me in this time-space.

taking it all in.
love. hate. the range of emotions.
this dimension as a limited range of energetic frequencies.

i am more of who i am when i write.

vacation: unresolved process.

I just got back from vacation with my family.
I could have chosen to go pretty much anywhere.
I (subconsciously) chose a place in Florida that is literally 45 minutes from where my dad lives.
I recently called my dad and broke an 11 month time of no communication with him. We visited him last November; he was nice the first day of our week trip, then ignored us the rest of the time.  It was weird.  The week before I went there, I called and told him that I was so appreciate of him being my father and thanked him for everything he did for me and my sister.  He cried and said it was the best phone call he ever received.  I spoke with him one more time on Thanksgiving, and then he never called or communicated at all.  He told my sister we wrecked his house and were disrespectful and messy (my 2 year old threw popcorn on his tiled kitchen floor and his dogs ate it up).  Again, I felt totally abandoned in my life.  Totally surreal.  People living thir lives in an alternate reality and creating stories to support their fears, which don't have anything to do with the reality of the situation.  This last year has been tinged with the real color of how little connection I have with my father (this is my adoptive father), the only father I've ever known. We're only in communication now because I called him--we had a conversation where I told him I loved him and wasn't mad at him and he told me he didn't call me for that long because he thought I was mad at him--I felt like I was talking to a 10 year old.  I told him even if I was mad at him, that's not a reason to not talk to each other for almost a year.  He totally wrote me and my kids, his grandkids, off for a year because of ....?
I know he's very emotionally limited and immature.  He divorced my mother after 22 years of being married, had an affair (probably one of many), got married to that woman, got divorced, now is on his third marriage.  He never even told me and my sister he got married to the second wife, he only told me he got divorced. 

I didn't need to tell him we were down in Florida, but I felt bad, so I told him.  We saw him and third wife and her kid for half a day.  It was fine, uneventful.  They acted like everything was normal.  Weirdly normal.  That's what its like.  There's this major lapse, major underlying issues that affect everything, and we see him and he just talks about his neighbors and Florida real estate and his dogs.  And his wife asks me if I'm working and he cuts her off and says "no, she's going to school" and they ask about school and I give them a VERY brief synopsis, and its basically meaningless. 
We went to dinner and afterwards he asked if he could come to visit us the next day and sit on the beach with us and I looked at him and smiled and said "maybe" but I was thinking to myself "no way there is no way I am doing that".  I put in my 4 hours, 4 hours I feel he did not deserve but I gave of myself and my family in hopes of something, something, what is that something? Did that something get fulfilled? I dont know, but it wasn't going to happen with another day given up for a hope of something.  So the next morning I emailed him and told him we were planning on riding bikes and not going to the beach and it was good to see him. Totally impersonal.  And for a day I felt fucked up and totally guilty on one hand, and justified on the other.  Completely unresolved.  I know that resolution isn't everything. I'm trained by this culture to look for the resolution, though. 

I'm just breathing and trying to be okay with unresolved process. And an interest to see what happens next.

clues

I emailed my biological sister in a desperate attempt to connect and gain information.  She's open! Yeah! She responded quickly and told me she would try to answer any questions I have.  She began giving me little clues about her (my) family, its very exciting.  And powerful. 
She told me she's sorry that her and her brother and sister got to grow up with our mother, but I didn't.  She also told me she wasn't the best mother, and they have all distanced themselves from her a bit because of her egocentricity and her unhappiness with life and judgmental-ness.  I'm just sitting with all of this.  It feels profound.  I am so much her.

trying to find something

my mother. my mother. my first one. 
do i want her back? what do i want from her? i wrote her another email yesterday, after talking at length about her to my therapist. when i feel the strong feelings, when i feel the pull, its like i CAN'T stop, i just have to try to connect, despite the risk of again being blown off or not responded to.  i don't know what exactly i am looking for.  anything connecting.  any connection with her or anyone around her.  i try to empathize and imagine what it must be like for her to have me reaching out.  i don't understand her silence. 
her silence forces me to feel more independent and makes me see myself more as just me, i am of me.  but i know i am of her and a man who is now dead but who was once alive and has two other daughters somewhere in germany. 
i want to go to germany and try to find a connection.  i went there for just a few days many years ago and i felt a strong resonance, it felt right. i think there's something there i need to go and find.

blessing or curse?

My birth mother is ignoring me.  I know its a process, and we are on one point of the continuum.  The process is excruciating, though.  I emailed her and asked her about my birth father's last name (I still don't know it).  I asked her about family health history.  She didn't respond.  I emailed her and suggested we talk by phone with a translator.  No response.  I began to feel desperate (I hate that feeling.  Its one that I only feel with her and one other person in the world) and I emailed her back again and asked if she got my emails....?   She responded and said she's really stressed out and she would call me in a week.  I immediately felt angry and resentful.  I waited a day, and then wrote back and nicely said I do not want to add to her stress, and why doesn't she let me know when she's ready to talk and I'll arrange for a translator. 
Its hard to feel the feelings underneath my reaction of stoic-ness.  When I get a glimpse, I know its the feeling of deep sadness connected to abandonment and rejection.  I want her to want me.  I want her to get past whatever she's dealing with and break through and make the connection.  I know that I am lucky that I actually found her; I have met many who are still searching.  But sometimes it feels like a curse.

my place in nature

Last night I was watching one part of the video series Planet Earth with my kids.  We watched a starving wolf kill a caribou baby.  We watched an arctic fox scavenge for goose eggs.  Once the eggs hatched, she took a gosling and fed it to her pups.  We watched a pride of lions and a group of elephants quenching their thirst at an African watering hole.  The two groups watched each other suspiciously.  The elephants are so incredibly huge, the lions are no match for them.  But the lions were hungry, and eyed each elephant.  When a medium-sized lone elephant showed up at the watering hole, not connected to the rest of the elephant group, the lions intuitively attacked and killed it.  Nature seems so brutal, so emotion-less.  And its the real world.  I wonder what the parallels are in my life.  I go food shopping at my upscale health food store and consciously realize my privilege and the fact that being in my marriage feeds my kids. That's an emotion-less veiw of it, but one that holds truth.

what is fantasy? what is reality? (edit)

Do other adoptees live in a fantasy life as much as I do?
I have a husband who loves me and beautiful children and a sustaining life, but its not enough. 
There's something major that's missing.  I don't know if I could ever find the thing/person/? that would make me complete.

I'm wondering about the capacity of adoptees to be capable of commitment. 
It seems the relinquishment hard-wires something into the brain that makes that more than difficult, seemingly impossible. 
Through my years of relationships with men, I always had people in the background to turn to when my primary relationships didn't fill me up.  This doesn't seem to work in a culture where monogamy is held as the objective. 
I'm confused about figuring out who I am and what healthy goals are vs. who I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to hold as healthy goals in terms of relationships. 

what i'm getting out of running

At my gym when I run on the treadmill, the tv blocks me seeing my face in the mirror.  I can see my body but not my head.
When I run I watch my faceless body and I keep on going.
When I run and I move to the side to catch a glimpse of my face, I slow down and start to get more into my mental level. I move back to the center and see no face in the mirror and get out of my mind and just watch my body run, and I can keep on going.
When I run, I think of my frustration levels when I feel overwhelmed by my kids.  I realize I am kid-free in the gym and it gives me the strength to get my frustration out through the run and I like it :)
When I run I can let go for a little while. 
I want to keep on going...I'm looking forward to it.

pushing myself through

I am proud of myself.  Again, I am breaking through my physical barriers and it feels really good.
For the last while I've been trying to teach my body to jog/run, I've usually just gotten to 2 or 3 minutes at a time and my breath feels like its about to run out, like there is no more left.  Then I slow to a walk for a few minutes, then go back to a higher speed for a few cycles.  It was okay, but for a while I wasn't getting past the no breath thing.  I got up to 5 minutes at some point but it seemed random and it didn't last.
A few days ago I made it to 6 minutes.
Today I got to 13. It feels so good.
I felt the no breath thing and went through it and i watched it subside, it ended up being irrelevent.  I'm passed it, I don't feel bound to that limitation anymore. So interesting.   At the point of pushing through, I thought about being in labor and it felt similar--the feeling of knowing I NEEDED to keep on going and letting my thoughts of anything else go.  The circumstance demanded that.  Its different with this because this is totally voluntary but it makes it easier setting a goal.  I made a distance goal and I stuck with it until I made it. Yeah!

the dreaded holiday party awaits

i'm going to the company party tonight, the annual company holiday party that i dread every year.  i guess i have learned how to toughen up and tolerate it.  i hate dancing at public parties and there's a band and no one i know except my husband's family. everyone drinks and gets loose and dances and i sit in my seat and walk around and go to the bathroom (alot!) and call my sister from the bathroom ,and this has become my yearly ritual.  its SO hard! i know there are alot tougher things, in a way its laughable.  i try to make the best of it.  i bought a sexy dress and i will wear it and that will be my fun.  but i don't want to dance.
the party brings up the height of my insecurities...what is my relationship to this family, do i matter, what is my position, what is my connection...i feel SO unconnected.  but its the economic basis of my life now more than ever...its very confusing.  i don't expect it will clear up, i expect it to become evermore confusing.  a weird place to be in.  i want to write more to explore this at another time.

again.

Last night I brought my boys to a neighbor's impromptu birthday party for her son.  I didn't know anyone there but her and her kids.  An Israeli guy came in holding his baby daughter.  The baby reached out for me, so I asked if I could hold her and the dad obliged.  So I'm holding her and he asks me who my kids are and I tell him, and there's a pause for a while, more party talk, whatever.  Then a few minutes later he goes, "so, how did your kids end up with hebrew names? How did that come to be?" And I looked at him and probably turned red because I was embarrased because once again I knew he was looking at me and thinking "she's obviously not jewish" and it was a totally awkward moment.  I said "Because they come from a jewish family." It was the most appropriate response I could come up with.
Ugh.  I feel like who I am does not jive with people's expectations of what's supposed to be.
Fuck what's supposed to be.

deep breath

ahhh, i can take a deep breath. i can write. or, at least i can give it a try and see what i create.
i felt the need to change up and create this because my previous project was becoming too personal and my name was attached. i know i tend to get confessional, and it just was not working with certain people checking in (namely, my therapists, possibly my son (?)). Not cool.

I need to write, I need to express myself, and I feel that the anonymity provided here will afford me the room to possibly go into places i wasn't going before.

so...

a quote: "Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?" --Joan Didion
I read this today and was struck by it. I have the same question. I naturally move towards writing to understand myself and try to understand others and the world. I dream intensely, and notice that reflecting outwardly through speaking of them or writing of them almost always gives me insights i don't have if i keep my thoughts in my head.

i need to get my thoughts out of my head. thank you, reader, whoever you are, for reading them. knowing that someone out there will be reading this makes my thoughts feel more real.

i feel hopeful to have this new space. yeah!
any comments are appreciated and will be gratefully received.

precious

I saw Precious the other day.
I can't get the images out of my head.
I knew I needed to see it, even though I'm so sensitive I usually keep myself away from really disturbing media.

The fictionalizing of a story is so powerful because it lets you get up close and personal in a way that can't really happen if the people being portrayed are real. I feel like that about this blog--since my name is attached there's only so much I can say. I'm hyper aware of the limitations here.

I say what I can say.
I am thinking of the movie. Appreciating my life. Wondering how it is possible for my life and lifestyle to exist when so many people are suffering so hard. Its hard to swallow.

catching the flow

I heard that this woman who is an acquaintance of mine is a musician--when she looks at notes on paper, she can hear the music in her head. She said that sometimes just looking at sheet music makes her cry; I assume she can hear the music in her heart. I was thinking about that and was trying to imagine what it must be like to play in an orchestra, totally feeling the music, not thinking about it at all, just completely feeling it together with all the other people playing.
I am such a solitary person. I want to know what its like to share beyond mind with a group. My closest experience was being at grateful dead shows as a young woman, dancing within the crowd, feeling the music move my body around the others who were sharing the experience with me.
I ran yesterday for longer than I ever have. I felt like my breath was slipping and I disengaged from my mind and let the thoughts go and broke through the fear of not having enough breath...and ran (actually jogged). It was good. I thought about what it would be like to run in a group, or to run in a marathon and be surrounded by others running, experiencing their version of the same.

Sometimes yoga is like that for me. One of the things I like the best about my class is that there are always at least 15-20 people who show up. We are a group, we flow through the movements together. I definitely feel the combined energy and I draw on it to push me through when my mind says its too hard. I draw on the power to disengage my mind and just let my body flow.

I want to know how to catch the flow in general in life...

tgiving fallout

I'm realizing bit by bit what makes me numb out.
Abundance of sensory stimuli is a big one.
Emotional expectations from people (family!) is another big one.

I just start feeling disconnected and I don't feel emotion, I'm like on autopilot.
I realized the day before thanksgiving until now when everyone left my house that I was in that zone, being super productive but emotionally shut down.

Thanksgiving is such a complex social/emotional environment--there are so many people operating mostly unconsciously from their childhood experiences superimposing their expectations on everyone else. An intricate web of wants and needs paralleled by active playing out of the satisfaction or un-satisfaction of those wants and needs, with a layer of 'nice-ness' on top of everything.
In those situations I only know how to go mostly inside and be outwardly good and nice but actually not feel. Its fucked up, I don't know how to be genuine when I feel such expectation.

It feels scary to admit not being genuine. I know alot of people hold high expectations for me, but I do for myself more than anyone else does of me. What happens when I let myself down? Is that where the split happens and I detach and retreat into my inside world?

That world inside of me is vast--I have lived there for alot of my life.

trying on family = good

Today I was talking to an adopted person and she mentioned that meeting another adult adoptee is like meeting someone from the same town you are from. I totally get it. There's an underlying feeling of familiarity that is based not in personality, nor currently shared interests, but in root circumstance that has lifelong implications.

I see my work in understanding and working through the whole is-ness of being adopted as an essential process in my parenting to my own children. I do feel that my attempts at awareness are for my kids' benefit.

I'm working on actively connecting with people in my new community, and although it doesn't exactly come naturally, it is flowing in some sense. Every once in a while I experience the feeling of being integral to the environment and needed, and that feels good. I suspect that I feel flashes of disloyalty to my old life, my old home upstate that streak through me and make it difficult to just be here and really be myself. The necessity of doing life here with kids forces me, though. I feel like I need to do it for them. I stepped outside my front door tonight and saw the moon--it is so amazing! Its cut in half and has a rainbowy ring of light around it. My first thought was that although it looked so cool, it would be such a different experience seeing it upstate. The air is crisper, clearer, the land is much more open up there and the stars SHINE at night.
But its good here. I'm making this house into our home, and the active doing that is surprisingly making me feel way more grounded.
As thanksgiving approaches, I'm trying to conceptualize family as 'good' and nourishing. I'm trying to reconfigure some of those neural pathways that were burned deeply around family being dangerous and imminently painful. I hope to pass on family=good to my kids. I desperately hope I do.

disclaimer: i am not all whine

I've had several people who've read blog posts of mine respond with the commentary going something like "adopted people are not the only ones with fucked up families...fucked up families can happen to anyone."
I agree. I acknowledge that. I'm not special because I happen to be adopted; I'm just special :)

I appreciate my life. I have four beautiful kids and a husband who loves me and tries to deal with my amazingness/instability. I've been really realizing how good I have it. I don't want to whine poor me. I don't know if this blog comes across as one big whine, I'm just trying to put whats inside of my head onto the screen in as real a way as I know how.

default settings

Women are scary to me.
Not usually consciously, though. Like, I really need to think about it to get to what its really like for me, to admit and be aware of what it is like to relate to women. I realize that it is very hard to trust them, much much harder for me than to trust men. There seems to be an opening with men, and I do not feel the imminent threat of being blown off, the way I do with women (though this is totally repressed and I really don't realize it within the interaction).
It makes sense, I can pretty much understand it. But to look back and see how I've lived my life adapting around the fear; its amazing to see how the adaptation took on such a life of its own. I've had a best friend that's a woman at almost every stage of my life, and my other relationships with women fell outside the sacredness of that inner circle.
My mother in law was overtaken by a feeling of closeness and came up to me and hugged me and expressed her love and it was a close moment but underlying it I had a terrified screaming person inside my head thinking 'oh-my-god-let-me-go-i-just-need-to-get-out-of-her-grip-i-need-to-have-my-own-space-breathe-nicole-until-you-can-have-your-space-back-to-yourself.
My marriage therapist stepped over and sat next to me on the couch I was on, and read me correctly and acknowledged that she knew it was probably hard for me to have her so close to me saying what she was about to say.
Physical closeness with women feels...unsafe. implicitly dangerous. threatening. uncomfortable!

Its very different with men; I don't feel like I'm about to get hurt just by mere contact the way I do with women. My (other) therapist is a man, my yoga teacher is a man, my chiropractor is a man. I feel a level of safety with them that seems almost like a default setting.

I'm running on default setting with women, too. I wonder if that will change if I develop more of a relationship with my first mother.

Its weird to realize that there's so much of how I live that is so unconscious and not aware, even in the face of making such a huge effort to be aware. I guess there are many levels of awareness--I tend to want to be super successful in what I apply myself to, so becoming aware of my lack-of-awareness gives me a slight sense of hopelessness. Life feels hard, and then I fall into appreciation.

how do i break free?

"The issues of trust and intimacy are closely related to those of abandonment and rejection. There is such a fluid movement among these issues that it is difficult to separate them. The adoptee's lack of trust in the permanency of relationships brings about a distrust of closeness or intimacy and a need for distanceing. At the same time there is a yearning for the very thing which is feared." (Nancy Newton Verrier; The Primal Wound)

I feel more cursed by this issue than most since my adoptive mother died. In a way it is freeing, yet my residual pain and ensuing fear of abandonment perpetually bind me. Its so unconscious. Built in to the heart of my relationships is a seed with a tough outer shell of 'survival mentality' protecting the inside, the baby that lost not only her first mother, but her second, too. It is so difficult to break down the survivor and not instantly refer to it when my abandonment fear is activated (usually unconsciously). What a predicament! How to change that pattern if I don't even realize that it is happening when it is happening?

Do people live like this for their whole lives? How do I break free?

seeing one in anyone

I took a train into nyc last night and I was struck by how much i loved the feeling of being around so many people at the same time in close proximity. When I got off the train and we all had to squeeze into a narrow staircase to get up to ground level at the station, I felt everyone's...vulnerability. Someone could fall and it would make everyone else fall. I felt the boundaries dissolve as we were all pushed and squished together through the staircase tube until we got out into the great expanse of the station. I suppose this is something new yorkers take for granted and probably don't even think about, but its novel to me, and really struck me. Plus I am super sensitive to things like that, such as where my body ends and the space around me begins. I live a very suburban life, and am not usually in such physical closeness to strangers. I liked it alot and realized at the same time that I have a limited tolerance--I can only be in a city for a few hours before I feel sensationally overloaded. I think last night I remembered that I love people. I walked down the street and looked into as many faces as I could and tried to project my awareness that we are all connected. We are all different bodies living out our own specific version of the same thing, the One.

michael.

Me and my husband saw This IS It tonight and I am basking in the glow of the powerful story of Michael. As I was watching it, the sociologist in me was wondering what it was like to be him. How do we know who we are? We create our identity either by default or by choice, or a combination. It seems the creation by choice is where the power is.
I came away with the idea that this life is all about story. We live and breathe story--it is the context of us, who we perceive ourselves and others and the world around us to be.

Nothing is objective. Everything is a story, and we assign values and definitions to all the different parts.

I self reflect and wonder who I am and how much who I perceive myself to be is reliant upon my assumptions of others' perceptions of me. I found pictures of my trip 12 years ago to France to visit my birth mother and her other children, and I was studying them last night. I see my resemblance in her. Then by chance I found pictures she sent me of my birth father and it was haunting to recognize myself in him, him whom I know nothing about. How strange it is to look at my likeness in these people, these people whom more than just my body is made from. What other qualities besides physical traits do I share with them?

I look forward to finding the answers and integrating them into myself.

creating the possibility of a choice

I am becoming more aware of how quickly I fall into my default 'survivor' mode. That place is one of stoic independence, in which I am strong and can take care of myself, need to take care of myself, don't have any choice but to take care of myself and I won't fail and I won't be beaten down so I will take care of myself even though its so hard I will do it. When I feel left, when anything happens that hints at disconnection I automatically find myself in that place, in that survivor mode. Its like I just snap into it. I'm trying to figure out how to slow down the process so that I have a choice about moving into it or not. I don't know how to do that but I know it would be useful, beneficial to my life and my people.

abandonment as a theme, part II

Could many adoptees be diagnosed with bpd (borderline personality disorder)? I've never been into consciously incorporating diagnoses into my identity structure, but I've been thinking about how I relate to this group of characteristics which describe this 'personality disorder'. I wasn't just adopted, I was adopted into a highly dysfunctional family; I'm not sure how these independently effect me, but combined they have been powerful shaping forces. I'm assuming many other adoptees could see similarities...? Abandonment early on in personality formation is apparently a common precursor to bpd, and so I am wondering what this means for adoptees in general. ?

Following is the DSM IV criteria for bpd. I've bolded what I can see in myself, and bolded and italicized my own comments.

DSM-IV criteria

The DSM-IV gives these nine criteria; a diagnosis requires that the subject present with at least five of these. In I Hate You -- Don't Leave Me! Jerold Kriesman and Hal Straus refer to BPD as "emotional hemophilia; [a borderline] lacks the clotting mechanism needed to moderate his spurts of feeling. Stimulate a passion, and the borderline emotionally bleeds to death."

Traits involving emotions:

Quite frequently people with BPD have a very hard time controlling their emotions. They may feel ruled by them. One researcher (Marsha Linehan) said, "People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement."

1. Shifts in mood lasting only a few hours.  (I have the ability to feel things VERY strongly, yet am often surprised by how the extremes roll away somewhat quickly, replaced by more neutral, moderate feelings).

2. Anger that is inappropriate, intense or uncontrollable.

Traits involving behavior:

3. Self-destructive acts, such as self-mutilation or suicidal threats and gestures that happen more than once

4. Two potentially self-damaging impulsive behaviors. These could include alcohol and other drug abuse, compulsive spending, gambling, eating disorders, shoplifting, reckless driving, compulsive sexual behavior.

(yes)

Traits involving identity

5. Marked, persistent identity disturbance shown by uncertainty in at least two areas. These areas can include self-image, sexual orientation, career choice or other long-term goals, friendships, values. People with BPD may not feel like they know who they are, or what they think, or what their opinions are, or what religion they should be. Instead, they may try to be what they think other people want them to be.

6. Chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom. Someone with BPD said, "I remember describing the feeling of having a deep hole in my stomach. An emptiness that I didn't know how to fill. My therapist told me that was from almost a "lack of a life". The more things you get into your life, the more relationships you get involved in, all of that fills that hole. As a borderline, I had no life. There were times when I couldn't stay in the same room with other people. It almost felt like what I think a panic attack would feel like."  (Much of the time being around people is excruciatingly painful for me; I am SO sensitive to them, I have adapted by creating a lifestyle in which I am alone alot of the time.  I like people, and can get into moods where I love being around people, yet only for a short amount of time before I feel burned out and totally overwhelmed.  Usually when I am around people for a sustained period of time, I need a recuperation period of being by myself--I almost feel like I've absorbed their energy and I need it to dissipate from me back into the world).

Traits involving relationships

7. Unstable, chaotic intense relationships characterized by splitting (Totally).(see below).

8. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

• Splitting: the self and others are viewed as "all good" or "all bad." Someone with BPD said, "One day I would think my doctor was the best and I loved her, but if she challenged me in any way I hated her. There was no middle ground as in like. In my world, people were either the best or the worst. I couldn't understand the concept of middle ground." (This describes basically all of the relationships I've had with men in my life).
• Alternating clinging and distancing behaviors (I Hate You, Don't Leave Me). Sometimes you want to be close to someone. But when you get close it feels TOO close and you feel like you have to get some space. This happens often.
• ***Great difficulty trusting people and themselves. Early trust may have been shattered by people who were close to you.***
• Sensitivity to criticism or rejection. (Its almost impossible for me to experience criticism without feeling completely annihilated and utterly rejected).
• Feeling of "needing" someone else to survive
• Heavy need for affection and reassurance
• Some people with BPD may have an unusually high degree of interpersonal sensitivity, insight and empathy 

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

This means feeling "out of it," or not being able to remember what you said or did. This mostly happens in times of severe stress.

Miscellaneous attributes of people with BPD:

• People with BPD are often bright, witty, funny, life of the party.
• They may have problems with object constancy. When a person leaves (even temporarily), they may have a problem recreating or remembering feelings of love that were present between themselves and the other. Often, BPD patients want to keep something belonging to the loved one around during separations.
• They frequently have difficulty tolerating aloneness, even for short periods of time. (Its weird because I feel the urgency to get away from people alot of the time, but when alone, I usually feel really out of it, not connected to anything, floating).
• Their lives may be a chaotic landscape of job losses, interrupted educational pursuits, broken engagements, hospitalizations.
• Many have a background of childhood physical, sexual, or emotional abuse or physical/emotional neglect. (I'm trying to gather the hidden, forgotten pieces and understand this part).

adoption and abortion v. class

I'm ruminating on the connections between class and adoption, and the connection between that and abortion policy.  Class and abortion policy, and the implication on adoption.  Blatant observation and guess: poor women tend to give their babies up for adoption, middle class and wealthy women tend to have abortions.  Middle class and wealthy women adopt poor women's babies that they give up.

I have so many questions.  My mind is racing.

i was surrounded by hunters.

I walked into the room late, a workshop with the title that included 'the birthmother's voice'.  I had an expectation.  There was one seat left in the front so I took it.  There was a social worker from an adoption agency that arranges (brokers) open adoptions.  She looked like she was 28 years old and was not a mother herself.  I listened for a few minutes, every once in a while turning around in my seat when someone behind me would ask a question; I wanted to see who was in the room with me.  It took a while for me to realize that most of the women were there to strategize about their future adoption plans.  They looked like me.  It freaked me out.  Women in their mid to late 30's through mid 40's, mostly long brown hair in ponytails, styley jackets and very cool boots, just a touch of makeup.  Intelligent, thinking women.  Upper middle class.  Jersey.  Seeing my likeness in this setting horrified me and intrigued me at the same time.
The social worker 'girl' talked and talked about what these expectant pre-adoptive women could write in their profile packages to effectively win the birthmother over, to be chosen.  And they in turn asked question after question, lapping up all the answers.  They were like hungry cats.  They asked in all different ways the same question: how can I convince another woman to give me her baby?
When I looked back I noticed that many of these women were looking at me with competition in their eyes--they didn't know who I was or what my position at the conference was.  I was anonymously witnessing their desperation, and it hit a nerve within me.   I don't feel like I have worked through nearly enough of my shit around adoption to feel anywhere near objective in my perception of the women in that room.  I wanted to feel empathic towards their situations, yet I couldn't stop myself from seeing them as being unfairly needy.  It was like I was seeing them through the eyes of a child who was thinking "why does she get to have another woman's baby?  Why is that fair? Its not.  Its unfair."  I feel like I'm five years old when I think of them.
The social worker was outlining profiles of actual past birthmothers she had worked with.  She talked about four or five girls, and gave a snapshot in a story for each one; it was a sociology lesson to me.  I realized what was happening was that she was teaching this group of well educated, middle upper class women how to span social class.  Desperation linking with desperation.  The women in the room asked the social worker if the birthmother will care what school they went to, what kind of work they do?  The social worker taught a mini review of Maslow's heirarchy and said that many of the birthmothers are not even sure of their next meal.  They want to know that the child is going to celebrate Thanksgiving every year.  A picture of a Halloween costume of a character with some historical significance to her.  Food, clothes.  Some exoskeleton of tradition, basics  This is what they don't have, what they hope their child will have.
I left the session with the gut-wrenching thought that everyone in that room was thinking of birthmother as commodity, or at least the birthmother's decision as commodity.   It felt dirty.  An acknowledgment of their need would have cleaned it up a bit for me, I would guess.  But I was just privy to 45 minutes of their lives.

I feel somewhat guilty for writing this.  I don't want to be in judgment of these women.  I am not an adoptee who rails against the continued existence of adoption as an institution.  I am actually much relieved when I meet adoptive parents who include an acknowledgment of the birth mother within their family's and their child's identities.  It seems that this is the case on a wide scale these days, and I think that is amazing.  I know it is integral to a healthier post-adoption outcome for the child, so its good to know there has been an evolution in the social understanding of what makes up adoption and how it works.  But the idea that a large percentage of adoptions are facilitated by private agencies is suspect to me.  It doesn't seem possible to be impartial or hold both parties interests as equally valuable when you are getting paid by one of them.  The social worker was explaining how her agency educates the birthmothers by showing them an expense list of how costly raising a child is.  To me, this seems obviously directed and leading, and it strikes that place of out-of-controlness I feel about the fact that I grew up within one family with significant problems instead of another.  I don't have the sense that I was spared suffering by being adopted.  The specific type of suffering was chosen for me, in a way.  Jewish family, mental illness, drug abuse, emotional instability, denial in many forms, suburban america instead of ...teenage single mother, germany, stifling german family?...    who knows? I don't.
I suppose it doesn't matter except that it does matter when I'm reminded of the sadness of losing my first mother.  Maybe it was divinely engineered?  I am open to there being an element of exact perfect placement that is beyond any of our control or understanding.

I want to get to a place someday of feeling the ability to be connected to women planning to adopt without feeling threatened by them, without construing their need as unjustified or unworthy.  Without seeing them as hunters.
I want to be less affected by my expectations.  I hope I can work through my stuff enough to get through limiting myself and my connection to people.

The night of the day of the conference, I got home, had dinner with my family.  I walked into the living room with a cup of hot tea in my hand and walked over and turned off the lamp.  I went to walk out of the then-dark room and fell over the coffee table.  I walked into it and my hot tea spilled and I fell onto the floor and I started crying.  I cried for a while--it took over me, I cried without restraint, from a place deep within me.  It overtook me; it was from a depth I usually cannot get to, like the cry when my mother died.

fantasy & reality

Yesterday I heard a fellow adult adoptee say something about living in fantasy being a common experience that we adoptees share.  I've been thinking alot about this today; this is very me.  My mind simultaneously lives in another realm alot of the time; I wonder how much this is connected to the fact that I gravitate mainly towards non-fiction media....? Its almost like I have enough imagination inside my head and I don't really have room for more.
Going to school and reading academic level material is FUN for me, and I feel my mind shifting gears and processing more.  I am reading so much and listening to public radio and thinking so much that I am noticing how overwhelmed my mind feels on a regular basis.  I then try to take a deep breath and stop thinking and let it settle a bit before I fire up again.
I went to the Rutgers annual adoption conference yesterday and my experience was so different from my expectations of what it would be like.  I have so much to think about and so much to feel.  I was overwhelmed by a catalog of emotions that kind of shut me down and I can see how it all went to my head and created a cluster of confusion.  I had a long drive today and I just tried to let the thoughts and feelings separate a bit so they could form into some sort of pattern in which I can start to identity pieces and begin to make sense of them.

the structure of control

I'm becoming increasingly aware of how I control the people in my life so that I can feel safe.  If I keep them in a restricted box, I can know what to expect and most importantly, I can keep a distance so they can't hurt me.  This is not even by choice anymore, this is just how I live and relate.  I can see how  it must be more than difficult to relate to me.  I keep on flashing back to my dad telling me over and over again while I was growing up that I was a most selfish person.  Its a theme.  I have always chosen men to primarily relate to who in some way agree to the control, and end up seeing themselves as my victim.
I want to, need to change this.  I think I move from such a deeply rooted place of alone-ness, the only thing that feels safe is to make boundaries and keep distance.  Being close is beyond scary.  I don't really know how to change--logically it makes sense but I can't see myself being another way. Maybe because how I see myself is primarily as self-protected; that comes first before anything else.  Again I heard today feelings are key to this. ....????

being in control, giving it up...can I?

My therapist told me today that borderline people often choose narcissists as their partners...ahhh, its making sense.

I have a hard time with feelings. I tend to either not feel them or feel them so strongly that I am overwhelmed by them. Feelings seem dangerous, both my own and others'.  Apparently becoming aware of what I'm feeling is the first step to change my reactionary patterns...even just thinking about that and typing it makes me feel ANXIOUS.   If I don't feel I can be in control.  Does feeling mean giving up control?
that is interesting but scary to contemplate.

encompassing 'immigrant' into my identity

When I was at Omega a few weeks ago, I fell into a deep conversation with a woman I met there and we spoke about adoption, jewishness, relationships, etc...  I told her the abridged version of my story, including my german origins segueing (sp?) into an american family; she commented that I am an immigrant.  I responded back, "yes, that is true."
I'm thinking about that today, that I am a first generation immigrant to america.  I have to think about it more in order to write about it more, but I wanted to just state it, and see what that does.  Its strange, to say the least, to have this realization only now at 35, to never have had conceptualized that before.
  more later...

bernie, the archetype

Ok, so I am totally intrigued by Bernie Madoff.  Not by the scandal as a whole, but by WHO he is, like Bernie Madoff: the person.   I don't see him as evil, I see him more as the supreme embodied modern archetype of 'in it for me at the expense of others'.   I think in some way, at some level I relate to him and that is why I wonder about him so much.  The fundamental question I have about him is if he actually has the ability to have the awareness that what he did was play out the collective greed of our society through his personal life.  Could he get that? I don't think he's a bad person.  I think he's a HUGE person who opened himself up and became a channel for something much much bigger than himself and he let go and immersed himself in that.  I think he justified getting for himself at everyone else's expense, but its so not about him--he LIVED out society's dark wantings.  Its so interesting to me that he supposedly knew and was expecting to get caught by the early 2000's, and at that point he was just in WAY too deep to turn back.  He realized he didn't have any choice but to keep on going....I find that concept and all of its implications horrifying and completely fascinating.

I grew up watching people totally self destruct.  Its so familiar.

i've always been repulsed by the idea of learning a foreign language but my mind is opening

I'm thinking about re-learning french. !

my birth mother speaks french and her (other) children, too.  and i think it will develop the rewiring and expansion of my brain i am experiencing now that i'm in school. i feel like something's opening up...

my garden as me

I went outside this morning to gather herbs for a morning cooking project and I was struck by its state.  Outside is mildly cold and wet, and my garden melded into the pleasant rounded grayness.  My garden says so much about me.  Here we are in the end of October and I am content to let the plants sit and do a little more growing, even though there is not nearly enough sun to ripen the green tomatoes that still hang on the vines.  I guess a more avid, 'proper' gardener would have ripped the plants from the ground at this point and added something to the soil in preparation for next year.  I just let the plants be, and consider the garden as an experiment, just to see what will happen.  I tend to value pondering influences and outcomes over outer appearances.  Yet, I also admit I tend to not take care of fine details in lieu of having lots of things going on simultaneously.

It matters to me that I was able to put fresh (and a little old) basil and thyme and rosemary and parsley into my food today. Yum.

my new title

My new paper is entitled Movement From Simplified Ideology to Complex Ambiguity.
(!)
I love it.  It is the title of my life.

it sucks and i'm used to it.

foundations

I am questioning the foundations of my life, they seem unsteady. Its not surprising when I take a step back and look at the bigger picture of my life within the framework of steady/unsteady foundations.  My original foundation was pulled away; maybe this is what I only truly know.  Steadiness does seem foreign to me and suspect.  Feelings do, too.

The perception that I am not "gotten" or "grokked" is the scariest thing to me.  That is the foundation I look for, always.  I can look back and see as a teenager that I made desperate attempt after attempt to connect with those who I thought possibly could 'get' me, and in doing so, I gave myself away, over and over again. I have the ability (bpd?) to open myself up WIDE to people I am only tenuously connected to, yet experience time and again that opening myself up to the people who I am very much connected to not only exposesme to the possibility of further abandonment, but the abandonment actually happens. It keeps on happening, time after time. How many times can someone do that before they just stop?

What is the difference between lowering one's expectations in an effort to be more in the present moment, to be with what is rather than what one wants it to be vs. cutting oneself off from one's emotions?

Today I feel hopeless and back inside my protective mechanism because I feel like I truly am the only one who will take care of me.  That is how I feel. It sucks, AND I'm used to it.
I'm burning the fire all day today.

fire and water

I have a few fireplaces in my house.  I have been enjoying making a fire and sitting in front of it each day recently.  I am reminded of a teacher who taught me that fire clears out the ethereal body of energy polution; he thought bathtubs and fire were the most important tools for cleansing.  He thought submerging in water or being before a fire extremely powerful in nullifying the 'death urge'; I can relate to this.  I'm beginning to remember relating to fire again in my life.  It feels effective.

in deep.

I think deep down I honestly don't trust that I will not be abandoned again.

revising the simple into the complex

Its curious how aligned my life seems to be with each major writing assignment I have for my english class.  My next impending paper due is turning out to be about living in myth (the first two sentences of my last post are from my notes for my paper), our human need for story in order to make sense of the chaos in the minute details of our lives, and the need to deconstruct and revise those stories when they turn out to be too simplistic, when the outcomes they purport don't align with reality.  The revision involves looking at the whole picture, which can be messy and tends to complicate things, but makes the story much more 'real'.  Sometimes there is not an exact, sharp conclusion, maybe not until many revisions take place, maybe never.
So I'm writing about these ideas and simultaneously really experiencing the direct doing of this in my life.  Its very powerful.

living in myth

We live in myth.
We create myths in order to piece together the endlessly relentless, entropic information that makes up our lives.
I am trying to deconstruct the myths of significant people in my life in order to understand the details of who they are better, to see them as the full, whole, HUMAN people they are instead of the conceptual myths I have created about them.

I want/hope people can do this of me, as well.

We are fallible. We are human. We fall.  We are human.

deconstructing to reconstruct.

I'm coming undone.
Deconstructing in order to reconstruct. Like the leaves falling off the trees.
My leaves are falling, I'm becoming bare. I don't know what I will become, I don't know what comes next.
Somehow I'm getting the strength to brave the unknown.

taming the beast

Recently I was telling a new friend about how the right sliding door of my van is semi-broken, and it sometimes shuts when it feels like it.  Otherwise, it makes lots of noise when it is opening and closing, and often just doesn't want to close.  My alarm system recently stopped working, and the alarm will go off pretty much anytime I lock my doors. The alarm has gone off in the middle of town several times, in a restaurant parking lot, and in a hotel parking garage where I got called in my room at 3 am telling me to turn it off. Not nice.
I took it to Honda, and of course, they called me and asked me why I dropped my car off, what was it that needed to be fixed? I told them to lock the doors and wait.  The van sat in their parking lot for a couple of hours uneventfully.   So I was telling my friend this and she asked me what is going on on my right side, relating the car door to my person.  I don't know about my right side...hmmm...my right side is connected to my left brain...my chiropractor (her husband) has been picking up on my over-thinking-ness, stuck-in-my-brain-and-not-my-body-ness...maybe this is it?  Likewise, I asked myself about the tripping alarm connection...this winter, in the depths of despair--hell--I was in, I began locking my door every time I would drive anywhere, which is so out of character for me.  When I lived in New Paltz, I would almost never lock my doors, ever.  I really lived in trust of my community; I felt held there, and did not need a defense.  Here, my defensive impulse was triggered and it wasn't like I was just locking my door when I parked somewhere; I was locking my door just driving down the street.  I felt super-vulnerable, exposed, and like attack was imminent at any moment.  So I see the alarm malfunction as an imposed opening being laid onto me.  I didn't choose it, but its working.  I don't feel the need to lock while driving now anyway, but I don't have a choice whether I lock or not while parked at school or wherever.  I'm unlocked.  Its therapeutic.

Ok, so I am working the same type of 'outer as expression of inner' understanding to my dog.  An amazing thing has happened! We have had this relationship where I (and everyone else in my family) have no control of her and she and I and everyone else completely knows it.  When she's inside, she obeys SIT and LAY DOWN, but she is always waiting at the door ready to bolt, and once she's outside, out of arm's reach, she makes the rules....until now.  So last week my youngest opened the door and let her out (again) and I freaked out because of my asshole neighbor(s).  After a while of pointlessly being outside throwing food, trying to lure her in when I knew it wouldn't work, I got to the point where we were on the front lawn, close to the steps and front door.  I was throwing turkey towards the steps, and she was going along with me, but only so far as getting about 3 feet away.  She is WAY quicker than me and I know it and she knows it--there was no way I would be able to grab her.  I was feeling the desperation of the situation; I'm on my lawn and my dog is three excruciating feet away and I can't get her and the neighbors are going to be back from work soon and....I got an intuitive thought--forget you're outside--tell her to sit.  So I did.  And it fucking worked! She sat down.  I told her to lay down.  AND SHE DID.  And I reached over calmly and grabbed her collar.  Totally amazing. This blew me away.  The next day she dug a hole under the fence we just put up in our backyard, and she was out again.  My husband was home and he went outside with the turkey.  This time she wouldn't get closer than about six feet.  I came outside and told him my new trick, we tried it and not only did she sit and lay down, she rolled over and he calmly walked over and got her.  This is completely amazing to me, the fact that I found this short-circuit that will override her wild-ness, and that it worked more than once, and therefore I have a new-found sense of control over my dog, and I know it, and SHE knows it.
I am trying to figure out what this means about me besides the obvious.  My inner wildness can be tamed?  Or maybe more generally, yesterday's impossible is possible today...?

the constant on my mind

I feel like I'm breaking open and everything might fall out.  In a good way, hopefully.
The idea of our lives being lived within the realms of social constructs is something I am working through.  Working through, as in it is on my mind constantly, it is the lens I am looking at life through.  Consciously, unconsciously.  I'm even dealing with it in my dreams. 

What happens when we question a social construct? When we question its validity, its requirement?  It seems to me that our thoughts and emotions are shaped by the construct(s) we live within; if we choose to break it or go outside of it or create something new, I assume the thoughts and emotions would be different. 

We can make this life anything we want it to be.  What a relief.

my present moment

I have a feeling most great writers feel the inner depth of alone-ness.

finding meaning in the center

self and other.
my self and others around me.
i contemplate how to relate.  moving from my center steadies the outcome.  centered helps me to not get knocked off course when the disappointment inevitably occurs.
centered tends to iron out my expectations and i can accept what is.

in the center, the highs are only so high, and the lows are only so low--the extremes are tempered.  is living less meaningful? do i need to feel the extremes to catch the meaning?

i think more than anything, i need to feel meaning. i need to feel that i matter.

origin in man and woman

Who is my maker? Where do I come from?
For so long I never even had the fundamental belief that I was born; there was a transfer of me into the family, but pre-that, there was nothingness.  Not even nothingness, like absence of anything (so that nothingness doesn't exist).  The idea of my existence pre-transfer was not even a thought or a non-thought.  Then at some point the consciousness of an origin point arose, but it was limited to my birthmother--it was completely woman-centered.  I was shocked to realize some time after I began searching for my birthmother that there was also a man involved in my creation.  That filtered in and my search expanded to encompass him, whoever "he" was.  Then  some time after that I was shocked again to realize that when I would wonder about my sister's origins, I was only considering a woman source, until it finally hit me that my sister was also created by a man.
I know hardly anything about my birthfather.  He is now dead.  I never met him.  Its almost like in a way, he never was.  Maybe if I ever find out more about him he will become more real to me.  Like, I don't even know his full name.  I don't know anything about his family, his lineage.  A name--that would be so clarifying for me.  I would know more about me if I knew his family's name.

It is a dissociating feeling knowing that there are people out there in the world who you know hardly anything about, yet you began from them and carry both their gifts and their weight into this life.  There's something very un-real about it, but its what is, nothing more, nothing less.  Its a fate, and it shapes.

the books currently on my night table

ordered in stacks

stack one.
-the primal wound--understanding the adopted child-nancy newton verrier
-the year of magical thinking-joan didion
-the hour i first believed-wally lamb
-growing up fast-joanna lipper
-the people they brought me-poems in the adoption community-penny callan partridge
-sara, book 1-sara learns the secret about the law of attraction-esther and jerry hicks

stack two.
-the biology of transcendence-a blueprint of the human spirit-joseph chilton pearce
-bright shiny morning-james frey
-healing the child within-discovery and recovery for adult children of dysfunctional families-charles whitfield
-obsessive love-when it hurts too much to let go-susan forward
-amelia bedelia and the surprise shower
-the big book of sudoko puzzles

stack three.
-mating in captivity-unlocking erotic intelligence-esther perel
-the other mother-a woman's love for the child she gave up for adoption-carol schaefer
-confessions of a lost mother-elisa m b
-following the tambourine man-a birthmother's memoir-janet mason ellerby
-birthmothers-women who have relinquished babies for adoption tell their stories-merry block jones
-infinite jest-david foster wallace

this list perfectly explains my life right now.

limited love

Today I am facing the question of what is family?  Who is included, and what does their inclusion (or exclusion) mean?  Also I am wondering about love, and how it shows up within those bonds.  I am trying to take a step back from my assumptions, to give room for something else I might not see now to arise.

Can I accept my family for who they really are as individuals?  Can I let them love me based on their (limited) capacities, or am I always going to feel that it is not enough?

Am I honoring myself to accept a limited love? Do I really have a choice?

I'm full of questions today; yet not attached to needing an answer...

trust and my heart

Yesterday my yoga teacher waxed poetic about living from your heart, that being the only true path.  The only real path.  I opened myself up and ended the class with an unfamiliar balance and warmth in my heart.  I thought of my dad and didn't feel scared anymore about calling and making a connection.  I felt like everything is imminently okay.

I think this is very connected to the past weekend for me.  I met a woman who does family constellation work, and she talked with me about the healing power of being aware of everyone who makes up your family.  We talked about what that might look like in an adopted family--both sets of mothers and fathers are included and acknowledged.  My (adoptive) sister's birth mother and father are included in my own family.  This feels so right to me; it makes sense and feels right in my heart.  I have not been in touch with my (adoptive) father for almost a year.  I called him today. Its not scary.  Its sad, but its not scary, so I know its okay.

Paralleling this awareness is my growing feeling that so many things in my life are all pointing to me needing to be grown up and gain the ability to take care of others.  This is really hard for me--maybe because this was always an innate requirement for having a relationship with my parents--for the relationship to exist, I was (and still am) required to be the adult and subjugate my (inner-child) needs to theirs.  I obviously am still in process about this and haven't come to a full acceptance of this dynamic, but something has shifted that has allowed me to move forward and make the call and connect.

I wonder if this inner shift I am experiencing will somehow transfer to the distance that exists between me and my birth mother...I want desperately to have a relationship with her, but I don't know how.  I also suspect it will be instrumental in healing the rift that underlies my relationship with my husband.

Being open and vulnerable is scary, but I see how it can propel me and those I am connected to forward, maybe exponentially.

possibilities openings connections

My weekend at Omega was full of connections.  I opened myself up to possibilities and they came pouring in.
I made the connection with Lynn McTaggart who wrote The Field and The Intention Experiment, and learned more about her amazing work and her projects, and am excited to be a part of them. I am so happy I made a personal connection with her, which is also related to adoption, and my search for more information to connect me to my origins.

My retreat weekend was deepened by my writing class assignment which I needed to complete while I was at Omega, which, (non-coincidentally) was based on the theme of identity.  On Saturday night I wrote for hours into the middle of the night, cozy in my cabin set within the fall foliage of upstate NY--I felt at home and serene, doing what I love and need to do.  Writing is such hard work for me.  I feel like my mind wrestles with the ideas I am working with in order to fit them together eloquently, and this is mixed with periods where I release and the sentences come spilling out almost without my control.  Writing is like a very physical experience for me; I talk out loud when I'm writing, I say the words I'm writing out loud, and it somehow affirms and organizes them for me.  I feel exhausted and complete when I'm done with a writing session.  I get that it is definitely my work in this lifetime, and I'm happy to be doing it (finally).

My meeting with Lynn was a preliminary step towards a future project I am contemplating regarding a sociological study of post-adoption outcomes within the specific population of adoptees who were the babies of Stanley Michelman's German/Austrian birthmother importing business.  There are so many potential implications to this, including my own personal understanding...

I didn't hit a brick wall, in fact I feel like I knocked the brick wall down and stepped over it onto the other side...I'm excited to find out what's next...

baby brokers

This weekend will be a peak moment in my current self-exploration journey; I am going to meet the journalist who researched and wrote a book about black market adoptions in the 70's and 80's.  She met with and wrote about the attorney who facilitated my adoption, and wrote in depth about the elaborate workings of his business and how he basically imported about 100 young women from W. Germany and Austria during a few years in the 70's in order to adopt out their babies. He used coercion techniques and was brought up on charges, eventually losing his license (I believe).  I was one of those babies.  Reading the book was a surreal experience for me, to say the least. 

I feel like I am a researcher myself, a detective, and I'm tracking down the details of my gestation and birth in order to put together the pieces of who I actually am.  These pieces of information are so critical to creating a more whole picture of myself.  I'm both excited about additional information I may find out, yet scared I'll hit another brick wall.

to be continued...

in the play yard

This morning I went to my son's nursery class today to celebrate his birthday.  I sat next to him at the table and we ate soup and crackers and sang songs.  I actually sat between him and a little girl who is friends with him.  She immediately started talking to me and wouldn't stop.  When we went outside into the play yard, she would not let go of my hand.  Ok, she let go, but she wouldn't leave my side.  I ended up not really even spending much time with my son because this little girl was like ATTACHED to me.  We made a sandcastle.  We played with acorns.  One of the teachers took her hand to form a line to walk into the garden and she looked back at me with a sad look on her face, like "where did you go, come here."  A minute later she was holding my hand and we were walking through the garden.  When we got back into the yard, we ended up in the sandbox and then I found myself surrounded by three girls (!) all of whom were trying to get and hold my attention.  When it was time to leave, the teacher actually had to ask me if I could specifically say goodbye to the one main girl--she was waiting for me.
The nature of her attachment made such a strong impression on me.  It was like a mirror.

Having and being around young children is such a reflective experience.  I see myself in them in ways that I couldn't otherwise.  I imagine my attachments as a young child, how strong they must have been, wanting for a mother who really 'got' me.  It was a bit overwhelming to be the object of such today; I don't really know how I feel about it, I just am aware that there was a big impression on my being.
I felt from her loss, and sadness, and an innocent hopefulness to connect.

My daughter had a new friend come over our house yesterday after school; she had never been here, nor had been around me other than pick-up from school.  My daughter told me this morning that her friend had said "your mom is so cool! she's so young, and fun, and pretty..."   Because of my relatively young age when I had my first two kids, I'm almost always the youngest parent within the group of my daughter's friends. Her friend's comment is one that I've gotten kind of used to hearing, considering I'm usually between 10-15 years younger than most of the other parents, so I'm sure I seem younger, and maybe more fun?...its funny, though, when I think about it...I don't think any of my kids would characterize me in those ways.

moving out of the corner

I have a recurring (bad) dream which came around again last night.  Each time I have this dream, the same thing happens: I come to the realization that I am pregnant, and at some point the dread of the imminence of birth rushes over me, and I feel stuck and cornered, like I have no way out.  I try to figure out if I am really pregnant or not, if I am really dreaming or not.  Every time I come to the conclusion that it is not a dream, this is real life, and I make the decision to accept my situation.  The acceptance moves me out of my terror, into a manageable realm where I can handle what is before me.  But the acceptance contains a taste of defeat.  I am so strong-willed, I think 'acceptance' in general has a stifling element to it for me. When I accept something its hard for me to do it willingly...I usually end up feeling beaten and somehow abused.

I have birthed four (large to extremely large) babies at home.  The experience has pushed me to my edge and has taught me that I can do ANYTHING and actually come out the other side with beauty and strength.  But its not to say that the thought of it is still not completely terrifying.  I think the concept of pregnancy and birth and the quality of the total commitment it requires is a metaphor my subconscious uses for the places in my life that require a similar commitment.  And so it makes sense to me that I am visited by these dreams frequently, especially now.

I'm trying to figure out how to move out of the corner within my life.

[disclaimer: I am NOT pregnant in waking life.]

drawing from the future

I'm thinking about the ways in which I can honor my daughter's coming of age in a way that has meaning for her (and for me).  I do not feel an obligation to do this within a jewish form, although that expectation is there in some way in my family.  The combination of being adopted, and being adopted into a family that has so much disconnection and non-continuity in it makes for a situation where I don't know how to go back to find something to give my daughter; I feel a need to move forward and create something forward and in the future to give to her. That seems right; it fits.

I am reading my sociology textbook and am totally fascinated by the way family structure is explained within the context of ideas and values being socially constructed.  Taking a step back and seeing all of the things we take for granted as social beings not as facts, not as givens, but as social constructs that we made up and choose to persist seems mindblowing.  This idea touches me in a deep way, and I suspect it has something to do with me being adopted, not knowing my history.  There is no legacy for me to carry on or draw from.  I am ultra aware that I create anew all the time, because its in my face.  I don't have a mother to turn to, to ask how to do things. My father is alive but we have not been in communication for a significant amount of time.  I hold the rest of my family far away from me (except my sister) in order to survive and not spiral into total dysfunction.  I have been forced to decide how I want to create my life every day with little familial reference points.  Its the orphan consciousness inside of me.  I suppose it gives me a strength in some ways, yet it seems shaky--there's no bedrock; I'm constantly reaching up into the air to pick out what and how I want to create.  I guess either way there is no guarantee that the decisions we make are right, but in being a parent myself, I am constantly being forced to ask myself if the decisions I make are the best for my children, and that is where the ground falls away and I'm flying and I'm 'winging it'.  Maybe all parents feel that way? I don't know, I just know that there's a built-in freedom to the new-ness.  That's a part of it that I like.

remembering to trust

I watched a movie in my sociology class today that has me thinking.

It was about a remote area in China where the culture is currently matriarchal and matrilineal (I'm just using those terms based on what I think they mean but I'm not exactly technically sure that these terms are correct).  

Women are the heads of the household and the family, and there is no marriage (as we understand it).  Their language does not have the word "daddy" or "dad".  The women live with their children and their brother(s) -- if they have one or more.  The uncles play the biggest significant role as a male authority/role model.  The women do most of the work and they make the decisions.  Monogamy doesn't exist.  The fathers do not live with their baby-mothers and kids, and it is not expected.  

The people believe that the fetuses live inside of the woman, and only need to be "sprayed" by the man, and then the woman grows the baby.  They believe the baby is the same baby no matter who the man she had sex with is. There is something about the man being respected for giving a gift to the woman, but it seems they feel he only jumpstarts the growth of something/somebody that already exists.  They don't believe children share the same bloodline as the man and that they are only physically of the mother. 

This culture is very woman centered, woman power-tipped.  And the men seem robbed of power.  

Schools have been built and have been in place for about 10 years.  They were in place for about two years when the film was the made.  I don't know who funds/runs the schools, but they are definitely an outside influence.  They teach the children about marriage and being a husband and a wife, and that this is how people in the rest of China live their lives.  Within two years some of the children were expressing that they would like to live with their fathers.  Boys played growing up into fathers.  This was something completely foreign to their culture until very recently.  There was a man who began becoming more involved with his child, seeing him every day (instead of every couple weeks or months).  The interviewer asked him if he's like to live with the baby-mother.  He said yes.  The interviewer then asked the mother if she would like the baby-father to live with her, and she said no.  She said they are all better off living separately, that this way there were hardly any fights.  

A few months ago, I went to an Erykah Badu concert with my sister in law.  We were googling erykah on her blackberry and we learned that she has three children (? or is it two and pregnant with a third? yeah, i think so)--I think three different dads, and there was an interview where she definitely gave the vibe that she doesn't live with any of the baby-fathers, she lives with the kids, and the fathers circle around the periphery.  

Its hard not to notice the trend or movement in society towards a significant population being single mother households.  I wonder what is underlying this? (besides the obvious factors like racism, domestic violence, alcohol/drug abuse, rise in materialism and subsequent intensification of the ego, etc.--those are the social factors. I'm wondering more about the spiritual/etheric patterning that is being mirrored in a physical-three dimensional plane-kind-of-way).  Is it the survivalist mentality? 

The question I take away from this is how to strike a balance between men and women?  The woman receives, the woman receives.  I was listening to Armand on WBAI and he was interviewing a woman about the physical history of sex--there has never been a species, apparently, whose females enjoyed sex as much as the human being.  Receiving is a major factor in women's pleasure. Can men and women co-create pleasure with balance? 


How can we find a balance of power?
How can I find that balance?  Last week I took a deep breath and admitted to my husband that I either push him away and get upset that he's gone or I pull him towards me and get mad that he's too close.  Balance of power is an issue I deal with daily.  Its scary to trust that I am not going to be hurt; there is a program that runs deep within me that says I am not safe.  


I need to remember to trust.






  

moon meditation

The other night on my long drive back to jersey from upstate, i was doing my driving meditation...alone, but into the solitude.  Recently I've been taking the space to listen to music LOUD and sing just as loud.  Its my way of releasing and processing my complex life.

So the other night I'm driving and singing with Beth Orton, and I look up at the moon, and am struck by how beautiful and alone it is.  Alone yet shining down on all of us at the same time, affecting us.  I felt the beauty of the moon's alone-ness and brightness so deep inside of me, I started to cry because it seemed so sad.

I belted out the song and felt the sadness and cried, and then came to the acceptance that sometimes something beautiful and sad is okay and doesn't need to be fixed.  Sometimes something can be sad and beautiful and heartwrenching and there's nothing to do about it, that's just what it is.

creative survival

Today I opened the door to a neighbor screaming at me about my dog.  He was completely aggressive and although I tried to remain calm we escalated into a turbulent screaming match.  He threatened to hurt my dog and I told him to leave my property.  I mean, loudly ordered him to GET AWAY.  This is in my stuffy upper crust ivy league neighborhood.  What manners...NOT.

I felt shaken by the guy's unbounded aggression, and I cried thinking that my dog is just too fucking wild for this place.  We're all too wild, we don't belong.  I was lementing this to my husband and he reminded me that our mean lesbian neighbors in NP hated our dog, too, and were consistently vocal about it.  Not great neighbors there, either: the first time I walked over to say hello, the woman told me she moved here 25 years ago to her house because she wanted to be away from people and not have any neighbors.  Awesome introduction.

Anyway, my husband said "Look, she's just a wild beast, its nobody's fault.  Her mother was burned to death by some occult group, she was living in the wild before we got her, then she grew up running free on 40 acres.  How is she supposed to be able to deal with living in a backyard?"

I paused and started laughing.  It hit me so hard that he described me.  I was laughing but no one got it.  That's my life in archetypes.

Its me and the closest people to me in my life.  I have gravitated to motherless daughters for a long time.  My best friends from young adulthood on have been these girls.  Mothers who have died, mothers who were absent in some way, a mother who was a junkie and who just left when my friend was young, birth mothers.  We could all relate on some pain level...we unconsciously knew we all understood that frequency of abandonment.  I even became really close to a girl for a short time who was TOTALLY attached to her mother and after we hadn't seen each other in a few years, her parents died in a tragic accident.  Its almost like I was drawn to her and her imminent pain.  I feel like we made up a tribe of orphans...we were all young women who were forging ahead with their own lives mostly unsupported by any parental figures as a reference point.  We were living lives of creative survival.  We all still do, that is what we do.

I fall into survival mode so instinctually, it is very natural to me.  It comes easily, and remembering that I have the option to do more than just survive is SUCH HARD WORK.  

in and out

I am in my bathroom and I wash my face, smooth cream into my skin, brush my teeth and find myself with my hands down on the floor, and my spine parallel to the ground, I stretch and get into my body. Like physically getting my consciousness into my body.  I turn to the right and stretch my arm skywards and twist out my kidney.  I come back to neutral and go the other way, to the left.  I am continually shifting away from being in my body and then coming back in, out and in.  Out and in.  Out. and. in.  It feels like I'm remembering something I forgot and giving myself a gift when I come back in.  I forget it alot.  I separate myself, not in a way that I don't know what I'm actually doing when I go through my days, but just...detached...in a way that I don't even realize until I shift back into my body and become aware that I just wasn't there.

Is this an adoptee trait?
Is this a trait of someone who has lived through sexual abuse?

I wonder what informs my past.

My long drives upstate and back give me a space that as a mother of four I rarely have, where I'm in a confined space with nothing to do but sit and be in the moment.  In a zen way I can look back at that phrase and contemplate the proposal that that is my life's description.  But not really in that I have so much to do pretty much at ALL times; that's my perception.  I go in an out of overload all day, every day.  Another place I go in and out of. Overload and my body.  I get overloaded and I go out of my body.  I get into my mind or close psychic space to it and just hang out there until I've dissipated enough of the energy that I can handle grounding back into my body and absorbing the next surge.

I wonder if I am a minority in this way? Do other people experience this as a backdrop to their life, a characteristic of the page their life reads off of?

I have practiced yoga for several years, but this winter was the first time in a long time that I began doing aerobic exercise.  I think its totally tied into my familiarity with not being in my body.  It has seemed so insurmountable in the past that it was something I didn't even think about for YEARS.  I began running.  I could feel the weight of the impact of my feet on the ground on the front of my shins.  Like, I could feel the pressure of my body pushing groundward when my foot would hit the ground and I was feeling subtle pressures and feelings in my body that seeemd totally new to me.  Its a weird feeling that makes me wonder where I've been.

I wonder how life would be different if I melded my consciousness with my body more often than not. I assume it would be too painful; I'm not sure I would have the capacity to handle how much I would feel.

is my name me?

Names are powerful.

Names are declarations.

What does a change of name do to a personality? I think it effects subtle changes within a person, and less subtle, gross changes externally.

I have lived with 3 or 4 names this lifetime, and I am only 35. My uncertainty of the total number is from my unclarity of my first name. Was it from pre-birth, or was I actually named something besides ___ after my birth, before my adoption? Eva? I have no idea--adopted people are legally not allowed access to their birth certificates in New York State, as well as I think 41 other states. The birth certificate I have seen has my adoptive parents listed, as well as significant technical birth information, as if I was born to them. Interesting...my thoughts on that will be held for another time.

What was my name as an unborn baby? What was my name as a born baby?

My name as a baby adopted into a new family with a new mother and father was ____. I lived that name for 20 years. I got married to my first husband by a rabbi but didn't sign any legal documents authorized by any state. I did not feel a need to change my name, and didn't. I did not feel any desire to take on my husband's name.

Then my mother died. She left me an inheritance. I went to the local bank to find out about the procedure to get the money. My mother had made the account out to my then-husband's last name (which was not mine). Looking back, this was a perfect testament to the less than subtle rift between my mother and I; did she actually not even know my name? Anyway, my social security number (the only one I've ever had) was on the account, and the bank people REFUSED to release the money to me. They insisted the only way for me to get it was to come back with ID showing myself to be someone I was not.

So I legally changed my name to get the money. I figured out how to do it myself; I did not use an attorney, and it was a whole involved process. I lived with that name, disconnected from it, for 10 years. The name outlived my marriage.

My ambivalence to that name somehow parallels my ambivalence to the place I live right now. There's something similar about it. I was driving down the road today between towns. I was noticing my surroundings while simultaneously noting how disconnected I feel. I said to myself, "I live in this place right now, but it is not my place." The geography feels temporary; I guess that is okay on some level. But underneath there is something very unsettling about it for me.

I ditched that name for my new name when I got remarried. I decided to take on the new name. Its interesting; I don't feel necessarily connected to the name and its history, per se, but I do feel a difference in that my choice to take it was specifically to reflect our connection.

I was in a bookstore the other day. I bought a few books and handed the man my credit card. He looked at it, looked at me, and in an offhand way said, "B..., B..., hmmm...are you jewish?" I felt like a deer in the headlights inside, and must have looked stunned outwardly as well, because he paused and said, "I'm only asking because I used to know a Breitman back in college..." I don't know how I feel about the fact that I have a name that definitely implies jewishness at the same time as looking so totally not jewish. My name's reference to my marriage feels safe, but its also feels dangerous in that it is like an invitation to my identity confusion.

i want something more

And I do want to change. I can say that I want a new paradigm; it just seems hard to grasp this new way out of thin air and make it my own. How to do that?

I want to live a life that is whole, but I fear that I have no way of even knowing what that is.

The basic premise I get from therapy is that understanding develops self awareness, which can be instrumental in changing behavior. But don't I need a role model? Who are my role models? When I think of my family, every single person has big secrets. I don't know half of who any of them really are. Every single one seems split, with sections splintered off, and I am aware that I only know certain parts of them.

I'm trying to figure out the differences in the influences between the outcome of being adopted ( in general) vs. being adopted into the specific, totally dysfunctional family that I landed in. Its very confusing.

my life script

I feel loved and wanted when people break the rules to be with me.

how i feel lost

When I am physically alone I most often feel disconnected. Lost.

Like, floating. Not really grounded or tethered to anything or anyone.

I feel like the people I love and who love me are like fingers on hands, and I am the substrate that filters through. They are there and they try to catch me, but I slip through the cracks. Sometimes they catch me and hold me for a little while, but as soon as I'm physically alone I slip through and there is no one and nothing to catch me anymore. Unbounded.

Its disorienting. I suppose it could be considered scary, but my familiarity with the feeling numbs out the terror.

I want to be connected so deeply. So much. Its the most important thing to me. I want to really know the connections persist even without the physical presence.

I hope I get it in this lifetime.

sources of disconnection

I feel like my life has been a series of events that have imposed disconnection on me.

I was adopted soon after birth. (How long from birth? I don't know, I haven't gotten all the facts straight yet). Ripped away from my mother. I remember my adoptive mother telling me a story about the first night they had me, she came into the room with my crib and woke me up from my sleep because she was so excited. Apparently I cried and cried and would not stop crying for so long that she never did that again. I think back on that story and can't help but think that her fulfillment was at the expense of me being lost.

At the end of third grade, when I was 10, my house burned down. I was the one who found the fire in the garage and alerted my mother and sister to get out of the house. I remember going inside to tell my mother and we stayed inside for a few minutes while she called the fire department. Then we left and went to our neighbor's house. My mother's new Corvette was in the garage and blew up before the fire fighters got there. Most of the house was gone before they could even attempt to save it. I basically watched my house explode, then was taken by police car to my best friend's house where I slept over that night. I distinctly remember falling asleep in her bed and crying into her pillow, feeling totally completely terrified and disconnected from the life I lived in that house. It seemed like that life burned away and there was nothing left. I still feel like that. We were able to save some pictures and old movie film, and one of my favorite pictures from my childhood is one that is an enlarged picture of my mother, my sister and I set on a 70's wooden plaque. The wood is burned and the border of the picture is, too, but the image shows through the center. A few years ago my sister, my dad and I did a project together in which we bought an old film projector off of ebay and watched all the old semi-destroyed movies. I felt like it was a priceless gift to have footage from the inside of the house. Oh my god! I was able to relive what I was forced to only imagine in my mind's eye for so many years. That's what my room looked like--wow, remember the wierd elf cookie jar on the kitchen counter? Look at the wallpaper! I felt like I was going home. I still feel so attached to that house--its like another piece of my life that was taken away from me in which I had no control.

Then, when I was 20, my (adoptive) mother died. She had been sick for basically my whole life. Not like a little sick. SICK. Hospitalized over and over again, year after year. For the last several years of her life, while I was in middle and high school, she almost died several times, and there I was again, powerless over a horrible situation I could not control. Even though it was humanly impossible for her to stay alive at the end, I was stunned when she actually died. I spoke with her the night before; I called her from a payphone from my crazy life on the road with my crazy (first) husband and baby. I told her that my birth mother and I had made arrangements for her to come to the US for us to meet. Then the phone cut out and I actually didn't have any money to call her back. That was the last thing I said to her. She died in the middle of that night.

After my mother's funeral, my grandmother said to me, "Did you even love your mother?" As if losing my mother for the second time wasn't torturous enough.

Needless to say, my identity within (and without) my family is more than confusing.