Living Your Book of Miracles by Pam Cordano
The day I met Pam Cordano I knew she had a book in her. I saw it. I also knew that we were going to be friends forever. On Facebook, it now says she is my sister.
I can’t write that and not smile.
Sister. We can choose our family just as we can choose our friends, especially if we are adopted.
My sister’s book came out this week! You can get it! Go to Amazon and buy a copy for all your friends while you are at it because it is a feel good book. It’s a book that makes your life better. More you.
The Amazon link for 10 Foundations for a Meaningful Life (No Matter What’s Happened) is at the end of this post.
You’re welcome.
And now here’s Pam:
My next door neighbor Natalie was four when I told her my parents weren’t my real parents. She burst out crying and couldn’t stop.
“You’re not with your real parents?” she sobbed, like it was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. “Nope,” I announced, like I had my four-year-old shit together. I was taken aback by her sadness, stunned by it, because I didn’t feel sad at all. I just felt soaked in shame that my own parents had given me away. By choice.
At first I focused my shame on my appearance. I was a monstrously tall kindergartener with carrot-red hair. My mom was tiny with dark hair. My appearance told the secret I so dreaded being revealed—I wasn’t theirs.
By junior high, my embarrassment had leaked into anything and everything. I felt embarrassed when John-Boy said goodnight to Mary Ellen on my family room TV. I felt embarrassed when I saw puppies drinking milk from their mothers. I felt embarrassed when kids sang the happy birthday song—to me or to anyone. I felt embarrassed walking to school, walking to a friend’s house, walking anywhere where I could be seen.
I ducked and took cover. I started watching crime shows instead of family dramas; I fell “ill” to skip birthday parties; I cut class so intensely that my senior award in high school was “Most Absences and Still Graduated.” I dressed in normal, average, all-American clothes, skipping the Emo or Punk or Slutty phases, at least on the outside. My survival skill was to avoid attention at any cost. Dyeing my hair blue would’ve tipped me into non-functional.
Even today, I love being in a city where I don’t know a single person. Anonymous means safe.
In order to choose to show myself to the world, there would need to be a powerful reason, a Why. If my kids were getting held at gunpoint, and the only way I could save them was to finally expose my embarrassment, I’d shout, “My own family bailed on me and never came to find me!” If I needed money for my dog’s surgery and could only get my hands on $5,000 by revealing my shame, I’d scream, “I went to a lot of trouble to find my real family, and they still didn’t want me!” Only life and death could provide a Why that was worth the pain.
I found my Why over the last two years when Anne Heffron and I created four-day retreats for adult adoptees. After participating, adoptees began telling us what the experience had meant to them. “I was planning to kill myself three days after the retreat ended, but when it was over, I wanted to stay alive.” “I feel hope about my future for the first time.” “I want to be a better mother to my kids.”
They sent us love gifts in the mail. On my kitchen counter I have a Superwoman action figure, T-shirts, Lego toys, a butterfly, books, stickers, stuffed animals, keychains, ornaments, candles, letters and cards.
If I can help others get a leg up on their healing, if I can help them choose to live more comfortably, more brightly—hell, to even stay alive at all!—then exposure is worth it.
So I said Yes to giving a keynote talk in Indiana this March, where I will be on stage with a microphone, deeply embarrassed for sure (the embarrassment is always there), but I’ll be so excited to share what’s possible when we hang in there with courage.
With Anne’s kick in the pants I got my book done. To send 10 Foundations out into the world is a massive exposure. I could have called it The Book of Embarrassment, but really, it’s The Book of Miracles. My embarrassment could have taken me out.
But it didn’t.
What would it take for you to come out of hiding? Who could your truth help?
What’s your Why?
