Sometimes the Price of Relinquishment and Adoption is a Loss of Confidence

Confidence: the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust; the state of feeling certain about the truth of something; a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.

Working with so many adoptees and helping them to get their stories on paper, I am acutely aware of what a bunch of interested, talented, funny, smart, loving people they are. They are like the rest of the world, but with their traits, generally, amplified. It’s like when you hang out with a bunch of firefighters and you get to see how wild and funny trauma can make a person.

I also notice that adoptees, when it comes to telling their story, are often like drowning people who seemingly can’t or flat out refuse to grab hold of the raft’s edge (which is telling their story as truthfully as they can) and pulling themselves to safety (a world where they feel free to tell their truth).

They want to grab the raft’s edge, but it’s often like the edge has been greased, or is on fire.

When you have had the rug pulled out from under your feet before you could talk about it or understand what was happening, the natural response is to live the rest of your life guarded, on high alert, waiting to lose what you most love and need without notice.

Confidence is not a natural response when a child loses his or her mother.

Pretend confidence is another form of bracing. It’s hard to live in this world without being confident, and that pretending is an added burden many adoptees bear—one that people, parents, teachers, friends, and many therapists don’t see because they don’t understand the real repercussions of motherloss and adoption. When the mother disappeared, our confidence went with her (just as hers ran out the door), and the world has not kept pace and has not found ways yet to help us (and our mothers) restore it.

It was like this for me for decades, living painfully without a deeply rooted sense of self- and world-confidence, and then a series of things happened: I met a person who heard and encouraged my voice; I had a person offer me space; I got fired for having a public meltdown (when it’s time to tell your story, the universe can be a relentless hand on your back, pushing you to your future): my daughter was off to college so I had no one who needed me at home; my mom had died without finishing her book, making me hyper aware the same thing could happen to me, and, amazingly enough, I had credit card companies dumb enough to give me credit so I could write and not have a paying job for three months.

That moment I unlocked to door to Kitty’s apartment and saw my present life mirroring dreams I hadn’t been brave enough to put into words I was flooded with, yup, the sweet energetic spine-strengthening tingly rush of confidence.

I had a sense of purpose, a sense of value, a sense that I was in the right place at the right time. I was confident. I was on fire. I was…what’s the word?…I was full of myself.

Growing up, this phrase was not a compliment. It meant I was conceited, a braggart. I worked hard not to be full of myself so I would be liked and accepted, primarily by my mother. I think more than anything she would have liked to be full of herself, for it is our nature to be full of ourself since anything else is a lie and a burden, but when your mother calls you on something like that, as her mother had her, you learn to deflate, to be less full of you and more full of someone or something else.

Isn't that funny when you think about it that being full of yourself can be seen as a negative? It’s like yelling at a sock for having a foot in it.

I was full of myself in New York. I was so smart and funny and interesting and sexy I could barely stand to be in a room alone with myself. One day I was texting as I was walking to the grocery store, and a runner bumped into me, or I bumped into her. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” she asked, still running. “Why don’t you fuck off?” I said to her back.

I thought I was going to explode. I called my daughter. “I’m home!” I said.

When I came home after writing my book, I went back to old habits and my new-found confidence leaked away. It has been a fight to get it back. I have had to change the way I do things. I have had to give myself permission to exist. I have had to give myself permission to feel good. To be in a body that is mine. I do this by relentlessly studying how other people find success and meaning in their lives and then developing new habits. I have come to understand that if I take full responsibility for my life, I can make it into what I want. I just have to let go of the story that if I stay a helpless child, she’ll come back and rescue me.

It has occurred to me as I work the dirt at Spirit Hill Farm, as I feed the chickens, bottle the olive oil, clean the fountains, so much time alone during this time of I want to be well and have others be well, too, that the most rewarding way to live out the rest of my days when I and the rest of us get the keys to the kingdom back and can hug our neighbors and revisit the places we love would be to do it with confidence. To live out the rest of my days full of myself.

This thought has made me incredibly hungry. I have had double portions for dinner both today and yesterday. It was so interesting. I felt great afterwards. Pleasantly, excitedly, full.

I used to be so afraid of my hunger. I thought my hunger was bottomless, and that I was destined to live a life where I always wanted more than I had, destined to lives as a hungry ghost. I’m seeing that the more full of myself I am, the less I have to fear.

What was terrifying was trying to be so many things to so many people. That made me bottomless.

I can’t believe it’s okay just to be myself. I can’t believe this is all okay. I wish I could tell my child self: You are not responsible for your mother’s happiness. I wish I could tell my child self: It’s okay to have needs. It’s okay to ask for seconds. I wish I could tell her, Everything will be okay. Better than okay. You will have amazing friends. You will do amazing things. You will think you don't belong, but that is a story. Everyone belongs. You will learn to listen to the stories in your head and then you will learn to let them go. The water in Maine in the summer is so cold, and you will be in it, swimming. You will turn blue. You will shake. You will bundle up in a towel, eat Oreos with your best friend, and then you will go back in and let the waves carry you to shore over and over until it’s time to go home.

You will learn to check in with yourself before you try to check in with everyone else, making sure they are okay, making sure they are happy, making sure they still like you. You will learn other people are not you. They can be them. You can be you. You are free.

It is not your job to be someone else. It is not your job to please people. It is not your job to make life easier for those who love you. It is your job to be you and to find the work you were born to do and to contribute to the well-being of the world that way, by fully exploring your abilities, by fully blooming into you.

I talked by phone with an adoptee today. “I’m in the dark place,” she said. I knew this could be it. She could decide it was all too hard, that being isolated on top of a lifetime of feeling isolated was going to push her over the edge. The apple orchard is full of daisies. Can you imagine if one of those sweet, hopeful flowers decided it was not good enough for the world and cut itself off at the root? I wish for us the confidence of flowers.

I want you to stay.

Just so I can see you bloom.

Just so I can know you are there, doing your thing, whatever that is. Even if it is just lying on the couch, watching the clouds go by. If that is what your mind and body want to do, then that’s enough. That’s more than enough.

That’s perfect.