In with the New

Tags

adopting a new attitude, Adoption recovery, Gratitude, planting hope

Last week I remodeled my back yard

For fifty years, the Century Plant lived and grew. It was big and green and beautiful. Every decade or so, it produced a lovely white blossom. It witnessed the overnight campouts of my two young sons, just little guys then. It thrived next to a California style hot tub, scene of social gatherings and solo soaking. In the 1990s, hot tub maintenance became burdensome and I had the redwood barrel removed. My Century Plant soldiered on. Though it flowered rarely, the plant held court constantly. In the 1970s and early 1980s, it was surrounded by grass. Up until 2000, year of New Mexico’s devastating bark beetle invasion, it was neighbor to a forest of piñons.

Then, a harbinger of losses to come, the backyard piñon trees died. First one, then another, and finally 70 of them. Everywhere in my two acres. It happened not just to me but to all of Northern New Mexico. Because of ongoing drought, the trees’ immune systems were wrecked. The beetle larvae, always present within the trees, came alive, fed on the trees, going voraciously from one piñon to another. The bug came to be called “a wildfire on six legs.”

With the help of my helper, Julian, the Century Plant was removed. Its roots went deep into the earth and it took my very strong gardener nearly an hour to dig and saw his way to the depths of the plant’s reach. To our delight, there was a new fledgling plant underneath the spikes of the old. Julian created a “rock pond” where the parent Century Plant had resided. Junior, as we named the offspring, displays himself proudly at the edge. Little things can mean a lot.

Why is this such a big deal? Today’s world is changing with increasing velocity. Problems such as climate change, war, famine, abortion rights, inequality and a host of ills. It can all be too much. Personally, I contribute what I can to help the world. After that, I narrow the lens. My goal: make improvements in the personal sphere. In with the new!

The old plant removed, a new start can live and breathe.

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on the writing, hiking and the outdoors, Santa Fe life, and the world as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Check out her newest novel The Hand of Ganesh. Follow adoptees Clara Jordan and Dottie Benet in their  quest to find Dottie’s birthparents. Order today from Amazon or http://www.pocolpress.com. And thanks for reading!

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A is for Ascending

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, adopting a new attitude, Attitude adjustment, Self-realization

Rising above adoption injuries may be the work of a lifetime, but it is work worth doing.

November is National Adoption Month, and in that spirit, I’m re-visiting some of my earlier realizations about recovering from the invisible wounds of adoption.  As every adult adoptee realizes, the deep-seated after-affects of adoption don’t go away. Impossible to change the past history that so shaped us as we grew up. What we can change is how we regard that baggage. It is something we must bear, and the stronger we become, the lighter seems the burden. I think of it as ASCENDING.

Here, slightly altered, is my realization about the anger that arose from my “adoptee status.” It was originally published on this website two years ago. Happily, I spend less and less time in the Canyon and more time, both metaphorically and actually, climbing mountains.

Anger is a terrible thing. Unless one deals with it, the feeling can deepen into a Canyon of Despondency. It seems there is no bottom and that one can never escape this negative emotion.

Until I admitted that unresolved issues about adoption were the root of my unhappiness, I was doomed to be the victim of angry, hurtful emotions. Because I had wonderful adoptive parents, it was very hard to blame them for anything. I admired and respected them. Only after they were gone did I realize how much the shame and secrecy about adoption had drained my self-confidence.

Separation at any age leaves invisible scars.

Adoption adds so much to a child’s life: parents who chose him or her, security and stability, a room of one’s own.
But it also takes away: blood ties, growing up with someone who shares your DNA, parents who probably look like you. As a baby, you resided for nine months inside your mother’s womb; you were connected at a primal level.
The adoption that followed your birth also represents a LOSS.

During the long years I dwelled on the loss of connection with my birthparents, I wandered a bottomless pit of unhappiness. I could never resolve my feelings of deprivation. I’d been part of my birthmother. I spent the first few years of my life with her. Didn’t that bond us forever?

When I was adopted at age five, which I describe in my memoir The Goodbye Baby: A Diary about Adoption, I did not ask questions. Instead, I grew up longing to know where I came from, why I was relinquished. I desperately needed to parse out what part of me was nature and what was nurture.

To articulate my anger would have seemed ungrateful; Depressed and resentful, I was a wild and uncontrolled adolescent. Re-reading diary entries about my teenage escapades, I pitied my adoptive parents. The diaries revealed an unflattering truth. They showed how slow-burning rage drove me to recklessness, to throwing myself into dangerous situations. All the outward successes—good grades, a nice appearance, friends and a social life—were a facade. I felt I had no value, which deepened my sense of loss.

As I entered adulthood, I began to realize that my outlook on life had developed around a perceived loss. Never mind that I had wonderful adoptive parents. I pay tribute to them in From Calcutta with Love: the WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard. However, they either could not or would not talk about what happened. I had to accept their philosophy, that I began life as the “born again daughter.”

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Anger, unchecked, tends to grow.  At least, in my case, this was true. It intensified over time. Before I looked back at the past revealed in diary entries of The Goodbye Baby, I wandered the canyons of despair.  I had to climb my way out to release my anger. For me the path was, and still is, writing. Spend time with your inner self to discover who you really are. Dig deep and then ascend. YOU are worth it!

Would I do it Again?

Tags

adopting a new attitude, adoption, adoptive parents, Authenticity, Dealing with Adoption, Diaries, healing, memoir, struggles

“What’s Done is Done and can’t be Undone.” -Stephen King

Nowhere is this more true than with publishing a memoir. Let’s be honest. Maybe it isn’t always a good idea to reveal the past. Perhaps it is worse if the “revelation” is in written form, an intimate expose, a confessional, a putting of oneself under the microscope? In other words, why would I present excerpts from my daily journals?

And yet, that’s just what I did when publishing an adoption-focused memoir, The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption. I culled four decades of diaries and transcribed the passages that showed me growing up as someone who felt herself to be a burden, a girl who had to hide behind the facade of being successful and “normal.”  Twenty-three years of grappling with the need to reveal what it felt like to grow up adopted. This act of daring or craziness (or both) accomplished my goal.

Diaries from the past directed me to a better future.

The reactions to the book have been surprisingly favorable. Other adult adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, and readers interested in adoption issues have welcomed the The Goodbye Baby. Coming out with my angst-filled past has opened doors. Now that I realize what happened to me isn’t that “special,” the book has led me to a wonderfully supportive online adoption community, many members of whom are shining lights, providing inspiration and serving as mentors.

As one of the bright stars in cyberspace, Deanna Shrodes, wrote in a blog post, “You wake up and you’re still adopted.” She is so right; the facts remain. However, having come face to face with those adoption demons empowered me to stare them down. Talking was not enough. Years of therapy, while enlightening, never enabled me to separate from what happened so long ago. Coming out with the story, which I never could have done without the therapy, cleared the path for divorcing the “poor adopted me” syndrome.

“Happy and grateful” is the image much of the world has of the adopted child, or rather of how the adopted child SHOULD feel. Most adult adoptees I’ve met are grateful for being removed from foster care, the orphanage, or whatever dysfunctional situation. But happy? Perhaps not totally. Something has been lost that can never be replaced.

In answer to the initial question, would I do it again, the answer is YES. It was much better to come out with a book containing my personal truth about adoption than to deny its effect. Now, as I burn the final pages of the diaries themselves, I realize that I no longer define myself as an “adult adoptee,” but as an adult. I’m free to live my life.

Join Elaine every Monday for insights into “Life after Adoption Recovery”

Lazy Summertime…

Tags

adopting a new attitude, Community, Creativity, Gardening, Lost Dog, Peace, serenity, Solitude, writing

“Seek peace and pursue it.” – St. Benedict

As the Summer Solstice draws near, I’m looking for fresh creativity and new ideas.

This scarecrow works 24/7-so we gardeners can do what we love

Once I week, I drive to Frenchy’s Field, the nearby community garden where four other women and I planted and now tend four plots. This morning, while watering the rows of spinach, tomato plants, cabbage and cucumbers, I admitted to myself that Arundati, the sequel to Beast of Bengal, isn’t writing itself. It cries out for more of my time. I also vowed to accelerate the revision of Santa Fe on Foot-Adventures in the City Different.

That said, beginning in late June, I’ll be  posting every other Monday. In the fall, I will most likely go back to weekly posts.

Like most writers I know, however, I’m always writing. People at Frenchy’s Field tend to be congenial. There’s a hospitable air, and so even as I gardened, I harvested material for future plots or subplots.

The city watering hours are only from six to ten a.m. and four to eight p.m. When I approached the garden around nine, someone was already there, gently hosing the plots that she had adopted. She handed over the hose so I could water my territory, and we chatted. It turned out that she also was a writer. We talked briefly about our published books. She had a long bike ride ahead and I had four plots to water before the ten a.m. deadline, but it was likely, we agreed, that the garden would bring us together again.

Another encounter happened as I was locking the padlocked gate to go home. A tall man wearing a bereft expression was calling for “Roy,” the dog he’d lost just a few hours earlier. Having recently lost my adopted orange kitty Thomas Cromwell, I related to Roy’s owner, and I wanted to help.

“He was last seen right around here,” the man explained, giving me a full description of his pet, as well as a telephone number and e-mail address. I assured him that I’d pass along the description of Roy – brown, labrador mix, shy and gentle – to people I met in Frenchy’s park. It turned out that before I got to my car, I’d alerted several dog-walking people to look for Roy.

Gardening seems to go quite well with writing. It provides a quiet, thoughtful time. It can also yield rewarding interactions with total strangers. Like seeds sprouting under the earth’s surface, ideas grow and break through. I went home and wrote for the rest of the morning.