Walking Through the Doorway of You to Wonder and Safety

All this time, it was all right there. 

 Dorothy wakes up to find she was home the whole time.

It’s always right there.

Be still and know that I am God.  

It’s here and here and here and here, and yet I have spent my entire life moving, searching, thinking no and no and no and no. 

Not you. Not this. Not that. Not me. 

Adoptees kill themselves for various reasons. They kill themselves sometimes because they can’t find themselves. They are trying to get rid the hurt and the hopelessness: the painful story; the belief in wounding, in disconnect, in isolation, in terror.  

You can kill yourself slowly. You can drink too much, eat too much, hide from others, swim in shame, believe the story that she didn’t want you. You can live following other people’s dreams, never verbalizing or maybe even knowing your own.

I would like to argue there should be no I in adoption. I was abandoned. I was relinquished. She didn’t want I. (Work with me here—let’s make I and me interchangeable just for a few minutes.) I am full of trauma. I am broken. 

If we step back, way back, like, way up in an airplane and look down at our life, the world continues to spin even though she relinquished us. The birds continue to sing. The corn continues to grow.

I carry the primal wound and yet summer solstice still came and went. 

I discovered something when I finally, after over thirty years of trying, I wrote my story: the hardest work was yet to come. I was going to have to find a way to give myself permission to thrive.

I had solidified my sense of I when I wrote about being an adoptee. I did this. They did this to I. I hurt. I suffer. I caused other people to suffer. I believe adoption is trauma. 

My sense of brokenness was even stronger. I had written a book that proved, in my mind, how damaged I was by my mother’s decision to relinquish me. (Or her parents’ decision.)

I had flown to the moon to fly the flag of fucked up.

And so now what? 

Isn’t the whole point of life to live happily ever after?

Writing my book has created many opportunities for me. The best part is that I have met so many amazing people who related to it and therefore feel connected to me. That is an incredible feeling—connection.  

So I am in no way saying writing my book was a mistake. For heaven’s sake! I’m teaching others RIGHT NOW to do the same thing!  

BUT.

I now keep the present and future in mind when I help people with their writing. I got really, really good at living in the past when I was writing, and so the lens through which I saw my life was all about past trauma and fear. That led to a present full of more of the same. It’s hard to enjoy yourself when you are Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall. 

And then Spirit Hill happened. I flew from Boston to Sebastopol, California, to visit for a week and to write about how living in nature on a gorgeous property would affect me as a human. 

And then I didn’t leave. I moved in. 

Suddenly I was living in paradise. 

With myself and my crazy, chattering brain.

That thing tried to make paradise terrible.

It made me anxious, overwhelmed, fearful. There I was, in the garden of earthly delights and my brain was determined to take me down. 

COVID-19 just added fuel to the fire. George Floyd made it rage.

Not too long ago, it got to the point where I would wake up and fall asleep in tears. Things just felt wrong. I felt wrong. I have had this feeling before. It’s the feeling that led me to drop out of college a bunch of times, quit jobs, relationships, dance class. It’s the part of me that is terrified of the new, of what I can’t control, of failure, of the unknown. It’s the part of me that insists I am in trouble even when I look out the window and see blue sky and birds singing in the olive tree. 

It’s the part of me that wrote You Don’t Look Adopted.

That part, however, also had help. There is another part of me that has saved my life a bunch of times. It’s the observer. It’s the part of me that feels clear, like a silver river of truth. It feels like a cool breeze, like safety. It knows everything’s going to be okay. That part is sitting in a movie theater, enjoying the show. I love that part of me because it’s the most pleasurable. The other part, the terrified part, I am learning not to dread even though it’s like trying to slow dance with a shark. That part is so much work. I am learning that this part has a lot to teach me. 

I struggled these last few weeks, lost, unsure how to change the channel, caught up in my own darkness, and then I had a phone call with a friend where I was crying and trying to tell her what was wrong, both of us confused, neither of us sure what was really wrong, and then I thought of something I didn’t want to say to her but said anyway: I think I have missed talking to you. I think I am lonely. 

Social distancing has its advantages, especially if you are partly an introvert, but it clearly has its challenges. We hug for many reasons. One is that it feels amazing. We share food, car rides, high fives, because we are human and we need to be with each other so we don’t start feeling like turnips.  

Our lives can flip on a dime. Somehow that small confession opened a door and I found myself. Here’s the thing: the door that opened was in me. It was as if I’d become this magic trick where I could fold into myself, slip through the doorway of me, and come out the other side, changed.

And here’s what has shifted: I can now feel in my body more than ever that I want to live, not just survive, but live. I want to really go for wild dreams. I want to be big just because I can. I want to be six again and do things out of curiousity instead of out of a feeling of duty. 

I outlined a book that a lot of people won’t like. 

I decided I really, really don’t want a boyfriend because I like having all this time to myself. I need all this time. Somehow I had this feeling that people are supposed to be paired up, and the fact that I was single was some sort of problem, but when I walked through the doorway of me I saw that this is freedom. This is me on the couch, happy, engaged, doing my stuff.

I had been pressed up, hard, against a wall I could not see around. I had felt so stuck. I had felt I had used up all the tricks in my bag and that I’d run out of gas and I was just so flipping stuck. 

In the past, I would have reacted and quit or run away or done something drastic to escape this feeling, but for the first time, because of COVID, because I’d made a commitment to stay, I faced that wall even though it felt like dying ,and then the miracle happened and the doorway in me opened.

I believe this is the antidote to the primal wound: the doorway of me.

This means that there is an I in adoption—but here’s the thing: what if one I has to die or drop away for the other to be born? What if adoptees don’t have to kill themselves to escape? What if they can find the doorway and be reborn to their true I that way? 

I think these are ways to access the doorway of I: 

1. Relax. Spend a lot of time lying on the floor or in your bed, breathing, meditating, listening to music. Have one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart. This body is the doorway to you. Listen. It may be exhausted. Let it rest. Love it. Just keep showing up for it, listening. See what it has to say.

2. Avoid sugar and alcohol. You need to sleep, and both of these things really mess with your sleep. 

 3. Get control of your finances. If you don’t have to worry about money, it’s easier to listen to yourself. You’re the one spending your money, most likely. You can always earn more. You can always, usually, spend less. 

3. Move your body a lot. Dance around. Do yoga. Ride your bike. Breathe heavily. Sweat.

4. Think about the idea that we all have a core of goodness within us. We are seeds that got planted and we grew. Everything else is story. Life starts and ends. The middle part is where you get to feel the full expression of your heart. 

5. Ask yourself the question, How much can I love? Close your eyes. Take a deep inhale, exhale for a beat longer. Feel the energy that is your essence. It wants to expand and merge with the stars. Let it. Feel yourself get enormous. Know you are bigger than your skin, bigger than your story, bigger than you will ever know. 

6. Let go. Let go. Let go. Let go.