There is No I in Trauma -- A New Writing Class

It occurred to me the other day that if I continue to live the way I have been all my life, I may never be truly, bone-deep happy for an extended period of time, say, for more than two hours, the length of many movies. 

Participating and co-leading the Flourish class for adoptees with Pam Cordano for the past few months has been illuminating, as in, hair on fire. As in it’s even worse than I thought. The trauma, the inability to move forward in a whole-hearted and self-assured manner is systemic in many adoptees, it seems to me. 

I knew adoptees suffered because of the way most of us, our nervous systems, reacted to relinquishment and adoption, interpreting these events or situations as trauma. I know I did and do. I wrote a whole book about it and over two thousand memes and years of blog posts.  

I had this feeling I was walking a long, steep flight of stairs and that there was a summit SOMEWHERE, and that if I just kept climbing I’d finally summit trauma and live among the stars, breathing deeply, home in my body, in relationship, and in my environment. 

I have started to wonder if I am on an endless flight of stairs, if living in the body of an adopted person means perpetual effort. I have started to wonder if my life expectancy will be shorter because I was working harder just to maintain the status quo (inhale/exhale) in a world that did not recognize or understand the effort.  

I have been thinking about how much I think about the past. I think about it ALL THE TIME. I am sitting here at my computer, writing about the past. Meanwhile, outside, the crows are calling and the wind is blowing the long grasses, and there are cars speeding by on the narrow, bumpy road that is in front of the house.

Meanwhile, my body is trying to talk to me. My feet are trying to tell me they are cold. My back is trying to tell me it needs a stretch. My face is trying to tell me it feels stuck in a frown. My body is asking me to move, but I wasn’t paying attention because trying to figure out the past, how to articulate what happened, what it felt like, what I did and what I wished I had done and what they did and what I wish they had done feels way more compelling and urgent than anything that is happening right now. Such as tending to my body. 

If I go for a walk with a friend (masked, 6 feet apart) at the ocean, I get frustrated when they talk about what is right in front of them for any length of time: the water, the sand, the seagull. I want to get to the good stuff: the past. I want to talk about what is wrong. I want to try to figure out my life or have them figure out their life so we can avoid living in the present moment and feeling is this it? as we dive deep into the past, looking, looking, looking, where is the way to feeling good? 

I am feeling done with all that, but I’m not sure how to get from A. obsessed with the past to B. obsessed with the present moment (obsessed as in in love with). I want to try an experiment, and I’m inviting you along with me if you want to play. 

I want to retrain my brain. Right now it’s like a crazy puppy that is determined to eat its own poop even though it is making it sick. I need to train my brain that the present moment is okay, better than okay, is all there is, is life. I need to train my brain that the present moment (and the future) is safe. 

I want to try to do this through writing. I have tried staying in the present tense before with writing. I think I made three sentences before diving back into the past. It was like writing about the past was coming up for air while writing about the present moment was swimming underwater.

I want to see what happens when I build up my tolerance for the present.

There’s the question where a boy asks an elder which wolf of two is stronger, and an elder tells him the stronger wolf is the one he feeds. I have been feeding the past since the moment I was born and hungry to go back so the mother who disappeared could return. 

She’s gone. The past is gone. And yet I keep clinging to the gone as if it will save me.

 Changing behaviors, I have found, is often easiest in community. You create a new normal and you get to see it mirrored in those around you. It’s exciting and fun and weird in the best ways. 

I’m going to lead writing classes on Zoom each Sunday (starting February, 14th, Valentine’s Day) from 4-6 PM PST on Zoom. We are going to play with writing. We’ll write and read our work to each other, and I will teach you everything I know about writing as authentically and clearly as possible. The classes are not about being good or talented—they are about showing up and community and working to feel as good as possible. 

The only big rule is that we have to write in present or future tense.

I want to see what is possible when we put our minds to believing in ourselves and in the power of the present moment. I hope you will join me. 

The suggested donation is $20 a class. If times are tough, pay what you can. I’d rather you try to be here now than not. You can Venmo the payment to me at anne-heffron or Paypal it to me at anneheffron@gmail.com. I’ll send you the Zoom link and we’ll be off and flying.