The Superpower of Attention
I made a mistake with the title of my book Truth and Agency Writing Ideas for Adopted People. I meant to call it Truth and Agency Writing Ideas for People Who Were Adopted.
Can you see/hear/feel the difference?
Am I more comfortable calling myself an adopted person or a person who was adopted?
What does it even mean to be an adopted person? Adopted becomes an adjective to describe the person. Adopted (adjective) person (noun). There is no adjective in the phrase a person who was adopted. A (article) person (noun) who (relative pronoun) was (auxiliary/helping verb) adopted (part participle verb/acting as the main verb in a passive voice).
What the what?
As a writer, I’m pretty good at spotting stories, and the more I look at my adoption and adoption as a whole, the more adoption looks like a gigantic story. I understand that my birth mother lived with the story that she could not/did not want to keep me. I understand that my parents who adopted me lived with the story that they were meant to be parents/should be parents and therefore needed a child since they couldn’t create one with their own bodies. I understand that our government made rules to make it possible for people to legally become parents of babies or minors who were not biologically theirs. This process our legal system named adoption is also called wishful thinking. And creative storytelling. And lying.
The older I get, the more aware I am of the existence of choice that is under my control.
I can choose, for example, what I focus on. This sounds rudimentary, but for someone who has lived basically in fight or flight for most of her life, this thought is revolutionary.
I have started a new exercise in my writing classes where I have people draw twelve little pots with flowers or some sort of plant in each. I ask my writers to imagine the universe has given them twelve cups of attention to dole out for the rest of their lives. This attention is their superpower, their manifester, their love machine, their steering wheel. This attention and where it is focused tells their body, mind, and spirit where to look, where to go, what, ultimately, to see.
When a baby is born, it is a beng fueled by life force energy. The mother is there to help the baby learn how to focus their energy and be a being that feels at home and safe in the container of their body. The baby and mother have skin and eye contact which teach the baby their body is a source of connection and pleasure after the chaos and pain of birth. The baby/mother eye and skin contact help the baby’s life force energy learn focus. It helps the baby to know the point of life isn’t to freak out 24/7. It’s to connect and to thrive in relationship, first with the mother and then with the body itself.
How do I know all of this to be true? Because I know what it is like to walk around with a nervous system that thinks it’s alone in the world and in trouble. What I feel in my body is that when I was born, I learned my attention needed to be everywhere in order to make sure I was safe. Being in my body was dangerous. I needed to be as out of it as possible because danger could lurk in any corner. My attention needed to be sprayed.
When my brother Sam died, I became increasingly in awe of my body, that I had a body. I held my own hand, and I imagined Sam’s energy in the ether, out of pain but also unable to touch itself, to know what it feels like to touch a finger, to feel your own heart beat. Without a body, I imagine Sam can’t hear birds sing or smell ocean air or smell his children’s hair.
Thinking of what my body allows me to experience is allowing me to, for the first time in my life, consider the possibility of falling in love/falling in awe of this body I have been so critical of, so mean to, so terrified of for all these years.
What would it feel like to walk around madly in love with my body, my arms, my belly? What would it feel like to fully grasp the miracle of feeling myself sigh, of hearing my dog sigh?
When I think of those things, there is not much room in my head to think about adoption.
The more I focus on what it’s like to be in a body in relationship with the world, the less attention I have to give to story. If I pay attention to the tree in the yard, I feel connected to something bigger. I feel awe. I feel worked up and peaceful at the same time, big WOWs coursing through my veins.
When I look at the trajectory of my life as an adopted person/a person who was adopted, I see I have been headed toward this point, finally, where I am beginning to really sense that I am a person.
I have found it incredibly empowering to name where I want my energy to go. One shift is that I spend a lot less time on my phone because every time I pick it up to scroll mindlessly, I ask myself, is this one of your pots? My dog wants my attention, that pure elixer I carry, for its own sake. My phone wants my attention so it can have my money. It doesn’t give a shit about me.
So. If you feel like it, draw your twelve pots (or fewer if twelve is too many—it’s a number that feels magical to me, so that’s why I chose it) and send me a photo of them to me. You could even do a deeper dive and describe the qualities of your attention. Become a connoiseur of what it is you have to offer the world to help it bloom.
If you want.
Increasingly it is getting harder and harder for me to have the sense that I’ve stayed on any kind of track as I write these posts. I just don’t care enough to try. I’m like a dog following a scent, careening down the road.
It’s so fun.
If you liked what you read and were adopted, consider joining Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao and me in our 6-month group Pit Stop. Here’s the information:
Pit Stop
a 6-month weekly Zoom gathering with Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao and Anne Heffron.
Here is what will shift for you every week:
Park the Car (From Tense to Grounded): You will actively release adoption-related physical stress using somatic practices that get you out of your head and back into your body.
Clean the Windshield (From Foggy to Focused): You will walk away with life-altering thought reframes created by Joyce and Anne to clear away old, unhelpful narratives.
Check the Engine (From Isolated to Understood): Skip the exhausting explanations. You get direct 1-1 breakout time to connect deeply with another adult adoptee who truly speaks your language.
Inflate the Tires (From Running on Empty to Energized): You won't just vent. You will leave with a concrete roadmap to cultivate joy in your upcoming week—and a community keeping you accountable to it.
The Goal: You will log off this Zoom call feeling physically lighter, mentally sharper, and backed by a crew that gets it and you.
Weekly Meeting Time:
Mondays from 9 AM - 11 AM PT/12 - 1 ET/5 PM - 6 PM UK starting September 14, 2026, ending March 15, 2027.
Cost:
$100 a month or $550 for all 6 months upfront. (You can also sponsor someone at an additional $100 a month if that calls to you.)
Register at:
