Adopted People and Mutuality

I love Pam Cordano for countless reasons, and one is her ability to name things in a way that changes my life.

Take “mutuality” for example, the topic of our February Flourish classes. I had to look up the definition in order to teach with Pam. (The wildest kind of teaching sometimes is the one where you are like HOLY SHIT the whole time you are speaking and listening.)

Mutuality is the sharing of a feeling, action, or relationship between two people.

Huh?

Can we get back to me?

Because I’m not done. I’m incomplete. I’m a figure made of LEGOs and I’ve got some missing pieces. How can I possibly focus on sharing feelings, actions, or relationships with others when I’m so focused on finding what is missing?

How can I think about we when I’m obsessed by what’s wrong with I?

One of the most powerful ways Pam has been teaching me by example about mutuality in our friendship is when I talk about myself for a minute and then try to shift the conversation over to her. “Nope, she often says. “Let’s stay on you.” Secretly, I want us to talk about me, but part of me believes I don’t merit the attention, and so it’s safer to focus on Pam even though, when I do this with other friends—invite them to talk much more than I do—afterwards I often feel empty and used.

Pam doesn’t want to just talk about herself with me. She wants our conversations and our friendship to be mutual, a we, not two I’s. I want that, too, of course, but when you have grown up with the belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with you (your own mother didn’t keep you!) (you feel confused about almost everything in life!) (you don’t know what you like or don’t like half the time!) (you struggle to focus and feel as if you’re a car with no one you know at the wheel!), it’s easy to focus on what’s wrong with me? or how will I survive? or how can I get what I want? instead of on the we of shared experiences.

We teach Flourish, Pam and I, and the experience feels so wholehearted and true. It’s like we’re in a river together with the intention of providing a safe, healing space for adopted people to flourish. It’s like we are a river, and it’s a relief to not think about how is this for me, but how is this for us, for me and Pam and all the people of Flourish.

Here we are, going down the river of us. Weeeeeeeeeee!

Again and again as I come out of the fog and into myself, I find myself thinking about community, the power of community, the love that exists in community, the mirroring, the sense of home.

Amen.