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The Goodbye Baby

~ Adoptee Diaries

The Goodbye Baby

Tag Archives: Christmas

Letting Go of the Perfect Holiday

19 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption

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Tags

Acceptance, adoption, Christmas, expectations, families, gifts, Nostalgia

By: Emily Shirley

We have all seen the Folgers commercial where the big brother comes home from college and starts making coffee. As the coffee smell reaches upstairs, the family comes down to greet him. They are all smiles in the perfectly decorated home with this perfect holiday moment of love all around and… well, perfection.

In other Christmas commercials, the adult children with their perfect families drive up, all smiles and carrying gifts. The food somehow magically appeared without anyone shopping for days, standing on their feet preparing for hours, and stressing over.

I have been guilty of trying to have the holiday depicted in commercials. But I have decided to be honest with myself this year. Those commercials were made up by someone, and many people are doing what I used to do, pretending to have their own version of a ‘perfect Christmas’ because others tell them this is how this season and Christmas Day is supposed to be.

It’s media like the commercials that creates an unrealistic expectation for holiday perfection, that hijacks the moments we could be having with others, or even spending the day alone. And it is this kind of emotional feed that makes us think we have fallen short if our Christmas doesn’t look like the commercials. We get upset with our adult children for not being what the commercials have told us they should be. And what about those people whose lives have changed, and they no longer fit the mold of the families in the commercials. What about the single parents, or those that have lost their spouse, or even children, due to death.

Many older parents are feeling left out of their adult children’s lives at this time of the year. Perhaps these adult children are behaving in ways the parents don’t understand. This can happen when we have certain unrealistic expectations that are not met by someone else. The more likely explanation for their not involving their parents more than they do is that they are working very hard to have their own version of a ‘perfect’ holiday.

We think of Christmas as the season dedicated to everything merry and bright. But let’s face it. Sometimes, it can also be one of the most stressful times of the year. Most of us want a little holiday magic, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. What if the magic happens in the simple moments that we often miss because of our heightened expectations causing this to be a stressful time of the year?  One of the first things we can do is admit that Christmas will never be perfect, or like any of the commercials. They never have been, and they never will be.

We can give ourselves credit for all those “almost-perfect” Christmases that we provided for our children, and others. Now, we can enjoy seeing others having whatever version of Christmas they want for themselves, while we enjoy our own version of this holiday. We can stay home, relax, and simplify things. If decorating is too much to do every year, we can even consider taking a year or two off and just decorating every three or four years, if ever. There are no Christmas police!

The real gift we have at this stage in our life is experience that allows us to step back and accept how things are. We can relax and be grateful for what we have and think about those ‘Christmases past’ that we survived. Rather than stressing over what we must do, we can be grateful for what we don’t have to do. We should all remember the real reason-for-the-season, and beyond that, this day can be focused on young children. It is nice to be able to take it easy. We can even meet up with friends and go to a nice restaurant for dinner, and walk away from the table and not have to clean up after ourselves.

Our gift to ourselves should be to get through the next few weeks without guilt for not participating in this season the same way others are. We can let go of some of the unrealistic ‘magical thinking’ of the past. It is time to adjust our expectations and embrace our own imperfect holiday. We can practice self-care through the holidays by carving out time each day to do whatever reconnects us with ourselves. This is especially important if we are alone this time of the year. 


The magic is there. We must be willing to look for it. We can do our version of this holiday season, based on the season of our lives. The part of the Folgers commercial we should consider is relaxing with a nice cup of hot coffee, Folgers or otherwise, and breathing in that coffee smell, while we munch on store-bought cookies that someone else made. 

About Today’s Guest Contributor:

World traveler and master gardener Emily Shirley is a part time resident of Louisiana and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Writing all the while, she divides her time between two homes. Past careers include Social Services Case Worker and Director and Human Resource Manager. She is currently at work on a memoir titled And Then There Were Ten.

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 www.pocolpress.com. And thanks for reading!

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Hiking the Holidays

03 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by elainepinkerton in Adoption

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Beauty, Christmas, outdoors, Reflection, Solitude

My son and his family wouldn’t be coming to visit until the 29th of December, so Christmas morning found me alone. Bummer, right?  Wrong! It turned out to be one of the most memorable Christmases ever. A Meetup hike had been scheduled for 9 a.m. but the starting point was a half hour from my home and outdoors the dense fog seemed like a warning to start early. Thick fog made visibility nearly impossible. I could barely discern a center stripe on the road I arrived a little before 9 at Fina Cafe on the Las Vegas Highway, a backroad heading north out of Santa Fe. Nobody else in the parking lot. After waiting five minutes, I called the hike leader to make sure I had the right meeting spot. “Oh,” she said. “It would have been muddy, so I cancelled in an email. In my concern about driving conditions, I had not checked email before leaving.

This neighborhood trail, nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, has become one of my favorite go-to destinations.

Instead of going home, I drove to the nearby Dorothy Stewart trailhead and did a solo hike. For the first time in my many years of walking that three-mile loop, I’d never been the only person in the parking lot. On the trail itself,I had the terrain to myself. Deciding to do a mental self-talk on gratitude, I began the undulating path at a brisk pace. Because Dorothy Stewart had come to Santa Fe in the 1920s, fallen in love with the city, especially outdoors, she’d donated land for public use. As I walked, I silently thanked her. Due to her generosity and foresight, a precious place had been saved from developers. Sweeping vistas all along the way, first of the Sandia Mountains, then the Jemez Mountains,and finally of Picacho Peak, Atalaya, and Sun and Moon Mountains. In my half-century of living here, I’d hiked them all and memories of those times came flooding back.

The day after Christmas, I walked the neighborhood through fresh-fallen snow, and on New Year’s Day, strolled the sandy arroyo. A special guest appearance in the back yard made history. Jake (pretty sure it’s the same fellow who’s been coming to my property for years) came in the morning and stayed till night. I’ve been taking a hint from my equine friend and when not out hiking have been relaxing with some wonderful books: The Magic Library and How to Stop Time by Matt Haig; This Tender Land by William Kent Kruger and The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. In the year ahead, I’ll remember the Quiet Time of this Christmas.

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A Gift to You – The 12 Days of Adoption

21 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by elainepinkerton in Celebrating Adoption

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

adoptee, adoption, celebrate, Christmas, discover, family, friends, Holidays, wounded, writing

I was adopted at age five. That event shaped the rest of my life. It’s made me who I am. Adoption, it’s been said, is both a blessing and a curse. For me. it’s a blessing. In this late December post, the last of 2020, I count the ways.

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

An Adoptee’s Song:
“The Twelve Gifts of Adoption”

With the holiday season upon us, Hannakah past and Christmas around the corner, music fills the air. From our devices, television or radio, we often hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” In your imagination, listen to the melody… then read with an open heart as this ADOPTEE offers a different take on a familiar song…

12daysBLOG-page-001

******

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on life through adoption colored glasses. Please let us know what you’re most grateful for this holiday season!

Snowshoeing is a great way to celebrate the Winter Solstice

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Adoption Wrapped in a Pretty Bow

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by elainepinkerton in Celebrating Adoption

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Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, blended families, Christmas, diary, discover, empower, family, friends, healing, Holidays, national adoption awareness month, national adoption month

Note from Elaine: I have two books coming out in 2016!: the “remodeled” Santa Fe on Foot and a suspense novel, All the Wrong Places. Because of current writing demands, therefore, my blogging has temporarily taken a back seat. Hope you enjoy this republished but timely message. Wishing all adoptees an especially fulfilling holiday!

For Adoptees, the holidays can be tough. Not only for young adopted children, but  also for adult adoptees. During Christmas and Hannukah season, we are supposed to be happy, filled with joy, relishing family reunions. Tis “the season to be jolly,” fa-la-la-la-la-ing” as we frantically strive to find the perfect gift for every last person on the list.

As described in my memoir, The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, I was five when my birth mom relinquished me. For all of November—National Adoption Awareness Month—I’ve focussed on my own adoption. It’s been an awakening, and not always a happy one. Though striving mightily to make this a good holiday for my own grown children and their families, I suffer from an all too familiar ache of incompleteness. We adult adoptees can become “orphans” all over again.

I’ve lost all my parents, both biological and adoptive. My birth parents: They could not have raised me and my brother, and yet I would have liked to have known them earlier in life. When I finally met them, it was too late for us to really form a relationship. Those wonderful people, the mom and dad who raised me: I feel an even keener sense of emptiness at their deaths.

To better explain why the holidays present this adoptee with a sense of deprivation, allow me to quote from The Goodbye Baby:

***

ABOUT EDGAR

Whenever I think I have finally been healed from the wounds of adoption, life serves up a reminder that I am not. It is the opposite of “looking through rose-colored glasses.” When one looks through the glasses of being adopted, everyday events are reminders of loss, betrayal, or abandonment. Through reading all my diaries, I became very aware of the unremitting prevalence of “adoption bruises.”

Elaine’s tribute to her Adoptive Parents

There are metaphors I find helpful in understanding the wounds of my adoption, including disease and death at sea. When troubled by having grown up as an adopted child, I let insecurity and self-doubt take root. Reason eludes me. I have given that negative emotional state a name—Edgar. Like burning flames, Edgar is fueled by his own energy. Like fire, he feeds on everything, which he transforms into negative thoughts about my past, present, future. Edgar is a demonic artist who paints the world in stark tones of black and gray. Like a disease, Edgar undermines my physical well-being.  Edgar lurks, waiting to arise when I am feeling healthy and balanced. When my spirit starts to wane, he is poised for the kill.

Edgar is always keeping score. His message to me: To be considered worthy of living, I have to prove myself “good” every day. If I do not, I might, metaphorically speaking, be sent to an orphanage. Never mind that I lived in foster care for only the first few years of my life. No matter that I should be well over the feelings of abandonment from that difficult beginning.

Fire burns everything in its path. Self-destructive memories add to Edgar’s growing stockpile of ammunition. Edgar thrives on drama and misfortune, not just mine, but the world’s… Disappointment appears and then malaise sets in, a pervasive feeling of things being awry. My stomach feels queasy, my shoulders ache, and my limbs are leaden. Uh oh. Here’s Edgar, I think to myself.”

If only Christmas were a holiday one could celebrate quietly and thoughtfully, I would be happier. That is not going to happen, so I’ve taken responsibility for making this season rich and fulfilling.

Loss, want, privation and melancholy are NOT what I want to give myself for Christmas.

I am taking the holidays as a time to deepen and renew friendships. Every day I will focus on self-care, spending time in nature, drinking more water and beginning each day with a morning stretch and hug. As a friend recommended, I will stretch my arms and legs, sit up and notice that I am breathing. For three or four breaths, I will simply pay attention, breathing in and breathing out. I will give myself a hug, saying “Good morning, Elaine, thanks for taking a minute to just be. Let today be about learning to love—myself and others”

Acknowledging my adoption as a gift

Embracing my adoption is a way of nurturing myself. This year, the holidays will be different. After putting “Edgar” into an escape-proof cage, I will wrap my adoption insights in a beautiful gift box. Knowing and accepting my adopted self is the greatest gift. When I do this, I have more to give family and friends.

***

Some questions for my readers:

Why do you personally think Adopted children find it more difficult to enjoy the Holidays?

Do you remember struggling with your own Adoption when Christmas/Thanksgiving rolled around?

Do you ever remember your parents trying to help you deal with this?

What do the Holidays mean to you?

How do you reflect on your adoption during the Holidays?

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Elaine Pinkerton Coleman

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Recent Posts

  • My Opera Dream Came True January 22, 2023
  • Letting Go of the Perfect Holiday December 19, 2022
  • Reading the Nights Away December 12, 2022
  • Ruminations and Rumi November 21, 2022
  • Adopting Autumn November 7, 2022

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