As an adult, one of the most satisfying responses I allow myself to give to an either/or question is, “Yes.”  

Do you like the red one or the blue one?  

Yes.

Do you want cake or candy corn?

Yes.

The answer isn’t “Both.” The answer is “Yes.”  There is implied knowledge that both aren’t possible, but if asked for a preference, the answer is a pronounced, “Yes.” “Both” is wishy washy.  “Yes” is definitively ambiguous.  

Definitively ambiguous is how I proudly claim my self concept as an adoptee.  I have frequently defined my adoptive self concept as, “Yes, and.”  Yes, I had a loving adotive family.  And, my birth parents, for whatever reason, didn’t want me around.  Both things are true, both are facts.  As facts, there is no judgmental emotional heaviness.  Taken together, most minds go to culturally accepted places.  Reconciling the two facts is sometimes torture for all involved.  Realizing that both facts can live independently is mentally refreshing.  It is no different than having two other non ambiguous facts.  That’s a fire truck.  Fact.  We need toilet paper.  Fact.  Adoptees need a safe place for our facts.  No one else has to get it.  

Society hasn’t provided us with the language to describe our adoption feelings or experiences.  Our words are a challenge.  We know something definitely happened here.  If we learn to accept the living as definitively ambiguous, we learn to live in the liminal.

In a recent adoptee group discussion, we explored the concept of liminal space, and how that my apply to the adoption condition.  Liminal was defined by one brilliant person as, “caterpillar juice.”  She explained that liminal could be used to describe the state of the thing in the cocoon as metamorphosis is occurring.  It isn’t exactly caterpillar, and it isn’t yet butterfly.  The disintegration of the caterpillar turns into batter for the butterfly and it all cooks up and happens in this inherently created pod.  It’s not really this, and it’s not really that.  Adoptees share a liminal stasis.

If you look up the etymology of liminal, you’ll see it is derived from the word threshold.  Threshold is a boundary to what’s next.  It implies a, “not yet, but almost.” The word limit is similar but with limit the word has less possibility?  A limit is a definitive boundary.  Liminal is a boundary with some potential, or not.  Limit implies guideline.  Liminal?  Maybe.  Liminal space is the concept of potential transition from one thing to another.  Liminal is definitively ambiguous.  Liminal may be the best way to describe the adoption stasis and may allow us to reimagine the question, “How will you live?”

Here are several ways we might embrace the liminal and accept ourselves.

Purgatory or limbo

Maybe liminal space is kind of like purgatory, or as I initially understood it, limbo.  I am not Catholic, but I could follow the logic of having a spiritual truck stop for those who didn’t quite fit in with rules of the heaven and hell set up.  Purgatory seems a little too punishing to me to be actual liminal space.  If high school is hell, purgatory is middle school.  Apparently, you have to prove you are Godly enough to get to heaven.  It is a space to go through some sort of spiritual cleansing - it is a place for transition, and the word stems from purification.  So, a travel center on Route 66 with a mandatory shower.  

Limbo is a slightly different kind of truck stop.  It is purgatory pre-K.  It is the place where the, “unbaptised,” get to hang.  The word comes from the medieval word for border, hem or margin.  I don’t know about you, but Limbo seems less heavy to me.  It simply sounds more liminal.  A place of drifting unbaptised souls.  Mmmmm.  Nap time.

As adoptees, I suspect some of us live in a type of purgatory.  We are constantly trying to prove we are good enough to belong.  Always looking for that free shower so that we can get through the next checkpoint of life and be accepted on that yellow brick road.  

As a liminal space for adoptees, I think I would rather choose to be in limbo.  It doesn’t sound as difficult, or as painful.  I mean, who can argue with a place that has its own dance?  Paradoxically, you are cheered as the bar goes lower and lower.  Failures are met with fruity drinks and reggae music.  Limbo sounds like a place to just be.  No shower required.  Heaven awaits, maybe, but hell isn’t in focus.  What a relief.

Vestigial organs

Vestigial organs are those that serve no contemporary purpose.  In fact, one definition describes them as no longer serving the “ancestral function.”  They aren’t quite understood.  We think they may have done something at one point, but right now, they are just sort of there.  Ear muscles are vestigial.  Body hair is vestigial (although I would argue that it traps pheromones which are pretty damn powerful if they can synchronize a dorm of women to the same menstrual cycle).  A favored vestigial organ is the appendix.  It’s just a piece of tissue that hangs out in your abdomen and collects bacteria.  

Other things can be vestigial, too.  I remember learning that extra buttons on a military uniform might be considered vestigial.  Maybe they did something once, but now they are just hanging out looking pretty.  That little ring on the back of an Oxford shirt?  Vestigial, unless you use it to hang your shirt in a locker so it doesn’t wrinkle.  These are things that simply adorn now, are customary.  

Vestiges.  The things that are left over.  The little scraps that evolution forgot.  Tissue that doesn’t support anything, “ancestral.” The things that remain to symbolize a nod to what was.  They have a liminal character.  They are here, they are possibly in transition, or maybe not.  Whatever.

Maybe adoptees are like appendicitis as they come out of the fog.  We are happy little stray cells inside the body until suddenly, we have had enough.  We start to scream and need to be removed!  Get me out of this constant barrage of bacteria!  I am tired of being leftover tissue.  Something someone has no use for.  Something evolution forgot.  Something merely decorative!  Maybe we are in liminal fog until we simply burst, eliminating the poison, allowing us to simply be.

Be the berm

When I was in high school I wrote an essay about unusual words in the dictionary.  While I have a very different perception of a berm now, (having run through swamp trails with alligators resting on their sides), when I saw the definition, I saw something a bit more simplistic.  Essentially, a berm was defined as the space between a pile of dirt and the hole the dirt came from - a little sliver of flatness.  The berm is the edge of the hole and the edge of the hill.  It marks the transition between the two and, perhaps, provides a place to put the shovel.

A berm is another form of liminal space.  As adoptees we are always somewhere in the middle.  To our right, there is a cavernous pit, and to our left there is a mountain to climb.  We are between families and parents, awaiting an avalanche or a precipitous fall.  Maybe we can make this a good thing.  Maybe we can grab a lawn chair, a couple of beers and a visor and just sit enjoying the fact that we aren’t part of either side.  We have a flat spot.  We are neutral, but not nothing.  We are part of both, but there is no climbing, no falling, unless we want to.  We are safe in this little spot where WE have the choice.  

Hannah Gadsby

Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comic who has a unique style that highlights her feelings of, “otherness,” and her take on the world.  She was diagnosed as autistic late in life, is a lesbian, and has suffered through hate crimes as well as celebrity.  She has a Netflix special called, Douglas.  If you like smart, well done, smart, complex, smart and honest funny smart comedy, drop everything you are doing and go queue it up.  

Two parts of her gig can be loosely related  to the adoption experience.  She has named the special Douglas, after her dog, Douglas.  She relates a story of an encounter in a dog park with a gentleman who attributes her dog’s name to the humorous connection that, “Dogs, dig, hence Doug/dug.”  She isn’t keen on connecting with this man, and promptly tells him that her dog is named after the Pouch of Douglas, which she then describes to him and therefore to the audience.

Simply put, The Pouch of Douglas is a pocket of space in the lower region of the abdominal cavity.  Gadsby relates that it is a space that cannot be seen, it is simply there.  She suggests that if someone were to put a finger into, as she states, “‘the relevant vagine,’” as well as a finger into the orifice in charge of human solid waste discharge, the Pouch of Douglas would be the internal space between the fingers.  

She goes on to compare it to the expansion zipper on a suitcase which she calls, “the zippy-zip.”  Outside, it looks like a zipper which will open the bag, but in reality, it only opens up some space in the case, which you can’t access unless you open the OTHER zipper.  It can be very frustrating to know which zipper you are zipping.  

In both cases, she describes the Pouch and the Zippy Zip as borders to potential space.  What that space can be used for isn’t clear, but nonetheless it might be potential storage.  This is yet another set of liminal spaces - there but not there, for use or not for use for no specific reasons. Here are more transitional spaces between compartments that have purpose.    Adoptees may relate to the concept of unknown empty spaces that are difficult to reach - spaces with unknown uses, that may be used, or not.  What people see on the outside isn’t necessarily what unzips.

What stands out to me is the potential!  Maybe, like the zippy zip, adoptees can imagine using their liminal zippy zip as a place for expansion.  We get to choose.  Do you want to take more on your journey?  Do you want to keep what you have as is?  We get to choose, and we get to choose whether or not we view this potential in a positive or negative light.  While we all have Pouches of Douglas, not all bags have zippy zips.  Adoptees have both.  We have secret compartments of potential.  It is our choice in how to use them.  What an opportunity!  What a relief!  Perspective!  Ours is different.  

That Little Part

Certainly, anatomy provides a variety of concrete examples of liminal areas.  Many are exterior and can be attributed to the nether regions and don’t need to be graphically explained.  Suffice it to say there are areas that are close to two things with very different functions.  But, there are other areas, too, like the space between your fingers and toes, the inside of your elbow.  My favorite, “other area,” is, “That Little Part.”

In the late 1980s, I went to Jones Beach on Long Island with my then boyfriend and his little sister.  We were lying on towels, on our stomachs with Maureen sitting close by, sifting sand.  We were damp, sweaty and messy.  Ed, my boyfriend, looked at me in this disheveled state and said, “Do you know what I like best about your body?”  I wasn’t particularly interested in a come on in the heat and humidity, but I could tell he wasn’t coming from that angle.  He sweetly pointed to the top of my leg and said, “That little part.  The part of your leg that isn’t really your butt, and isn’t really your leg. It’s kind of a part of both. I love that part.”  

What a sweet and lovely sentiment.  Someone loved a part of me that had no name or definition.  Throughout our relationship, we would tease about, “that little part,” and my heart always melts a little thinking about it.  Over the years this became more symbolic for me -it is liminal space.  It is a transition from one part of the body to another.  I think we all want to be loved in a place without boundaries that doesn’t have a name.

As adoptees we are thrust into a false and skewed sense of unconditional love.  

“She loved you so much she gave you away.”  

“We loved everything about you from the moment we saw you.”

That’s a confusing message.

I want to be loved like, “That little part.”  There is no name for it, it is intrinsic to the body,  doesn’t do anything, has nothing to prove, but it is so endearing, reason is unnecessary.  I want to be loved in all of the transitional parts of me because I am, inherently, transition.

Lightness as a choice

As adoptees, we carry a certain heaviness.  Our identity isn’t necessarily obvious in our experience.  We are often told that we are lucky.  We are lucky.  We are lucky because we have the ability to live liminally and embrace it!  Our liminal space can be our lightness.  We get to choose if we are heavy or light or both.  We are packages of unknown potential but we are too busy not knowing it because we don’t have the cultural ability to see it.  We are put in a definitive box not of our choosing.  Liminal space allows us to float our way to the edge of opportunity that we can choose to realize, or not.  What a comfortable place to be.

Anne and Pam have invited us to look at The Primal Wound, our primal wound, in a different way.  We can’t ignore that something definitely happened here.  If we can reorganize our thinking, maybe we can reclassify our stasis so that we recognize difference without wound.  There can be pain with this difference, but there is also opportunity.  As the great American philosopher, Bruce Springsteen says, “Cut it loose or let it drag [you] down.”

So, take the wound, leave the framework, and recognize the freedom in a different way to be.

People reading this may think I am some sort of Pollyanna.  If you met me, you would not think that.  I am goofy and sarcastic.  I never met a down side I wouldn’t consider.  What I can say is that in addressing my adoption, I have had to rethink what I am.  Something definitely happened here.  How will I live?  With or without a primal wound, I am part limbo, part vestige, part berm, part pouch and I do have a very confusing zippy zip.  I am a liminalist.  I am, “That Little Part.”   I am, proudly, definitively ambiguous. Yes.