标签： 西瑞丸

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被收养者的悲伤和禅修

在印第安纳波利斯，我最近开始与禅宗禅师 Seung Sahn 创立的观音禅宗大乘佛教传承的僧伽一起练习禅修。我在印第安纳波利斯禅宗中心与一群修行者一起坐下来开始学习。修行包括坐禅和行禅、聆听禅宗佛法朗读以及在等候室参与轻松的佛法讨论。

在冥想练习中改变游戏规则的是我睁着眼睛冥想。我决定尝试并被它的功能和实用性所震撼。我是完全警觉的，而不是在我通常能找到内心平静的各种沉睡、微妙的冥想阶段中穿梭。我在闭着眼睛获得的正念中清醒，而推动我冥想的是，我在清醒的生活中立即培养正念，而不是闭上眼睛，在黑暗中做所有这些工作，然后将其与世界。

自从我最近搬到这个新城市以来，我一闭上眼睛就沉浸在活生生的悲伤中。在我的冥想中，我觉得它是一片凶猛、吞噬一切的海洋。而从中，我的心中有一种沉重感。我透过窗户上的雾气或污垢看透那种沉重。但它确实很清楚，这是我在瞬间清晰的瞬间实现的。然后我在当下感到非常生动，我完全没有头脑。我只是在我坐在的房间里醒着。

在我昨天的禅修中，我能够接受一位老师的采访。我在调解中提出了我的悲伤，并在它消失时提出了我的经历。

“它要去哪里？”老师问。

“它消失了，”我说。

“那你有一个选择，”他笑着说。

我描述了悲伤和沉重，它如何拉扯我并让我昏昏欲睡，以及悲伤和这种沉重的感觉如何模糊我的清晰度，寻求禅宗建议，让这些困难的感觉几乎像一个圆圈一样旋转。我说我对它有强烈的执着，我可能多年来在我的冥想中专注于它，使它变得更大，不知不觉地将我的思想集中在它身上并喂养它，但现在看看它如何在我身上徘徊睁开眼睛，我只能想象它会如何在不知不觉中影响我清醒的生活。所以，我很苦恼，因为这一切就像是背负了我一辈子的被收养人的业力，还好老师略知一二。

“从中学习，”他说，“当我体验到它时，我会感谢它。我感谢它给我的教训。”他在悲痛中描述了自己的人生经历，提到了一本书，书名是： 如何与你的恶魔做朋友，并说这对他来说确实消失了。

在这次谈话中，我突然燃起了希望。

“所以我可以尝试欣赏它的存在并继续练习，”我向他确认。

“你必须去感受它，”在我的禅宗访谈即将结束时，老师对我说。 “你必须拥有它。”我凝视着他，明白了即使悲伤也有修禅的方法。并且有一种方法可以拥有它并且不让它控制我的生活。

在我位于印第安纳波利斯的新公寓里，我睁着眼睛看着我今天生活中的悲伤和它造成的沉重，我正在记录它教给我的东西。尽管很难，但我会根据自己的观察向自己提出批判性问题。我没有完全专注于我的悲伤，而是给予空间来感谢它并感谢它在我的生活和清醒世界中的存在，以及它教会我的一切。从我的悲伤经历来看，它是一个受伤的、令人陶醉的伴侣，尤其是在我的菲律宾裔美国兄弟去年去世的时候。但我也意识到，我并没有通过欣赏悲伤并将其与内心的爱联系起来而放弃悲伤。

阅读 Desiree 之前的博客： 在一个新的城市继续前进

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创伤 在采用资源

你的悲伤是你的礼物

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作为新城市被收养者的新目标

问候！我到达了印第安纳州的印第安纳波利斯。回顾一下：在我最近的 ICAV 博客中，我是在瓦胡岛写博客的，瓦胡岛已经成为我的家五年了。在我的菲律宾裔美国兄弟、前火奴鲁鲁居民去年意外去世后，我的生活发生了变化。那个夏天过后，我知道我在夏威夷的日子结束了。总而言之，我准备安定下来。作为被收养者，是时候扎根了。

经过大量研究和推荐，我选择了印第安纳波利斯，因为它的生活成本可以负担得起。这个城市位于中西部，自从我在威斯康星州长大后，我就想念中西部。我想念中西部的树木和四个季节，尤其是在我一生的大部分时间都住在亚利桑那州和夏威夷之后。

为了过渡到大陆，我从夏威夷搬到亚利桑那州南部，离收养家庭很近，这样我就可以去看望祖父母了。在一个艰难的学期里，我代课教学，参观了凤凰城，并经历了祖母的去世。在这次失利之后，我对搬迁到印第安纳波利斯有了更清晰的认识。顺便说一句，我在城里找到了一些兼职教学工作。我找到并联系了一家禅中心，在市中心居住和修禅。当我开始开车去印第安纳州时，那是我租约的最后几天。因为那时不知何故，我能够在印第安纳波利斯公共图书馆找到一份全职工作。

带着信念的飞跃，我开车带着我所有的财产装进了我的新起亚灵魂。在印第安纳波利斯禅宗中心住了一周并开始我的禅宗研究后，我在几英里外一个古朴、适合步行的名为 Broad Ripple 的地区找到了一套可爱的公寓，并永久搬家。老树环绕着我的庭院。我为我的地方布置了足够一个人的家具，并与我从夏威夷带来的猫 Pualani 一起安顿下来。又过了几天，我带来了热带植物。我重新开始写垃圾日记和写信，从当地的农贸市场购买食物，甚至开始与这里的菲律宾和亚洲收养社区交朋友。

我明年在印第安纳波利斯的目标： 我希望买一栋简陋的小房子，里面有柴火炉。我希望能够每天为自己烧木头和生火。我设想养一只小狗，这样 Pualani 就会有人陪伴。在这个小房子里，我将主要使用再利用的家具和植物。我将永远独自一人，全职工作直到退休。我将有假期去其他国家旅行和教英语。我会拍照，也许有一天会出版我的视觉日记，来自我一直在做的治疗性拼贴画。并过着简单、平静的生活。

祝我好运！请关注我的人生旅程、冥想、混合媒体和信件制作 http://www.instagram.com/starwoodletters.

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收养艺术家

在 ICAV，我们努力提升被收养艺术家的地位，因为他们的作品通常可以描绘难以用语言表达的内容。与此一致，在最近的 9 月 9 日 K-Box 领养者接管之夜, Ra Chapman 和我希望当晚成为澳大利亚跨国收养艺术家的庆典。我们能够以 ZINE 的形式打印输出他们的一些作品，您可以在此处查看：

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其他收养艺术家

多年来，我们还有其他一些令人难以置信的跨国收养艺术家在 ICAV 上展示他们的作品。这是已共享内容的汇编。点击图片，它会带你到他们的博客与艺术作品。

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Adoption Can Be a Psychological Prison

How do I start over?

The question echoes in my brain every day here in Hawaii, now totally away from the relations of my former adopted life.

How do I live anew as one person in this world?

I left my adoptee ties that were technically governmentally bonded relations that I had no control over as a Filipino orphaned child circa 1980’s. For me, they had been total strangers and I didn’t have any oversight or support in post-adoption.

As time went on for me, I wasn’t able to have the fortune to get to know my biological family as after my reunion in 2012 in the Philippines, I decided to go my own way once I discovered our language barriers and my inability to confirm any facts on them.

So yes, fast-forward to current times and it is Sunday, and I have relinquished my bond of my adoptive ties for various reasons, and it hasn’t been easy but for me, it was necessary.

This break action has been mental, emotional and physical. Slamming this lever down included making physically strategic distance by moving far, far away on my own to the Pacific islands in 2019, re-establishing dual citizenship to my birth country in the Philippines in 2021, and civilly sending a kindly written email to my adoptive parents this year after my adoptive brother’s jarring and untimely death.

Additionally, the extended adoptive ties I’ve noticed can also naturally deteriorate with time itself after years of peaceful but gently intentional non-communication.

What happens after you’re on this path of annexation, you wonder?

For me, I’ve arrived at an interesting intersection in my adulthood when I’ve sort of returned to a former state of orphanhood with no real station in life, no bonds, all biological history, heritage and economic status obsolete all over again.

Doesn’t sound that appealing, I know! Tell me about it.

The perk is that instead of being a vulnerable child, I am a 36-year-old woman living in Hawaii. I have rights. I am in control of my wellbeing and fate. I have responsibilities. I drive my own car, I pay bills, I have funds; I have a job and I am not helpless.

I can take care of myself. So to me, the biggest perks are in being healthy and reclaiming my life, identity and sovereignty needed over my own needs and wellbeing.

So quickly the adoptee bond can turn into toxic relations if the parents are narcissistic or emotionally or physically abusive.

After the death of my adopted brother, who was also a Filipino American adoptee and died of severe mental issues and alcohol poisoning, I had a stark wake-up call of how these adoptee relations were silently impacting me too.

And I had to make better choices for myself, I would be risking too much if I ignored this.

It is like leaving a psychological prison, I told Lynelle on a weekend in May.

After some reflection, I realized that as a child and having to make structured attachments from being displaced, this legal bond fastens.

And as a displaced, vulnerable child, I think one falls privy to co-dependency, the need for a family structure overrides even the need for safety for his or her own wellbeing, like if abuses arise in this domestic home.

Or other aspects might not nurture the adoptee, like when the child isn’t being culturally nurtured according to their birth country.

Or when the parents or family members are financially and socially acceptable as to meeting criteria of adoption, but possess narcissistic personalities which is also detrimental to the child’s personal, emotional, psychological and cultural development.

A child stays glued and psychologically devoted to their family ties through development stages and on past adulthood because the need for foundational attachments is paramount to one’s psychological upbringing and success.

And if these ties are in any way bad for the adoptee early on, I think these relations that were once saving can quickly turn into a psychological prison because you are truly bound to these social ties until you’re strong enough to realize that you have a choice.

And you can break out of this bond, this governmentally established bond, although possibly later on as an adult. And, with some finesse.

As an adult adoptee, from my experience adoptive ties that develop healthily or dysfunctionally, after a certain amount of time both types transitions into permanence to that adoptee. Adoptive ties mesh and fuse just the same as biological ties, once you’ve gone so long in the developmental process.

This adoptive relation is totally amazing when it’s good, like any good relationship.

The spin is that when there are issues plaguing the adoptive unit, which can be subtle, interplaying with the personality and culture of the adoptive relations, these issues can go totally disguised, unreported, and it can be toxic and the affects can last a lifetime.

From experience, I see that it is because the adoptee child is vulnerable and doesn’t know how to report issues in the relations, because the option isn’t even granted to them.

No one is really there to give or tell the adoptee child that they have these rights or options. When it comes to post-adoption, there isn’t much infrastructure.

Sadly, if dynamics are not supportive to the adoptee, in time, it can cost an adoptee the cultural bonds to their own birth country or the loss of their native language.

It can cost an adoptee their sanity and mental health.

It can cost an adoptee their self-esteem, which all bleeds and returns into the social sea of their placement or back out into other countries.

And, it can cost an adoptee their life.

On the upside, if the placement is good, it can save a person’s life as well! And it can allow this adoptee happiness and joy forevermore.

Each side of the coin both instills an adoptee’s human value and the toll the placement takes on every child who becomes an adult in society is also expensive, leading to exponential advantage and success in society, or potential burnouts.

For me, my adoptive placement was costly in the end. However, I was still able to survive, work and live. I was materialistically taken care of, thankfully.

I honestly think much was due to my own faith, offbeat imagination and whatever blind luck I was born with that all carried me through this.

Overall, this has been a total trip and my journey has been very far from embodying the traditional fairy tale adoption story.

So now, it’s time to do the hard work, an adoptee mentor messaged me today. But I can do it, we all can do it! It just takes good choices and regular upkeep.

Nearing the end of this post, I will share to my adoptee community that we have a choice especially once we’re of legal age. I’m sort of a wildflower in general, and a late bloomer, so I’m coming out of the fog and becoming aware now in my mid-thirties.

Yes, we have a lot to rear ourselves depending on the economic status we find ourselves in without our adoptee ties. But like other adoptee peer support has shared, you should not do this kind of thing by yourself. You can have support structures the whole time in this.

And yes, it is terrifying, because you will have to rebuild your sense of identity when leaving toxic family relations. As yes, it can be like rebuilding your identity all over again from when you leave them and start anew, as a now a self-made, sovereign person.

From a Hawaiian private school I work at now, I have come to find that cultural identity building begins in the present and it is built upon values, history, education and the wisdom of the past. Now that I have found a home in Hawaii, maybe I can learn more about it.

I will also be working on weekly goals that I hope to share to the community as I continue on this never-ending journey.

In conclusion, if you are in a good adoptive family, God bless your fortune and I have so much love and happiness for you! However, if you are needing to split away from the ties, like if your adoption wasn’t that healthy, then please know it isn’t impossible.

Professional and peer support is here for you, every day on your way to freedom. You can create your own sovereignty, it will just take work.

Read Desiree’s earlier post at ICAV: 当我被收养时我失去了什么 and follow her at Weebly or Instagram @starwoodletters.

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在最黑暗的时刻寻找力量

我的兄弟在我到达收养家庭前 2 年被收养，他上周在菲律宾因无家可归和精神病去世。就像我一样，他是一名跨国菲律宾裔美国人收养者。

我们不知道发生了什么。他与坏公司有牵连。我有一种死亡被协助的感觉。涉及疏忽。我听说那是在棉兰老岛的一个农村地区，美国人去那里旅行很危险。如果他们发现你是美国人，就会发生真正的绑架。我不能去看看这是不是真的。唯一通知的人是一位女士，她从一开始就是坏消息。她总是向他要钱。追捕我的兄弟以得到我的养母。她是这次死亡的一部分，在我哥哥因疑似酒精中毒无家可归去世前几天为他拍照。

这个消息让我震惊，悲伤的过程是真实而痛苦的。我很难把这个消息告诉同事。第一天回来上班，我在最后一个小时哭了。

我想写的是我作为菲律宾裔美国人收养者从我的生活和世界中学到的东西。这种生活从来都不容易。这并不好玩。我对我的白人收养家庭从来都不满意。我有一个患有精神病的兄弟，他来自我的出生国，和我一样棕色皮肤，只比我大两岁，我全心全意地爱着他。

然而，他从来都不是健康的。他在我成长过程中虐待我。他患有精神疾病，他的虐待发展到他自己造成的程度。他也试图让我参与其中，所以我必须有界限。我等着他好起来。我以为他会的，但他只会变得更糟。随着岁月的流逝，背负着这种痛苦，这让我感觉更糟。不知道该把它放在哪里，该怪谁，为什么它在那里。

毕竟，我想说的是，总有一天你需要做出选择。你没有像以前那样做出反应，而是抬起头来重新呼吸，因为这一切都变得太多了。您注意到云层中的新细节，并意识到您仍在踢球，您不能保持相同的想法或相同的习惯。你感觉到了转变。你看到了面对逆境的必要性，反而想在它丑陋的脸上咧嘴一笑。您会发现有必要给自己空间，让自己成为真实的自己。因为没有回头路了。

我花了这么多年躲在过去的悲伤和创伤中，我想我写这篇文章是因为那些时代已经结束了。

我所知道的是，从这里开始，我将变得坚强。

我怀着崇敬的心情纪念我作为菲律宾裔美国人被收养者的经历。我永远不会为我所经历的事情感到羞耻。我不会为我今天在同事周围感受到的痛苦感到尴尬。我也不会再背负我哥哥痛苦的重担，我曾经有过。我会爱自己。我会原谅自己。我会温柔的对待自己。我不会再像以前那样对自己那么苛刻了。

一直以来，我都背负着从未有过的生活重担。我抓住了我从未抓住过的爱的痛苦。

一个我从来不知道的家庭。

但是我的兄弟死了，他可能是世界上我唯一爱过的人。我所见过的唯一一个真正的家人。我身上发生了一些变化。

我呼吸，写这个。我还活着，写这个。

我现在就在这里。我从所有这些乱七八糟的狗屎中幸存下来。在菲律宾成为孤儿。必须穿越我被赋予的美国生活，因为这就是饼干崩溃的方式。我们得到了我们要处理的事情，你必须处理它。你必须调整。在成年的某个时候，您会了解到在此过程中善待自己和他人的重要性，因为幸福是一个人生存的一部分。

在经历了这一切之后，我的骨子里有一种明显的决心。就是要坚强。就是爱我今天在这个世界上所拥有的。这是不放弃。

我的决心是继续工作。过上健康的生活。要真实。活得真实。我还在这个世界上。而且我是一个人，但我用我的才能做到了。

在这条路上我并没有交到很多朋友，但我一直在努力工作，转向艺术世界、图书馆和学校寻找出路。

我过着内敛的生活。我开发了我自己的创意媒体表达方式，在我自己的智慧和事业中狂野。

即使在 36 岁时，我也才刚刚开始接触这个世界。

我不知道是否有人会喜欢这个博客，但如果有人喜欢，请知道我永远不会放弃，我也不希望你放弃。因为我很幸运能听到你们中一些人的故事，并在圣诞节见到你们中的一些人，这是值得珍惜的事情。你在这个世界上是如此重要，你真的如此。

我会像年轻时一样相信你和爱情，我永远不会停止。就像我年轻时相信上帝的方式一样，我也从未停止过。我不会停止相信人类。我不会停止朝着更高的目标努力，因为那是我早上起床的动力。

我今天在这里是要说，痛苦、考验和斗争将及时发挥作用。

活着是有原因的，你会找到的。

在最黑暗的时刻，你会找到力量。

或力量——会找到你。

阅读 Desiree 之前在 ICAV 上的博客： 当我被收养时我失去了什么

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当我被收养时我失去了什么

I look around me today and I have no family in sight. I was torn at the roots when I was born in the Philippines in destitute poverty in 1985, orphaned at birth and adopted in 1987.

Dually, my intercountry adoption process had systematically erased my entire heritage and knowledge of my ancestors. While also permanently bonding me to people that had no interest in preserving or keeping in tact my birth nationality and culture.

I don’t know why that had to happen in the adoption process.

Why the past needed to be so efficiently erased as if it never existed.

Why did any of this have to be erased?

The narratives of my grandparents, the narratives of my great grandparents, the voices of all the flesh and blood and bones that made my DNA today.

Why did their stories have to leave me?

Was it because I was brown?

Was it because I was born from the Philippines, which in history has always been a developing, marginalized country with a colonized past?

Was it because I was a vulnerable child who didn’t have a say or rights to my own life at that time? Was it because my memories and my identity didn’t matter?

Did I have to be separated from my own birth country and my own birth country’s mother tongue to be saved by a more privileged family?    

And why was the remaining biographical information so unbelievably useless and irrelevant? And why did I have to wait until I was 18 to receive even that information, which parts of it, I later found out from a reunion with my birth mother—was not even true.

Am I complaining because I was orphaned?

Or am I complaining because there were parts of this adoption process that was systemically inhuman including adopting me to a Midwestern Caucasian couple that had shown no interest in preserving my cultural heritage or keeping myself connected to my own birth country’s language. As it shows, even in that adoption documentation, they had no interest in my heritage.

Little did I know—that if I had kept this connection when I was a vulnerable brown child and basically purchased by a privileged white family, I would have been able to return to the Philippines in my adulthood, my birth country, and I would have been able to speak fluently, which would have given me a much easier pathway in reclaiming my citizenship.

Even my birth name, why did my adoptive parents who never met me, suddenly have the right to change my birth name when they adopted/purchased me?

Why kind of rights had been given to them?

What rights were taken away from me in this dual process?

Where did my citizenship in my birth country go when I was adopted?

Why did any of this have to leave me—when I was adopted?

You can read Desiree’s article: On the Road to Recovery, follow her at Weebly or Instagram @starwoodletters.

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On the Road to Recovery

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

  1. 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 这里 and my Instagram 这里.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

Read more from Desiree:
Reconstructing Identity & Heritage
A Filipino Adoptee’s Plea not to be Erased

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Thriving in These Shifting Times

“With all this unpredictable change, it’s more important than ever to manage and conserve your energy because you fuel your entire life with it. You have four sources of energy: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. When we get triggered emotionally, we lose a lot of energy.” – Alice Inoue, national award-winning author and life expert

These are the words from my job training yesterday morning at the Hawaii Convention Center. Alice Inoue was one of our public speakers in our presentation.

I’d been a newly-employed temporary Adjudicator in the Unemployment Claims sector of the Department of Labor for the State of Hawaii. That day, I was training in the art of communicating with clients especially when they’re emotionally escalated. Little did I know, this training would be coinciding with adult adoptee life as well as the public in this time, as I’ve had to cope with emotional triggers all my life.

Now it seems emotional triggers is something we’re all dealing with on a larger scale. Spanning and intermingling with larger demographics of society.

Emotional Triggers of the Unemployed

Covid-19 is affecting all of our lives in seen and unseen ways. Unemployment to date is persisting with over 100,000 issues in the state of Hawaii. I was hired to help alleviate some of these issue. It is a full-time job.

One day is not enough time to even put a dent in this situation.

I talk to customers at work who are struggling in hard times. It can be difficult since as governmental workers we are also living in these Covid times. It is a challenge working with emotionally-triggered people who have fallen unemployed.

Especially being vulnerable to triggers as a person living in these shifting and uncertain times too. From state workers to the public, everyone has more stress, pressure and anxiety than ever. Additionally, as an adult adoptee, I find myself working with my own emotional triggers along with everyone else’s.

So, I sat with my friendly team of adjudicators who were hired on in June and listened.

What I first realized was a pre-conceived notion: that emotional triggers are mostly reserved for people with PTSD. What I learned from the presentation is that triggers also develop with people with any hurt in their childhood.

Emotional Triggers

“Growing up, we had pain that we didn’t know how to deal with,” stated the slide, with a photo of a crying baby on the screen. “As adults, we become triggered by experiences that are reminiscent of those old painful feelings.”

I listened and gulped down my coffee.

In the hour, I learned how triggers are not just in the land of adult adoptee post-trauma but also interweaves broadly in the scope of the world’s social terrain.

Another slide stated: “(Triggers are) the super-reactive places within you that become activated by someone else’s behaviors or comments.”

The Best Advice to Dealing With Emotional Triggers

“Whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t,” Alice Inoue said, as she explained the golden rule for all emotionally triggering situations. “Put your focus on your feet and toes. Feel the ground beneath you. Take yourself out of the visceral experience of threat so you respond rather than react consciously.”

More Tips:

  • Create a “counterfact” or reframe a scenario of a current situation that could be worse, so you can feel better about it instantly.
  • Control what you do have control over: your perspective, decisions and actions. Calm yourself with a “4-7-8” breathing technique.
  • Apply logic to irrational fears when something happens. And, remember the 3 As: Accept, Adapt and Allow.

Thriving with a Post- Adoptee Skillset

The world is changing everyday due to Covid. Amidst this time I have found untraditional footing in the world because of my own life’s experiences.

As an adult adoptee, I am armed with all of the therapy and coping I’ve done in my past, to where I am educated. Additionally, I can extend my practices into a profession where I work with an emotionally-triggered public in this time of Covid-19.

It was like an epiphany, training in how to thrive professionally and personally as one. My adoptee solutions coincided with serving the public together. Thus, in this time, I have been seeing how each of our own rivers can one day meet the ocean. While learning, how life’s challenges can also become our greatest tools of transformation.

“From every crises and challenge emerges blessings,” Alice Inoue said, at the end of the presentation. “You have a lot of blessings coming to you.”

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此时此地

我在夏威夷当地的海滩之一

自从我上次在 ICAV 发帖以来已经有一段时间了，发生了很多事情。但我没事。我现在住在海滩对面的一间小型单间公寓里。在檀香山旁边的一个沿海小镇。在 Kamehameha 学校进行了一个大流行学年的代课教学、教授数码摄影并为 8 年级制作了年鉴之后，我现在是夏威夷州的一名全职审裁员，帮助解决因 Covid 造成的索赔积压。这是一份有条件的工作，应该在 12 月结束，但有可能再延长 6 个月。我不得不尽我所能，因为各地的代课教学领域都不再稳定了。

我是新单身，虽然我不知道有多久我已经遇到了一个让我发笑的人，这很棒。我最近和我在夏威夷交往了大约两年的前未婚妻分手了。与他分开对我来说是件好事，虽然很难，但总是很难放弃我曾经爱过的人，即使他对我不好。我认为是大流行病和所有意想不到的变数导致了他不知道自己有的行为模式。我想我不能为他对我不好找借口。我只是不得不离开，我不再和他说话了。

生活充满了高速公路的声音、闪闪发光的海洋、海滩和 Aloha Aina 的景象。作为一名 35 岁的菲律宾裔美国收养者，我的小猫 Pualani 一直是我与这个地球相连的基石和绳索。我的工作室里到处都是植物、垃圾日记材料、笔友信件、人字拖和基本必需品。我有某些石头和水晶可以让我的能量保持稳定，平衡内部混乱的宇宙。

这些天的生活翻开了全新的篇章，全职工作，独自在夏威夷维持生计。我从周一晚上开始玩《龙与地下城》和《辐射 76》，我几乎每天都和隔壁的新邻居一起出去玩。他一直在邀请我出去，让我保持高效，结识朋友，探索夏威夷，去海滩，同时支持我的书呆子秘密爱好。我非常感谢他能够让我摆脱困境，哪怕只是一点点，这太神奇了。

我有时想知道我的生活去了哪里。有时我觉得自己是一个普通成年人的失败尝试，因为我现在应该结婚生子了。我应该拥有一个家，去参加家长会，我现在应该找到一个属于自己的地方，但还没有。我带着所有这些未成文的书在夏威夷生存，等待被释放。我还没有找到我可以在接下来的几年里成长的工作，但我想。在夏威夷，这是一个持续不断的冲突，因为买房太贵了。但是，这是一个美丽的地方，不断变化着各种合适的元素，让我每天都保持警惕。让我每天都在努力。

这座城市令人敬畏。海洋，一个永恒的谜团，伴随着我灵魂永无止境的探索。夏威夷文化是一种我在不言而喻的内在层面上尊重和联系的文化。我喜欢住在高速公路旁，步行即可到达图书馆和海滩。我现在每天醒来都会看到海滩。这是壮观的。每天给我一种深深的解脱感。

在夏威夷，我被收养的过去永远存在，就像生活在我心中的一个寂静、幻灭的失落世界，无论今天多么美好。但是，越来越多的，我觉得我可以在这里处理我的过去。不知何故，我只是在做，也许在不知道为什么或如何的情况下经历它。不知何故，我发现自己在这里，独自生活，过得很好，尽管心痛。

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A Filipino Adoptee’s Plea to Not Be Erased

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,
西瑞丸

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

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