What Happens When You Take the Not Out of I Can't Believe?

This thing happens at least once every Flourish class with Pam Cordano and other adoptees that reminds me of what Emily Dickinson said happened when she read a good poem: she felt as if the top of her head were taken off. With Pam and these beloved people, I regularly feel as though the top of my head blows off.

The first time it happened was when Pam and I did our initial adoptee retreat in Berkeley, and Pam asked the group of ten participants to raise their hand if they were adopted. Looking around the room and seeing that everyone had a hand in the air made something happen to the cells of my body: they started to reorganize themselves around the notion of belonging. I was with my people, and my body hungrily soaked up the resonance.

One of my favorite things is when a door opens in my mind when before there was what felt like a wall or confusion. Oh, the space! Oh, the reframes! Oh, the freedom of clear thinking! The door that opened when all the other adoptee hands went up was It’s not me: it’s adoption.

It’s not my fault.

I’m not my fault.

I’m not wrong. I’m traumatized.

During class today, we were talking about coming out of the fog, and how we can cry for years and still not feel done with tears. We were talking about how we feel we should “be over” the trauma of losing our first mother, our first life, well before we’ve even waded knee-deep into all the repressed feelings. Someone said they could not believe all they had to feel since coming out of the fog. Someone said they could not believe all they had to endure as a person who’d been separated from their mother at birth. As a group we nodded in agreement.

Pam said her therapist Claude did this thing when she used to go into his office and say she could not believe something. He’d have her take out the not.

I thought about this: I can not believe how hard it is to be adopted.

I can believe how hard it is to be adopted.

There goes the top of my head.

The first one, the can not believe allows me to not feel. I get to bypass owning the experience and have it slide down my back into the fantasy world of I can’t believe and so I don’t. This leaves me living in can’t. No forward movement, no change.

I can believe my mother gave me up. I can believe how much damage it has done to my body and mind to be separated from my mother at birth. I can believe I wan’t enough for my first boyfriend. I can believe I dropped out of college three times. I can believe I’ve been divorced twice. I can believe it’s really hard for me to focus. I can believe I’ve been without a romantic partner for years. I can believe my daughter had her third concussion. I can believe I can’t stop eating pizza. I can believe I’m so tired.

If I can’t believe I’m so tired, there’s less chance I will rest than if I can believe it. If I can believe I’m so tired, the natural next step is to find a way to take a nap. If I can’t believe it, then I’m going to grab an espresso, power up, and motor through the fatigue until I get a migraine or some illness that makes me stop for a bit.

If I can believe how much damage being separated from my first mother has done to my brain and body, I’m more likely to look for help.

Are you getting it?

If I can believe I’ve been divorced twice, I have to feel it; I have to feel what it’s like to promise forever and to quit before that time. Oooof. It hurts.

And yet.

And yet this also makes me own my piece in what feels like a more concrete way—not just in a Oh, this makes me feel so shitty about myself way, but in a What could I have done differently/better? kind of way. And not in a How could I have been better? kind of way, but in a more functional What actual steps could I have taken? More like an adult than a child kind of way is what I’m saying.

I can not believe how—I mean I can believe how, if I’m willing to feel, much better my life is! All this time I thought I was doing myself favors by avoiding emotions that felt heavy and dark and scary, when it turns out the avoiding was so much more work than the actually feeling! Lying down on the kitchen floor in the fetal position and crying for an hour (or for the month of May) isn’t that bad! It’s so real!

What is terrible is walking around with a belly full of fear and tightness, desperately holding onto the rigidity of spine and determination: I will not cry. Ever. Especially not on this floor.

I can’t believe I’ve spent almost my whole life pretending I was okay.

I can believe I’ve spent almost my whole life pretending I was okay.

Big sigh. The gig is up.

I can believe anything is possible if I'm willing to climb into my own skin and claim this body as home.