Tags
adoptee, adoption, adoption child, discover, empower, healing, separation, wounded
Note from Elaine: I continue to write adoption stories. Clara Jordan, heroine of my recent suspense novel All the Wrong Places, travels from Virginia to New Mexico hoping to locate an unknown birthmother. Instead of finding roots, she falls in love with a two-timer named Henry, a sly character who betrays her. She runs further into trouble as she searches petroglyphs for traces of a mother she’s never known. All the Wrong Places is available from http://www.pocolpress.com or from Amazon. My novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, takes our protagonist to the shore temple of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India. Participating in NaNoWriMo, I plan to finish the first draft this month. Stay tuned!
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It’s been said that trauma is not a mystery, that it attaches itself to you in a way that’s hard to undo. My story, as related in The Goodbye Baby, offers living proof. Being an adoptee has added melodrama to my life, created a passion for writing, and ultimately inspired me to take off the masks and to discover who I really am.
Though I was fortunate enough to land in an adoptive family who loved and cherished me, it could not make up for losing that first “mother connection.” My birth mother and I said goodbye before I started first grade, and I waited 38 years for her to come back into my life. I was deeply wounded by the separation.
My struggles have been with feeling abandoned, isolated, and rejected. I’ve worried for years that I will be misunderstood and that I’m simply not good enough- as a daughter, a friend, a partner, a mother, or even as a human being.
With my infant son in Greece
Because of being adopted, I felt small and insignificant. Probably because adoption wasn’t something my family discussed, my negative assumptions became deeply embedded. Throughout my adult years, I accomplished a great deal, but in my mind, I was never admirable. Harmful pangs of inadequacy took root and shaped my outlook, my decisions, my disastrous romantic choices. Until I re-read my diaries, I never realized that I myself had invented the self-damaging myth.
How did I deal with my adoption-induced complexes? My adoptive parents had to raise a delinquent teenager who drank excessively, stayed out too late and attracted bad boyfriends. As I grew older, I tended to be an over-achiever: running nine marathons to lower my finishing time, yet always “keeping score” and endlessly coming up short.
Thirty years ago, when I first started to write about my adoption, the title of my book was Reunions. My plan was to meet both my biological parents and write about finding the missing puzzle pieces. I met my original parents, but the reunions were not what I hoped for. The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained. Only writing The Goodbye Baby completed the picture.
After both sets of parents died, I found that looking into the past gave me the wisdom to see where I’d been and how to go forward.
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What my adoption has taught me is that the world reflects my inner reality, that my happiness or unhappiness depend on my actions and not on outside forces. I’ve learned that it is never too late to make a fresh start.
I have always known I would be a writer. In the summer of 1962, I wrote in my diary,
“Some of this frantic recording is wasted energy. How can I have a future as a writer?…I need to find something to say.”
The theme of adoption is that “something.”
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and sneak previews of her newest novel, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.
The Goodbye Baby 
My “something” is that, although I always had the spirit of a tomboyish adventurer, at puberty I developed breasts better suited to a porn star. My doctor told me I was “fat” and put me on diet pills. I became obsessed with dieting and convinced that I was too obese and clumsy for the active, travel-filled life that I wanted to lead. It took me 30 years to realize that I wasn’t “fat” in the first place (I just had more curves than a 12-year-old was “supposed” to have), and I don’t let anything stop me now … but all those years of feeling like an elephant in a china shop have left their mark. (Interestingly, my current writing project features a heroine who’s struggling to overcome some of the same issues.)
I can relate to your perspective, Paula. Because of my weird body self-image when I was a mere 8 or 9 years old, I’ve fought poor posture ever since. My adoptive father wrote a letter (that I wasn’t supposed to see) describing me and my brother as “very large children.” Compared to my petite adoptive parents, we were. Feelings of being gawky plagued me as a young person. My parents signed me up for an excruciating after-school activity called “social dancing.” As a too-tall seventh grader, I towered towered over any dance partner. My alignment, quite poor to this day, was terrible. Both literally and figuratively, I “drooped.” AT long last, I’ve accepted this defect, dealt with it and done the best I can to stand up straight. I have quit berating myself, but it has taken all these years. We do what we can!
This is fascinating to me. For years I resisted adoption as my topic. In writing groups, people would respond when I wrote about being adopted, but I went “there” rarely. There was power in it, but it scared me. I tried to write without writing about adoption, but I eventually realized it wouldn’t work. Adoption is what I know.
Glad to have discovered your blog.
Thank you, Rebecca.
I am here to help anyone that I can who is going through the same issues that I struggled, and continue to struggle with. I realized that Adoption is a part of who I am, but it does make me who I am entirely.
You should not fear writing about, or discussing your adoption. It’s part of you. If people cannot accept your writing, specifically when involving your adoption, then it’s as simple as they don’t have to read it.
I never wrote in my diaries for the purpose of pleasing anyone else, it was my escape route and what healed me.
Let’s stay in touch– I am looking forward to reading your blog posts.
Wow! This could be one particular of the most helpful blogs We’ve ever arrive across on this subject. Basically Fantastic. I’m also a specialist in this topic so I can understand your hard work.
Thank for the kind response to my blog! I am working to help/inspire others in the community who are struggling with their adoption status. May I ask what you specialize in?
I enjoyed reading ur blog I have recently wanted to write more about my thoughts and feelings about being adopted but have been to afraid to because I don’t want to offend my siblings and other family members. Both a parents have died, so they aren’t a concern.
Hi Ann,
Thank you for the kind words! Regarding your personal worries about writing your thoughts/feelings about being adopted… I encourage you to go for it! I struggled with the same worries when I first was questioning whether or not to publish my memoir. I found that writing my feelings was a part of my healing process. Going back and seeing my struggles, accomplishes, etc. was the most rewarding part of writing, because it allowed me to see how far I had made it.
Your family should not take offense to your words. If it is coming from the heart, it doesn’t matter what they think. I have found it better to get your thoughts on and on paper, for yourself, not for others. If they have a problem with it… then so be it. Write for you.
Let’s keep in touch. I’d love to help you!
This statement is so powerful, and I think people could debate it’s meaning for a long time, based on their own experiences: “The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained.”