s family. They lived two hours away from each other. We met our father first. It was totally nerve wracking. Dan, Terry, and myself all flew in from different places and met at the airport first before we met our father and his wife. We planned this so we could all connect and muster courage together. I wrote to my birth parents first and Terry did as well. My brother didn’t. I, as I have said, had been preparing for this find for a few years and had long attended a triad support group. I spoke with both my mother and my father on the phone before meeting them and exchanged letters before the phone calls. Once I got the addresses from the National Locator is would be 4 weeks in between meeting them and getting their locations. During that time I lost 15 pounds. I was scared. We were all scared. We had a great reunion with our father. However, his wife, who was a birth mother who relinquished her son and found him, wasn’t quite comfortable with the whole thing. Most of our reunion was spent drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes at a local Denny’s or Wendy’s. My father’s wife didn’t want us in the house. Near the end of that week…she loosened up a little bit and we were able to visit in the house. We kids shared a hotel room during the visit. We met our 4 half siblings; three girls and one boy. They, too, suffered from the loss of our father through divorce. But to my father’s credit he did not keep us a secret. My half siblings were all aware of our existence and each year my father would put our birthdays on the calendar. They told us that they wanted to find us, but never had. My father told us that he had tried to find us but couldn’t and when he found out that we had been adopted he discontinued searching and went on with his life.

I clicked immediately with my half brother and one of my half sisters in particular. My birth sister Terry became very agitated with me during our reunion with them. She said some very horrible things about me to me and to my newly found family members. On our last night with our father we all gathered in the home of my half brother. All seven of my father’s children were under one roof. We all desperately loved and needed him and I wondered what that must feel like for him…if it must be overwhelming to contemplate trying to meet the needs of all the faces in that room. I knew that I would have to take my proper place and that I would need to share my love with him with low expectations. It was an amazing evening. My brother and my half brother connected as well. The trouble was Dan was still looking for connection and immediately moved in with my half brother and his wife and two children. His mental illness kicked in big time as all of these past hurts, memories, and relationships were brought to the forefront. In the end my brother and half brother parted ways in a very ugly manner. It ended any potential I might have to connect with my half brother. Add that to all that my sister had said to me in her exaggerated and needy state my opportunity was killed for connecting with this part of my family. Gosh, it hurts as I write this quite a bit. Loss. To find is to find loss for me. Finding has never brought full joy. Finding has never been about having or building a relationship with anyone from my birth family. Distance and hurt has taken much of those hoped for opportunities. When I returned from this reunion I received a letters just a few days following from my birth sister Terry. It was 12 pages. My husband opened the letter before me and read it. He tore the letter up before I could read it. He said that it was a letter full of ugly and hurtful words and that he wanted to protect me from ever having to read such a thing. I am forever grateful for this act on my behalf. After the reunion I recognized that I was the only one really prepared for this challenging journey just following reunion. I watched those that I had found and those that I loved move through tremendous pain…tremendous. I wanted to be there for them…to listen…to soothe…to connect with and to assist in healing. Looking back I realized that I put my own pain and need into the background and into a very private and personal place. I felt isolated and unheard. My support group had dismantled and I had no therapeutic assistance through the next 18 months post reunion. I swam in a sea of nightmare emotions. After returning from Michigan I remember the return trip I cried the whole way. I couldn’t turn the tears off much to my humiliation. When I got home I lay in bed for 4 hours crying and crying with my husband sitting beside me. A year after my reunion my marriage fell apart. My kids had left home to go to school and to start their lives. We were building a new house. I felt totally lost. It would be two years of putting myself back together like a broken glass. It was a process of finding all of the pieces of myself and rebuilding my identity. During these two years I started painting, writing, and acting again. I reconnected with the loves from my teenage years. I wrote a play and produced and directed it. I painted and began acting. I wrote poetry like mad. My creative self came pouring out as if in a rebirth and in this creativity was an emotional madness. I had been diagnosed as bi-polar…like my mother…like my brother. I would live life as a bi-polar out of control person for the following 6 years. My life was an emotional yo-yo. My kids had left home which left me feeling abandoned and as a failure as a mother. I felt that healing my stepfamily was hopeless and I lived in severe guilt. I felt that once again I had been abandoned by my family who I loved so tenderly. I cried to the heavens, “All I
want to do is love them…why won’t you let me love them?” It was a mantra of loss. Through lots of therapy, art, time, emotional emoting, wrestling and defeating my demons, I have come full circle. I no longer need to “be” a bi-polar person. I have struggled and worked hard to integrate and heal. I have come a long way and now 15 years post reunion I am more whole than I ever dreamed possible. I am no longer the victim inside myself. I have learned there are a myriad number of ways to love someone and that the opportunities for healing are infinite. I have found, discovered, explored, and claimed my self as an individual…as a whole person…who happens also to be adopted. And here they are…those tears that come whenever I dip into this place. The longing for love and family and knowing that counting what I do have is ever important; how easily it can be to get lost in this sea of loss that swills itself up to the edges of my life.

I’ve never written about my post reunion experiences in such a holistic manner as I am doing in this research questionnaire. In fact it is only in the last year or so that I have recognized that speaking of and writing about this experience is a blind spot for me. In one of my classes in my maters’ of social work program on trauma I was asked to do a difficult project. The assignment was to write a clinical assessment and create a treatment program from a character in a movie. The character and the story were all about a young man searching for his birth mother and his finding her. Long story short…I was so completely un-expectant of such a task that it hit me like a ton of bricks. How could I write this for this man in a movie when it is the unconscious and untold story of my life. I was hit hard emotionally and from this experience realized that I needed to see this part of my life and not continue to be blind from it. So, I began to look at my reunion experiences slowly. I began with my art…that non-verbal…non-threatening medium which helps me so often prepare for the unconscious content of my soul to become conscious. I am committed to being completely aware of the story and listening for the healing that comes from this stance.

My reunion with my birth mother was different than that with my birth father. We three birth siblings didn’t really want to leave my father and extended our stay with him for two days. My birth mother had been cleaning and cooking for our preparation and this delay made things painful for her. In retrospect I see that she had a lot invested in our arrival and the cooking and cleaning and preparing was a way for her to connect and love her. Our tardiness took this away from her and it hurt her. But, our hurt from the past made connecting with her difficult and we had to muster our courage. Me and my siblings began to band together in a different way with the meeting of our mother on the horizon. We began to feel giddy, silly, and connected deeply as if in preparation for the need of each other. As children we had faced many abuses and neglect together and I think that we traveled back into our memory banks and brought forth those feelings and positions as we headed to once again meet the loving mother and the monster of mental illness that over took her in our childhood. I remember arriving at her house. It was dark and she lived in a small town in a closely built up neighborhood. We tried to peek in the
windows to see if we could see her first through the lit pane. We giggled and laughed outside like small children being naughty. We went to the door and there she was. The strange thing was that I had dreamed of my mother many times in my life and what has always been striking in these dreams was her eyes. When I looked into her face…my stomach almost brought up the contents of our dinner…because they were the VERY eyes that I had seen all those years in my dreams and they were eyes that scared the hell out of me. My mother set us all up in the living room of the small house that they lived in and the three of us banded together in pjs and blankets. My mother had sewn matching pajamas for my sister and I to wear when we arrived and we had donned these for her feeling silly and strange. Who the hell was this woman I thought? Her food was greasy, her smell was strange, and her home was tattered and bare.

We woke the next morning after falling asleep late from whispering and giggling through our fears and our impressions. When our mother got up and greeted us that morning she raged at us. Mostly at me as I was the only one who looked her in the face as she yelled out her pain of our lateness in timing our visit to her home and how she was hurt by this. She then said, “Look at the three of you, you are all taking the same roles you did when you were young!” My mother and my two siblings were all born again Christians and I was what was referred to at that time as a New Ager. They all told me I was going to hell and that they would pray for me. How I got through those five days I don’t know. When I got home I became very ill from the flu and remained in bed for two weeks. I always stayed connected to my mother through letters until she died. I somehow understood her and that she suffered from pain and mental illness. When she died almost two years ago I had gotten to a place where I had begun to more actively reach out to her and was beginning to plan a visit to see her. Before she died she was put on life support. The hospital petitioned us to sign the removal of life support for her. It was a difficult decision, but one we felt was best. 8 hours after being removed from life support Sandra Estes Lumley passed away. Before she died, my sister sitting beside her, said: “You can go now mom, Danny and Gwennie and I all forgive you. You need to forgive yourself and go in peace knowing that we love you.” About 10 minutes later she died and I am left wondering why I didn’t reach out to her sooner…why I didn’t feel safe enough sooner…if I could only have connected with her one more time…because what is more everlasting and stronger than any emotion I have ever had in my life…is this love for my mother. I remember hearing a story of a mother who set her child on fire and from amidst the flames burning that child they called out “mommy”. It is this that is true for me…that no matter what the depth of loss, hurt, pain or neglect that she inflicted…I loved her down to the fibers of my very cells. She is my birthing self…she is the core of my beginning…she is the love of my life. I have learned other kinds of love but there is no love like that which I have for my mother. Why this is true I have no idea whatsoever, but this is my truth.

After our reunion my brother once again moved in with another found birth family member…this time my mother. It was a hellacious experience for both of them which ended badly and in trauma. My brother would go out into the world missing for the next 7 years. He once called me five years into his missing time and told me that he had lived in various states and was now part of a traveling carnival. How strange this was for me to hear and how my very bones ached from the pain of it. For I knew that he was lost in a sea of loss and pain and so far into it that he might possibly never return. There was little I could do for him except fret and pray.

Today I write to my birth father several times a year. My husband and I have gone and visited with them in their home one Thanksgiving. He has visited me once. We never talk on the phone. But we write very heartfelt letters. He is still part of my dream world and I love him very dearly.

My sister is a grandmother like me and lives in Alabama. We talk a couple of times a year on the phone and write an occasional letter. We plan, as I wrote before, to visit this spring. I have been to visit her one other time in Alabama. She has never been to my home nor has she met any of my family. Maybe one day this will change.

My husband never took part in any of my reunions. I had my siblings and we worked hard for many years to get to a place where financial freedom was in our favor. Paying for two airline tickets back then just wasn’t within our means. He has been, however, an emotional life saver. Our marriage has been through some really rocky places as I have struggled to heal and to integrate into a more whole individual. My process has supported his healing as well. We are on the other side of that now and enjoying the joy and love that comes from moving out of the dark places and into the light.

24. How did the reality of early reunion compare with your hopes or fears?
My father was a big surprise. I realized that the love that he offered me as a child was quite wonderful and soft. It was this love that became a huge protective factor in my life and because I had this love from him as my father I think I was able to choose a life partner and know what love really feels like and how it is supposed to feel. I am ever grateful for this gift from my father. I wasn’t aware of this until after I met him and recalled memories and knew him in person as an adult. I found out after meeting my father that he had a passion for theatre. He has starred in a B rated movie and one of his life dreams was to open a community theatre in his town. These has also been my passions…although I had not been in a movie, but had taught children’s theatre for years, had become a professional costume designer, playwright, and actor.
My mother was all that I had expected. She no longer looked like me as I had only seen picture of her as a woman in her 20s. So, this was interesting to find that I was picturing her always as this young woman and found her as a woman in her mid 50s. I didn’t expect to find that she sewed, did crafts, was an artist, and a writer like myself. She had won awards for her writing. In fact there were so many things that she did that were like me that it gave me the chills. She sent me a lot of her writing. I have never read these. I can’t as it is too much for me to go into her psyche through her writing.

As a side note: I am also very like my adoptive family who come from a long line of teachers. I became an early education teacher after trying to obtain an education in the arts (fashion and graphic arts…I got an associates in the first and completed only one year of course work as a graphic artist). I then went on to get a master’s in education and most of my professional career has been in the field of special education. Now in my late 40s my life is about being the artist again. What I find interesting is that I developed both parts of myself…both my biological or genetic predisposition/talents and those that I was taught to value in my adoptive home; teaching, education, and intellect. I have always had two careers going…one in the arts which I could never really make enough money at and that in the educational system. I have worked very hard in my life…and in my mid 40s burned out completely…couldn’t keep the pace anymore…had to stop…start living by my own internal passions…and don the authentic me in every aspect. This is the road I am currently on. The development of two selves, as Betty Jean speaks of so eloquently, really has been my reality, my world. I wonder how life would have felt if I didn’t have this need to be two identities…that of the adopted child and that of the birth child. Would life have felt more easeful…would I have been less driven…would I have learned more and gotten more relational experiences and thus more mutuality in my life interacting more within relationship instead of accomplishment? I know that part of me has been really tired for a long time and that I am only now recovering fully in regards to energy as I find myself in a more whole state and the ability to be authentic as I become fully integrated. All aspects of my life coming into view through one lens: mine.

25. Prior to search or being found, what kinds of people had you told about your relinquishment or adoption? Did you disclose different amounts of information at different ages? Who usually initiated the conversation?
Talk about my adoption as a child was always initiated by my parents after the first year I was adopted. That first year I would talk about it until I realized that it wasn’t a conversation that was wanted. When my parents would talk about it it was usually when I was introduced to one of their friends or business acquaintances. I remember once someone saying how much I looked like my adoptive dad, my mother didn’t say anything at that time to the person about my being adopted, she just looked over at me and smiled as if to say…wow…aren’t we pulling one over on them! Part of me felt so proud that they thought I looked like my dad even though it was only a load of crap.

In high school I found out that the girl that I was best friends with was also adopted. It was so thrilling to find this out. I talked with her at length that night on the stairwell of our dormitory. The following day I was called to the head mistresses office. She told me that I had scared my friend so badly that she had called her mother hysterically the following day. I was ordered never to talk about it again. I never did.

When I was in college I drank too much one night. I was not a drinker and so was inexperienced and drank too much wine playing cards with friends. I went into a black out. My friends told me the next day that all I did was cry and talk about my birth family and adoption. I have not memory of this, but it struck me quite profoundly.

I talked about my adoption with my husband and shared this part of my history formally with my children (my stepchildren…I feel that they are my children).

Then in my late 20s I got into therapy and it was all about adoption. From there I understood that I was on a journey of self reclamation and that uncovering these lost years and my lost story was vital to my life and my life satisfaction.

Now, I talk about it a lot…read about it…write about it…understand it more than I ever have in my life. I know that being adopted doesn’t define who I am…it is only part of me and it is a part that I can join with the other parts. For so many years I was a compartmentalized person. When I was in the theatre I was one person…many of my friends there didn’t even know I was married…and when at school I was another person…and when I was socializing I was yet another person…and on an don and on…Now I am all of these things in one presentation…no longer compartmentalized…I claim all of who I am…and as a whole person I have many aspects that are all out in the open…I am artist, teacher, mother, sister, wife, daughter, adoptee, writer, social worker, and more. Being adopted is not the primary focus…I have claimed my humanity…my human-ness…I have claimed myself and I am more than this one story in my life. Adoption is a part of my story it has colored other parts of my story…but I am not limited to this historical story any more than I am limited to a diagnosis of any kind. I am what I believe Alice Miller called: “One of the possibility people”. We all have this choice to make in our lives…be the possibility…

26. If you are an adoptive parent, at what age did you tell your son or daughter about their adoption? Did you disclose different amounts of information at different ages? Who usually initiated the conversation?
N/A

27. If you are an adoptee, at what age were you told about your adoption? Do you remember this or was it before you can remember? Were you given more information as time went on? Who usually initiated the conversation?
I’ve answered this in question number 25 I believe. I always knew that I was adopted. I was given more information when I was in my early 20s. In fact my mother gave me my birth sir name then. It happened to be the same sir name that my social worker had…don’t think we are related…never asked that question…but I tend to think that we aren’t as it would have been unethical for her to work with me as a social worker…however in the arena of adoption back then…who knows…actually I have no desire to go down that road.

28. If you are a birth parent, did you discuss your relinquishment with a subsequent spouse or partner, or with offspring? How much information did you have about your child and or the adoptive parents? Did you have any further contact with the other birth parent?
N/A

29. Following the initial reunion was there a search for other birth parent or other family members?
My reunion took place over a ten year period and for this I am entirely grateful. After each reunion or found piece of information I needed time to reflect deal with emotions that came with it and to find my equilibrium again. Taking it slow, I believe, kept me from shattering my psyche. Through the use of art, poetry, and therapy I was able to take the search steps over time with success that built a stronger sense of self, an ability to develop skills to be present in my relationships, time to grieve losses, time to heal past trauma, and to integrate new truths that inevitably come with reunion.

30. Since the reunion began, how has the relationship between birth parent and offspring developed? How much contact is there currently and how would you describe the relationship at this time.
This has been answered previously and I will spare you the reading of repeated information!

31. How did the reunion affect the relationship between adoptee and adoptive parents?
Greatly. The first thing that I realized is that a lot of my dissatisfaction and anger towards my adoptive parents had its roots in my birth family. Once I understood this I was able to let go of some of those hurts and pains and place them where they belonged: with my birth family. This cleared a pathway for me to connect and love my adopted parents more wholly and in a cleaner more mature fashion. Life too is a great teacher and as I learned of the challenges, joys, hopes and fears of being a parent…I began to understand some of the choices and stances my adopted parents had. Even though my adopted parents never were fully on the trolley ride with me during my reunion as I didn’t tell them until after I found…they did want to know…a little. My adopted mother told me that she was hurt that I kept the search a secret and when she told me this I was able to share with her that I never believed that she would want to know as the past and those missing five years was a subject she never really wanted brought up. She was silent after I said that. A local paper did a human interest story on me after my reunion with my birth family. She read the article and we looked at my reunion photos together. She will often ask how my sister is doing and feels she played an important role in this reunion…which she did really. She is in her late 80s now and sometimes she feigns interest in this part of my life in regards to my birth parents. I don’t keep any secrets from her now although I respect the fact that it can be uncomfortable for her to talk of these things…and so I let her lead the way and I don’ t push it with her…I have no need to. She has expressed to me that she wishes that she had done things differently and that she feels she was a failure as a mother in some ways. Actually overall she was a wonderful mother…better than what was birthed to me…and for this I am entirely and completely grateful for…none of us get to choose our parents…and they create for us the friction that will energize our lives if we let it. I embrace her in all of her humanness just as I pray that my own children will find that same empathetic compassion for me as their mother. And I realize from this vantage point…as I see my adoptive parents influence on who I am as a woman in the world…connected to how my children are in the world…and I see connections for the first time…I see the chain…I see that I am a link in that chain…no longer on the dusty floor…but perched in between those that I love and those that have embraced me…through history…through choice…through love…and we have helped to build each other into who we are…and this is building who are grandchildren are…I have found a place in history…my history…linked forever…with my families history and I see my place in it because I see my influence in it…both the good and the bad…and I am no longer lost.

I could never have had this had I not searched…had my adoptive parents never acknowledged my search and find…never embraced my whole story.

32. How did the reunion affect other family relationships with spouses, parents, extended family?
My reunion is connected to my coming fully present into my own life. My fantasy world and my real world merged into one. It wasn’t uncommon for my children and husband to call me two or three times before I would come out of my thoughts and respond to them. I think the need to operate in this mode was resolved after my reunion. I had the truth and fantasy was no longer needed to attend to my internal dilemma around my issues with my past and unknowns. I can love more deeply, stand more courageously in who I am, and I have learned to self soothe and as a result to not demand this from those I love. I live now from an internal place instead of an external one where the world and those in it were required to validate my existence. I am validated by my own sense of self and so I can interact with those in my life from an authentic place and not from a wound or a need or a fear or an emotion. I am not driven by my own needs…I can step back and see the other person…and not lose myself in the process and as a result not feel as alone or isolated or fearful of abandonment by them.

My birth family relationships are still a little distant and if I lived nearer to them this might be different. But I am content with this because I know that I am empowered to shift this if I feel the need to or am asked to do so. It is not the quantity of time that defines a relationship but the quality and it has always been at the forefront of my mind and in my actions to maintain my own dignity and a high quality of interaction…working on my own issues so as to interact with my birth family in ways that are not damaging and do not contribute to the challenge of the whole bundle of hurtles that come with this experience.

33. Do the adoptive parents and birth parents have contact with each other?
No..never have and I doubt that they ever will. If I was younger this might be a potential, but at 47 there is no need really. If either set of parents felt that they needed some sort of closure or healing through a connection like this I would be there to assist in making it possible, but I doubt that that will ever happen and that is all right.

34. Sometimes a search results in learning that the person being sought is deceased. If that was your situation, did you go on to search for other family members? Please elaborate.
N/A

35. Some observers see a pattern to reunions, with a honeymoon period first followed by some conflict or reduction in contact or a leveling off of intensity. Others see no particular patterns, but do observe changes over time. Please describe your own reunion relationship in this regard.
For me there was a honeymoon period with my father and none with my mother. There was a reduction in contact after the first couple of years. There was never any major conflict in my experience with my birth parents…but a lot of that in my brother and my sister’s experience. I attribute this to the fact that I had counseling and they didn’t and that I was in a triad support group for a while before reunion. Although my first reunion with my sister I didn’t have either of these and had no conflict, but my sister and brother did. Over the years I have maintained a constant contact with my birth sister, mother and father. Not so with my half siblings. Some of these family members have passed, but most of us have just gotten on with our lives raising children and working our jobs. Living in different states has influenced the frequency of contact quite a bit. I know if I lived near my sister I would absolutely love it and we would have a close relationship and I think this would be true of my father as well. I don’t think this would have been true with my mother due to her mental illness.

36. What are your hopes, expectations, or fears regarding the future of your relationships in reunion?
This fall my birth father’s brother died. I met him a few years ago and his children…my cousins…my Uncle Bill took care of us when we were very little. He never took an interest in my after the reunion despite my letters and Christmas cards. My birth father was quite sad about this loss as Uncle Bill really raised him. Their parents both died at young ages. My father didn’t tell me of his passing until almost three months after he passed. He told me in a letter that included a DVD of the funeral. I viewed the funeral which shared more of my own history through the story of Bill’s life. At the end of the video was a group picture of Uncle Bill, his children, and their children. It was a very large group photo. I recognized the faces, the hair color, the smiles as mine. I broke down in a puddle of tears…for there before me was my clan…and I had never known them…I had never been claimed by them…and I find this to be true in all of my families…each and every one…to a degree…I am connected through history, love, and choice…but in regards to clan…and as the Cherokee…it is a profound realization to know that at some level I will always be on the outside. It is this that I am fearful of because of the pain that always comes with it when it sits in my mind. Mostly I know that I am connected…and the photo was proof of that…but the loss of one’s clan leaves a scar…a scar that remains forever.

37. What do you wish you had known before reunion, whether you were the searcher or the one being sought?
That it was going to be so painful and that I would be so lost as I learned to “compose” myself. I would have sought therapy specifically for myself to act as a net to catch me so that I wouldn’t of had to act out and heal on my own. It would have saved me from creating additional wounds for my family and myself.

38. Since reunion have you told your story to more people such as friends, coworkers, or others who have adoption connections?
Yes, telling my story has been the balm and the thread to healing and the development of a solid sense of self.

39. If you are an adoptive parent, what additional kinds of help or support would you have wanted throughout your adoptee’s life and in connection with the reunion?
N/A

40. Are there any other aspects of reunion that you would like the researchers to know about? Please give us any additional thoughts, feelings, or observations you may have.
Not at this time.

41. Were there any ethnic or cultural aspects to your adoption or reunion situation that you feel are significant? Please explain.
None.

Books of Interest

2006-05-07T05:18:00.000-07:00

The following list is an ongoing one that will be updated with new books as I read them. As a MSW student and adoptee who has been reunited since 1992 I am looking to read books that focus on the post reunion experience and the stages of integration and development of self and identity. I am particularly interested in books and articles that speak to adults in their 30s and beyond. Much of the literature out there doesn't address these years deeply. As adults in our society tend to live much longer lives, I am interested in the quality of the lives of adoptees and the tools and supports they need as they move through the adult years of development and their sense of self or identity.

Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self
by David M. Brodzinsky, Ph.D.

Publishers Weekly commented that "This illuminating book should help and comfort adoptees, adoptive parents, and others who search for their identity."

The back cover description reads:
Being Adopted uses the voice of adoptees themselves to trace how adoption is experienced over a lifetime, and their reflections are moving, keenly self-aware, and very personal. Replete with vital and astute analysis by the authors. This book offers a place to turn for thousands of adoptees who, at one time or another, have questioned the validity of their feelings but have had no one to compare their experiences with.

Adoption and Recovery: Solving the mystery of reunion
(A companion volume to Adoption and Loss: The Hidden Grief)
by Evelyn Burns Robinson

A reviewer of the book states: "With this powerful and insightful book, Evelyn Robinson has created a completely new paradigm within which to understand adoption reunion."

Quoted on the Dedication Page of the book:

A Tear and a Smile

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of

the multitude. And I would not have the tears that sadness

makes flow from my every part, turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;

a smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

kahlil Gibran

Evelyn and her son Stephen write this book together. Evelyn is a birth mother and Stephen is the son that she found after relinquishment. They are both from Australia.

From the back cover:

"Experiencing an adoption separation brings its own challenges, lessons and opportunities for growth and development. This original and dynamic book will help many people to meet the challenges that adoption and separation bring, to learn more lessons, and to take advantage of those opportunities.

Synchronicity & Reunion
The Genetic Connection of Adoptees and Birth Parents
A facinating exploration of surprising coincidences in the union/loss/reunion stories of families separated by adoption.
by LaVonne Harper Stiffler

"We must be grateful to LaVonne Harper Stiffler for illuminating the mysteries of the connections that bind us to each other - and connect us to the cosmic mystery. A masterful work."
-Betty Jean Lifton
(Author of Twice Born and Lost and Found as well as Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness)

"This i s not only a terrific job scientifically, it is also highly practical, useful, and a spine-tingling read!"
-Berthold E. Schwarz, M.S. Author of Psychic-Nexus

From the back cover:
"Carl Jung knew "synchronicity" to be a subjective experience with significant timeng and meaning for the participant, a clue to an underlying system of science and spirituality. Paul Kammerer used simply physical analogies for such coincidences and defined the "law of seriality" as a unifying principle at work in the universe, correlating by affinity. He believed this pull toward unity produces concurrent or serial events in space and time, bringing like and like together.

After search and reunion, adoptees and birthparents begin to piece together the long years of separation and to seek their own explanations for uncanny coincidental behavior and meaningful information transfer that occurred when normal sensory contact was absent. This psychophilosophical exploration of the anecdotes of 70 reunited families will certainly stimulate subsequent investigation. LaVonne is a reunited birth mother.

Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness
-Betty Jean Lifton

Publishers Weekly:
Lifton has written before on this highly charged subject ( Lost and Found and Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter ), but this is a more profound investigation of the trauma she sees as occurring when a child is separated from his or her birth mother and is brought up by people not of his or her blood. Lifton is for "open" adoption--meaning, to her, not only that the adoptee should have a chance to find out about his or her birth mother, but preferably that both sets of parents should get to know each other. She discourses at length, with reference to myth, legend, folklore, science, psychiatry, as well as to many personal experiences, about the crippling effect of the loss of the birth mother on the adoptee's sense of self; she even cites evidence showing that adoptive sons are more likely than natural ones to murder their parents.
-Quoted from Amazon.com book review of this book.

From the book's back cover:
"A brilliant contribution to the work of healing in adoption. I highly recommend this to all members of the adoption triad and to professionals."
-Sharon Kapland Roszia
Co-author of The Open Adoption Experience

Chapter One begins with...

Betwixt & Between
"Then I shan't be exactly human then?" Peter asked.
"No."
"What shall I be?"
"You will be betwixt-and-between," Solomon said, and certainly he was a wise old fellow, for this is exactly as it turned out.
-James Barrie
(from Peter Pan in the Kensington Gardens)

Betty Jean Lifton is an adoptee.

Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up

-by Nancy Newton Verrier (Author of Primal Wound)

On the back cover:

Who should read this book?

All members of the adoption triad, anyone related to them, all professionals working with triad members, anyone who feels her or she is living an unauthentic life.

What you will learn:

The role of trauma in our lives, how trauma affects our neurological system, how the fearful child may be ruling our lives, how the meaning we give to events controls our beliefs, how beliefs control our feelings and behaviors, how to uncover the authentic self, how to gain power and by becoming accountable, how to improve our relationships and reunions.

Carol Shaefer, author of The Other Mother: A Woman's Love for the Child She Gave Up for Adoption writes:

"With enormous compassion and caring and exceptional knowledge and insight, Verrier reveals not only how to finally heal but also how to actually be better for the journey."

Nancy Verrier is an adoptive mother.

Poetry...after all these years!

2006-04-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

(Sifting through notebooks tonight and came upon, to my utter amazement, poetry!

Seems I am writing without noticing or even remembering. Indulge me, eh?)

* * *

Happy New Age

* * *

The new year comes walking through the door of marching time.

I gaze into the mirror and wonder who this woman is that I have become.

She is heavier by degree and her face has markings some would say give character.

* * *

Time blurs by as the children are raised and my children have children.

How do they grow older and I am only now feeling the touch of the constant clock?

I am the bloomed bloom that has not yet faded but shows signs of knowing a broader vision.

* * *

Some might say that the shedding of youth is wisdom hanging its hat on your soul.

My body moves through the world at a slower pace yet my dreams now take a stronger stride.

This life is more aligned with my heart at this stage then I ever knew could come to fruition.

* * *

Long gone are the dreams of being Miss America or any type of beauty queen.

I rest with the faith of the idea that beauty lies within and finds magic there which draws like honey.

Still when rising time comes in the morning I rustle this frame awake and feel my body to be a stranger.

* * *

These days I am living from the inside out and not from the outside in.

It is not the mirror where I find my self, but in the middle of me, in the center of my self.

The world has not yet fully embraced this concept, finding beauty to be only one dimensional.

* * *

Age, ages, aging graces my body and my soul.

Dancing with the shifts of time that come in so many brown paper wrapped boxes.

Time marches by as I sit in my center watching the blurs of it and adjusting to this ever changing me.

**************************************

Draped In Glory

I once believed that if I were a man
My life would be different
My longings were for

The power and dignity given
To men without question

I wished that I had this assumption

Granted to me as a woman

But I was young when these thoughts
Lighted upon me and I had no inkling
Of my own empowerment as a woman
The years have taught me differently

The world has a popular view of how
Things should be for men and for women

In my youth I didn't know

That I could choose
Another way of creating how I would be
Disregarding the well worn path of
All those societal role assignments

that had come before me

In saying that I am woman I say
That I am a creature with softness
That is learned by knowing hardness in her self
As female I am able to wander into many
Places unafraid of what will be found
Inside the inner chambers of her heart

And I, in my womanhood, know that
My reality is a thing created by
The products of my imaginations
Like a painter I paint my own canvas
As I see fit, disregarding what the
Majority would want or dare to see

I have been called witch, sorceress
Blasphamist, trader and I let the names
Drip down and over me knowing they
Do not fit me in any way at all
I am woman in her glory

Online Pictoral Art Exhibit

2006-04-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

The following link will take you to my online art exhibit. It is a traveling exhibit and is available upon request to show in your community. Please visit, read, feel, and respond if you are so inclined...

http://autobiographyartexhibit.blogspot.com/

Workshop for Adoptee Integration

2006-02-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

At the tail end of this posting is a web address of my blog. It describes a workshop that I am offering in my home town. I hope to bring it to a larger audience eventually. It grew out of an exploratory art class that I took where I created my own process of internal healing. My goal was to create a series of boxes that told the story of my life. Each box was interactive and told of milestones and important phases and feelings that have encompassed my life. The final piece to the work was a large canvas with a representation of me "out of the box". The art work has been exhibited twice now. It was in the exhibit venue that I got a larger view of my art piece.

As I created this art piece I worked with the writings of Caroline Myss, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and some of Carl Jung's work. Each spoke to me of archetypes and how the individual has within them these larger embodiments. The universal idea of orphan, mother, daughter, wife, and woman played major roles in assisting me in coming out of my own limited story.

When the art piece was completed and displayed it dawned upon me slowly that I had created my life story and had actually moved out of the role of victim in a very true sense. But what hit me like a ton of bricks is that I had told the story of the adoptee...the larger archetypal story complete with the healing and process stages without knowing that this was happening.

The workshop that I have put together is done really to respond to my longing to assist other adoptees in the healing potential that comes from telling your story and healing the fractured pieces in it in order to move on to a larger definition of yourself. The process has given me such a solid sense of who I am and allowed me to move out of the life long story of being an "adoptee". I will always hold this as a true part of my experience...but it no longer defines me...I have moved to a place where I can feel and be whatever self definition fits me now in my life. In essence I am free of the story and can create a whole new one....this is such a gift!

In the mean time if anyone would like to go to this workshop blog and give me some constructive criticism of it...I would be entirely grateful!

http://tellingyourstoryinart.blogspot.com/

The Subtle Feelings

2006-02-21T10:32:00.000-08:00

It’s one of those days…those days that feel heavy and wraps a sense of being lost around you. There is no reason for this dropping of heart that feels as if it could not easily be understood. In my reflection of this familiar lost place I recognize why I am in this mood. It is again that sense of leaving…ending…and having hope take your hand uneasily while mustering your courage as you clasp and grip the invitation.

I am 46 years old. Not a spring chicken, but I feel alive and vibrant. My mind and dedication and future plans are electric.

And then there is today with this reminder that I still visit the swamp land of my past in exotic and subtle ways. My adoption happened in 1964 which left the first 5 years of my life full of foster homes, neglect, abuse, and confusion. These veils of emotion still are part of the garment that my emotional life wears. You would think that we would shed them after years of self reflection, healing, and integration. What I know now is they never go away, they simply find a subtleness that at times is unrecognizable.

This is what is happening today.

It is Tuesday. This past weekend I had a celebratory two days with long time friends and new friends. My friends and I have had a Native American circle of healing together for many years. We have practiced Michael Harner’s Shamanic Journey work since 1988 together. It has been a couple of years since we have joined our circle together again in my home. The circle has encompassed White Feather, the medicine man for the Wampanoag tribe on Chappaquiddick. He has joined our healing circle and has blessed us with pipe ceremony and sweat lodge work. We had a glorious healing weekend and the group members each broke open their hearts. I am the only adoptee in the circle, but we recognize each other through the challenges and circumstances we struggle to overcome in our lives. These are my family members who completely see me. Today I felt for the first time that I had a circle of family behind me that I could fall into and they would catch me.

How strange that this realization would sit along side this deep grey green feeling of loss today. There is the subtlety. I recognize the sadness after they returned to their prospective homes in other towns and some in other states. I am alone in the quiet today much like the aloneness and quiet of the bedroom of the daughter of the foster parents who took me in or the quiet of the corner of the playhouse on the black top at the orphanage. That small sad child sits with me today and I hold her and coo to her and whisper that all will be well.

Triad Member Blogs

2006-02-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

The following is a resource list of triad member blogs online:
http://miassavinggrace.blogspot.com/2006/01/mias-saving-grace-journey-to.html
http://haggardoldpsycho.blogspot.com/
http://paragraphein.blogspot.com/2006/02/little-low.html
http://everyscarisabridge.blogspot.com/
http://nancyverrier.com
http://adoptioncrossroads.org
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950/?20069
http://lovechild-myreunion.blogspot.com/
http://emptycerealbox.wordpress.com/

Daniel Part Two - Hope in What Felt Hopeless

2006-01-28T08:26:00.000-08:00

For over two years I wrote my brother in prison. The attempt to take his life by other inmates in the general population due to his status as an informant, which reduced his sentence down to three years instead of ten, resulted in his placement in solitary confinement for his own protection. In a tiny cell with a radio, books, and letters from family he found his way back to himself. Each day he made a schedule for himself. He would read, exercise, and listen to radio talk shows and music. The discipline he learned as a Navy Seal resurfaced. The prison life placed external controls in his life that freed him and mandated that he find his resources and tools inside himself. He also found time to search his heart and soul. He had almost three years to clean his body of meth which he had used daily since 1997. He built new behaviors and thinking patterns and came back to a state of health. The resiliency found in the human spirit is an amazing thing.

As his sister it was difficult to know that he was living in a room that was 5 x 8 feet every day with few people to talk to or to assist him in this grave situation. My heart broke every time I entertained the idea that he wasn’t being held or that he wasn’t receiving any kind of human touch and that this had been so for most of his life. His drug dealing days brought him lots of money and lots of loss and finally cement walled confinement. My brother was never much of a criminal in the long term as his mental instability would get in the way. Depression would take any gains away from him. His life never included a long term job or relationship of any kind. I have often thought that drug dealing and use was a way for him to build a community. People would come back to him over and over for their drug and thus keep a connection with him. This may have been the only behavior that he cultivated consistently in order to connect with others. Our adopted family was ill equipped to help him and his lack of ability to connect with them made family painful and absent. Prison became the catalyst and womb which has brought him back to life.

Since his release in May of 2005 his life has transformed. My trip out there in May was a show of support and love. In 2005 my life was on the road to earning another master’s degree. My studies during the last year of his prison term were as a MSW (master of social work) student. I did an internship at Taunton State Hospital (a psych hospital) on a locked unit for adult males who were forensically involved and had dual diagnosis (drug abuse/addiction and major mental illness). Little did I know when I began my MSW program that I would be in training for eight months on how to assist my brother in stepping into a new life. My learning gave me tools in many of the major areas of challenge that my brother faced during his transition from prison.

He was released from prison into a supervised prison release program which the state called a halfway house (this has political implications as the community was unaware of the real nature and purpose of this particular “halfway house”). There were many restrictions consciously placed on him during the six months while he was there that played a role in how he integrated back into the community.

My trip to be with him and support him was risky because there was the possibility that I would only see him for 20-40 minutes a day at the halfway house and that I would have to make connections for him to services etc. on my own. My adopted family supported us emotionally and financially during this journey and was involved via phone daily. We were lucky because my brother’s career counselor bent some rules on our behalf and each day she gave him passes to job search affording us 8 hours together each day. Under this pass we got food stamps, free health clinic services, a VA doctor and social worker, visited his probation officer together, apartment hunted, purchased a used car and got repairs done, and visited Baskin & Robins for the soothing of our hearts. We talked about the challenges and symptoms of his mental illness and embraced his strengths and potentials. We laughed, we hugged, we cried. We stood in food lines, free health clinic lines, and food stamp lines. We grasped each moment and pushed out the boundaries of them so that we could make up for all the lost years. I looked into the eyes and listened to stories of those in lines with us; their hope, their challenges, their spirits and even their gratitude. My heart broke for the world and I wondered how people could find gratitude in the face of such challenge. The system had thrown them away and made it so difficult to find a path back. I vowed that my brother would not be thrown away. However, it was not my vow that brought my brother back.

During our time together our biological sister called. We were reunited with Terry first and then 4 years later reunited with our birth parents. All three of us were together for each of the reunions. The call from Terry informed us that our mother was in grave medical distress. She had been in a nursing home due to her mental illness by the assistance of my sister Terry for the previous two years. She had been doing really well. Medication was given on a daily basis and the stable environment afforded her access to her life in a more productive way. I had begun writing her very often while she was in the nursing home. I sent her care packages with clothing, treats, and personal essentials. I began to let her in a bit more. Her mental illness made connecting with her too frightening for me. But her placement and stability had me entertaining thoughts of visiting her. The phone call from Terry changed this plan.

The news was grave and the description of my mother’s bloated face and body and connecting tubes to her was almost more than I could bear. She had been on the life support machine for about a week. Terry was calling because the decision to take her off life support needed to be made. The doctor and medical team reported that she would not survive off of the life support due to the inability of her lungs to support her. We all wondered why they were asking us to sign off on this decision. We weren’t even legally connected to her anymore. We weren’t legally her children. It was so odd, but the hospital insisted on the follow through of obtaining all of our notarized signatures and statements giving permission to remove Sandy from life support. Even the law seems to boil down to blood connections regardless of circumstances. Biological connections are primal and I think that this bond is understood viscerally by everyone and so the documents stating that we had legally been relinquished meant very little in the face of my mother’s death. So we all complied. How strange it was that my mother died while I was with my brother who I had seen once in 11 years and then again in these present circumstances. My brother and I were present on the phone when they pulled the plug and we were present on the phone during the memorial service. She passed away without much ado while my sister cried at her side giving her permission to pass and stating that Danny and Gwennie and herself forgive her and love her. In the aftermath of this experience my brother and I had no words to explain what this meant inside of us. Dan shed no tears.

My brother and I continued on in the face of the emotional whirlwind encompassing us. Sitting in the hotel room we phoned apartments, potential jobs, services, and made appointment after appointment. Our day was punctuated by the phone calls into the halfway house required by law every 2 hours. Dan had to be where he said he was and to confirm this he needed signatures wherever he went. The pressure this created was challenging. Everyone wanted him to be accountable for his whereabouts and his activity and little was really done to support his efforts. He had to fight one system (the prison release program at the halfway house) to find his way to services in larger systems like health care, food, shelter, and VA services. He was now a felon and getting a job that did not jeopardize his disability benefits, which were his life line, seemed almost impossible. Even finding an apartment or room to rent as a felon seemed impossible. Dan was committed to being honest on every front in regards to his past. In fact it has been Dan’s discipline, commitment, and resilience that have saved his life. He truly learned new ways of living his life that do not resemble the patterns of a life of drugs and drug dealing.

He is taking a mild medication for his mental illness and still is challenged daily with hallucinations and is also taking an anxiety medication to help him through social situations. He is using his psychiatrist and following the requirements of his probation. He has faced several challenging situations that could have pushed anyone to give up and revert back to old and hopeless behaviors. He had a job for several months were he initiated a program and won company wide recognition for his work and faced social slamming by his fellow co-workers, but he didn’t internalize it as his failure. He did give up the job due to the threat to his disability check as the hours were more than the governmental system would allow.

Dan and I talk on the phone and write letters a lot. He is living on the other side of the US and so visiting together isn’t possible on a regular basis. We check in as do my other adopted sisters and adopted mother. During the time that Dan was in prison I connected with my adopted sisters. We worked through a lot of old family issues so that we could understand, connect, and love Dan. For me it meant taking a lot of risks by talking about mental illness and drug abuse and helping my family understand the kind of assistance and support that Dan really needed. It was extremely anxiety producing for me as it meant risking being rejected by my adopted family. Their religious background of Christian Science made for a very narrow way of thinking about and seeing the world. To the credit of my sisters they walked with me and loved me through the process of creating a larger world view for my family and ultimately for my brother.

Today Dan’s hope and our family’s hope for the stability and personal thriving in Dan’s life have come to fruition. Dan was released from the “halfway house” and found a boarding house to live with 3 other gentlemen. He has a large bedroom and a guest house where he keeps his drums. He joined two bands where he is the drummer and after two jobs (one as a gas station cashier and the other as a salesman for a major food distributor) he has settled into a new financial project. The challenge has been to acquire a job that pays enough for him to live comfortably without jeopardizing his disability check. While he was working he stored up canned and nonperishable foods in preparation if he found that he was out of work. He continuously plans responsibly for the future. Together he and I brainstorm ways that he can earn money honestly and make ends meet in a way that doesn’t feel like he is constantly living on the edge. As we focused on his strengths and past successes this lead us to his experience and success as a Navy Seal and his commitment to fitness and the health that this brings to his life. Based on these two things he developed a fitness program. It is a civilian Navy Seal fitness program. He developed the curriculum and found locations where he could have classes. He promoted it with flyers and ads. In the process we found that there are other such programs going on in the United States. But the city that he lives in found the idea fascinating. Two major newspapers approached him and did articles on his classes. A television station broadcast a short segment on the program. One of the city’s major community center programs requested that he head up a community outreach program with his classes with a commitment that they want to support individuals who find themselves in Dan’s situation so that they can integrate into the community successfully. One of the city’s police departments contacted Dan and is actively working to have him train police officers and get them up to a higher standard of fitness. He has begun to fly and the world is responding to him. My brother has taken hope and molded it into something quite beautiful. I am proud beyond words of him and I pray each day that he will continue to fly with such beautiful colors and that the world around him will embrace him.

Daniel Part One - The All American Smile

2005-12-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

(This is my biological brother Dan. We were adopted together in 1964.)

You had the all American smile. You were blonde haired, blue eyed, and offered all the opportunities any man would hope to have in their young life. The future held such grand potential. You were the son our parents wanted. They chose you from the line up. They peered through that glass window into the great room and you lit up their faces. Adoption had become our mantra and here it was for both of us. I was happy to be on your coattails.

In a whirlwind we were on East River Road in a blue mansion of a house and people to call mom and dad. We were ragamuffins, the pictures proved that. Those black and white dog eared photos of the day we were adopted standing in the entrance hall with raggedy suitcases. Your hair was wispy and you had a shy smile spread across your face and we both had dirty little secrets in our pockets. It was time to forget them, push them as deeply inside the linings of our memory and begin a new day, a new life for these people who wanted to love us.

My mission as a little girl was to be your shadow. Any glance my way would grant you a cross eyed look or goofy action given your way in the hopes of a smile from you. That big, straight toothed grin that meant the world to me. I suppose I was driven to be just two steps behind you because I didn’t want to lose you again like we had so many times before we joined the Sampson family.

My first memory of losing you was when I was so little I could barely see over the top of the mattresses of the beds in the children’s ward. They had separated us. I went looking for you with Miss Lee, a large black woman who held me ‘til I fell asleep many nights, chasing me around with concern trying to keep me under wraps. I was looking for you to find any sign of you, but within the walls of that orphanage you were no where to be found.

Being adopted meant that we were not going to be separated again. That I wouldn’t wake in the morning and pack my bags again and watch through the back window of a station wagon as they drove me away from where I knew you were. Being adopted meant that we could breathe again and that nothing big was lurking around the corner anymore. I was wrong though, wasn’t I?

It wasn’t surprising to me when mom told me that you were going away to Franklin Academy and 6 months later that I was going to Palmer House. We had become too much for them. Our needs were bigger than what they had expected. They had already raised three perfect daughters. We were ragamuffins trying to keep the secrets down; trying to be perfect, too.
Drugs helped for you. Horrible migraines helped me and the tantrums and the tears that just kept everyone around me exasperated. You, however, began to disappear. Still we never talked about the past or our lost sister. We hardly ever talked because we rarely saw each other. We’d have two weeks at Christmas and two weeks in the summer before we headed off to our assigned camps. There were those rare conversations when you shared your recurring hallucinations left over from an acid trip you had taken. There was evidence that there was something not quite right when I noticed you couldn’t remember the last time we had spent time together. The marijuana was taking its toll or so I thought. The petty thieving, the running away from school, and finally being kicked out of the house and family when you were 18 seemed to be the ticket that sent you fully on the road that you would never seem to exit from. I was away at school, no windows to watch through as you walked away, but empty bitterness towards the parents who said that they would love us forever. The deep hurt of it still echoes inside of me.

You were 33 when you got your first official diagnosis: Manic Depressive with a Schizophrenic Affect. Did you tell the doctor that you had become a Navy Seal? That you had gone through the most grueling training a man can withstand and made it through with honor? Did I ever tell you how much I admire you? How proud I am of you? Do the policemen who find you wandering the streets at 3:00am know that they are looking at a Navy Seal? Or do they simply see a man confused and wandering sleepless in the night?

Statistics tell us that 10-15% of those who are in mental hospitals and prisons are adoptees; children who have grown into adults who were abandoned and abused as children. Those statistics, those numbers, those totals each have names and faces. We are two of those. What is it to have been held captive by a mentally ill mother who passed this on to her offspring? I know in your struggle you have attempted, like me, to shake it off. To forget that our pockets are full of things best left alone. But they do indeed come back to haunt us and so as we grow older we are forced to pull them out one at a time and look them in the face or they shall overcome us and direct our lives without our permission.

If I could have taken all of your pain away I would gladly have done so. If I could take away your prison sentence and the years that you will be locked away like an animal in a cage I would in a heartbeat. But I am left in the position that I have always been in and that is in this place where all I can do is watch you go, or leave, or fall, or find torment. I have listened to your ranting of your mission as "god’s soldier" while you sell drugs on the street for six months and then are homeless with nothing for the other six months of the year as you fall victim to hopelessness. Your spiral up and your spiral down brought you to an underworld I know nothing about. I know of your inner sadness from that night when we were teenagers and you got slam drunk and talked about how sad you were until you passed out. I felt so lost by your sense of sadness and so powerless.

Here I am at 43 and still as helpless as that little girl looking for you in the children’s ward. I have sent out my love to you for forever. It is all I have to do. I have tried to reach you and you are unreachable. Mental illness takes all of that from the individual: connection, family, love, and stability. It has taken part of my heart as well.

In my mind I will always remember my brother Danny and that wide, perfect all American smile and the potential that life had to offer. I will try not to swallow the bitterness of how life played out the hands we were dealt and our pocket full of dreams. I will forever hold the hope that life can change and shift and move like the sands of the desert and that even from a wasteland like a desert or broken hearts, miracles can always happen.

(Note: This was written in 2003 when my brother was in prison. He has since served his sentence and has been drug free for three years. We are in constant contact even though I am on the east coast and he is in New Mexico. Things are vastly different now. More on this in another post.)

Love Emerges in Memory

2005-12-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

It is the little things that bring us to our hearts. We search for the answer to our longings in big feelings and big events, as if the sky would open and out would pour the liquid that would heal all of our wounds. I know, as sure as I breathe, that the little things; those small images and inklings can be passed over so easily. If we can but recognize them and risk the holding of them for just one moment that this is what opens up vast understandings, can become liquid pouring from the sky and change our paradyme completely.

My daddy was not a tall man. He was never a hero. He made choices that I could easily condemn him for if my mind was made up to do so. I didn’t know what he gave me in my life until my children were grown. The love of mattress ticking lead me to my daddy’s goodness. It was the sight of mattress ticking that opened up this feeling in me of love, of safety, of hope.

When I met my sister, after our 25 year separation, she told me stories about him from our childhood, things that I could not remember. He was poor in those years of the 1960s. Three children were beyond what he could fathom dealing with or supporting. But when we three were with him he mustered up his heart. There was no food to speak of unless saltine crackers and water fit into this category. He had us sit at the kitchen table and mind our manners as we crumbled crispy crackers and washed them down with water. He made a bed for us on a large mattress by the window with blue and white ticking and buttons all over. It didn’t matter that there were no sheets or that our stomachs were rumbling, for when we were with our Dad the sustenance that fed us was his wide grin, large hands, and the safety in his gaze. In his face we found love.

Blue mattress ticking is my little reminder of what love is and the power of its longevity. It tells me that somewhere inside of me I chose to hang on to this rightness in my father instead of the wrongness that raged around me when I was a child. Somewhere in this child’s choice is god.
The first time I remember seeing blue and white mattress ticking as an adult a feeling of great love rushed through me. Not having been reunited with my sister yet, I had no idea why this would have happened, this feeling of love washing over me from the sight of an old mattress covered in stripes and lined up buttons.

Adoptees Share Your Stories...

2005-11-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

"Our mothers

ancient

given to us for life

forever

standing in the windows

forehead glued ot the pane

send forth their absence

watch out for us

who go away

who come back

who do not come back"

-Jerzy Ficowski

Share Your Story in the Comment Section

Adoptees need to hear each other tell of their experiences. How we all want to know that we are not alone and that our experience has a universal ring to it and a path that has been trodden to familiarity that leads to wholeness and a release of grief. Share, share, share so our voices ring together even as they speak in their own singularity of experience.

Adoptee Identity

2005-11-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their

lives, power to retell it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as

times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts."

-Salman Rushdi

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Erik Erikson's theories on identity development have influenced our modern ideas about how humans develop through their life cycle. He was an adoptee. Erikson was birthed and raised by his biological mother and adopted by her husband after losing his biological father. Much of Erikson's work, in regards to human development, began in the seeds of his childhood that created a strong desire to find his own identity as a result of his experience with adoption. "Life history intersects history," he wrote and clearly he felt perched precariously on his family tree as he searched for his likeness in his forefathers, both adopted and biological.

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Erikson identified tasks that individuals must master from infancy until late in life as they become elderly. Adoptees fall into this developmental process because they are human, but as you will learn, if you read on, the adoptee has additional tasks at each developmental stage in which they must hurtle as they move through their life course.

The following are brief descriptions of Erik Erikson's

seven stages of human development:

Child Development:
Erikson's Oral-Sensory Stage Basic trust vs basic mistrust

Oral sensoryBirth to one year

Social mistrust demonstrated via ease of feeding, depth of sleep, bowel relaxation Depends on consistency and sameness of experience provided by caretakeer Second six-months teething and biting moves infant "from getting to taking" Weaning leads to "nostalgia for lost paradise" If basic trust is strong, child maintains hopeful attitude.
Erikson's Muscular-Anal Stage Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

1 year to 3 years

Biologically includes learning to walk, feed self, talk Muscular maturation sets stage for "holding on and letting go" Need for outer control, firmness of caretaker prior to development of autonomy Shame occurs when child is overtly self-conscious via negative exposure Self-doubt can evolve if parents overly shame child, e.g. about elimination
Erikson's Locomotor Genital Stage Initiative vs. Guilt

3 to 5 years

Initiative arises in relation to tasks for the sake of activity, both motor and intellectual Guilt may arise over goals contemplated (especially aggressive) Desire to mimic adult world; involvement in oedipal struggle leads to resolution via social role identification. Sibling rivalry frequent
Erikson's Latency Stage

6 to 11 years

Child is busy building, creating, accomplishing Receives systematic instruction as well as fundamentals of technology Danger of sense of inadequacy and inferiority if child despairs of his tools/skills and status among peers Socially decisive age
Erikson's Adolescent Stage 11 years and through end of adolescence Struggle to develop ego identity (sense of inner sameness and continuity) Preoccupation with appearance, hero worship, ideology Group identity (peers) develops Danger of role confusion, doubts about sexual and vocational identity Psychosocial moratorium, a stage between morality learned by the child and the ethics to be developed by the adult
Erikson's Adult Stages:

Early Adulthood

Intimacy vs. Isolation

Middle Adulthood:

Generativity vs. Self-absorption

Erikson's Maturity Stage:

The Aging Years

Integrity vs. Despair
*(This information was quoted from ChildStudy.net on the web.)

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There are seven core issues that face adoptees regardless of the circumstances of their adoption or characteristics of the individual adoptees. These coreissues are expected and evolve naturally from the nature of the adoptive experience.

These seven core issues for the adoptee are:

Loss
Rejection
Guilt & Shame
Identity
Intimacy
Mastery
Control
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The additional developmental tasks for the adoptee throughout their lives is the identifying and integrating of these seven core issues at each developmental stage. These core issues will challenge adoptees in mastering behaviors and feelings such as helplessness, impeding isolative behavior, lack of self-esteem, and obtaining and maintaining control over their lives. As the adoptee moves through these core issues at different developmental stages a sense of identity diffusion can be experienced. This might look like the adoptee having no clear path for their life, or an unrealistic sense of where their life is going, and a lack of a sense of who they are or what they believe and can lead to an inability to make a commitment to a particular identity.

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The search for identity commonly takes place during adolescence and in early adulthood, but for the adoptee this inability to develop a sense of whole self due to loss, grief, rejection, shame etc. moves the process of finding their identity into adulthood. The adoptee's dilemma around fitting into their adopted family can bring up a sense of being different and for some a feeling that they do not quite fit in. The sense of not fitting into either their adopted family or their birth family creates a lack of confidence inside the adoptee that a place has not been reserved for them in either family and can extend as far as feeling that they literally do not belong to or have a right to be a part of the human race. Reunion and completing the fractured story offers fodder for developing a solid self. Empowerment and reconnection to their biological family and history have the power to connect the adoptee to themselves and to assist them in fixing upon their sense of self in a committed way so that a solid identity evolves over time.

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At each stage of development the seven core issues will come into play and shape and mold the adoptee's identity by their ability to come to terms with the lack of knowledge of their history or the integration of their discovered and recovered history as a result of reunion with their biological family of origin. The adoptees sense of self or identity becomes more whole and solid over the life course when the issues around adoption are resolved and intergrated into their feelings of belonging and having the right to a place in the world.

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Interesting & Informing Links

2005-11-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

Yahoo Groups Get connected on the internet in yahoo groups. Talk with other adoptees. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfterTheSearch/

Stay connected and link in to online chat. We have an on-line chat room.We are there every evening after 11:30pm Eastern.Why not stop in and join us? You might find it helpful. Click below to go to chat: http://communities.msn.com/Adoptese

Emergency Medical Locators for Adoptees"Dedicated to those adopted whose lives are imperiled by medical Crisis,"http://www.adoption-free-search.org/Free Medical locations Locating and obtaining medical histories for the adoption community and all in need.1st family traces for transplants availableFax: 775-845-4334Staff members are online 24/7 To handle emergency searches. No one should die simply because they are adopted.Email: bobcrowter@hotmail.com

Adoption Crossroads, (HQ) 845-268-0283 (All days but Wednesday) Email: joesoll@adoptioncrossroads.org 74 Lakewood Dr., Congers, NY 10920 Other Meeting Locations: 444 East 76th St, NY City, Wednesday only: 212-988-0110

Schenectady, NY: 518-370-2558 (call for schedule)

Paramus, NJ: 973-427-4521, 201-843-9898 (call for schedule)

http://bastardette.blogspot.com/

The Daily Bastardette features daily commentary by Bastardette on issues of identity and adoptee rights including open records for adult adoptees, Baby Moses/Safe Haven laws, and any other atrocity the adoption industry and its paid lobbyists--not to mention deformer "friends"--can devise to maintain The Adoption Culture of Shame.

http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/

The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC) was established by Congress in 1987 to provide free information on all aspects of adoption. http://www.adoptionlawsite.org/main_cur.asp

Adoption LawSite created by The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital University Law School. The goal of this LawSite is to deliver a single online resource where prospective adoptive parents, biological parents, adoption and child welfare lawyers, juvenile and family court judges and child advocates of all kinds can turn to for child welfare and adoption law information.Adoption LawSite created by The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital University Law School. The goal of this LawSite is to deliver a single online resource where prospective adoptive parents, biological parents, adoption and child welfare lawyers, juvenile and family court judges and child advocates of all kinds can turn to for child welfare and adoption law information.

http://www.families.com/forums/

This is a great adoption forum if you want to connect and communicate with other triad members.

http://unlockingtheheart.com/www/A_buy_tape.htm

This website sells a movie entitled Unlocking the Heart about adoption and healing. There is also a curriculum on adoption and issues around adoption.

I Am Not A Poet

2005-11-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

"When it's dark enough, you can see the stars."

Charles Beard

I am not a poet. My poetry writing burst forth prior to, during, and after my reunification with my birth family. I had last written poems in the first grade. A year after my reunion experience I put the poet's pen down and have not lifted it since. That was 13 years ago. (Carl Jung theorized about poetry and psychology. I wish I knew more of what he thought on this subject, perhaps one day I will spend some time on this very task.) What is fascinating to me is that after my reunion with my birth family all I wanted to do, was impassioned and obsessively motivated to do, was write poetry. I produced I'd say between 40 and 50 poems. It was as if the normal language that addressed my life no longer sufficed or served my experience justly. There was a language and a rhythm to the lyrically beated patterned expression found in the writing of poetry that gave my long and silenced history an artistic and almost formless or unruled expression. I treasure these poems. They are short lines that my soul spewed and danced out into existence after a very long exile. They are encapsulated and controlled versions of desperate inner turmoil and dark pain. When I wrote them I reread each of them over and over until my mind wore a familiar path between the words. It was as if the ghost kingdom of Betty Jean Lifton slipped through the ether and into my solid world through these imaging words and phrases. I am not a poet...but it took a poem to express my deep inner world that housed a secreted abandoned self as regularly organized every day language found no way of connecting to my experience, emotions, or split soul part.

Becoming Whole

2005-11-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

"You see the one that I am, not the one that I was.

But the one that I was is also still part of myself."

-Jean Amery

__________________________

My birth name is Gwendolyn Ray. I was named after my maternal grandmother, Gwendolyn Painter who died in 1963 from breast cancer. I have always imagined that I have her grace and poise and I am sure that I carry many of her shadows. In 1987 I met my maternal grandfather and full biological sister. In 1992, at the age of 32, I met my biological mother and father. I am one of three children from my birth mother and father and the youngest of five children in my adopted family. I was taken as a ward of the state of Michigan during the first five years of my life and adopted in 1964. My adopted name was Gwendolyn Carrie Sampson.

______________________________________

As I grew up I developed a split sense of myself in the outer world and in my inner world. I was the adoptee who always wore a mask of perfection and I was also the secreted abandoned child who was ashamed of her passion, energy, and difference. The inner dance of boxing off my authentic self and fanning the flame of my masked self took on the energy of my life. In the process of finding the truths in my life and conneting my fractured life story I have become whole by integrating these two selves. As a result I have gained a sense of identity that I never dreamed possible. The integration of internal split selves is possible. When you are whole and find your authenticity the world becomes your oyster and belonging is never up for questioning.

_______________________________________

Betty Jean Lifton writes about the adoptees sense of having a split self and states in her book, Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness, that the goal of the adoptee "is to illuminate the dark unconscious of the self and make it whole." An adoptee's lack of a complete personal history is a hardship for the adoptee and a lack of a biological sense of himself is created by the separation from his biological family of origin. The adoptee is unable to identify wholely with either her biological family or her adopted family and as a result is left with internal questions that are unanswerable without the information that a genetic heritage can give them. One adoptee said of themselves in Nancy Verrier's latest book: "I have, as an adoptee, a Swiss Cheese identity because there are lots of holes in it!"

______________________________

The lack of personal history that is solid and based in truths creates a split identity in the adoptee and steals the individual's sense of belonging not only to a family, but also to society. At some point in the adoptee's life they need to find and face the truths of their life story and their origins. This means that many adoptees will forge ahead, almost driven for answers, to embark upon the task of searching and finding their birth family and ultimately themselves.

_______________________________

The process of finding birth family will plunge the adoptee on to what Joseph Campbell called the hero's journey where they will face the internal dark side of themselves. It is through this hero's journey of finding their origins and completing their interrupted story that they will find the pearl inside themselves and rescue their soul. Completing the quest to find one's story will bring wholeness of identity and belonging to the adoptee.

The American Adoption Congress

2005-11-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

The American Adoption Congress is composed of individuals, families and organizations committed to adoption reform. AAC represents all those whose lives are touched by adoption.Through education and advocacy the AAC promotes honesty, openness, and respect for family connections in adoption, foster care, and assisted reproduction. This organization is committed to increasing public awareness about the realities of adopted life for birth and adoptive families, changing public policies related adoption practices to acknowledge adoption as an extension of family, changing legislation in all states so that there is guaranted access to identifying information for all adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families through records access and preservation of open adoption agreements, and the right for birth familty reunification for all adults, without prior restraint, through search and support group networking and/or social service assistance.
(This information is quoted from the AAC website at www.americanadoptioncongress.org)