L.U.I. - Living Under the Influence: Notes on Thought Addiction and Adoptee Sobriety.
Where we pay attention is where we give our power. Many adopted people think a great deal about the past, about what could have or should have been. What does that do to our strength?
Feeling gratitude does for the heart what the misters do for the vegetables at Safeway. If gratitude is a dirty word and the water doesn’t spray, what happens to the vegetables?
Victor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” As soon as I heard this, I knew Victor Frankl wasn’t adopted.
If you aren’t in your body, if you aren’t fully present, you’ll never have enough. Of anything.
It is common advice to pay attention to what makes you come alive, but what if your body was trained to understand the feeling of coming alive as one of danger?
What if one reason I have suffered as I have is because day after day, acting in ways I learned by osmosis were responsible and right, I have abused and abandoned the thing that is most dying for attention and love: my body?
What happens when I am fully aware of my body in the present moment? There’s no room for story, for adoption, when I am in the breath of now. Who am I then?
Perseveration, list-making, planning, worrying: all ways to grapple for a sense of control. All ways to stay with your feet firmly floating somewhere else.
The story goes that the baby can’t become who it is meant to be if the mother runs away.
Martha Beck taught us to ask not if a story is true, but if it is helpful. I did not know you could do that. #gamechanger #makeyourownrules #feelyourfeet
