33
THE SEARCH IS THE ANSWER
Elizabeth had come to a monumental decision - to visit her father whom she hadn't seen since she was eleven, twenty-one years ago. She left for the coast with a stop at Valerie's, and then went on to her boyfriend's apartment in Portland. She had learned at the Kushi Institute that in order to heal her body, she must first heal all her relationships; until then, her problems would persist.
I was apprehensive, a slight tightness bound my heart. I said a prayer and sent her light and love. This was a courageous endeavor. Knowing her boyfriend would be with her helped settle me.
Now I realized why we had fought in the Winds - one of the reasons why. When she decided she wanted to see her father, she started to do what her sisters had done - blame me to justify being with him. That's how we get around difficulties we can't deal with - by shifting blame.
For years I had been pleading with my older daughters not to interfere with their younger sister and her father. But, at his instigation, they tried, frequently and hopelessly, to get them together because of their need to please him. She was going to make her own decision as to how, when, and where it would happen. This was my maternal duty that had ruled my existence for twenty-eight years since the divorce. Would she recognize him? Would he intimidate her? Would he blame her for the past? These and a thousand other questions ran through my mind while I waited for her to call.
This meeting would go well, I was sure of it. The shadows in our lives were less threatening when a little light was let in. Perhaps a new pattern would emerge. There were a lot of possibilities - new energy, new beginnings, less fear and more room for love and acceptance.
Elizabeth's voice at the other end of the phone was light. She told me what I needed to hear. He was smaller than she had imagined, not the huge dark figure that had always loomed as a paralyzing presence in her dreams. He did blame her for having made it difficult for him to see her over the years. She admitted it would take her time to absorb the aftershock but she had finally faced one of her demons and hopefully her life would change.
"A deep identification with our forebears, as experienced originally in the mother- child relationship, gives us our most fundamental security." 1
"Inside every adoptee is an abandoned baby. It lies coiled in the core of the adoptive self like a deep sorrow - that can find no comfort." 2
My life has passed, shadowed and secretive. It is a hopeless situation, not knowing where you come from, impossible to mature without the objectivity one gets when rooted in one's origins.
My search has taught me that whatever my two older children and I have lost can never be fully recovered. Much the same as it would be if I found my biological mother.
My oldest daughter, in the midst of a divorce, a reiteration of mine, cannot stop blaming me and the world for her problems. My middle daughter, unable to have children and too defensive to relate to me except superficially, declared adoption wasn't an option when I timidly made the suggestion. So I continue my desperate dynamics and am unable to make a change with them.
And Elizabeth and I struggle along, she to affirm herself and I to let go of my closest blood relative, the one who taught me with a hug what the mother-daughter bond was all about. I have fulfilled my most critical calling of being a mother, having raised a daughter who is my friend, who has accepted me into her life as I have opened mine to her. With a deep trust in our relationship, we have overcome the transient temperamental times. She seems to have inherited my fear of being abandoned and rejected. A woman's ability to let go can be traced to her feelings about her father. If she trusted him not to leave her - she'll trust the man next to her in bed.
"The child who grows up without the father who gave her life will feel abandoned and unprotected in the world." 3
You're stoic, like your real mother, carrying so much guilt with your children that you don't feel worthy of their love and respect. You felt you weren't there for them. But they need to take responsibility for themselves. Part of your block is you have felt displaced and are experiencing all the frustrations of your adoptive parents, then put- ting them out to your children; and so you have alienated them. They feel towards you as you feel towards your parents. Since you have experienced both sides of the spectrum, you can teach them how to be responsible for their own actions.
Psychic reading by Tony Jolley, 2002
I am blessed in living with a man whose love and support has encouraged me to be positive about acknowledging my adoption. He has stood by me through a horrendous divorce when even my closest friends deserted me. Even though my adoption had been a painful burden to me for forty-eight years (until I started talking about it), it has become a genuine learning experience. I now ask myself, instead of why was I adopted, what can I learn from having been put up for adoption?
Why did I choose to be adopted? Maybe that's more important. What am I here to learn? Michio Kushi said it had something to do with neglect. In a previous lifetime I neglected a child and now I am here to learn what it felt like. My birth- parents neglected me. I can work with that.
I don't hold sacred what other women do - matching dishes and linens, new clothes, jewelry, weekly dinners and close family ties. My adoptive parents' de- sires weren't mine. I tried to be like them to please them, but trying to conform made me angry. That anger was unacceptable and to this day is so inhibiting, so impossible to express, and perhaps the reason that I couldn't find a medium in which to express myself until I discovered marble. I could swing a hammer, wield a chisel, and chop away my anger, my feelings of isolation, my alienation. Artists often live an unstructured existence outside the confines of society. We work alone and feelings of loneliness are prevalent. I know now that where I originally came from has something to do with my strife.
“In returning to observe adoptees after years in their adoptive homes, I have seen that they are still largely the offspring of their biological parents, not only in out- ward appearances but in their interests and character." 4
“Adoptees don't have the same relationship to things that other people have. This disconnection they have experienced has made them devalue things that others hoard and treasure." 5
"Rage turns into sorrow; sorrow turns into tears; tears may fall for a long time; but then the sun comes out. A memory sings to us; our body shakes and relives the moment of loss; then the armoring around that loss gradually softens; and in the midst of the song of tremendous grieving, the pain of that loss finally finds release. In listening to our most painful songs, we can learn the divine art of forgiveness. Both forgiveness and compassion arise spontaneously with the opening of the heart." 6
Adoptive families are different. I don't know my origins and therein lies the problem. Medical history? Anything here