Why Chocolate Chip Cookies and Shots of Tequila are not Self-Care for Adopted People

“I’m going to show me I love me,” my friend said. “Tomorrow I’m going to treat myself to a chocolate chip cookie the size of my head the bakery downtown makes. They cover it with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.”

My friend struggles with his weight, and I thought about the joy he’d have driving to the bakery, ordering exactly what he most wanted, and sitting down to enjoy his sweet delight.

And then I thought about his body, the work it would have to do to counter the sugar so my friend didn’t pass out. I thought about what it means to be borderline diabetic, and how while we seem to know instinctively not to throw gasoline on a burning house, we don’t seem to know the same for ourselves.

I am, of course, talking about myself. I mean, I am talking about my friend, but what he does, I do also. When things get hard, I think sugar and/or alcohol are ready friends, happy to give me some ease. There are days I just want to toss back a shot of Patron and lay my head on the bar. There are days when I get off the subway to walk home, I stop by CVS and buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk because I am too hungry and tired to make dinner, and ice cream seems like a brilliant solution. It will give me a lift. It will fill me up.

Sugar and alcohol get me high.

I have relied on sugar to help manage my moods since I was a child. I routinely had cookie batter for meals. I have also had suicidal ideations since I was a child. The sugar helped.

The sugar helped me to continue the cycle. Feel low—eat sugar—get high—crash—feel low—eat sugar—get high—crash.

When you are in a sugar crash, a salad sounds like awful, like eating the front lawn. Chicken sounds boring. What sounds good is more sugar, and because your body is telling you this, it’s easy to think you are doing the right thing. People tell you to follow your gut, right? Well, your gut is telling you to go back to CVS and get more ice cream.

You are taking care of yourself. You are practicing self-care.

It was such a hard day. The best thing you could do for yourself is to relax with friends and have a few drinks downtown. That will make everything better.

Your body can deal with the consequences of unstable blood sugar levels. That’s its job. You’re going to have one more pop because you deserve it.

When you were relinquished and adopted, your brain and body become different from people who stayed with their mother. It’s like you’re a car dragging an invisible elephant. You may go more slowly than your non-adopted friends. You may burn through more gas, and no one will understand why. You may feel like there is something really wrong with you. You may feel like you need more gas. You may need to press harder on the gas pedal.

What you really need to do is stop the car and address the elephant, unhook it from your car.

Go to therapy with an adoption competent therapist. Get massages, acupuncture, reiki. Go for a float in a tank full of salt water. Go to the gym and sweat. Go for a walk in the woods and kick leaves. Eat things that had roots. Eat roots. Do nothing. Lie on the floor and feel what it is like to have a body. Pay attention to your heart. Can you hear your own heart’s beat? Self-care can seem really boring when you are so tired that all you want is a quick jolt to I feel good enough to go on, and so part of self-care is limiting the stress in your life. Is your spouse kind to you? Does your work feed you? Are your friends dependable, supportive?

Are you in debt?

Recently I realized I had no belief in the future. I was so in survival mode that all my energy went to the past and to making it through the present moment. It didn’t matter if I overspent or overate because I was just taking care of myself. The future was something other people had, like a savings account. If life were a ship, I was standing at the back, focused on the churning waters of the past. Who gives a shit what you do if all that matters is what happened yesterday and making yourself feel better because yesterday was hard?

What happens when you move to the front of the ship? What happens when you think about the future, when you allow yourself to dream, what happens when you throw an anchor out five years to the future, an anchor that represents the life you’d like to be living in five years? Not the future you think others want you to have, the future you want. You don’t even have to know what it is—just latch onto key words: freedom, love, soccer—whatever words you would feel like pounded into your tombstone. This lets you have a future, one the boat of your life is headed toward, but one which allows for fluctuations, for some back and forth as the rope connected to the anchor both pulls you forward but also allows you to meander.

Coming out of the fog for adoptees means the past seems to be eating you alive. It’s hard to know how to survive so much surprising grief and confusion. Sugar and alcohol can seem like friends during this time, but they are cruel friends. They hug you and then kick you in the knees. Part of recovering from trauma is fighting the urge to continue the trauma loop. Things that ultimately make you feel good: water, an apple, olive oil, salmon, may seem like the last thing in the world you want when you are in pain.

So you can’t listen to your gut. You have to parent the child that is hurting and provide real care. Cook the greens with love and feed yourself with gentle understanding. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Ride your bike. Call a friend. Do something nice for someone. Make someone’s day and watch what happens to your own. Live the life of a four year old. You are starting over. Keep it simple. But also look for the edges. Little kids climb up trees and give their parents heart attacks because they are so afraid their child will fall. Balance on rocks. Blindfold yourself and try to walk around your house. Scare yourself a little, in sweet, humane ways. Grow.

I’m sorry it’s so hard to be in this body of ours. I’m sorry the world doesn’t understand what happens to our brains when we lose our roots, but we are figuring this out together, and together we can do laughing yoga, together we can put our heads on each other’s bellies and laugh, tears streaming down our light-filled faces.