Breaking Through Writer’s Block

Tags

Adaptation, adoption, Contemplation, Discipline, Nature, Novel-in-progress, Snow, Wildlife, Winter's Day

For months, I couldn’t write. Started a decade ago and worked on intermittently, my “novel-in-progress,” wasn’t progressing. Was it ever going to grow into an actual first draft? It had a title — The Hand of Ganesha ~ Clara and Dottie go to India— but after 200 pages, I’d stopped. The two protagonists, like me, were adopted daughters. Unlike me, they had not dealt with the issues of adoption.That’s what brought about their trip to India. I loved the idea behind the book, but it was not going to write itself.
Oh, there were plenty of excuses. Last Fall, I had the house updated: a new exterior stuccoing, fresh paint inside, and new flooring. I was engaged in a year-long decluttering campaign, selling or donating at least a fourth of my possessions. How could I write with so many demands on my time?
Then, just as I was about to knuckle down and get to work, along came the best ski season in years. I’ve loved skiing ever since moving to Northern New Mexico in the 1960s, and, like many of my friends who are still skiing, I want to enjoy the sport while still able.
How could I write with fresh powder snow in the mountains?
And so it went until one snowy morning when a blizzard made it risky to drive anywhere, much less up the windy ski basin road. OK, I told myself, time is running out. I don’t have forever.The clock is ticking. Our days are numbered. Driven by such thoughts, I gathered the photo albums of a research trip I’d made to southern India. I’d start by looking through pictures of the Shore Temple complex at Mahabalipuram. This would be the setting of my novel’s last section. Memories of the trip and of the novel I’d first envisioned came flooding back and I picked up at page 201, where I’d left off.
Just then outside my office window, four deer wandered into the snow-filled yard. Noses to the ground, they began grazing. Apparently there was new grass growing under the snow. They would find food no matter what. After watching them until they ambled on to feed in the yards of my neighbors, I opened my laptop and resumed. I wrote for an hour and continued each day throughout the week. The momentum will continue. In a mysterious way, the deer inspired me to get busy. and just write. Thank you, neighborhood deer.

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Have encounters with nature ever helped you in mysterious ways? Please send me your stories through this website. Especially if they relate to adoption or to writing, I’d be interested in publishing them. And join me on alternate Mondays for an adopted daughter’s reflections on adoption and life.

Adoption Recovery 101

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptation, adoptee, adoption, labyrinth, Reflections, Sarah Ban Breathnach

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

…Nothing so wise as a circle. -Rilke

This morning’s labyrinth walk yielded reflections that I’d like to share with you…

With the publication of The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries, a memoir comprised of diary entries from the 1950s through 1980s, I began to heal from years of repressed anger and pain. I forgave the past and myself. I redirected my imagination. Instead of dwelling on all those invisible wounds (from being separated from my birthparents), I was able to focus on writing.

After The Goodbye Baby, I decided that I’d moved on. Producing a memoir was instructive and healing. Helpful as it was, however, it wasn’t enough. Or to put it more accurately, it didn’t last. The stress and instability of my first five years of life sometimes come back to haunt me.

Here’s my newest “rescue remedy,” a three-pronged remedy for adoption recovery.

ACCEPTANCE –
Realizing the difference between dreams and expectations. As Sarah Ban Breathnach recommends in Simple Abundance, I’m following her recommendation:
“You dream. Show up for work. Then let Spirit deliver your dream to the world.”

WALKING-
I do this daily and I reaffirmed this intention with creating a new edition of my             guidebook Santa Fe on Foot. (www.santafeonfoot.com)

READING-
Allowing time each day for books.
I spend time reading for edification, for entertainment, for information, and (sometimes) sheer escape.

We really do not know what’s in store for us. As Sarah Breathnach recommends, “…we’ll only find out once we start investing our emotions in authentic expression, and not in specific outcomes.” Don’t get caught up in the “delivery details.”

Keep your dreams even as you accept what IS. Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for adoption thoughts.

 

 

 

BOOKS and My Father Richard ~Adopting the Past

Tags

Adaptation, adoptee, adoption, adoptive parents, Bedtime Comfort, Books, Enrichment, Family history, memories, reading

 I grew up with two family trees -1. biological 2. adoptive.

My father at age five. Even then he was a bibliophile.

Years after being adopted, I met my birthparents, and that was helpful if not completely rewarding. I was fortunate to end up with my adoptive parents (family tree #2), and in that vein I’m talking a look at family history from the adoptive side.

My father died on a May morning in Virginia, the state where I grew up and he had lived for 40 years. Richard Leonard Beard was my hero, my role model and — after I moved from Virginia to New Mexico in the 1960s — my favorite pen pal. Before the cruel dementia that ravaged his mind and memory, he was a brilliant and much-loved college professor first at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and then at the University of Virginia (UVa). Of the many gifts my father imparted to me, I cherish most his love of books.

Since that sad, raw Tuesday when Richard gave up his battle for life, I’ve savored memories of this wonderful man. None have been more heartwarming than those provided as I go through his books, which my mother sent me, carton by carton, over a period of three months.

My father was a lover of the written word, a true bibliophile. The oldest of four

Fifties Family -Growing up in university towns.

children growing out in rural northern Ohio, he was the only one who went to college. The family moved from a farm in Hancock County to Findlay, Ohio, and there for the first time he had access of a library. He started reading voraciously and never stopped. In high school, young Richard was president of 38 clubs, including the book club, the drama team, and the debating club. Ultimately, my father became professor of guidance and counseling, before which he was a high school English teacher. His love of books was conveyed to a multitude of fortunate students, and later, to me.

Times were tough for my biological mother, and-never mind books- she had enough trouble housing and feeding me and my brother. In fact, she couldn’t, and that’s when my new Mom and Dad came into the picture. I can’t recall seeing a book before my “rescue” from grim foster homes and what I considered an orphan’s life.

In the wonderful new home where my brother and I were treated like royalty rather than unwanted burdens, I recall our father reading to us every night. There must have been other bedtime stories, but my most vivid memory is of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Night after night, I would fall asleep to my father’s rich baritones, with visions of the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Jabberwock. He instilled in me a passion for reading and transformed what had been a bleak, booklets childhood. I grew up rich in words, finding through books fantasy, adventure, edification and a world apart that seemed to make up for the first five years of my life.

During the mid-1950s, In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Richard established an

Ahead of his time, Dr. Beard spearheaded a book TV program in the 50s.

educational TV program in conjunction with the University of North Carolina, based on books and reading. He was the host and I was a frequent guest. In the meantime, his personal book collection was growing. In thirty years, it would reach over 5,000 volumes. (To be Continued)

Next Week: “Books and My Father Richard,” Part II. Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on adoption, adapting, and life.

Remembering Cindy

Tags

Acceptance, Adaptation, adoption, Burnt Mountain, Cindy Bellinger, Dear Diary Readings, Los Alamos, memories, Paths, Santa Fe Film Festival

It’s been said that we do not truly die until the last person on Earth who remembers us is gone. -Unknown

On the long path of “adoption recovery,” I’ve learned a few things. One of the most important is this: memories have the power to hurt or to heal. At the loss of a friend who dies, I’m heartbroken and grief-stricken. These are demoralizing blows, painful and bitter. On the other hand, those who I’ve loved are in my heart. Even though they may be physically gone, the departed can still be part of our lives. They can even teach us, which is the focus of today’s posting.

Cindy reading about an old high school flame

My friend Cindy Bellinger died of cancer when she was barely sixty. A modern-day Renaissance woman, Cindy wrote, rode horses, taught, lived a fiercely independent life, and, a year before she died, fell in love with a wonderful man who became her soulmate. Recently, as I was cleaning my office, I came across a manuscript that I’d totally forgotten about. It was a draft of Cindy’s book Not a Rock Out of Place, and I recalled editing it for her and writing a recommendation. Before many people saw the final version, published by her company Blue Mesa Books, Cindy slipped away.

While living in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1980s, Cindy walked a forest path near Burnt Mountain. For four years, she did this nearly every day. In her “Pre-Amble” she writes, “The path that traversed Burnt Mountain didn’t take me deep into the wilds, but it brought me into some extraordinary happenings… On Burnt Mountain–with its trees, birds, butterflies, and grass–moments sparkled with the simplest wisdom, or the darkest truth. I’d take a question beneath a ponderosa and learn how to find the answer. I’d sit on a rock and the anger that accompanied me would melt away.”

Another aspect of Cindy that I cherish was her generously supportive nature. Cindy helped me during the first decade of this century by participating in my “Dear Diary” staged readings, benefit performances which we produced as fund-raisers for Santa Fe Film Festival. We held “cringe readings,” sharing selected excerpts from our adolescent diaries: Cindy, as she read from old diaries, was a star. Even as a young girl, she wrote with style and exquisite wordsmithing.

Dear Diary Readings 2009

I’ve adopted Cindy’s habit of walking the same path nearly every day. My route is not through a forest but up Sun Mountain. Thank you, Cindy, for inspiring me. And thank you as well for the reminding me not to wait to express appreciation. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you. Do it today.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

Tags

Adaptation, adoption, Claret Cup, Dealing with Adoption, Native Plants, Nature as Teacher, Prickly Pear, Resourcefulness, Rockly Mountains

Many of life’s lessons can be learned from nature.

Join Elaine every Monday for insights on adoption and life.

Much of what I call “adoption recovery” comes from walking and hiking in the Rocky Mountain foothills. My favorite spot for musing is Sun Mountain, affectionately known by its Spanish name, “Monte Sol.” Less than a mile up to the summit, it rises 700 feet and offers sweeping views of the high desert plateau, Sandia Peak to the East and the Jemez Mountains to the West.

Festooned in scarlet, this cactus brightens its dusty surroundings

Though short, the hike is demanding. The narrow path comprises several hundred switchbacks and a bit of scrambling across boulders. The surface is gravelly. Feet can slip right out from under, landing you on your derriere. Once at the top, however, you are rewarded with a panoramic landscape painting: The distant mountains and mesas offer layers of purple, blue, sage, sand, and green. Over-arching you is a dome of sky and an-ever changing show of clouds. It is the kind of view that to many, me included, means home.
There are gifts along the path as well. Because of late spring rains, we’ve enjoyed a season of blooming cacti. For years, I’ve taken these blossoms for granted. It is said that nature heals, and I’m finding that to be true. Because of freeing myself from constant focus on adoption issues, I’ve been more tuned in to the unique beauty of cacti. Also—don’t laugh—I learned a valuable lesson from these native Southwestern plants.
Bloom where you are planted, they seem to tell me. The cacti know that they may never be showcased in someone’s cherished garden, proudly displayed like heirloom roses or bragged on like proud dalhias. Many will be regarded as reminders of drought, dust, wind and harshness. They may be considered prickly pests, ugly opportunists who hang out with dead trees, surrounded by a scree of fallen pine needles, dry dirt, twigs and fallen pine cones.
No doubt, conditions here in the Southwest are dangerously dry. We may be running out of potable water and — according to many environmentalists — we are definitely running out of time. Still, one can

Not to be outdone, the prickly pear offers a radiant burst of yellow.

celebrate the lowly cactus as a plant that thrives without water and gives back with brilliant flowers.
It is amazing to find such unexpected beauty bursting forth from the lowly cacti. The “Triglo” claret cup boast scarlet blooms; prickly pears are festooned with blossoms  that range from lemon yellow to marigold, pale coral, pink and mauve. They are a source of unexpected joy, reminders that beauty exists everywhere, if only one has the eyes to see.