I do an exercise in my Write or Die class where I have people describe a photograph that shows the essence of who they are. Eighty percent of the time, the photograph, real or imagined, is from a time when the person was under eight years old.

The good years.

One time when my former husband and I (We once did a podcast together on Adoptees On. I recommend everyone do a podcast with a former spouse. It’s so lovely!! Truly!) were visiting my family, our young daughter ran into the living room, naked, slapping her butt, yelling WOOOOOOOO!!!

That was the highlight of the day. Maybe the year.

Why?

It was so funny, so real, so true to her spirit. Also because I got to see everyone in the room wake up.

Her behavior also walked the edge (okay, totally went over) of what was considered normal behavior. It was daring and free-spirited. It was joyful and funny and celebratory. No one was hurt. My former husband is more polite than I am, so he was embarrassed and quickly grabbed our daughter and got her out of the room and into some clothes, but he as also embarrassed in a that was so fucking funny kind of way.

I’m not suggesting that, as adults, you run into a party naked slapping your own butt, yelling Woooooooo!!!, but I am suggesting that, if you are feeling a little stale or bored or heavy, you do something that gives you the same feeling as having done that wild thing.

I am increasingly interested in how much easier it is to write about bad things than it is to write about good. So many people tell me they write the most and what they consider the best when things are in the shitter. When their lives are disastrous the words pour out, and when their lives are wonderful, they don’t write.

This is not a problem unless you have committed to being a writer.

Someone yesterday asked me when I felt the most free, and a photograph came to mind of when I was 21, standing in front of the Rocky Mountains, arms open, smiling. I was driving across the country and my best friend had taken the picture. We were in the between place then, having left Boston and headed for Los Angeles. Sometimes being in the between is magical because you don’t have the same triggers that lead to the same habits and you are more you and less repetitive behaviors.

When you feel free, there can be less of a need to write because there is no problem. Nothing for your brain to solve.

But what if writing is prayer? What if writing is saying, I see you. I love you. Thank you. (I know I should have a question mark here, but I don’t want it.)

What if we feel delight with the same intensity that we feel sadness, and that we share both equally?

I think perhaps a fear sometimes comes along when things are good that positive times are limited and that this time probably won’t last forever, so we should put the top on the bottle of us so to prevent leakage. It’s not a time to spill out because we might lose what is good.

But what if the trick to maintaining a sense of wild freedom is in the spilling? What if the more you write about how free you are the more free you become?

What if we buy more into our sadness than our happiness?

I have noticed something about adopted people. Many of them (uh, me) cling to the narrative that no one held them after they were born. They believe the story other adopted people told them of babies in cribs, untended until their new parents came to get them. We become bodies and minds that believe we did not receive the tender and necessary care we needed when we were very young, and this belief colors the way we see the world. But the fact is that almost all of us have zero proof this story is true. I may well have been held by a caretaker 24/7 from the moment I was born until the moment ten weeks later my parents came to get me.

I prefer the story of I was alone and neglected because then I can feel wounded and damaged, and my brain likes that story. It likes to worry over it, project it into the future, see how I will be alone and neglected all my life. The brain is such a weirdo. It could just as easily paint me a picture of goodness and safety, but it wants the freak out.

I listened to someone talk yesterday about transformation and about the need to have a loose and soft mind. I loved that image, a mind like something you might stir. Something just lightly more tangible than air.

Something so free.

http://www.adopteeson.com/listen/s4e6divorce