August Attitude Adjustment: Not Moving After All

Tags

adoptee, Homestead, Maintenance, Real Estate, Restoration, Reversal, roots

What a crazy summer! It seemed everyone around me was “downsizing.” I joined the movement. In June, I decided to sell my house and move somewhere smaller. By July, the offer I’d made on a nearby townhouse was accepted. I was in the process of packing to move. Meanwhile, even before the old place was officially on the market, I’d been getting a few tentative offers. Nibbles.

Home-Where the heart is

Along comes my son and his family for a visit. They see the new place and hear about the too-low offers made on the old home. After studying the numbers, my son pointed out that I would not come out ahead. Hard to believe at first, but when deferred maintenance was taken into consideration, the house would actually not be making money for me. Financially, I would just about break even. A two-day family discussion: Ultimately, we concluded, it would not be best for me to move. Rather, I’d invest in refurbishing the old home.
August finds me adopting an entirely new attitude. No longer will I mind the indoor and outdoor maintenance. I’ll take full advantage of the hoop gardens for growing vegetables and herbs; I’ll walk the labyrinth every day; I’ll harvest fruit from the apple and pear trees in the fall and turn the bounty into juice, pies, and cobblers. I’ll commune with the occasional deer coming to visit. I am realizing that I hadn’t really wanted to be uprooted.
The home makeover begins next week. That means that I’ll be moving out of one end of the house to the other. The section that needs paint and new flooring has to be vacated. This has led to massive de-cluttering and a donation-a-thon. Thankfully, the work begins outside, with re-stuccoing. So I have a tiny bit of leeway in clearing out of the renovation end. On the other hand, the-clock is ticking.

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Carrying a Heavy Sack

Tags

Adopted daughter, Attitude, birthparents, Family history, Listening, Parenting, Patterns, recovery, Restoration

Carrying a Heavy Sack
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Remembering family history can weigh heavily.

It’s been said that “everyone is carrying around a heavy sack.” The sack, of course, is a metaphor for woes and concerns that come with everyday life situations. Some sacks are heavier than others. Not surprisingly, I feel that the sack of adoptees weighs tons more than most. The issues we adoptees face aren’t the kind that go away easily. As life goes on, the issues simply take different forms.
Such questions as “Why don’t I have a real family tree?”; “Am I repeating the mistakes of my (birth/adoptive) parents?” “If I love someone, will (he/she) abandon me?” and finally, ironically, “If I do not have to solve the problems of adoption, what’s left for me?” I am no longer an “adult adoptee,” but simply “an adult.”
What IS it about being adopted? About not quite belonging and slipping into a feeling of alienation? Picture this. The evening has arrived at last: A fundraiser for Youth Shelters. I’m at the benefit party I’ve been planning for months, and the guests are having a wonderful time. Jean (not her real name) mentions that she knows of a birthmother who had a most wonderful reunion with a son she had to give away when he was just an infant. The meeting, recounts Jean, was completely wonderful and now the reunited mother and son have a great relationship.
Immediately, I recall the not-so-satisfactory meeting with my birthmother and hardly pay attention to what else Jean is saying. Why can’t I be present? After grappling with my adoption angst for so many years, shouldn’t I be less reactionary? Less easily injured and thrown off balance?
Jean is still talking and I tune back in to what she’s saying. She wants to help the mission of Youth Shelters, which is directed toward helping homeless adolescents and young people. Another volunteer! How wonderful. I shove thoughts of my unsatisfactory reunion under the rug and put my cheery facade back into place. The evening is a success and everyone, especially Jean, seems to be having a wonderful time.
I realize that my sack of concerns may never really lighten, but that I am capable of becoming stronger. After all, the family constellation formed long ago. Changing it would be like moving the stars. This is impossible. The only star I can change is

Aspen Vista, Santa Fe, New Mexico

myself.

Traveling the Chamisa Road

Tags

adoption, Chamisa, Dealing with Adoption, recovery, Restoration, Split at the Root, the goodbye baby, Walking

Chamisa, also called Rubber Rabbitbrush: a perennial deciduous Native shrub, with aromatic, blue-green-grey, feathery foliage in Summer and dense clusters of bright-yellow flowers in early Fall. Deciduous shrub, 3-5 ft. tall & wide. Can prune strongly – blooms on new growth. Sow anytime.

October brings Chamisa into full bloom.

Join Elaine every Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Though I loved growing up in northern Virginia, with its lovely green deciduous trees and grassy lawns and hills, I willingly adapted to living in a dry land. Here in my adopted state of New Mexico I find myself surrounded by Chamisa. It is scruffy and hardy; it attempts to cover the hard dirt fields, it is everywhere. Though occasionally planted in gardens or used in landscaping, Chamisa’s favorite place is bordering roads.
Many Octobers ago when I first moved to the Southwest, this ubiquitous plant was abloom with small yellow blossoms. I made bouquets and put several throughout the house. Soon I was sneezing my head off. Lesson learned. Too pungent to be used in the house, Chamisa is best left outdoors.
This lowly “rabbitbrush” seems to symbolize the adoptee’s journey of forgiving the past and being in now.  Not resignation, but rather, acceptance. The “Chamisa Road” is about moving beyond invisible wounds, those injuries that are hardest to heal. It’s about traveling from “how to have what you want” to “how to want what you have”
In my experience, the wounds of adoption may never really go away; they simply change form. I’ve written about this in my confessional, The Goodbye Baby-A Diary about Adoption.  Similarly, in her excellent memoir Split at the Root, Catana Tully indicates that restoration may be a lifelong process. The “wounded heart” of the adoptee overrides intellectual decisions. At any time, the feelings of being not quite OK, of not belonging may reappear. They rear their ugly heads and must be stared down.
Adoption recovery, it turns out, is not accomplished by simply writing a memoir and then declaring “OK, I’m healed now.” It is a Sisyphusian undertaking that must be faced afresh every morning.  It is about walking The Chamisa Road.

The House that Hope Built

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Home, Hope, Public Art, Restoration, Teenagers, Trompe l'oeil

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all.
-Emily Dickinson

We adoptees sometimes have trouble feeling at home in the world. One

Before a transformation by teen artists, this building was an eyesore

solution is being open to finding new “homes away from home.” This summer, as a result of joining a community garden, I’ve “adopted” a rambling city park called Frenchy’s Field. Even though I live in another section of town, I drive to Frenchy’s at least twice a week. My day to water the garden is Saturday. On Thursday, I meet with fellow gardeners at 8 a.m. We water, weed, and harvest our three garden plots.
I’m fascinated by the place’s history. The park was named after the crusty farmer who farmed that very land. Bernard “Frenchy” Parachou, a veteran of WWI, operated Sunshine Dairy from 1933 through 1983.
The town grew up around the former dairy farm-turned-park, and it subsequently morphed into a community gathering place. Where cattle grazed, there is now a large oval of wildflowers surrounded by a track. Three times around the track, titled “Prescription Trail,” comprise a mile. Bikers and joggers use the wide walkway, a

The mud labyrinth at Frenchy’s invites one to do a walking meditation

meandering path that goes for miles along the Santa Fe River. A mud labyrinth invites contemplative walkers. A playground is always busy with mothers, fathers and children. And of course, there is also the community garden that first brought me to Frenchy’s.
Late last month, another sort of “home” appeared. Santa Fe Teen Court and an organization named ARTsmart recruited young people to give an abandoned residence new life. The house that teens and children painted looks just like an adobe house, a simple farm dwelling like many found in northern New Mexican villages. The “trompe l’oeil” style mural is amazing. One feels the original resident, Bernard “Frenchy” Parachou might step outside the front door at any moment.
The faux house, marvelous to behold, stands as an example of creativity and resourcefulness. It pays testimony to the adults who initiated the project, but most of all to the talents of the young people who transformed the abandoned eyesore of a derelict building into a beautiful work of art. It is a monument to hope.

Are You a Girl Who Went Away?

Tags

adoptee, birthmother, Reclaiming, Renewal, Restoration, Younger Self

Are You a Girl Who Went Away?

The best book I’ve read this summer is Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v Wade. Written by an adult adoptee, it comprises interviews with birthmothers separated from their children. All true stories, many of them are heartbreaking. Instead of writing a review, however, I chose to use the title as a springboard for today’s post.

Specifically, it’s that “went away” part. As an adoptee who’s long struggled to feel authentic, I realize that for years, I had forgotten the small, cherished part of myself—the “Little Me” within.

As I learn more about what it is like for other adoptees, especially women, I have come to feel that in a way, women adoptees are all “girls who went away.” We went away from being the adorable children who knew they were precious and lovable. If we were adopted by good parents, as I was, we felt that we had to please. Secretly afraid that we might not be good enough, we endeavored to be perfect.

There is no way to take back the years that slipped away between the girl of yesterday and now, but is never too late for a fresh start. The hard part is to recapture that girl within, the lovable self who was drowned out by years of self neglect.

After reading The Goodbye Baby, my diary/memoir that speaks of recovery from adoption issues, my scientist son commented that we never really get over the past. What happened cannot be re-written. Or, as a Stephen King character commented, “What’s done is done and can’t be undone.” My son and Stephen King are not totally correct. While not underestimating the power of the past, it is with hope that I feel we can transform its influence.

That said, I also believe that one’s outlook is a do-it-yourself project. Perspective is the result not just of the events of one’s life but of what one makes of what happens. Having spent many years imagining myself as the “victim” of a bad beginning, my patterns of reacting negatively were deeply ingrained.

If “she” has escaped from you, it takes courage to reclaim that girl within, the younger,

Cause, Baby, “Look at you Now!”

more optimistic YOU. Thanks to joining an extensive online “adoption community,” I’ve learned to put my reactions in perspective. Reclaiming oneself: hard labor, but work worth doing!

NOTE: If you are a male adoptee, I would love to hear from you. Your journey may have presented itself to you in a different way, but it could enlighten “the girls who went away.” Please comment, and I promise to write back.