Writing the Sequel to You Don’t Look Adopted

I thought I could write it in California, but I can’t find a comfortable place to sit, even here in Pleasure Point, a 2-minute walk to the beach. (The irony is not lost on me.) I even bought a special donut pillow for my chair, but my body is a hard no. No. No. No. No. I will not open to you here. The air is not right. The light is wrong. You are too far from the Atlantic. The Pacific can suck it. My body has opinions. Feelings. The right of first and last refusal.

So we’re headed to the coast of Massachusetts. The body wants what it wants. I want to know what it has to say, so I’m willing to put everything in storage again, get Bird anti-nausea medicine, and drive 3200 or so miles to the other side. I want to know what my body has to say about change, about experiencing the whole caterpillar to butterfly thing when you are 60 years old. I suspect the life time-line for many adopted people has us becoming adults both far too early and far too late for our own good—rocketing us off any predictable life path. I suspect the life time line for many adopted people looks more like a scribble than a clear path that goes from A to B. Living in the scribble is fine—the problem comes up when the rest of the world thinks there’s something wrong, thinks in terms of straight lines and roots. Then any delight of what the fuck is going to happen next with this nervous system of mine gets sucked out the window because you aren’t having an adventure or simply figuring out how to live your own life—you are having problems.

If you look at that previous paragraph, you might ask, How the heck did she go from traveling to Massachusetts to problems in so little time?

That’s my brain for you. Who needs a bridge when you can leap?

I want to write a “ten years later” sequel because I have learned so much since writing You Don’t Look Adopted in 2016 even if I have not learned how to stay on topic. The most amazing thing I learned was that if you tell your truth, you find your people. The adoption community has been the thing I did not know I most needed. When you are with people who understand you before you open your mouth, there is more room to breathe.

I also learned that telling your story without falling in love with the present moment and yourself can be a recipe for disaster. I learned that focusing on the past without at least one finger up, feeling for and testing the winds of the future leads to possible extended returns to the pit of despair. You can’t fix the past by fixating on it, is what I found. My brain was convinced if I just wrote about the past enough, I’d get control of things and get back on track. Back on what track? Headed where? My brain liked when I stayed with my head turned to the past because at least I had survived that. My brain was afraid—part of my brain at least—that if I had new thoughts, did new things, I might get myself in trouble. I might be seen. I might fail. I might die.

Better to stay in the closet of the past and cry over what was lost than look to the future and grapple with creating a life I wanted for myself.

One thing I’ve learned (of so so many things) in Martha Beck’s Wayfinder course is that a direct way of confronting anxiety is to head into creativity. She taught us that the anxiety the left brain feels turns off when we leap over into the curiosity of the right brain and start creating…anything. The left brain does not know the right brain is there, so it really can feel like a leap of faith to leave anxiety for curiosity since the left brain thinks the right brain is a black hole you will only fall into and disappear. (I’m not sure if that’s true, but it sounds pretty good.) To get to the source, read Martha’s book Beyond Anxiety.

The drive from California to Massachusetts feels like some kind of physical leap I have to make in order to start this new project. I need a grand gesture so show myself this is for real, that I’m driving towards the person who can write the sequel, that I’m willing to do this work to become her because I’m so curious about what it is she wants to tell me.

I have to think the work is important enough to change my life to hear it out.

At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.

We don’t have to love the stories we carry. We don’t have to nurture them, bring them to light. We can let them rot, wither, die.

It’s all a choice.

Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?