Adoptees, Get to Work. All of You. Talk. Write. Draw. Sing. Live Your Truth Out Loud.

I’ve been thinking and thinking about the book I loved as a child, Mandy, by Julie Andrews Edwards, an adoptive mom, and it finally hit me what is so adoptive parent about that book: at the end, when orphan Mandy gets adopted by the rich family, Mandy gives up her special cottage she had turned into the first space she’d ever had for herself for she doesn’t “need” it since she now has parents and a brother.

That’s adoptive parent thinking, that they, the new parents, are going to be able to fill all the child’s needs.

It wasn’t Mandy who gave up the cottage: it was the adoptive mother who was writing the book. She gave it up for her character, for Mandy.

We need adoptees to tell us their stories. Why is that what many people consider the “bible” of the adoptee experience, The Primal Wound, was written by an adoptive parent? That book was so important to me. It was the first book where I thought, Oh, my god. I’m not crazy. I’m adopted.

I haven’t read any happily ever adoptee stories, fictional or non-fictional, that I believe. It’s hard to write the truth when you are not living it.

I am working with almost thirty adoptees this year as they write their stories. It’s a hero’s journey, telling your truth when you are afraid the people you love most don’t want to hear it, when you yourself aren’t sure you want to hear it. What I hear mostly is that people are afraid they won’t be loved if others know how they, the writers, really think and feel.

The hardest part of writing my book was getting away from the hammer I kept swinging at myself, the one that tried to break me: your story is boring; you are stupid; you’re not good enough; you sound like a narcissist; you are going to fail; you are a black hole—you don’t even have a story.

The person most adoptees need to overcome in order to tell their story, it seems to me, is themselves. Adoptees as a group—if I had to lump them together and make generalizations—are, I would say, some of the most thoughtful, considerate, self-deprecating people around. I wish adoption agencies gave us bumper stickers for our cribs that said: You were not put on this planet to keep people at ease. You are not here to make things better or more beautiful or shinier. You were put here to be you.

The other day I was out walking because I wanted to find some daisies. It had occurred to me during meditation that I was a daisy—just a stem and some roots and a bloom that reaches for the sun. A daisy does not have shoulders. When I felt this in my body, it was as if five hundred pounds of armor slid off. I’m not that complicated. Life can feel so overwhelming when you are trying to stay one or five steps ahead of everyone so they won’t abandon you. Daisies just wait for the rain and the sun. They grow. They bloom. And then they die.

I thought about how I did not have to carry other people’s problems (adoptees are often particularly attuned to carrying the problems and concerns of their parents) on my shoulders because I was a daisy and did not have those things—shoulders. I also did not have to try to be a tulip. That would be ridiculous. Who ever saw a flower trying to be another kind of flower? An iris struggling to bust out into a peony? If flowers could groan, that poor iris would be making a lot of noise.

It. Can’t. Happen.

I sense people as tubes of energy, and so I can feel both the story and the blocks when I talk to people. To me, it’s a life and death thing, because if anything energetic is blocked, its vital life force is going to be lessened. I can’t stand to see that, and so sometimes I end up in the middle of a field, screaming into the phone. Sometimes I try to bribe people to keep writing. Sometimes I get older sister bossy and pretend I can tell people what to do.

When I talk about people writing a book, I don’t necessarily mean a book as in a thing with pages and a cover. I mean some form of artistic expression that lets them and others see an external representation of the light and truth they carry inside. Some of my “writers” draw. Some sing. I use the word book because it’s easy and I love the word.

Don’t die with your story inside of you.

I mean, you’re going to die anyway, so you might as well make the most of the time you have here. Everyone you are afraid of is going to die, too, maybe soon. Put blinders on and write your truth. Sing it. Draw it. It’s a direct line of communication between you and Spirit. It’s a dance.

It’s COVID-19 time. We might as well boogie.

And if you think you’re not a good enough writer or artist or singer to get your story out, I call bullshit on you. If you were to sit across the table from a beloved friend, I would bet you a million dollars you would not remain stone silent if they asked you to tell your story. If they waited, patiently, for you to organize your thoughts, to figure out where to begin. Chances are good you would not even do this organizing thing. Chances are really good you would just start talking and let the pieces fall where they may. Your friend has a brain. She’ll be able to connect the dots, to follow your “lack of transitions.” Forget everything you learned in school. That was about how to write in a certain formula. I’m talking about how to live.

Your story is inside of you. All you have to do is relax enough to let it out.

I tell my students telling your story is just like pooping. It’s a function of the body. You take in food, you poop it out. You take in experiences, you talk, write, sing, draw, build, dance them out. Creating is a function of being alive.

Judging, on the other hand: good, bad, A, B, C, D, F, is a function of keeping you in a cage.

Break free.

As Seth Godin says, Make a ruckus.

Just because you can. Just because when your body and your brain are in concert, anything can happen.

Maybe what you really fear is that if you pull out all the stops, if you open up and fully become yourself, you’ll see that you aren’t special, you aren’t perfect, you are…ordinary. Average.

Do you know what good news this is? It means you are connected. It means you are part of the net of jewels that is life. It means everything is better than okay.

It means you are home.