Since quietly moving my blog over to Egypt Titchenal, I have been trying my hand at writing pieces for publication by online magazines, and I’m proud to announce that yesterday I was published over on Mutha Magazine! Maybe head on over there and show me some love? I’m hoping to write more pieces like this in the future!
And while you’re at it, go ahead and follow my new blog!
I didn’t dread mother’s day as a child, it was always my birthday that brought up feelings of confusion and frustration around abandonment and adoption. But once I became a mother, myself, I realized my uncomfortable relationship with the archetype of motherhood.
And yet, I love being a mother. Rather, I love being a mother to Potamus (most times, like when he’s not hitting me, or only eating chocolate chips). Motherhood has awakened a nurturing part of me that has let me settle into a part of who I am that I didn’t know I could even feel, let alone express. I dare to be more myself because I am a mother. I must be as authentic as I can, to set a good example for the little one I’m responsible for raising to adulthood.
But I feel motherless, in so many ways. I feel like I am discovering this part of myself and it’s unrelated to the experiences, or non-experiences, I had with my own mother(s). Even the act of buying a Mother’s Day card fills me with angst, because no Hallmark writer could ever express the feelings I have about my relationship with my adoptive mother. Hallmark could never write the complicated feelings I have toward and about my biological mother. And this year, my mother-in-law sent an email saying she definitely didn’t want anything for Mother’s Day, and so, clearly that relationship feels complicated too.
If I were stronger I might embrace the toddler years and say fuck it all, and make everyone focus on me as a mother. Me Me Me, and just let everything else just fall away.
Potamus with pigtails?
I am pre-occupied with looks, specifically the looks of my child in relation to my own and my husband’s. When Potamus was born, everyone was shocked by his blonde hair and blue eyes. At almost two his eyes have turned hazel, but he’s still blonde as the day he was born. But most people think that he looks like Boof, which is hard for me…and I think it all goes back to being adopted, and being raised in a family where my looks weren’t reflected back and nobody said “oh, she looks like great aunt millie.”
I think my son actually looks quite a bit like me. His personality is quite a bit like my own, with his little mischievous side, but his sweetness is reminiscent of stories I’ve heard about Boof as a child. Every once in awhile Potamus will give a look, make an expression, that makes me think of his dad, but for the most part, when I look at my sweet child I see myself as a baby looking back. So why am I so surprised or frustrated when people don’t notice the way he resembles me?
My psychologist is kicking my butt. She basically accused me of thinking too much and not letting myself feel (totally true. totally nailed it in session #4 people!), but I don’t really know HOW to feel. I do know how to think, how to over-think, and how to think some more. I also know how to catastrophize like nobody’s business.
At any rate, in an attempt to avoid feeling all the feelings about that early trauma of separation from my safe place (mom) and being raised by genetic strangers, I decided to think about my job. And it made me wonder…I am working with 16-20 year old “at-risk youth” in a community college setting. I am teaching them skills to succeed at school. And my biological mother was 16 when she got pregnant, and my biological dad was 20 when I was born. My biological mom did not finish high school, but did complete her GED, and my dad completed HS but had a 3.9 GPA and NOBODY suggested he go to college. And, my maternal half siblings did not finish high school (and my half bro got his GED…I think). I guess my question is….am I trying to work with my biological family?
Am I throwing myself into a situation, a passion, in some sort of karmic attempt at rescuing my parents? Do I see these vulnerable young ones and want to spark a fire for education in their life, to empower them toward greatness, so they don’t end up in a situation where they have to give their firstborn away as atonement for their “sins”? Am I somehow trying to connect with my family in this choice of career?
Or (or maybe an) am I trying to distance myself from my family? Do I like sitting on the other side of the desk, seeing that I have “made it,” that I am “not like them,” as if my life is somehow a proof that my biological parents made the right decision in letting me be raised by strangers. Because, see, I am not like them anymore. I am educated. I am in the middle-class. I am…fill in the blank.
Or, do I do it to prove something to my adoptive family? To protect myself from further abandonment by both excelling in education and also working in a compassion field to show my humility?
Could all of those reasons be true? Or not true? And does it matter? Does the motivations, or the impetus, or the reason that I end up in a job really matter? Or is what matters that I feel like I fit here, that I belong, that I was actually made for this type of work? Does me trying to work out my own identity or story take away from the “goodness” of doing this type work?
And how can I just let myself feel, instead of always just thinking about things?
As a child I was obsessed with Mt. Rainier. OBSESSED. As in, I wanted to live there permanently. Whenever we would camp I would eagerly go to the visitor center, join the junior ranger program, and read books about wildflowers and animal tracks. By the time I was in highschool I had 42 of 84 wildflowers of the North Cascades memorized by sight. I mean, I said I was obsessed.
Because I loved being outdoors so much, I decided (at the tender age of 9) that I wanted to be a park or forest ranger. And I knew that my dream was to be a park ranger in the Ohanaepcosh campground of Mt. Rainier. Or worse, down the road at the La Wis Wis campground (which was always our backup campground). It wasn’t until 11th grade that I gave up that dream, after meeting a gal at an environmental camp that casually mentioned the regulation changes for park rangers, that they had to attend police academy and carry a firearm. That sealed it for me, being a park ranger was out…I would NOT carry a gun for work. Not because I was opposed to guns in the backcountry (Grizzlies and mountain lions aren’t to be messed with people!), but because I didn’t want to be a law enforcement officer in a national park. I didn’t want to have to shoot someone. Nope. No thanks.
So I’m having dinner with my bio dad, and we were chatting about the crazy wildfires happening here in Washington…and he said, “Well, you know, my sister stopped being a forest ranger when she had to deploy her fire shelter on the fire line.”
And then I remembered that my bio aunt had been a forest ranger. Whoa. Uncanny, right? And where did she work? La Wis Wis campground. OF ALL PLACES, she worked right down the road, as a forest ranger, from where I wanted to work from 9-17. Whoa. And we got to talking, but he finally said, “But then the laws changed, and she stopped doing it because she didn’t want to carry a gun.”
He happened to say that at the EXACT same time that I said the reason that tipped me over the edge was when I didn’t want to carry a gun.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Right?
Hot yoga is humbling. I’m there in the sweaty room, with limber (and not so limber) yoginis and yogis, all working hard in our own practice. And while, in other yoga classes, I have felt this internal dialogue of competition (mostly with myself, but sometimes this though ‘I don’t want them to see me quit or rest’) that has pushed me forward in my practice. A little competition is okay, in that it pushes me forward, seeing how a pose can be done in ‘full expression’ is thrilling if I let it be, discouraging if I let it be, too. I rarely let it be discouraging.
But here I am, in an abnormally hot room (their heaters were on overdrive from a weekend where they hadn’t been going at all), and the sweat was pouring off me. I wasn’t able to do many of the positions that I normally can do, and so I spent much of my time, as instructed at the beginning of class “focusing on the breath, taking breaks on the mat.” I sat in easy pose, breathing, watching my belly rise in the mirror, while all around me the yoginis bent into triangle and eagle and balancing stick or sugarcane. I was silencing my internal chatter, and then the instructions were to ‘turn a quarter turn to the left,” and suddenly I was there, in easy pose, with the rest of the class turned toward me. Wow. Talk about feeling vulnerable. I sat, and breathed and watched, but instead of disassociating, I stayed present…I stayed connected to the process of being in the room with these people.
I took this experience as I headed out for a family reunion. Because I had been invited, by my biological dad, to meet one of my grandma’s sisters. Since my grandmother has been dead for many years, it would be a treat for me to meet a sister. And then I got there, with Potamus and Boof, and I was actually meeting THREE sisters! Hot dang, these little old ladies were hilarious. Sitting around the table, drinking beer, telling stories from days gone by. I loved the oldest giving the youngest a ribbing for being a “hussy” as a teen, since she winked at her future-husband to get him to ask her to dance. Scandalous, right?
But there was this moment, when part of me took a step back (a mental step back?), where I saw myself sitting around the table interacting with these women. These women who are my blood. Three aunts, three great-aunts, and me. A part of them because of blood, apart from them because of adoption. They certainly welcomed me with open arms and I could see the ease in which I fit in…and the way in which I also do not belong. Living in this gray place is hard, but hot yoga helps. Because when the heat is turned up I have no choice but to be honest that I need to breathe, need to take a break, rather than try and push or force something that isn’t working, and can embrace it when it is.
- Clearly being rebellious runs in the family…
“From how you’re talking, it’s like you’re in that place, where people just run away and you don’t hear from them for like 5 years, and they’re living in the woods somewhere. Or they have a new identity, or a new family. That’s what it sounds like.“-Boof
Yeah, that’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s what it feels like. The pressure on all sides feels like it is closing in and, like a trapped coyote, I just might chew my leg off and run. Though I clarified with Boof that I had no intention of leaving him, or Potamus, that right now they are my only tiny floating safe spot in this crazy ocean of frozen emotion (think Titanic proportion ice-burgs).
The overwhelm didn’t begin yesterday, but it was certainly heightened, as I spent the afternoon with my natural family, mostly my little sisters. They were disappointed that I didn’t bring Potamus, and my biological dad seemed annoyed at some parts. I realized that I have been in reunion for 5 years, and while the times have been mostly honeymoon phase, I am starting to grow weary of having to navigate all the shifting dynamics of reunion. When I met my little sisters they were 4 and 9, now they are 10 and 14. It’s crazy. They are young women and I am getting to know them just as they are figuring out how to navigate this young-auntie role. I am both daughter, and therefore in the ‘young one’ role, but also friend, especially to my “step-mom,” as we giggled and had inside jokes that the other girls didn’t quite understand yet. I’m in this caught-between-world of adoption that feels both wonderful, as it’s a reunion I could only have dreamed of, and awful, like an after-school-special where everything seems going great until a zombie or werewolf or chainsaw murderer shows up.
The pressure I feel to be the glue to hold all of my families together is too much. The constant second-guessing that my emotions are going to cause friction or panic-stricken martyrdom and bending-over-backwards actions to try and accommodate my shifting moods. Normals rarely get it…they talk about families with step-parents or in-laws and I just don’t think they understand…I met my family when I was 25. And not only do I navigate my own reunion, but how do I relate to my siblings reunions, too? I now have to navigate this ridiculous amount of families, from vast different experiences…upper middle class highly educated…middle class educated…lower middle class uneducated…working class uneducated, and the vast array of political and religious beliefs, not to mention the very different life experiences that have made up each and every individual. I feel stuck in the votex of all these families and it is drowning me.
I have this runaway fantasy, where it is just Boof, Potamus and I on a desert island. Yes, I’d even leave Scrummy the dog behind. And we’d be stranded so we wouldn’t have the guilt and pressure to perform or navigate or save people’s feelings from getting hurt. We wouldn’t have to have conversations like this:
“I know you’re cousins are having their barbecue next Sunday, but I guess my biological grandma’s sister (my great-aunt) is coming to town for the last time next Sunday and we’ve been invited. I can’t say no. Can we make the timing all work?”
As I slid down the water slides with my biological family, I had all the overwhelm of nostalgia, the face-to-face of what could have been and I both liked it and wanted to puke. I compared it to my own upbringing and wondered why I’m surrounded by bigoted and racist men. Am I karmically supposed to be learning from all of this? And, if I believe in reincarnation, or life between lives, as I think I do, I wonder…if there is a lesson in all of this…am I missing the point? Will I know what the point is? Have I known these souls before? Did we actually choose this complicated story to enact for some good-to-come reason? Or, is it a punishment for some arrogance I must have had in a previous life? Why does it have to be so damn complicated?
The emotions are frozen inside and coming out in nervous tics and insomnia. My mind will not stop chattering and I’ve played approximately 768 games of bejeweled on my phone. If I were to even allow myself 5 minutes of meditation I fear I would burst into tears and never stop. In fact, I had to come out of camel pose in my last yoga class because the heart opener was just too much…I almost did cry. I just don’t know what to do, because running away is clearly not an option.
The beautiful thing about technology, is that it has opened up the possibility for reunion with my biological family. Starting way back in 2005, when I looked up my 1/2 sister on Myspace and contacted her, I have had an online reunion with biologicla family members. And the family circle widened even further when Facebook came into play. So, a few years ago (I think? the math is getting kinda fuzzy in my head), my great-uncle (maternal grandfather’s younger brother) reached out to me on Facebook and we hit it off. Which was SO refreshing, since I haven’t yet hit it off with my maternal side of the family. His older brother, (my grandpa) is kinda weird and hard to get to know, and chain-smokes more than a chimney, and is obsessed with Mayan calendars (haven’t called to see about his current obsession since the world didn’t end). We just…didn’t click. But Great-Uncle and I seem to have a very similar worldview, way of writing online, and from Day 1 it seemed completely…well…NATURAL!
So, we’ve corresponded via message and he loves seeing pictures of his great-great nephew, but lives all the way up in the great white North and doesn’t make it down to Seattle that often. Until last week. He was in town for 36 hours and we had bantered before about meeting up so he could finally give my son a hug, but I wasn’t sure the short time-frame would work with his schedule. Unlike my grandpa/grandma, he offered to drive to my work and meet me for lunch because he wanted to meet us. For those of you who don’t know, the drive from where he was up north of Seattle, to the Eastside, in traffic probably took a good 2 hours. AND THEN he would drive all the way back to Canada, get on a ferry, and go home. Yeah, my great-uncle rocks the socks, because he basically drove 4 hours out of his way to see me and meet Potamus.
And, by the look on my kiddo’s face, we clearly had a great time!
It’s funny, though, the day I met my great-uncle, I learned that my adoptive great-uncle had died.
The world is strange.
Do you consider yourself an “activist” of any sort? If so, what areas of policy and social justice are you most passionate about? What outlets of activism (petitioning, blogging, writing op-eds, fundraising, etc.) have you done or would like to do? What do you wish others would understand about causes that are important to you?
Yes, I am an activist.
I think it started when I was a little girl, and went with my parents around our unincoporated part of the county and worked to get it annexed to the closest city. It was politics that made sense to me, though I was just a kid.
I am probably most active in Adoptee Rights, because it is something that effects me on a daily basis. I have donated money to Adoptee Rights Coalition, and to protests that I have been unable to attend, have signed online petitions, and have corresponded with representatives here in WA that have been working on a bill to allow Adult Adoptees to access their Original Birth Certificate. I have circumvented the Washington State confidential intermediary law, and have helped reunite several individuals. I helped reunite both of my adopted siblings, and then reunited a birthmother with her daughter. I spent three years of graduate school focusing on adoption issues, and I consider each of my papers and presentations as further activistm, as it helped a group of graduating professionals learn about issues that will inevitably affect clients they might have. In 2010, I flew to New York and spoke at a national conference on counseling adult adoptees.
In addition to adoptee activism, I am also passionate about other things, especially equality for my gay and lesbian friends. I registered to vote this year, simply to vote for the Referendum 74 that allows my gay and lesbian friends to get married. And, hallelujah the referendum passed! Woo! Now, if only I could be as successful with my adoptee rights 🙂
What do you call your natural/first/birth/biological mother/father/family? Why? Are there different rules for different family members? What term(s) is not acceptable to you? How do you refer to them to others? If you’re in reunion, do you introduce them the same way? How does your natural/first/birth/biological mother family feel about the term? Does it matter to them? What about your adoptive family?
In real life, I refer to my adoptive parents as my parents, and my adoptive siblings as my brother and sister. Only in blogoland, when trying to differentiate or emphasize my adoptedness, do I call them my adoptive parents. When I introduce them to others, I introduce them as my parents. And only when someone makes an assholey comment about how tall I am, do I tell them that I am adopted.
In real life I introduce my biological/first dad as J, since that is his name. Sometimes I might introduce him as my biodad if it’s in a situation where people are going to wonder a) why he’s there and b) why he looks so much like me. He introduces me as his daughter, which I love. If I am nowhere near my adoptive family or my in-laws, I introduce him as my dad, or as my father. In blogging, or online, I refer to him as my natural/first dad for those who are schooled in proper adoptee language, and biological/birth dad for those who might be confused by the former langauge. I don’t get my panties too in a twist about what terminology I use for him, what annoys me is when people “correct” my use of a certain term. I will decide what I damn well please, thankyouverymuch.
My biological mother, on the other hand, is always my biolgical mother or birth mother in conversation. Perhaps I use her given name, E, and sometimes when I am feeling very generous online or want to fit in with my peeps, I use the most accepted ‘first mom/natural mom’ bit. I don’t get the chance to introduce her to people, as she is so messed up with drugs/alcohol that I very rarely even get to see her in her home, let alone out in publice. Which I am fine with.
I don’t really know how my biological family feels about what I call them. And I don’t actually care. I mean, they relinquished me to be raised by strangers, I don’t really think they get much say in what I call them. And my adoptive parents refer to them as my birthparents, or J as J, but I also don’t care what they think about what I call them. I think, that, as long as I’m not refering to THEM as my adoptive parents in public (or private) they should be fine.
boof & monk-monk 