Breathing and Being an Adopted Person -- Writings from Class

I had two retreats in a row—one in-person and one online. I wanted to see how the experiences compared, and if it was even worth having a retreat if it also had to be on a screen.

If people connected, discovered new ways of seeing their story, themselves and others, and shifted perspectives and beliefs to a more positive angle, then I would believe the time was well spent.

Which I now do.

I came away from both retreats thinking that if I could give adopted people, including myself, anything, it might be the ability to breathe deeply and fully. Maybe self-confidence would be the gift that would allow us to breathe that way, but I also believe self-confidence and self-love would be a natural by-product of full breaths. So I choose breath.

I decided to ask my writing class of adopted people to write for 20 minutes on their breath. I didn’t talk much about breath—I just said to write about it—they could tell a story, write a definition, whatever. The topic was “my breath”. Whatever came to the writer was the perfect response.

Hearing people read their work outloud was a profound experience for me, and so I asked the writers to send these 20-minute first drafts for me to share with you, if they felt like it so I could share their work with you. Hearing someone read their work outloud is a special pleasure, but maybe you could read these works outloud with your own breath and bring them to life that way.

Sometimes I can’t breathe, which never used to be a thing. 

I had endless breath. In my teens,I’d run for miles, okay usually just two or three, not marathons or anything, but miles nonetheless.By my twenties I’d picked up smoking but doubled-down on exercise. I’d sweat through 2-hour sessions on the stairmill—the one that looks like an escalator—with a cigarette break between hours. For the next two decades I exercised and devoured cigarettes with breath to spare. In my forties I quit cigarettes but added hot yoga and long bike rides.

 Now, at 54,  I walk uphill with my dog and gasp. I bodyboard two baby waves and suck wind. Ever since I figured out adoption, specifically my adoption, was a thing, I just can’t seem to catch my breath. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe its my fifties. 

I think it's adoption. 

I had every heart and lung test you could have. I wired up for a “stress test” on the treadmill. . Wore a Holter monitor. Echocardio. Echo stress. Sat inside a claustrophobic phone booth looking room for a litany of lung tests.

“Blow out,” the tech said, “ more more more…” 

I thought I might die.

“Good job,” he said. 

Everything is fine they kept saying.

“I can’t breathe,” I repeated.

They assured me I was healthy. Assured me they believed me. But did they? And if they didn’t was it because I’m a woman? And adopted? Maybe.

Or maybe I’m wrong and I just breathe differently now. Maybe this is normal. A defogging of my heart and lungs.

Breathless....by Hannah

My breath

Signs of life

The breath

Does life on earth begin with a breath 

with taking oxygen into our lungs from the air externally

When we transition from the oxygenated fluid in the umbilical cord to the external world

That Moment of transition

From the womb to the world is punctuated by breath

Is that the moment my breathing began, shallow and constricted 

Keeping pace with the rhythm and beat of the heart

The constant rise and fall in service of movement . . . Constant movement 

Kristina 

What I can write about my breath is skewed.  I only notice it when it's not working normally.  Maybe after a long, brisk walk, or when the wind shifts over the pig farm, or it's cedar season.  Even when I do purposeful breathingL Breathe in, 2, 3, 4, Hold, 2, 3, 4, Breathe out, 2, 3, 4.

Only cellular functions are less noticeable than breathing and it's right in the top 4 of the most important functionalities for a happy life. Top 3 if you don't care about happy.  

1. a pumping heart

2. a filtering liver

3. breathing lungs and 

(optional) 4. an active brain

These are the basics.

For me, living with these functionalities is like living in the expensive dorms in college.  I would have my room and a passing knowledge of the women that lived next door and across the hall.  I might not notice the last time I saw them or if they moved out or someone new moved in.  I would notice when the room is empty.  They don't exterminate empty rooms, so I get more visitors of the creepy, crawly kind.

Although my breath is almost invisible to me, it is an endless source of information to my husband, who can hear a sigh four houses away.  

What's wrong? What's happened?

Nothing. Nothing. I must be tired.

I often wish other things were as easy as breathing: cleaning dishes, paying bills, scooping kitty litter.  The catastrophic price that comes with any error makes it bearable.  I don't want anyone to say she passed away peacefully over the kitty litter.  Her arm finally gave out.

Breathe in, 2, 3, 4, Breathe out, 2, 3, 4, Hold, 2, 3, 4

Oh, I always do this in the wrong order.

by Dawn Conwell Mulkay

I hold my breath. A lot. I hold my breath like I am afraid to breathe too much. If I breathe then I am alive.  If I am alive then it means that I have a body. If I have a body, then it means that I feel things. If I feel things, then it means that I cry.  I don’t want to cry.  Crying changes my breath.  It makes me gasp for air in a way that makes my chest feel like it is going to explode.  So, I exist in this state where I hold my breath, and when I breathe, my breathing is shallow and my body is on high alert and never relaxed.  I am so good at holding my breath and only taking shallow breaths that you can’t hear me gulp when I drink something (unlike my child and my husband, you gulp down water like they can’t get it into their body fast enough, ending with a really loud gasping for air at the end.)

Holding onto my breath and only breathing shallowly means that my body on the inside has taken on how I behave in the world – NOT taking up too much space.  I had a therapist tell me once to notice my body when I lay on the couch watching a show. She asked me to observe what my body was doing.  Guess what?  I am not even relaxed laying on the couch where I am supposed to be chilling out watching a movie with my child, my husband and our dog, all cuddled together.  I observe them and they are perfectly relaxed.  There I am, taking breath sips and holding my head and shoulders up away from the cushions.  I don’t even sink into the cushions; my body is so rigid.  Later I wonder why my neck and shoulders are always so tight.  I now have to schedule 90-minute massages because 60 minutes won’t cut it.  I don’t really relax and breathe freely until about 45 minutes into the massag.  90 minutes is not long enough anymore.

In my workout class, the coach is always trying to get me to focus on my breathing.  Jenni, breathe! Oh yeah!  You are right, Travis - Doing box jumps is a lot easier if I actually take in some oxygen.  Yep, I row better if I concentrate on my breathing.  It is amazing how long I can hold a plank if I let my lungs expand and contract, releasing the CO2 and bringing air back in. It helps me focus and hold the pose.  

When did I start holding my breath all the time?  Did I always do this? Why do I hold my breath? Why don’t I take up space and expand?

by Jenni Newby

My Breath 

 I think I was placed with my parents when I was six months old.  When I was eight months old I had pneumonia and bronchitis and nearly died.  If forced to talk about it, my mum looks like she could faint.  It was terrifying for her.  I suppose losing a baby is one of the most awful things that could happen to anyone.  I guess it would be compounded for the supposed mother who has only had the baby for a month or two. 

Apparently the doctor diagnosed me by listening to my labored wheezy breathing through the telephone.  He prescribed lots of steam.  And antibiotics.  I don’t know how long I was sick for, but I think a while.  I didn’t get pneumonia again, but when I was in my twenties, and discovered scuba diving, I had to get a medical exam and chest x-ray.  They checked my medical records and noted that I had pneumonia and wheezy bronchitis as a baby.  We don’t call it that any more, they said.  We call it asthma.  The doctor prescribed me two different kinds of inhalers, for the asthma attacks I had never experienced.  And signed off on the extra paperwork needed for an asthmatic who wants to scuba dive. 

I smoked.  Cigarettes, joints, pipes, bongs.  I loved smoking.  I started when I was 14, when the rabbi gave me a cigarette.  A month or two later I discovered weed.  It was perfect for me.  Just right for switching of my busy brain, letting me think about one thing or even nothing.  And I could be silly.  Be amused by the same things everyone else seemed to find funny.  I could giggle in company.  When I wasn’t high, I mostly didn’t understand why they were laughing. 

But when I tried to stop smoking, I discovered what an asthma attack was like.  I used those inhalers and they worked.  That’s how you know it’s asthma, the doctors told me.  They asked me to blow into a tube.  A peak flow test.  I failed the test.  I started running, as an incentive to keep away from smoking.  I had to run with my inhaler in a little pouch, so I could use it every twenty minutes or so.  

I could feel it beginning, my breath getting shorter, each breath smaller, my chest feeling like it would burst, but my lungs blocked, only a small amount of air in them.  It stuck in my throat, like there was a wall between my throat and my chest, that no air could get past.  

I tried wild swimming.  In England that means cold water swimming.  The shock of the cold would take my breath away.  And I just couldn’t get it back again.  Not even with the inhaler.  I stubbornly swam a mile around the lake, mostly on my back, gasping for air.  Twice a week.  

I noticed how hard it was to breathe when I visited my parents in London.  The big city.  The big smoke.  Air pollution, traffic, or my increased inability to breathe in their house?  

I moved to California.  I brought my inhalers with me, stocked up for a few months because I knew health care was complicated here.  I’ve never used them.  I’ve never had trouble breathing here.  The expanse, the ocean, the redwoods – who knows.   

I met my birth father.  He suffered with terrible asthma growing up in Morocco.  He moved here in his later teens.  He’s also never had an asthma attack since arriving in California.  

Here I breathe deeply.  I take yoga classes and concentrate on my breath, my balance.  My inhabitation of myself, my body, my place in the world.  I notice my chest expand.  I fill my abdomen and back with air.  I take kundalini classes and do breathe of fire, lion’s breath, so many different kinds of breathing, all feeding me, my insides, my voice.  The wall between my throat and my chest is crumbling.  I am allowed to be here.  

by Ruby Barnett

Holding my Breath

I am drowning

fifty different times

every day

in a sea of other people’s

bullshit.

It has carried me here

like a beached whale.

I hope I can

make it home.

And return to

my lungs,

to myself,

and remember (again)

how insane

it is to carry

something that

should be contained inside someone

else.

My uncle called me

Tuesday to tell me that

he is dying.

I felt myself

cave in at my ribs and hollow out

a place to put that.

I started digging a grave that

will sit empty until he is gone.

I have started

filling that grave with

my own tears-

Another ocean to toss me around-

and I can’t help but secretly

wish to capsize in it.

To curl up and fall asleep in the dark

and not come back up for air.

Loss is a security blanket.

Grief is a friend.

At least I know I’m being left this time.

I return to my lungs.

to my self.

To the “now” and the

“what if” and

The mess.

I return to a shaky part of earth

that has broken off

and holds me as I drift.

It used to be solid ground.

It’s a piece of my history

-my breath.

It’s the one I have always had.

It hasn’t left me.

I trust it.

I see how long I can hold it -

like a game

of chicken,

but it doesn’t stop.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Not.

Yet.

by Laura Summers

My breath. I don’t know if I’ve ever held its hand. I lean on it like a wife on a husband she needs but can’t relax around. My breath as a seperate being in my body feels uncomfortable—it’s like a basketball player flying coach in coach. If my breath were in first class—the hard edges of my body would crack from all the soft expansion! I know know who I would be! I’d be grounded, safe, relaxed if my breath were kicking it in first class. What would there be for me to do? I’d be like a frog on the edge of a pond on a summer day. My job, the job I’ve always had but am currently, finally letting go of in itty bitty baby steps, is to keep myself moving, agitated, over-caffeinated, tired, so I don’t have to land and be like a mountain, still, solid. Historically I am less like a mountain and more like over-stretched violin strings. Mountains breathe in their steadiness of beingness. Tight strings snap.

If I talked to a lover with my full breath, he would know I was real. Otherwise, the tightness of my voice says Don’t trust me because I am already halfway out the door. I can’t breathe here. It’s not my breath that’s the problem: it’s my body. The area of my sternum above my xyphoid process is so tight my lungs don’t have space to fill. When I habitually roll my shoulders forward to try to disappear myself, my breath shallows.

The more I take things off my plate these days, the more aware of I am of my body wanting to breathe. It feels like being born in slow motion.

by Anne Heffron