Today was a difficult day. It was hard picking myself up after falling down. It was harder still, to do the task I had set for myself which was to finish this junk journal spread on this Sunday in Hawaii. Gravity felt like weights pulling down on me. Gradually I felt lighter with each layer of mixed media I applied onto the page. Paintings, a doily, an envelope reconstructed, a little space for handwritten poetic thought written in cursive, cut out images of yellow flowers, Victorian art and pieces of vintage book pages. I finally published it and although my work is never perfect to me, I feel a sense of exultation when my secretive mixed media gets posted, shown for the world to see. I don’t feel as lonely when that happens. I show myself in the most beautiful of ways, showing all the best parts of me. So I try to junk journal on a regular basis, at least one post a week if I can. Today was difficult but I published one spread and that helped me keep going.
What was one thing that helped you keep going today?
Please comment here or write me at starwoodletters@gmail.com
It’s been a while since I’ve last posted at ICAV and a lot has happened. But I’m okay. I’m living in a small studio apartment across from the beach now. In a coastal town next to Honolulu. After a pandemic school year of substitute teaching at Kamehameha Schools, teaching Digital Photography and creating a Yearbook for the 8th grade, I’m now a full-time adjudicator at the State of Hawaii, helping out the claims backlog that happened due to Covid. It’s a conditional job, supposed to end in December, but there’s a chance it’ll be extended for another 6 months. I had to take what I could since the field of substitute teaching everywhere is simply not stable anymore.
I’m newly single although I don’t know for how long as I’ve already met someone who makes me laugh which is great. I recently broke up with my ex-fiancee in whom I’d been with for about two years in Hawaii. It was good for me to separate from him although hard, it’s always hard letting go of someones I once loved even though he didn’t treat me well. I think it was the pandemic and all the unexpected variables that brought up behavioral patterns he didn’t know he had. I guess I can’t give excuses for him not treating me well. I just had to leave and I’m not on speaking terms with him anymore.
Life is full of the sounds of the highway, the sight of a glittering ocean, beaches, Aloha Aina. My kitty, Pualani, has been my rock and cord connecting me to this earth as a 35-year-old Filipino-American adoptee. My studio is full of plants, junk journaling materials, penpal letters, flip flops, basic necessities. I have certain stones and crystals that keep my energy grounded, balancing the chaotic cosmos within.
Life these days has been a whole new chapter, working full-time, making ends meet in Hawaii on my own. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons on Monday nights, and Fallout 76 with my new next door neighbor in whom I’ve been hanging out with almost everyday. He’s been inviting me out and keeping me productive, meeting people, exploring Hawaii, beach-going and supporting my secret nerd hobbies simultaneously. I can’t thank him enough for being able to get me out of my shell even just a little bit, which is miraculous.
I sometimes wonder where my life went. I sometimes feel like a failed attempt at a normal adult because I should be married with kids by now. I should own a home, going to parent teacher meetings, I should have found a place to belong in by now, but haven’t. I’m surviving in Hawaii with all these unwritten books inside me, waiting to be let out. I still haven’t found that job I can grow in for the rest of my years to come, but I want to. It’s a constant conflict here in Hawaii because it’s too expensive to own a home. But, it’s a beautiful place that is constantly in flux with all the right kinds of elements that keeps me on my toes everyday. Keeps me trying, everyday.
The city is awe-inspiring. The ocean, a constant mystery and companion to my soul’s never-ending quests. The Hawaiian culture is one that I respect and connect with on an unspoken, intrinsic level. I love living next to a highway where the library is in walking distance and so is a beach. I see the beach everyday now, waking up. It is magnificent. Giving me a profound sense of relief everyday.
In Hawaii, my adoptee past looms ever-present as a silent, disenchanted world of loss that lives in the heart of me, no matter how beautiful the day is. But, more and more, I feel like I can come to grips with my past out here. Somehow, I’m just doing it, moving through it maybe, without knowing why or how. Somehow, I found myself here, living on my own and doing okay, despite the heartache.
Dear Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) of the Philippines,
I’m a 33-year-old Filipino American adoptee and I refuse to be erased. I refuse to be ignored. I was born in the Philippines and it was not my choice to leave. But it is my choice to return as an adult and to regain my citizenship. Because, ICAB, I am still here. And I am a human being with civil rights and I deserve this choice.
To date, I’ve been requesting your assistance for dual citizenship and to also retrieve my Filipino birth certificate, but I haven’t heard back from you nor received support for my requests.
Why you, you ask? Why do I keep reaching out and consulting you? And, why is this important, you wonder?
I seek you out, ICAB, because you have been the keeper of my biological records. You have been the storehouse of my Filipino history and the last remains of my Filipino identity. You are the legal witness to my orphaned situation. You have been the writer and transcriber of my last remaining Filipino past. You have been the watcher, overseeing my welfare as I’d lived in an orphanage in the Philippines from infancy until I was two years old. You have been the manager of my international adoption process from the Philippines to the United States. You have been the selector, approving my very adoptive parents and sole caretakers.
You have been the landlord switching over my vacant Filipino estate to another country, transferring me to Holt International’s adoption process in the United States, for me to be naturalized. You are now my living treasury of the last of me, holding my human files, history, heritage and remaining rights of my birth country. So, please don’t ignore me now, when I need you most, to help me recover my history. You are the one that knows best, of what was lost. Please, don’t abandon me now.
I know I am just one adoptee, sharing a plea to not be erased. But one adoptee is vital to the Philippines, because one erasure, is an entire lineage of Filipino heritage and descent. One adoptee, represents all Filipino adoptees because neglecting one, is allowing a different administrative direction to take shape, and human values will be lost with this attitude and transaction of erasure. Neglecting one Filipino adoptee’s needs–will be lowering the bar for others. This action will degrade the virtues that all our adoption agencies, global humanities and civil rights reflect.
Please, grant me access to my Filipino birth certificate. Please, allow my information to be retrievable in an expedited manner, please don’t give me obstacles in my requests. Please, endorse me for citizenship since you are the only one who can prove my Filipino heritage. Please, support me. Please, listen to my needs today, and tomorrow. Please, assist me in trying to make a new pathway to citizenship and a better relation with immigration in the Philippines, because of what this action stands for. For, I am not just one Filipino adoptee, but all Filipino adoptees. And you are the last remaining world and glue holding all of our remains, together.
You, ICAB, are the keeper of all of our futures in the Philippines, and nobody else can govern our past and future citizenship but you.
Thus, today, I push for another step in reunion. Today, I push for more recognition of my human history. Today, I push for regulated acknowledgement of my civil rights. And today, I push for a pathway back to citizenship in my homeland, my motherland, my birth country from where I was born, in the Philippines.
This to date, is a vital goal as to why keeping all Filipino adoptee birth records and information legitimate, accessible and retrievable at all times is important. As in this collective, positively goal-minded action, we, together, keep ICAB erected with the intrinsic values that our global community and sense of Philippine Kapwa is built off of.
Dear ICAB, we will need to work together now, to be able to knit identity back together in the Philippines because the goal of adoption is not to give away, nor to erase, but to restructure, and to rebuild. Adoption is a positive solution, and so is this request, which aligns with the goal of all international adoptions.
The very nature of all adoption efforts combined, is compassion.
On a positive note, I can imagine Filipino adoptees able to give back what we’ve learned on our journey abroad. We are not entirely lost to the Philippines. We can relearn what it is we forgot having lived away from our birth country for so long. We can build new connections and relations with the culture of the Philippines, and regain a new sense of repurposed identity to help the Philippines become a stronger leader in diversity. We can help the Philippine and global economy. We can learn from each other. We can heal the past and that painful separation, with hope.
So please ICAB, don’t erase me. Please, don’t ignore me. Please, see me as still a part of our country, the Philippines, the homeland that had shaped my fate and the country I had been born into as a citizen, long ago. I implore you. Please, don’t forget what it is you’ve been responsible for, taking me in all those years ago. Please, don’t see my requests and questions today, as trivial. Please, don’t ignore my emails. Please, don’t ignore my heart’s calling to reinstate my civil rights to my birth country. I know I’ve been away for quite some time, but I’m still here, and I haven’t forgotten where I come from. Please, don’t give up on me, Philippines.
Because I refuse to give up on you.
Sincerely, Desiree Maru
Birth name: Desiree Maru
Birth country: The Philippines
Relinquishment: Day of birth in Cebu, Philippines
Orphanage circa 1985: Asilo de la Milagrosa
U.S. Adoption Agency used circa 1987: Holt International
Denny walked into the library and I greeted him at the circulation desk. Immediately, I felt that he was my soulmate. Later on, I found out he felt the very same thing. He’d visited a few more times, and then disappeared for a few months. In that time, I started learning how to fly by myself. I worked rigorously at the library, explored Oahu, shyly started dating using Tinder, and one day we ran into each other at a gym–on the staircase of all places. He gave me his number. The next day, we met at a natural grocers and drove to the coastline together to see the ocean at night. We stared up at a star-filled sky, gazed in awe at billowy clouds, and found out how similar we are to each other. There was an ease and a familiarity with him that I’d never felt before. We think alike, I told him, astounded.
We’re on the same wave, he said.
Starting a relationship has been terrifying for me as an intercountry, Filipino-American adoptee because of my past.
Last night, he told me he wanted to grow old with me. I told him that I’m scared, and he asked me why.
This question made me think, really think.
A Moment of Self-Discovery
The answer to that question, let me to self-discovery. I realized that as a child, I lost the first person I’d ever loved and that was my brother. He was damaging to me and must have broken my heart a billion times, until I moved out at 18. And only in my early 30’s, did I start to heal with therapy. All this time, I’d become extremely absorbed in personal work, art, creative outlets, academics and spirituality, basically avoiding relationships because deep down, I’d been so scared of being close to anyone. This is because I’d been scared to lose what it is that I love the most.
I dug deeper and finally came to a conclusion.
I never thought anyone could ever love me, I said.
My Fear of Falling in Love
This fear, I realized, came from the trauma I’d experienced in my early childhood. I felt that this stemmed back to having felt abandoned by being orphaned as a baby. Those feelings followed me in my early years living in an orphanage. It clung to me through my adoption and relocation to the Midwest, and onward, since my big brother, also adopted from the Philippines, had extreme PTSD. And even though I loved him deeply, he triggered and traumatized me until I was 18.
Starting a relationship is challenging, but Denny’s words of hope have been the seed to a new beginning, watering a new feeling that I can be loved despite my brokenness. It’s watering the hope that I’m not as alone as I once was. And in this constantly reforming present, I am believing in myself more. I am stronger and healthier. And I’ve found what matters most of all–the relationship and love that I have with myself–for in the light of love, I find myself more and more everyday.
Overcoming Challenges
Even though this is amazing, to curve my own difficulties, I have to go at my own pace. I must remain independent, and keep focused on my own dreams. I have to give myself space to process and do the things I need to do to remain in check with my own personality quirks and needs. I am still set on becoming a librarian. I am also still set on being a writer and to keep on with my travels, collecting beautiful photos, and artifacts of my offbeat spirituality and meditations along the way.
At 33, I am a late bloomer and all I can say–is that to try is better than not trying at all. To be hopeful, is better to not have any hope.
To keep your dreams alive, is better than living a life empty of them.
Love exists, in a myriad of forms, despite the hardships of yesterday. And what I’ve learned on this journey of a lifetime, is that even if you might not believe in love anymore–this love will still believe in you.
Discussion Question
Do you have a successful experience with “falling in love?” Did you have any challenges that came from having a difficult past or from being an adoptee, and how did you overcome these challenges?
I can hear the crickets chirp outside as I write this in my tiny but cozy bedroom in Hawaii. It’s been five months since my departure from Arizona to Oahu, and everything’s been changing. I’ve been changing. And life has been a whirlwind, as everyday brings in new surprises, challenges, love, and especially, books, since I work with books everyday.
A full-time library job that has challenged the very core of my being. Boogie boarding. Learning how to ride the waves. Climbing boulders barefoot as the ocean crashes below me. Sunrises, the color of pink and tangerine. Wind in the trees. Hiking trails that have taken my breath away.
Working out at a gym that has a jacuzzi and steam room. Wearing new, pink glasses. Enjoying a membership at Costco, a consumer’s theme park of food and galore that I visit at least once a week–mostly for the free samples. Partaking in first times. Getting a past life reading in China Town. Going to a Kirtan, meeting a new girl friend. Falling in love with a guy who could be my soulmate, which has been frightening.
Even my clothes have been changing. I’m wearing brighter colors, creative patterns and organic jewelry that have crystals, stones or wood. I’m taking care of my appearance better. Taking care of my skin. Eating healthy food most of the time. Practicing yoga as regularly as possible.
Everyday, has been a process and an opportunity to work on myself. Training my mind withThe Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, has transformed my mind into steering clear away from toxic, negative thoughts that have a way of leaking into my reality. Some days are better than others. The book, Practicing the Power of Now by Eckart Tolle has also made an impact during my time in Hawaii.
I am alone here with no friends or family of my own, so I have to try harder and be more serious about managing myself than others. I have found that it is easier exploring this island on my own.
As a Filipino-American adoptee with a missing a heritage–who was also relinquished to an orphanage the day I was born–remembering myself as a child has been liberating. And, in recent meditations, I found that by viewing my past as not a victim but a victor, or a person that had a choice, I can mend my own past by restructuring my own mental story of it. Mostly alone, but with the occasional company of roommates, co-workers, friends from devotionals, and secret lovers, I slowly become a braver, more wholesome, an eccentrically rooted woman.
And at the end of the day, I hear the crickets chirp in my small but cozy bedroom. I burn some incense, light a candle, sometimes meditate. I sink into my bed, cuddling up with my blankets and pillows.
I am not an orphan anymore, I am barely even an adoptee, I am just a human being with a past that has humbled me into understanding people’s pain and wanting to change this world for the better. As it gets darker outside, I fade into the night. Hawaii keeps my soul warm as I dream. And when I wake, a whole new day begins.
“Leave the past behind, and walk away. When it’s over, and the heart breaks, and the cracks begin to show,” the lyrics of an electronic song plays in my headphones as I write this in Hawaii. It’s Sunday when I finally start this blog about what’s been going on in my adoptee life, during a spell-bound phase of cloudy weather on O’ahu.
I’m sitting on my bed in my bedroom, in the lower half of a five-bedroom house, shared by three male roommates and one other female.
My favorite roommates are Juan, a Mexican man in his later 30’s, and Delano, who is half black and Mexican, and my age, 33. Juan is a serious but insightful human being, I’ve discovered. And Delano, is by far the most humorous and entertaining of my roommates.
My new workplace is a public library that is about a mile away. Here, everything is new and foreign to me.
Nature is Everywhere
The ocean coast can be seen from my bedroom window. A better view of the water can be seen from the balcony and the backyard. Roosters roam and crow at every other odd hour of the day. There are horses in the private property just behind the backyard, in the valley below.
Green lushness is everywhere–a sight that I am still getting used to, especially when driving on a highway through the middle part of this island.
The nature in Hawaii is unreal. It is vast and jungle-like, growing wild and extreme in the distance. It’s been a dream come true being able to live so close to this nature that might be kindred to the Filipino in me.
I moved here two months ago, not knowing if this would work out. But I needed a change, or risk living hampered in a complacent, stagnant life I’d been living in the rugged territories of Northern Arizona.
Healing as an Adult Adoptee
As an adult adoptee, I am healing from my difficult and complicated past.
Day by day, I’ve been unearthing within the importance of self-love, forgiveness, accepting myself as I am and accepting my past as what it was to me. Day by day, I am rising and falling as the human being I am, equipped with the quirks and the delicacies of my own strengths and weaknesses. Day by day, I change.
Every time I see the beauty of Hawaii, I am inching away from yesterday’s pain and struggles. And each time pain and emotions arise, I console myself gently through yoga, meditation and mindfulness.
Gradually, I melt the cold walls that have blocked my heart from loving the way I eagerly loved as a child. Slowly, I get to know others.
My Own Therapies
I boogie board as much as I can. When I’m out there, I empty myself of all of yesterday’s thoughts and emotions. I ride the waves. When I’m done, I lay on the beach with the sun flattening against my body, warming up my organs. I breathe. I focus on peace.
I love to watch the sun set in Hawaii. This gives me a sense of closure and enchantment each day. The sunsets and sunrises reveal a living, natural world that is strong and vital. The sun have nothing to do with having been born an orphan in this world. The sun has everything to do with the waking present and the choices that affect our lives today.
Fear and Insecurities to Overcome
Sometimes, I’m scared but I choose to try to rise above this fear even when I’m feeling inadequate. As an adult adoptee, I’ve been so accustomed to biting down a matrix of hidden anxiety, heartache and stress. But it’s time to release my fears. It’s time to move on.
Fear had haunted my everyday life because I didn’t have the normal support of friends and family most people have to lean on in life. I grew up afraid to make any wrong steps and of not being good enough, often isolated in my adoptee complications. This fear pushed others away. It had also pushed me onward in life to adulthood.
Now, I am realizing that this fear doesn’t serve me anymore.
This fear keeps me from enjoying the present moment. This fear holds me back from being the person I want to become. And so, I work on meditation and mindfulness to transcend my insecurities.
Having all of my possessions in Hawaii, I have also felt insecure of my life’s security too. It was all or nothing, coming here.
Neverless, my life is with me now and all I can do is move on.
Changing Habits
At night when I stare up at the stars, I whisper prayers. I ask God to guide me and for love to find me, and love me as I am.
Where my habits of yesterday are changing. I’m eating better. Being more active when I’m in or out of the water. Taking in more sun. I’m exploring nature, cliff sides and exploring places more. I’m slowly coming out of my shell with my roommates and new people I meet.
I can’t fall into past habits of negative thinking. Instead, I live my life without plans, each day ridding myself of worry and doubt.
Working full-time at a public library has also kept me busy here.
Practicing Positivity in a New Job
About 40 hours of my week is consumed with working hard at a public library out here. At work, I’m checking in books, checking out books to the public at the circulation desk, organizing the videos and audio books, and mending damaged library books in the backroom of the library.
Presently, I’m waiting out a 6-month probationary period where after that, I can apply for a higher paid position since I just received my Master’s of Library and Information Science degree last month.
Until then, I have to continue on with this entry-level job at this library, which keeps me occupied all week, 8 am til 5 pm.
What’s been getting me through the rough times is thinking positive, even in challenges, which arise almost everyday at work too.
Staying positive has been getting me through everything.
Gratitude
At the end of the day, I am grateful for the small things.
I don’t have much to my name, but I have cultivated compassion and forgiveness that I feel is worth more than gold. I am proud of these personal accomplishments and all that I’ve done to help others along the way despite my hardships.
I look forward to this new adventure that I’m on and to where I’ll be guided to, one step at a time. As day by day, I live on.
The meditation hall at Garchen Institute in Chino Valley was brightly colored with royal reds, canary yellows, lush greens and deep blues. Buddhist thankas adorned the walls. A gorgeous mandala was in the center of the floor that held sacred items and offerings. Brilliant candles and Buddha statues lined the front. Reverent lamas sat in the front right, reciting traditional Tibetan mantras. I sat on the opposite corner, behind the mandala, near the isle, hidden from sight from the lamas. In this meditation space, I received my Vajrakalaya empowerment. In this space, I gave my Bodhisattva vows.
Why was I doing this, you ask?
In light of the storm of adoption awareness month and the struggles within me as an adoptee, I was here to purify my heart and mind.
The Vajrakilaya and Vajrayana Buddhism
In this Vajrakilaya Drupchen retreat, I generally understood that the empowerment was designed in a way to vanquish the obscurations in my heart and mind, to clear the “poisons” that tend to aggregate within me in the material world, which cloud the original pure nature of every one of us–that is love and compassion. According to Garchen’s website, Vajrakilaya is a wrathful manifestation of Vajrasattva, the Buddha of Purification. Thus, the practice in this Vajrakilaya retreat focuses on removing intense inner and outer obstacles to peace, happiness and enlightenment.
The Vajrakilaya is a part of Vajrayana Buddhism, and these teachings express that the source of suffering is the self-grasping of the “I” that doesn’t exist. The altruistic goal in these practices is to cultivate Bodhicitta or enlightened compassion within ourselves, which is also the nature of the Buddha. This compassion cultivation is the antidote that can dispel all suffering from ourselves and others. Thus, the Vajrakilaya is like a vehicle that cultivates compassion inside us, and in an accelerated pace.
My Empowerment
Here is a video of me receiving the empowerment. I enter the video stage left at about 7:12:16. And to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing.
Garchen Rinpoche first applied a scepter to the crown of my head and chanted. I walked to the next lama. In a second, I was instructed to put my left hand out. This lama suddenly poured wine into my palm. At that moment, I felt really surprised, because I simply wasn’t expecting that.
I walked to the next lama, my hand still out. Next, this lama plopped a mid-sized, round seed into the liquid in my palm, and now, total puzzlement descended upon me. I halted, wondering hard at what I was supposed to do. I took a few more steps. “Drink,” this lama instructed, so without hesitation, I basically slammed the contents into my mouth. With the wine and the seed in my mouth, my tongue whirled around the objects, and I swallowed the liquid. I halted in front of the lama with the grape basket.
Oh no. What am I supposed to do now? I thought.
This lama ushered me to take a grape, so I took a grape. Not knowing what I was supposed to do with this grape either, I threw it in my mouth instantly, which I believe was the seed of longevity. The last lama had a bit of a half-grin watching me. It seemed he then remembered to give me a bracelet, and then I walked back to my seat as gracefully as I could.
I gulped the empowerment seed as I found my seat, trying not to choke or make a face. After that, I started reciting prayers.
Taking Breaks
The drubchen is one of the most powerful yidam or diety practices that include continuous recitation of mantras to aid in watering the empowered seed planted within. It is usually for about 7 to 10 days of uninterrupted practice, and for this retreat it was 8 days. Several days of drubchen is equivalent to years of solitary retreat. It is practiced to create a transcendent environment for the deity to arise, and to destroy the forces within us that are counteracting our compassion. At the meditation hall, there was a blend of sacred rituals including trumpets, dances, as well as incense burned to stimulate the senses.
For this retreat, I wasn’t there continuously. The center’s guest quarters were all booked for this drubchen, so staying off site made way for commuting and having breaks. This turned out very good for me.
Knowing myself, I tend to push myself too hard at times. Most new practices for me need to be at my own pace, so I can gently submerse myself.
In my breaks, I stayed in a hotel nearby. I listened to the live Youtube feed that the institute showed during the drubchen sessions, meditating at the hotel. There, I practiced Vipassana meditation too.
I was at the center practicing most days. I hopped in my car early in the morning and drove back at sunset. Still, I felt the need to be gradual for this. I knew that next time, I will be better prepared and more disciplined.
Working With Negative Energies Effectively
I look back at myself in this video and admit, I chuckle to myself. As an adult adoptee with internal struggles, I’ve taken so much of my life and thoughts seriously. But lately, I’ve been practicing Buddhism to shake off my deathly seriousness, and expel my negative energies and obscurations, which have kept me locked into habits and afflictions for so long.
I hope to be lighter and more controlled with what I have inside me–which includes adoptee anger, that Lynelle writes about in a blog post.
By doing these practices, I make a personal effort to control and next, turn my most negative emotions into positive thoughts, feelings and actions.
The goal in these practices is to practically manage my life and energies more effectively, so that I may be useful in today’s society.
Stephanie taking Bodhisattva Vows at Garchen Institute in Chino Valley, Arizona
What’s Coming Up Next
I’ll be heading to see Amma, a well-known hugging saint, next week in Northern California! I will be attending this Bay Area Retreat with my friend, with more photos and experiences to share soon.
I get up in the morning and I try. That’s basically what it’s like every morning as an adult adoptee. Whenever I look back in my mind, my past stretches past a million acres of difficult terrain that’s emotionally challenging and left psychological imprints on me. An adoptive family I never got that close with. A birth family in the Philippines that I met but also couldn’t get close with. Memories that are warm and fuzzy, hard and cold; and the cherished ones I made for myself growing up in the Midwest of the United States that are whimsical–full of bright stars, meditation, books and humorous moments.
As an adult adoptee, I am 33, and I recognize that it’s taken me longer to do many things. It took me longer to find myself, love myself, search for answers, travel, learn about my “sanskaras” or psychological/emotional/spiritual imprints made within me from how I was born, raised and developed as a child through adulthood. It’s taken me longer to understand the world and myself, push past my own fears and barriers, and finally, have healthy relationships which is one of my ultimate goals. It’s taken me longer to find my callings in life and professions that suit my personality and talents too.
What I want to stress in this blog is being alone. It’s hard to address because I wish I were more popular and successful as a person but I’m going to write where I am in life now. I’ve been more isolated as a human being in this world and I believe it’s due to my own hardships. Due to its own uniqueness, I’ve had to work on my problems alone, solve them on my own and seek therapies and healing modalities that best suit me as I’ve gotten older. I don’t know if anyone else relates to this, but it is hard doing all of this and feeling so alone.
A difficult hurtle has been to forgive and accept myself for where I am today. I have flaws, quirks and imperfections. I’m often hard on myself for being sort of odd. I know I don’t fit the image of being normal. I get tired of my ups and downs and everyday is a hurtle onwards. I know I’m at-risk due to my complex background and undiagnosed PTSD, which calls for tight management on myself. I have to constantly be vigilant on my therapies, keeping mentally positive, keeping connected with life and God as best as I can, and keep open and social with others even though it’s hard. Every day.
In the end, I can’t give up. Some answers for my own life is to substitute teach for the day, work in a library or go home and shut out the world, turn on music, make art and journal write. Living in Northern Arizona, I like to hike, drive out to Sedona and visit my favorite stupa or drive to my favorite Buddhist institute, the Garchen Buddhist Institute in Chino Valley, Arizona where I learn, meet others and practice in what I’m passionate about. I feel alone, but every day, I work on my goals, as well as forgiving, letting go, accepting myself and embracing the world as it is. Being in nature helps. And, always learning.
It is a fight at times but it’s worth it.
I began alone in this world but we all do. This life itself has been my most challenging story to tell, a story beyond words. A human story that has so many threads, and naturally, some threads will break in places when worn too thin. But this is where I pick up and weave my own story. This is where I can live all over again in a new way. And, this is where I can connect with others and move forward from the past, by living in the present.
So in this month of November during National Adoption Awareness Month, I encourage everyone reading this, and any who can relate, to keep trying. Every day is a hurtle, a journey, a timeless opportunity of creation. Every day, we can live and weave this life with what we’re given. Even if we feel alone.
I received another email from ICAB on June 28, approximately 15 days since I’d emailed a signed form requesting the retrieval of my birth certificate. This email had the subject: “Post Adoption Concern” which made my heart flutter since it sounded so serious and official. The content of this email basically said that ICAB has acknowledged my receipt for request sent on June 22.
ICAB said they would also retrieve my folder for the photocopy of my birth certificate and request the security paper copy from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). ICAB would inform me once my birth certificate becomes available.
In this waiting period, I’ve felt isolated but my life in the United States (U.S) has shifted and blossomed into new pathways. I’ve started a new job at a different school here in Northern Arizona, still close to the Navajo Reservation where I’m building a small, specialized library for K-12 grades, at a fully sustainable charter school. I finished with a mixed media art series that will be shown at a downtown restaurant on a First Friday Art Walk in August. I was able to move into a bigger room in my house for the same rental cost, so I have a more spacious bedroom now for myself and my plants.
I’ve been able to realize my dream even more–of wanting to live in Hawaii one day and work at a library there. I’ve been tweeting obsessively about the children being separated by immigration at U.S borders and forcibly brought into the U.S foster care system. Oh! And I also started wearing contacts, which has been awesome for me since I’ve had glasses all my life.
Personally, I still acknowledge there are missing pieces to the fabric of my identity in some ways. Culturally, I’m estranged. Family-wise, I still live life mostly single and wish to one day have a family for myself. But the good thing is that creatively, I’ve been able to restructure some of what I’ve lost having been orphaned as a baby. And, professionally, I’ve found the best outlet in the work that I do, as the profession I’ve chosen mixes well with the introverted personality that I’ve developed as an intercountry adoptee in the U.S.
I can’t say that everything is fine, because it isn’t. There’s much that still needs to be fought for, shared and brought to awareness. But on a positive note, I think we’re at a better place than a few decades ago when all we had was an old-fashioned mailing system to rely on. I look forward to what innovations life and the rest of our adoptee community can create, especially if we keep believing that our voices matter in this world.
Since May, over 2,300 immigrant children have been forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexican border due to President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. When I watched the news, I was speechless. I was terrified for the children being placed into foster care because they don’t belong there. These children belong to families, they are wanted and certainly aren’t in need of new care. And I believe foster care should never be used in this way–their services shouldn’t be used to house children who belong to families.
How was this even made possible? I wondered.
And another thought struck. Where is this leading to?
I read recent news to find out how the funding evolved. It looks like back in 2014, the Obama Administration created a network of foster care programs back when immigrants and unaccompanied minors were crossing the Mexican-United States border. Now, in the wake of Donald Trump’s recent “zero tolerance” immigration policy, these foster care facilities are being used to house the children who were forcibly separated from their families too.
This is what shocks me. Back in May, 2014, it looks like the federal U.S government gave a US$2.28 billion budget to help set up state-licensed shelters and foster care agencies around the country, for these unaccompanied minors. From this Newsweek article, I learned that the White House established a linked network of foster care programs to cater towards these immigrant children too. Thus, now presently, these foster care programs are funded in the same way that state or county laws and regulations govern domestic foster care.
Additionally, the news article states that the children who are removed from their parents by ICE are still legally considered “unaccompanied alien children.” Because of this technicality, these children could spend an average of 51 days in a temporary shelter before they are put into sponsor homes with relatives already living in the U.S — or be placed into the U.S foster care system. And this is where my horror turns into anger since the immigrant children at the border wereaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian.
I’m shocked because the U.S is not being truthful in its own administration–which from experience can be extremely damaging for these children in the future when they become adults. This detail is also destructively misleading, assisting children into dangerously enter the world of foster care and the adoption industry where so many risks are involved.
My Personal Statement
As a Filipino-American adoptee, I was orphaned at birth because of destitute poverty. My birth family couldn’t take care of me. I wasrelinquished and had to live in an orphanage until I was two, then adopted in the U.S, where I grew up experiencing the hardships of my displacement and my adoption placement. I wouldn’t want to wish this on any child especially for those that aren’t a part of the intercountry adoptee realities.
I believe these immigrant children do not have the same qualities surrounding their displacement as intercountry adoptees.
These children belong to families who want them.
They had not been abandoned or relinquished and they should not be termed “unaccompanied” when they were accompanied. These children were forcibly separated by the U.S government, a traumatizing action which will need healing and repair for each family that this is impacting.
Shame on the U.S government for creating a funded system in place that would even begin the process of orphaning these immigrant children at the border. In my opinion, the U.S. government should be reprimanded for the mistreatment of children and for the flagrant misuse of today’s foster care system.
And, I think we should all care about this issue–because the misuse of the foster system and the systematic funding that allows this, especially in a leading developed country like the U.S, jeopardizes today’s foster care system and adoption industry on domestic and international levels.
My Plea
I urge spotlighted attention to be placed on the immigrant children being placed into foster care and shelters. I am asking journalists, writers, social media networkers, lawyers, caring citizens, adoptees, non-adoptees and everyone to watch the news and make sure that these children are being treated well and will not be placed for adoption. We need to see that these government funds will be used to reunite these children back to their families.
Discussion Prompt
Intercountry adoptees and adoptive families, what are your views? Do you have feedback, or ideas of what can be done or ways to keep an eye on each immigrant child that is placed in U.S foster care and shelters?
