In Indianapolis, I recently started practicing Zen meditation with a sangha in the lineage of Mahayana Buddhism from the Kwan Um school of Zen, started by Zen Master Seung Sahn. I started my studies with sitting with a community of practitioners at the Indianapolis Zen Center. Practices consist of sitting and walking meditation, listening to Zen dharma readings and participating in light-hearted dharma discussions in the waiting room.
What has been a game changer in meditation practice has been meditating with my eyes open. I decided to try and have been struck by its functions and usefulness. I’m fully alert rather than traversing in various sleeping, subtle stages of meditation that I usually find inner peace with. I’m awake in the mindfulness I gain with my eyes closed, and what advances my meditations, is that I develop a mindfulness in my waking life instantly rather than closing my eyes, doing all this work in the dark, and later integrating it with the world.
What’s come up since my recent move in this new city is the living grief that I’m immersed in when I close my eyes. I feel it as a ferocious, all-consuming ocean in my mediations. And from it, there is a heaviness in my mind. And I look through that heaviness like fog or dirt on a window. But it does clear, which I’ve achieved in split seconds of temporary clarity. And then I feel exact vividness in the present moment, and I have no mind at all. I’m just awake in the room I’m sitting in.
During a Zen retreat I had yesterday, I was able to have an Interview with a teacher. I brought up my grief in mediation and my experience when it clears.
“Where does it go?” The teacher asked.
“It disappears,” I said.
“Then you have a choice,” he said, smiling.
I described the grief and the heaviness, the way it can pull at me and makes me sleepy, and how the feelings of sadness and this heaviness can obscure my clarity, seeking Zen advisement on meditating with these difficult sensations revolving almost like a circle. I described that I have a strong attachment to it, that I might have been making it even bigger by focusing on it in my mediations throughout the years, unknowingly concentrating my mind in it and feeding it, but now see how it lingers in me with eyes open, and I can only imagine how it could also influence my waking life unconsciously. So, I was troubled because all of this is like taking on my lifelong karma as an adoptee, which the teacher knows a little about thankfully.
“Learn from it,” he said, “And when I experienced it, I would thank it. I thanked it for the lesson.” He described his own life experiences in grief, mentioned a book titled, How to Be Friends With Your Demons, and said it did go away for him.
I felt a sudden burst of hope in this conversation.
“So I can try appreciating its presence and continue with practicing,” I confirm to him.
“You have to feel it,” the teacher said to me towards the end of my Zen interview. “You have to own it.” I stared at him, now understanding that there is a way to practice Zen even with grief. And that there is a way to own it and to not let it have control over my life.
In my new apartment in Indianapolis, I’m seeing the grief in my life as it is today and the heaviness that it creates, with eyes open, and I’m journaling about what it teaches me. I’m asking critical questions in myself from what I observe even though it’s hard. Instead of focusing entirely on my grief, I’m giving space to thank it and appreciate its presence in my life and waking world, and all that it teaches me. From my experience with grief, it’s a wounded, intoxicating companion to me especially with the death of my Filipino American brother last year. But I also realized that I am not abandoning my grief by appreciating it and connecting it back to the love inside me.
I was filling in the shades of another line picture yesterday of the “Dogpache” dancing with two Dogohawks and later noticed inflammation coming through my body and arms …
I do several iterations of images and they often yield a deep trek of Adoptee feelings .. In my case a core trauma is being child abused and used after Adoption ..
Slowly the trek of images echoes my feelings and also shows new angles and prisms which I use to resolve pain .. In my type of therapy I can do at anytime I please now, as I am retired, I am trained to allow the feelings to be what they want to become .
So my arms went up in the air and into claws and then pictures of my birth mother came into my mind ..I felt like a child scratching her face. And I did that in my “image-spheres” and into the airs .. I am quite rationally, crazy, and it’s all fine.. I have a well developed creative mind ..
Birth mom left me at 3 and that core area is surrounded by later misuse of my body .. She knew the person she left me with as far back as 1940 when Birth mom was aged 7 ..Anyway, I felt the pained feelings, but another prism returned of a stuck mouth .. Muffled languages. Stay safe … SAY NOTHING……Pressure to speak though ..
Finally the pain burst out of the howl-mouth-child-hole of me into resolving cries which were like a ghost child howling for mommy … It’s just another prism in the massive fragmentation field of early childhood mending for me .. How does it mend ? By being and becoming itself ..By finally allowing being, to be inside being as itself .. To grieve as that child part … It is truth delayed for sure but able to be therapeutically re-experienced…..
Does it hurt ? When it’s in the stages of inflammations yes … You bet, because the body is hiding an old “lie” of the early mind which nonetheless tried to protect me from the horror..I don’t need protecting now (poor auto-brain) in fact I need to be all of me .. Held as me by me .. That’s all ..
Now I am finally old enough to be young again and feel things from the various pasts of me because I have a brain developed that can hold everything ..It’s a slow road back to feeling-connection and that form of internal integrity. I note though it’s necessary to let out the grief of: “Who should have been there and was not” …
That’s the point in reducing the unmet need (for mommy) into resolvable grief and crying …”Mommmmeeeeeee”… “HOwlllll”.. I’ve been on a slow road to acceptance of what happened, but what happened was over many pain distorted years .. It’s why I still befriend monsters in Art and make them cry and landscapes howl too ..
OWWWWWLLLL OWWWWOOOOOO …. I love howls they free my early primal soul that was chained to dissociative emotional prisons..I have learned to grieve as a child who was stopped from grieving…. I am here in myself … I have arrived .. I am home in my skin better and it is sad in a more positive way simply because tragedy is ..
by Lynelle Long, Vietnamese ex-adoptee raised in Australia, Founder of ICAV
I can officially now say, “I WAS adopted” as in, it is of the past. Now, my identity changes once again and I am no longer legally plenary adopted. I am my own person having made a clear and cognitive adult age decision that I want to be legally free of the people who looked after me since 5 months old. Mostly, I wanted to be legally recognised as my biological mother’s child and for the truth to be on my birth certificate and flowing into all my identity documents for the future. This also impacts my children and their future generations to ensure they do not have to live the lie of adoption either, but are entitled to their genetic truth of whom they are born to, multi generationally.
The biggest lie of plenary adoption is that we are “as if born to our adoptive parents”. My Australian birth certificate reflects this lie. I grew tired of the untruths of adoption so I decided to take matters into my own hands and empower myself. Nine months later, on 13 December 2022, I was officially discharged from my adoption order which had been made when I was 17 years old. Previous to this, I had been flown into Australia by my adoptive father at the age of 5 months old in December 1973 and the family kept me with them for 17 years without legally completing my adoption. So technically, I was legally under the care of the Lutheran Victorian adoption agency and Immigration Minister’s care as my guardians until my adoption got completed in April 1990. These institutions however didn’t seem to followup on me nor did they create a State Ward file on me. It is still a mystery to this day how I was barely followed up on, given they knew quite clearly that my adoption had not been finalised.
My case is very unusual in that most adoptive parents want to quickly complete the adoption so they can be officially regarded as the child’s “legal guardians”. I have no idea why my adoptive parents took so long and what baffles me is how they managed to pass as my “parents” at schools, hospitals, or any places where there should be a question around “who is this child’s parents” when they had nothing formal on paper to prove their “parenthood”. It’s quite obvious I can’t be their “born to” child when I am Asian and they are white caucasians. We look nothing alike and they raised me in rural areas where I was often the only non-white, non-Aboriginal looking person.
So as this year closes, I can celebrate that my year of 2022 has been a year of empowerment in so many ways. On November 2022, I was also recognised for my years of suffering by being offered the maximum compensation, counselling and a direct personal response under the Royal Commission for Institutional Sexual AbuseRedress Scheme by the two entities responsible for me – the Lutheran Church (the Victorian adoption agency) and the Department of Home Affairs (Australian Immigration). The past 5 years I’ve spent talking to countless lawyers, trying to find a way to hold institutions accountable for my placement with a family who should never have received any vulnerable child. Finally, in some small way, I am able to hold these institutions somewhat accountable and be granted a face to face meeting as a direct personal response via the Redress Scheme. What I want them to recognise is the significant responsibility they hold to keep children safe. It is still hard to fathom how any country can allow children in with parents who look nothing like them, clearly having no biological connections, no paperwork, yet not take all precautions to ensure these children are not being trafficked. I am yet to finish with that larger issue of being highly suspicious that my adoption was an illegal one, if not highly illicit. Our governments need to be on higher alert, looking out for all signs of trafficking in children and ensuring that these children are followed up on and that they have indeed been relinquished by their parents before being allowed into another country with people who are nothing alike.
My case in the Redress Scheme also highlights the many failings of the child protection system that is supposed to protect vulnerable children like me. If I’d been adopted by the family as they should have done, I would never have been allowed this compensation or acknowledgement through the Redress Scheme. It is a significant failing of the system that those who are deemed legally “adopted” are not considered to be under “institutional care” when these very institutions are the ones who place us and deem our adoptive families eligible to care for us. I wrote about this some years ago when I was frustrated that I hadn’t been able to participate in the Royal Commission for Institutional Sexual Abuse. Thankfully, a kind lawyer and fellow sufferer as a former foster child, Peter Kelso was the one who gave me free legal advice and indicated the way through the Royal Commission labyrinth. He helped me understand my true legal status as “not adopted” at the time of my sexual abuse and it is this truth that helped my case for redress via the free legal services of Knowmore. So it’s a bitter sweet outcome for me as I know of too many fellow adoptees who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their adoptive families. Most will never receive any sense of recognition for their suffering and the pathway to hold individuals criminally accountable is also tough if not impossible, depending on the country and laws. In most other countries except Australia, the statute of limitations prevents most victims of sexual abuse from seeking justice. I know from personal experience that it can take survivors 40 plus years to get to the stage of being strong enough to take this route of fighting for justice. More so for an adoptee who lives their life being expected to be “grateful” for adoption and being afraid of further abandonment and rejection should they speak their truth. For some, they never ever talk about their truth as the trauma is just too great and they are busy just surviving. I know of others where the abuse played a major role in their decision to suicide.
I am 2 years into the midst of criminal proceedings against my adoptive family. Next year begins the court contested hearings and who knows what the outcome of that will be nor how long it will go for. I talk about this only to encourage other victims to empower themselves, fight for that inner child who had no-one to protect them! For me, this is what it is all about. I spent years in therapy talking about how none of the adults in my life protected me and even after I exposed the abuse, none of those in professions where child protection is part of their training and industry standard, offered to help me report the perpetrators or take any action to hold them accountable. I finally realised the only one who would ever stand up for myself, was myself. Yes, it has meant I end the relationship with that family, but what type of relationship was it anyway? They were more interested in keeping things quiet and protecting themselves then protecting or creating a safe space for me. I eventually realised I could no longer continue to live the multiple lies both adoption and sexual abuse within that family required. Eventually, I had to chose to live my truth which ultimately meant holding them responsible for the life they’d chosen and created for themselves and me.
I hope one day to also hold institutions accountable for the illegal and illicit aspects of my adoption and once I’m done with that, then I’ll feel like I’ve truly liberated myself from adoption.
Until then, I continue to fight with the rest of my community for this last truth of mine. So many of us should never have been separated from our people, country, culture, language. We lose so much and there is absolutely no guarantee we get placed with families who love, nurture, and uphold us and our original identities.
The legal concept of plenary adoption is truly an outdated mode of care for a vulnerable child and its premise and legal concept needs to be heavily scrutinised in an era of human and child’s rights awareness. I agree there will always be the need to care for vulnerable children, children who can’t be with their families, but it is time we walk into future learning from the harms of the past and making it better for the children in the future. My lifelong goal is always for this because adoptees are the ones who spend so many of our years having no voice, having no independent people checking up on us. Adopted children are so vulnerable! Too often the assumption is made that adoption is a great benefit for us and this oversight impedes a serious deep dive into the risks to our well being and safety. In my case and too many others, it isn’t until we are well into our 40s and onwards that we find our critical thinking voices and allow ourselves to say what we truly know without fear of rejection and abandonment. Plenary adoption needs to be outlawed and simple adoption should only be a temporary solution for a temporary problem. Any form of adoption should always be the choice of the adoptee to have their adoption undone and allowed to return to be legally connected to their original families, if that is what they want.
May we continue to bring awareness and much needed change to our world so that vulnerable children will be given a better chance in the future and to empower our community of adoptee survivors!
I wish for all in my community that 2023 will be a year of empowerment, truth and justice!
Resources
Discharge / Annulment / Undoing your Adoption
In Australia, each State and Territory has its own process to discharge: VIC, QLD, NSW, WA, SA This process includes costs that vary between States. All Australian intercountry adoptees can seek the Bursary amount of $500 from our ICAFSS Small Grants and Bursaries to contribute to the costs of their discharge. Domestic adoptees might also access Small Grants and Bursaries via their local equivalent Relationships Australia program too.
Can you Reverse an Adoption? Reversing an Adoption: Adopted child returned to birth parents (historically, legislation in countries to discharge / reverse an adoption was included to allow adoptive parents the right to undo the adoption if they felt it wasn’t working out)
by Gabriela Paulsen, adopted from Romania to Denmark.
EMDR Therapy Changed My Life!
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for me, involved the therapist moving 2 fingers in front of my head so the eyes are moving side to side, while I was thinking about a trauma event. The stimuli can also be something I hold in my hand which is vibrating or it can be tapping done by the therapist. The eye movements help the brain to take up the trauma and reprocess it again, so it does not disturb me in daily life. During the eye movements, I sometimes had different reactions such as crying or maybe some body sensations like getting hot or fast breathing because my body experiences the trauma event again. There can many kind of different reactions and the tricky part is that I had no idea how I would react until I tried it!
In my case, I wanted to work with a trauma I had from my time in Romania as an orphan, I think it was from the orphanage, but I am not completely sure as it could also be a memory from my time in hospital.
My trauma was a memory I only got when I was sleeping and when the trauma was about to occur it felt like I might pass out and loose control. In that moment I knew that I would relive the trauma event again. I experienced the nightmare quite often as a teenager. The last time it happened, was around 10 years ago, just before I turned 17-18 years old. The trauma event felt extremely real. I was very scared and after I woke up, I was completely paralysed with fear. I had always thought this was something real, so when my therapist recommended EMDR therapy for me, I said yes and we started to work with this trauma. I only have my nightmare to work from, so it was not much. I had absolutely no idea whether I would react or not and it was actually quite difficult to think about such an old memory during the eye movements!
Session 1 On my first session of EMDR, it took a while before I started to react. I started to sit as if paralysed, I could only look straight forward and talked more slowly because it felt like I was put into a hypnotic state of mind. I then started to remember more of the trauma and I starting to breath faster even though it felt like I was holding my breath. My body was definitely starting to prepare for the trauma event memories and I felt very alert.
After that session, my brain continued to work with the trauma, which is expected. I could feel it because I was very alert, I was scared of being in a dark room and of some gloves I had because they are a symbol of a hand. During a work day, there was a potentially dangerous situation of a woman who was very threatening towards one of my colleagues, who reacted with aggression. I got extremely tense because of that and I was breathing like hell because I was ready to fight. It was a huge and shocking reaction I had and I couldn’t talk properly because of my breathing, so I had to take 5 minutes break to calm myself.
Session 2 I had problems getting my mind to go back into the trauma so my therapist and I had a short break from the eye movements to relax and help me get back into it. After a while I started to react with the paralysed / hypnotic state of mind and quick breathing but within myself, it felt silent and it appears like I am not breathing. After a while, I wanted to move my arm but directly afterwards I regretted this because I immediately felt like I did something wrong. Later, I started to remember more, it was like a part of me was revisiting the traumatic event. It was very interesting to explore because I got new information about my trauma. After going deeper and deeper into the trauma my breathing got faster and faster and suddenly I felt like I was about to break down into tears. I continued for a few minutes more and then I stopped doing the eye movements because I got very sad, I was crying and then my breathing was changing to be very big and deep, from within my stomach. I could feel my bones in my back so much from the heavy breathing. During this, I experienced the most insane feelings inside of me whilst my tears were running freely.
I didn’t understand at the time what happened because my brain was in the present and yet my body was reliving the trauma I had experienced. It was very hard to feel the trauma again. I thought that I must have looked like a person getting raped or tortured. It was a completely insane experience and afterwards I felt very confused about what happened and I asked my therapist to explain it to me.
Afterwards, I was extremely tired and my whole body felt very heavy. My muscles in my arms felt like they had lifted something way too heavy! I was also very alert and the rest of the day and the next 3-4 days, I was in this stressful state of mind. I would feel suddenly deep sorrow and tiredness several times a day without knowing why. It was literally like something was hurting inside me several times a day and like something wanted to come out of my body but I was with family, so I worked very hard to not break down and at the same time, I felt like I couldn’t get the emotions out either. It was very confusing. I also started to not like high noises and I felt scared if there where many people too close around me, like when I was on public transport. I usually do not have such problems. I was still scared of darkness and sometimes I got scared without knowing why. One of the times I was scared I was thinking about the woman who had caused my trauma.
I felt like I didn’t want to sleep after I have my nightmare about my trauma, because I was so scared!
Session 3 After 3 weeks, I was going to do EMDR again and I was very nervous and exciting about what would happened. The night before therapy I had a very short nightmare again which had not happened for around 10 years! This time, it was like I was further in the trauma event as compared to in the past, I had only ever dreamed as if I was at the beginning. In the nightmare some people were about to do something that I definitely didn’t like and I was thinking “stop”, so the nightmare ended extremely short. It felt like a few seconds but it was enough for me to feel again how I actually felt during the trauma event from years past. The next day, I was very stressed and actually scared.
During EMDR therapy session after this, I felt like my eyes were working against me, not wanting to participate. So I talked with my therapist about how I had completely closed down because of the nightmare. I didn’t have huge reactions during that session nor the next 2 sessions. In the last EMDR session, I could nearly get the image of the trauma event in my mind and I no longer felt scared – it was as if the trauma no longer affected me as powerfully as before. Between the sessions, I have felt very bad mentally but one day, it was like gone completely and I felt much happier, more relaxed and not as chronically tense. I also stopped having problems sleeping in a dark room – in the past, a completely dark room signalled that the re-lived trauma would occur.
In the past and prior to doing EMDR therapy, I would get anxiety from the outside getting dark, or having many people around me and high noises. Now all of these things are no longer a problem so I feel like I can go on living as myself once again. My friends have also told me that I seem more relaxed and most importantly, I feel a huge difference in my life!
I can highly recommend EMDR therapy for adoptees especially when it comes to trauma that the body remembers. I feel like I have healed my body and let out a terrible experience. Before EMDR therapy, I didn’t understand that my body was reliving such huge trauma all the time and how much it was impacting me.
by JS Lee, adopted from South Korea to the USA, author and artist.
When I was in Korea in 2006, I traveled to Daegu to see the hospital grounds where I was supposedly found abandoned. Wandering aimlessly, I hoped for something to feel familiar, despite how decades had passed. This painting was inspired by the photo I took on my trip.
While painting my infant self there sounds pretty sad, it felt amazing—almost as if I’d traveled back in time to tell her she was now in my safe hands.
You can follow more of JS Lee’s works at her website.
In November 2021, I was asked by the Australian Department of Social Services, to source artwork by intercountry adoptees that would fit with their artwork brief for a literature review they funded reviewing the research available on Adoption and Suicide.
ICAV approached various adoptee artists known for their work by ICAV and requested if they wished to submit any pieces. Dan, a Filipino adoptee in the USA, had only weeks before just joined the ICAV network and I had seen his artwork as part of getting to know him. His artwork blew me away with its depth and intensity. So I’ve asked him to share it with you all here. Artwork is such a powerful medium to portray the adoptee lived experience! I hope you enjoy the next 3 blogs whereby we share you Dan’s incredible talent, his artwork and the meaning behind each piece.He presents to you his 3 part series, all related to being a Filipino intercountry adoptee.
by Dan R Moen, adopted from the Philippines to the USA.
Grieving for the Child of the Past
This represents both my present and my past simultaneously going through emotional turmoil. The child is suggested to be naked in representation of being completely vulnerable. With both arms surrounding the adult form of themselves, the child desires nothing more than to be loved, protected, and to not feel orphaned—a real sense of belonging.
The adult, however, represents my current adult self. The old world/Victorian/Edwardian clothing represents a connection to history; the love for studying and learning from our ancestors and a passion for those who came before, and yet, completely ignoring the child in the present. The red vest represents love but is covered and not revealed by the partially closed frock coat. He is looking away from the child suggesting that there’s a disconnect. He is looking in towards the darkness knowing that the world isn’t all shiny and glorious. He too is also grieving but not fully connecting to the child. One arm is wrapped around the child suggesting there is some small connection to his past self, but the other hand is completely in the pocket suggesting that there’s a sense of standoffishness, including cognitive dissonance—needing to grow up and to move on. He is displaying the inner turmoil of accepting the idea of “that’s just life” – while simultaneously, not granting himself permission to fully mourn with the past child.
Surrounding them, there are different colors suggesting fire of meanings. The dark greens represent the forests that I visited throughout 2020 and all the secret spots that I like to go to for healing. Many of these locations were off the nature trails, and for one to visit them, they would have to trek deep into the woods to find these locations.
The red represents the blood of those who have died at the hands of bad policies, politics, racism, ignorance, and to Covid-19. As does the white, which represents the countless spirits and souls who have passed onto the next world.
The yellow represents the fire with chaos and change. There are hints of gold metallic paint suggesting the idea that there is healing within the chaos, but it depends on individuals’ perspectives. This is represented physically by the viewer as the angle that you’re looking at the painting determines the visibility of the metallic paint. So, when multiple people look at the painting at the same time, some will see the metallic paint while some will not see it, that’s the point.
Many of us, as adults, sometimes forget that the raw emotions we feel, are human, just human. No logic is needed in the moment of grief. Many of our fears, woes, and deep inner turmoil come from our past, and sometimes, we mourn our childhood – as we haven’t given ourselves permission to fully grieve and feel these raw emotions. We must give ourselves that permission; any advice from others or opinions from others will not be fulfilled if we don’t allow ourselves to feel first and validate how feel internally.
You matter too. You are #1 in life; from birth to the next world – learn to live with yourself, not by yourself.
Coming next, Dan’s 2nd art work piece Does My Perspective Matter? in his 3 part series.
To find out more about Dan and and his work, check out his website.
I am a 36-year-old Filipino American adoptee and my road to recovering from being orphaned as a baby has never come easy. I didn’t have the resources to return to the Philippines to restore my heritage. I never had the resources to mend the problems I had with my intercountry adoption placement. So, I had to find creative solutions to recover from all of this.
I can’t promise any tips to save anyone from the complications of being adopted or adopting. What I can do is give a few personal solutions that I found in my own adoptee life that helped on my road to recovering from my intercountry adoption journey.
5 Things I Did to Reclaim My Adoptee Life
Creating. I first studied writing and then library and information science. My interests led to making mixed media art and information products that helped me voice my transracial life’s losses and restructure a new sense of identity in innovative ways. I could transform my grief with art and education. For instance, I made a digital archive showing my adoption process and the biological identity that I lost when I was born as an orphan in the Philippines in 1985. You can view my archive here and my Instagram here.
Retreating peacefully. In-between a rock and a hard place, I had to choose what was best for me psychologically and emotionally. I started retreating from the norm in my early twenties. I separated from my adoptive family through geographic and social distancing. I retreated from all of the past relations that failed me in the past and the bad relationships I had. I moved to Hawaii in my thirties, a place I had been mysteriously called to for years. There, I let go. But despite letting go, I never gave up on myself, or the love I have for life, my ideals or the world around me. And to keep myself well in Hawaii, I continued my meditation practices and holistic therapies.
Focusing on Work. There are pathways in Buddhism where one can practice meditation optimally and achieve liberation through intensive work and labor. Work has been the best practice for me. Work caters to my studious personality. It is the best physical, emotional and psychological outlet. I can rebuild a sense of identity in work as well.
Being Involved in Communities. I got involved with supportive communities and support groups. I gravitate towards people that practice meditation, people that are devoted to art or learning, or nonprofit endeavours. I enjoy being a part of supportive networks with people. I ask questions. I volunteer. I like to believe that I restructure the broken bonds of my history by being involved today. Being a part of communities helps me cultivate a sense of belonging. I build a positive foundation around me and support structures.
Taking Care of My Relations Today. Relationships keep me regulated in my daily life. My relations include unconventional ones like taking care of my plants, my cat, work relations and with myself. I’ve started adoptee counselling on a regular basis to cultivate a better relationship that I have with myself and my adoptee world. I am also returning to my adoptive family this Christmas to visit and help heal my relations with them. My relations help me keep well in life today.
Yes, I still feel echoes of my broken bonds affect my life today. I still ache from having been born into destitute poverty in the Philippines so long ago. I still dream of the older Filipino American brother whom I lost in this intercountry adoptee experience. I still carry the void where my biological family’s voices are forever gone. There is no easy answer to recover from these paradoxes.
Despite it all, I do know that I am finding my way day by day. I have been coming out of the fog, and it has been a good thing.
I’m interested in music since the day I was adopted to Germany. I like to say I was born with music in my blood . I started playing classical music instruments and tried many other instruments, like piano, clarinet, guitar and so on.
During my childhood, we had a twice yearly meeting organized from our German adoptive parents, where us Bolivian adoptees could meet each other, getting to know our same roots and also so the parents could talk about the themes of adoption. When I was about 6 or 7 yrs old, our parents invited a Bolivian music group for our meeting. That was the first time I heard Bolivian folk music in concert. Before this, I had only ever heard it via MC’s or CD’s so I was absolutely fascinated from the singing and playing the cultural instruments and that was the time when I decided to play the instruments as well.
I’m absolutely happy being adopted to Germany but learning my native instruments made me feel like I have a connection to my land, where I come from even though I’ve never seen it before. So I went on with playing, writing and singing the songs from Bolivia.
When I grew up I also learned Spanish. To understand the meaning of the songs was also important for me because singing alone was not enough. I wanted to also know what the songs meant.
My inspiration into my music is the connection to my land where I was born and the fascinating culture of Bolivian Indians and the mountains.
I still haven’t visited Bolivia. I hope that any day I will go and visit my old orphanage and the city where I was born. When I play music, it’s like I’m closer to Bolivia and I can imagine how the sunset over the mountains starts and how the wind blows over the fields. It’s also a good method to relax and forget about the stress sometimes.
The past 2 weeks it is as if we were on a roller coaster within the adoption community in which all the themes that have passed by in recent years were under a magnifying glass.
The loss of our fellow adoptees hit like a bomb, mainly because it touched parts of ourselves – because in the end, we have all lost a part of ourselves through relinquishment and adoption.
By accepting and acknowledging that we know death is something we usually stay away from, we need a hero and we have to become our own. Normally loss has no place, we only have an eye for surviving but when we recognise our loss, we also recognise the lost parts within us.
In the past week, we have experienced that we can no longer ignore death and we motivate each other to share and acknowledge our pain, fear and sorrow. By jointly expressing the wish that we want to remove the taboo about death and loss, a space has been created in which both sides of the adoption are starting to have a place.
We no longer just survive but also openly mourn and honour the lost parts within us. Let the tears we had as a child flow, and our child part is finally liberated.
And with this, the realisation is also born that we can embrace death and life because then fear disappears and we can live from love …
Original Dutch
De afgelopen 2 week is het of we binnen het adoptieveld in een achtbaan zaten waarin alle thema’s die in de afgelopen jaren voorbij zijn gekomen onder een vergrootglas lagen.
Het verlies van onze mede geadopteerden sloeg in als een bom. Voornamelijk omdat deze delen van onszelf raakte. Want uiteindelijk hebben wij allen een stukje van onszelf verloren door afstand en adoptie.
Maar het accepteren en erkennen dat ook wij de dood kennen, is iets waarvan we wegblijven. We hadden een held nodig en we zijn onze eigen held geworden. Verlies had geen plaats we hadden alleen oog voor het winnen, overleven. Want als we ons verlies erkenden, erkende we ook de gestorven delen in ons.
De afgelopen week hebben we ervaren dat we er nu niet meer om heen kunnen en motiveren elkaar om onze pijn, angst en verdriet te delen, te erkennen. Door gezamenlijk de wens uit te spreken dat we het taboe er af willen halen, is er een ruimte ontstaan waarin beide zijdes van de adoptie medaille een plaats beginnen te krijgen.
Waar we niet meer alleen overleven maar ook openlijk rouwen en de gestorven delen in ons eren. De tranen die we als kind hadden, laten we stromen en ons kindsdeel wordt eindelijk bevrijd.
En hiermee is ook het besef geboren dat we de dood en het leven mogen omarmen. Want dan verdwijnt angst en kunnen we vanuit liefde verder leven…
This is the one time of year where I’m reminded I don’t have that childhood family with amazing memories and closeness. I’ve always yearned, as only some other adoptees can know, for that sense of family where I feel wanted, cherished, loved deeply. I know my family, like many others, are never perfect, but the older I get, the more I see my childhood in my adoptive family and can only remember the pain it created for me. Adoption is supposed to be happy isn’t it? It’s what gets portrayed. But I know I had spurts of moments of happiness in mine — it’s so hard to recall because as I grow older and relive it all again via children of my own, I realise the level of neglect and trauma my adoptive family caused, that could have been avoided.
How do I get past it? Should I? Or do I accept it will just always be … yes it hurts beneath the surface, oozing with pain every time I have to think about “adoptive family”. I’m old enough now to understand this pain is part of who I am. It’s not going away but I can hold and honour what I’ve had to do, to come past it —to be functional, stable, loving.
Healing doesn’t mean the pain stops and goes away. Healing means I’ve come to accept the truth. I no longer sit in it drowning or reacting. I’ve learned better ways to manage my emotions. I’ve learned how to have boundaries and not give past what I’m willing to. I’ve learned it’s ok to remain true to my own needs. I’ve learned to accept what can’t be changed but to change what I can. I can accept them as they are and know they’re not capable, even if they wanted. I have to give it to me, myself. Love, connection, acceptance, nurturing.
Xmas, like Thanksgiving for Americans, is a time where as an adoptee, I feel those sad feelings for what I might have had but didn’t. I know the reality of reunions is that even bio family, if I ever find them, will most likely never be able to meet my emotional need for “family” either. So, this Xmas, I will bring my children and husband close and treasure every moment I have with them for they are the only true family I will ever have! I am thankful I was able to heal enough to have a loving relationship and become a mother myself and give to my children what I never got. This has been my life’s blessing and will be my focus this Xmas!
