Installment #4 in the Sequel to You Don't Look Adopted

I don’t want to publish this as a book, but in the years since I published You Don’t Look Adopted, I’ve done so much growing and have worked with so many adoptees that I think it would be a waste not to share some of the insights I’ve had. So I’ll continue to write them until I feel done and put them here, in no particular order as is my habit.

Kryptonite 

What gets in the way of adoptees (human beings!) feeling free to talk about their feelings and experiences and beliefs? Here is a sampling: other adoptees and adoptive parents who are in the fog, non-adoptees who dismiss the idea that adoptees are different because of their experiences, adoptees themselves who, even out of the fog, can’t fully wrap their heads around just how completely motherloss affects the brain, and therapists who say they can help adoptees but have no real idea what they are saying.

Shadow 

I was reading Debby Ford’s book, The Dark Side of the Lightchasers, and it occurred to me that maybe, for many adoptees, their “original self” the one expressed by their DNA becomes their shadow self when faced with chameleoning their way through life. A shadow self is one that causes us to feel, among other things, shame, aversion, and denial. That wasn’t me, we think as we drive home, filled with shame remembering how we told loud jokes at the party and took up more than our share of space.

12 Ways of Looking at Enough

1.     I’ve had

2.     I have

3.     I am

4.     You are

5.     We are

6.     That was

7.     That is

8.     That will be

9.     Enough is enough

10.  Enough said

11.  Have I hugged/been hugged enough yet?

12.  Good enough 

Sous Vide

I have never used the sous vide method of cooking, but I saw it done on TV once. (Which makes me something of an expert.) Raw meat or vegetables or whatever are put into a special plastic bag which is vacuum sealed and then dropped into precisely heated water so that food is cooked evenly all the way through.

It occurred to me that as an adoptee, I was raised in the same way one might Sous vide a steak. I was born, vacuum packed into a plastic bag of “this is your new life, there is no other air to breathe” and then thrown into water that was the precise temperature of my new life. It was like the plastic bag was my new skin and that I’d never been any other water that was any other temperature.

The Ladder of Gratitude

1. Attraction (my mother’s body and my father’s body being called together)

2. Competition (the sperm that won)

3.  Toughness (my mother having me)

4. Love (the family friends that took care of her when she was pregnant)

5.  Mother hunger (my mother wanting a baby)

6.  NYC (the place of my birth)

7.  Westwood (my second home)

8.  Janie (my first friend)

9.  My grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my brothers

10.  Babysitters

11.  Creativity

12.  My grandparents’ house and lake

13.  Baby Ellen and Bob Dog

14.  Little yellow house

15.  Fisher Street

16.  (not junior high school)

17.  Track team

18.  Softball team

19.  Swim lessons

20.  Friends

21.  Bicycles

22.  Martha’s Vineyard

23.  Camping trips

24.  VW Bug

25.  Racoon

26.  Barn

27.  Whole wheat bread

28.  Slushies

29.  Chocolate chip cookies

30.  Candy

31.  Money

32.  Lawn Mower

33.  Kites

34.  Trees

35.  Meadow

36.  Cigarettes

37.  Front porch

38.  Bedroom

39.  Skin

40.  Lips

41.  Perfume

42.  Stockings

43.  Boys

44.  Music

45.  Books

46.  Lies

47.  Running

48.  Sneakers

49.  Heart necklace

50.  Boston

51. Stars

52. Rocky Mountains

53.  All the adoptees I know

54.  Piano

55.  Violin

56.  Basketball

57.  Movies

58.  Jean and Mimi

59.  MTV

60.  Ice cream

61.  Cars

62.  Dreams

63.  Alcohol

64.  Fishing

65.  Death

66.  Beauty

67.  Tadpoles

68.  Fingernail polish

69.  Girl Scouts and Brownies

70.  Horses

71.  Birds

72.  Gerbils

73.  Rabbits

74.  Guinea Pigs

75.  Chameleon

76.  Lip Smackers

77.  School Lockers

78.  Summer

79.  Winter

80.  Fall

81.  Spring

82.  Eclipses

83.  Clouds

84.  Airplanes

85.  Paper Airplanes

86.  Dogs

87.  Cats

88.  Chipmunks

89.  Squirrels

90.  Worms

91.  Memories

92.  Cookbooks

93.  Grocery stores

94.  Suntans

95.  Ferry

96.  Ocean

97.  Cape Cod

98.  California

99.  Texas

100. Keats (it took so much work to get to the top, and every step was worth it)

I suspect my ability to feel gratitude is connected to my ability to let myself feel/be out of control. If I am truly grateful for my family, my dog, my flowered pants, if I make myself vulnerable to loss by wholeheartedly appreciating what I have, chances are good I’ll eventually, maybe in an hour, get mortally stabbed by the sword of Oh, where have you gone? Historically, my nervous system didn’t do well processing my first big loss, so who’s to say another one won’t be the end of me?

Elizabeth Bishop wrote in “One Art”:

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Bitch and Moan

I feel so much more in control when I’m sitting in judgement, having a tantrum, throwing a pity party for myself, or thinking about all the ways I’m better than other people. Maybe control is not the best word to use here. I don’t feel in control in a good way when I’m doing those things—I feel more like a drunk asshole who took over the wheel of a ship and is headed god knows where, probably straight for the Great Barrier Reef or for some kids hanging out on a dock singing camp songs.

Mother Love

I was hard on my mom in my book You Don’t Look Adopted. I thought I was being honest, but now, in retrospect, I think I was leaking broken heart all over the pages. I had wanted my mom to forsake my father and my brothers and to take me somewhere where it would just be the two of us and peace and quiet. Her eyes on me, and my eyes on her. I wanted her to prove her love to me, show me I was as special as she said I was. I wanted to feel chosen in a way that would settle my anxious stomach and make me feel less like a starving black hole for more, more food, more clothes, more attention, more praise.

Write it

I was hard on many people when I wrote You Don’t Look Adopted and after in my blogs and in my writings on Instagram and Facebook. I felt I had a right to say what I thought the truth was. I catered to the judgmental part of me that sat like a cold stone or an angry dervish saying you! you! you!

Oh! The fury of the hungry baby!!

Who Do You Love

When you live in tantrum or fear or reactivity, it’s hard to know who you love and who you don’t care much about at all. (Sometimes using whom even when it’s grammatically correct is just too silly sounding.) When your heart is tight because you don’t breathe deeply and slowly and your guts are telling you you’re in trouble because your nervous system is in flight or flight instead of rest and digest, it’s natural that people would bug you. It’s natural to push people away because you have a headache or because you’re so busy worrying that you don’t have time to listen to someone else try to share their thoughts with you. It’s like you’re a storage unit full of your own stuff—how dare your friend try to put her toaster in your unit. Doesn’t she know how little space you already have? Can’t she see? You start to hate your friend for taking up oxygen that you need.

It's so hard to be with myself. Being with another person can feel like trying to drive two cars at the same time.

It’s easier to be alone with my full storage unit and no one breathing my air.

Whoops

I can see that the thing I want most: to be alone, is going to be the thing that could kill me. I can feel myself hardening into a solitary thing. I’m becoming a garden statue instead of a person who lights up when they see a friend and gives them a big, long hug. I’m a robot with my phone in my hand, plugged into a world of disembodied faces and voices where, as soon as I am displeased, I can disappear or block someone and drop them from my life with zero warning or explanation.

I’m a plant refusing water and light.

Why? What am I thinking? I am made of those things. I need them.

The problem is almost can’t bear, physically and mentally, to be with people. Being with others for me is like taking a porcupine and trying to stick more quills in its fully-quilled body. I’m already so irritated and short-tempered. Why would I want to add gasoline onto the fire of I just need some sleep…I just need to eat something…I just need some good news…I just need a Diet Coke…and then I’ll be able to be friendly, nice, open, relaxed—whatever the things are I need to be in order to feel comfortable enough in my skin and mind to be around others.

Sisyphus

Carrying low self-worth is such a pain in the ass. Not only do a task such as vacuuming the floor, but I also carry this unnecessary load on my shoulders that cramps my lower back and hurts my brain. I wish there was a carwash for erasing stupid thoughts and beliefs that I could drive myself through and lighten my load so I could whistle while I work and see the opportunities and humor in yet another day on this wildly spinning incomprehensible globe of wonder.

Hunger

While most people eat with a knife, fork, and spoon, I hover my face over my plate or bowl and vacuum up all the food in a single go. Or that’s how it feels when I eat. I barely chew as chewing is not the best part of eating: consuming great amounts is. It’s like I’m in a contest to get as much as possible in before someone rips away the food.

When my daughter was nursing, she was attached to my breast for big chunks of the day and night. My body was often the answer to her cry.

When you are an infant and you don’t have a mother, are you on a bottle schedule? Are you fed when you cry or at prescribed times? It’s bizarre to me that I have zero idea who fed me the first ten weeks of my life or even where I was. I think in many ways I’m still that infant, frantic for the next feeding, and then, when the feeding comes, frantic to get to the bottom of the bottle in the hopes that something that feels better to my body, like my mother’s body, might appear.

How many pints of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk can one person eat, hoping to find home?

If I have a day all to myself, I start getting anxious about food soon after I finish breakfast. When I’m busy and only have tiny gaps of time to grab something to eat, it’s not such a problem, but when I have a whole day of nothing I have to do, I generally use (a lot) of food as an anchor to keep me from flying away. I’ll crave cookies, popcorn, Chinese food, cereal, ice cream—anything that will numb my brain and help stop the spin so I can go through the rest of the day in a near-coma, unafraid of what I’ll eat next because I’m already so full.

If I get fat, my parents won’t love me. If I get fat, I won’t know who I am. If I get fat, I’ll be like a magnet with no pull—useless. Glennon Doyle is publicly facing her diagnosis of anorexia on her podcast We Can Do Hard Things, and I am so grateful to her. I feel as if she’s speaking for so many of us who live in a terrible cage of I have to be a certain way to be accepted into the tribe of humanity. Changing a fundamental belief is like changing the black box on a plane. You can’t just record over it. You have to remove the thing that’s bolted into the cockpit. In other words, you have to do the nearly impossible or unthinkable. You have to become a new person.

My Dad

What if a mother is shaky in her attachment style, and so she turns her daughter against her father, the mother’s husband, to insure the child’s love and devotion? What if the child grows up watching her mother talk as if she is superior to the father, but cooking the meals and cleaning the house after a day at work because these are not things the father will do? What if the daughter harbors hatred and disdain for the father because the mother cannot bear to carry these things herself and stay married?

I realized recently I feel like I need permission to love my father, to accept him, faults and all. To accept him as a human being. If I can’t accept him, how can I accept another or myself?

My heart is a thing that wants to beat slowly and take in and give out love. I feed it caffeine to keep it anxious, to keep it speaking the language I was taught growing up: you are not safe: hustle, hustle hustle.

I want to go visit my father at his retirement home and sit in the chair across from his favorite spot in the middle of the couch and look at him open-heartedly. I want to sit there and breathe and accept and love him just as he is.

I’ll go this Saturday. I’m imagining he’ll say or do something that will piss me off and take away my breath. I don’t want to give you any examples. I’ve already betrayed him in so many ways. I’m going to try to take out my black box and put in a new one.

Write it.

I love my dad. My dad has disappointed me, hurt me, not seen me, and still, I love him. He does not have to be perfect. He does not even have to always be good. He is worthy of love because he is human.

Note to self.