“I don’t remember going into labor at all. I don’t even remember that much about being pregnant with you but I do remember being in the hospital. I was lying down.   There was a doctor with a mask on his face. He just came in, took you out and that was it.”

“I think I looked up,” she continues. “I wanted to see you but someone pushed me down again.” She presses against her own shoulder, as if to remind herself of that moment and what happened. Her hand drops to her lap. “Then you were gone and I was taken to another part of the hospital where there were no babies. I was put into a room with an older woman who had been recovering from some surgery. She asked, ‘What are you in for, Honey?’ like I was in prison.

“I told her I didn’t feel well,” she says. “That’s when the lies began.”

She looks at me as if I could or should understand and I suppose I do. I want to understand. I say nothing though.

“I went home and the birth was never mentioned again,” she said. “I was so depressed. I kept getting lower and lower. My family was watching me all the time.  Maybe they thought I would kill myself?”

She looks at me with the question, as if I have the answer.

I can only shrug and shake my head.

“When they finally left me alone in the house, I kicked the screen out of my window and walked to a mental hospital. A nice Indian doctor took me into a room and I talked about being depressed.”

“Did you tell him you had a baby?” I interrupt.

She shakes her head. “I just told him I was depressed and he gave me some lithium. I threw away the pills and went home. I never got caught for sneaking out and I never told my mother.”

She lays the photo of my infant self on the table and leans back. Her face is sallow. Her lips are curved down. The beautiful and confident woman at the airport and at breakfast has slipped away and the true Catherine is here—tormented, confused and angry.

“If I ever asked about you and how you were, my mother would tell me to forget the whole thing. She said it was over and you were happier with your new family. She told me no good could come from thinking about you.”

“When I thought I might search for you, when everyone else was searching, you know in the eighties and nineties? My mother told me I would just mess up your life and to let it go.”

The sun is bright in her hair now, making it shine all different shades of reddish-brown.  She looks so tired and so sad.

“I think about that,” she says. “Why didn’t I just search for you anyway? Why didn’t I defy her? I went against her wishes other times. I married Bill right out of high school. I got pregnant and went to Germany with him after he was drafted. All of that was pure defiance. Why didn’t I defy her when it came to you?”

She looks to me again, as if I know.

I have no answers for her.

She has no answers for me.

“You can have those baby pictures,” I hear myself say. “I don’t need them anymore. I never even look at them.”
“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Catherine says. She stacks the photos in a little pile and flips through them again.

~

The sun drops below a line of hills and long ribbons of gold and gray light reflect on the high clouds.

We hold hands while I drive Catherine back to the airport.

“What will come next?” she asks.

I am taken back by her question. It seems foolish in retrospect but all I anticipated and expected was today. I wanted to confirm I had been born to someone. What else is there?

“I don’t know,” I finally manage to say. “What do you want?”

Catherine tugs on the hem of her silk top and sits taller in her seat. “Well, I want to know you,” she says with the authority of a mother. “I want us to be in each other’s lives. You could move to Reno. That would solve a lot of our problems.”

I pull into the airport parking lot and laugh as if that’s a good one. Reno!

She’s not laughing and I make myself stop.

I turn off the car and tuck the keys into my purse.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat. “My life is here, in Portland.”

Catherine pouts a little, as if I have just burst her bubble and I wonder—did she really think I would move to Nevada?  We only just met.

The engine ticks as it cools down and we sit in the quiet for a long time.

The experts—who specialize in reunion between birth mothers and adopted children—suggest a slow and careful “getting to know each other period.” Birth parents are warned to be cautious and respectful during reunion. Adoptive children must learn how to believe again. Bridges of trust must be built. Old wounds need to heal.

Of course, I have read all these books. Catherine has read none. I’ve spent a lifetime in the pursuit of my own healing. Catherine has spent a lifetime in pursuit of hiding. A few days ago, before I found her with the help of an investigator, I had been a secret she planned to take to her grave.

What comes next should be this: Catherine should go away and I should continue with my life. The end.

“We can try to know each other,” she says. “Can’t we? I would be so sad not to know you.”

“You would?” I ask.

She nods and gives the impression of sincerity—to a point—but I also sense deep well of unexplored sorrow.

What to do?  What to do?

Something in me, something tiny and hungry for a mother, nods. I find that I am agreeing to know her, that I am agreeing to try.

She lights up, as if delighted. She laughs out loud. The sound fills the inside of my car and makes me think of my own daughter. My mother and my daughter have the same laugh.

We get out of the car and walk in silence, holding hands once again. As we approach the airport terminal, I feel shaky and scared. What have I agreed to?

“Saying goodbye is supposed to be the hardest part,” I hear myself say, quoting one of my adoption books. “If we are going to be in each others lives, you need to call me, in a few days. We’re also supposed to make a plan to see each other again. We are supposed to set a definite date.”

Catherine and I separate and go down the escalator. When we reach the bottom, she doesn’t try to hold my hand again. In the passage from the top of the stairs to the bottom, she has become someone in a hurry to get home.

She walks ahead of me, eyes trained on the glowing blue screen that displays the schedule for the departing flights. “Well, I can definitely call you although I’m not sure when,” Catherine says over her shoulder. “And I’m not sure when we can get together again either. I have a lot of things coming up with my own kids, things I’ve already scheduled months in advance—”

Catherine strides over to the security check point and digs into her purse for her ticket.

Dragging behind her, my hands get cold and I open and close them to bring back circulation.

“Okay, well, I guess I don’t need to know exactly when we can meet again,” I begin but she doesn’t seem to be listening as she gathers up her license and her boarding pass.

I feel waves of fear.  She’s leaving.  She’s leaving me again.

When we get to the front of the line, Catherine puts her arm around my shoulder.  She gives me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. It’s a peck, like we are strangers.

“Okay,” she says. “So I’ll call you when I get home. I’ll try to call tonight.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I feel like we might need to know, tentatively, when to meet again. Do you have any idea when you might be free?”

I feel so odd as I ask this question. It’s like asking a disinterested guy for a date.  I’m setting myself up to be rejected and here it comes.

She does this little shift from one foot to the other. She is restless. She sighs. “Well, not really,” she says. “Why don’t I figure that out when I get home.”

In my head, I tell myself that her reassurance should be enough. I want to believe we will form a plan later but my body knows the truth. Catherine left me before and she will leave me again and she is leaving me right now. If she truly meant to know me and be in my life, she would not behave this way. She would stand still. She would look me in the eye.

I hug myself and try, one more time, to bring her back to what is happening and what is needed.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Will you figure it out? Will you remember?”

“Yes, yes, I will, I promise,” she says. She hugs me again but it’s an impatient embrace. She is eager to get on her way.

I step off to the side and let my mother go on without me.

Catherine weaves though the maze of security, shoulders back and hips slung forward. When she reaches the x-ray machines, she slips out of her high heel sandals.

My face is wet but I don’t wipe away the evidence of tears. I let myself cry and hug myself tighter still. Is this the fear, terror, grief and rage that I felt as a baby? The pain makes me dizzy. How did I survive?

Catherine forgot to ask:  How are you here, Jennifer? How did you make it without me?

She forgot to say she was so sorry for leaving me. That she would do anything to make it up to me—her first child—her daughter.

She rushes back to a full life of children, grandchildren—her big extended family.  I watch from here—as unknown to her as I was when she arrived this morning.

What happens next?

What happens next is that I get into my car and cry all the way home.

What happens next is that I put on my pajama’s, pour myself a very big glass of wine, pull my son and daughter under my arms and read silly stories that make the children—and me—laugh out loud.

What happens next is that I fall asleep next to my daughter—grateful to keep her close—grateful that I know every inch of her and will get to know my child for the rest of my life.

But first, what happens next is this moment: Catherine—exiting the x-ray machine and bending over to push her feet into her strappy sandals. In a final gesture, as if it is enough, she lifts her arm and waves goodbye.

She will land in Portland by eight a.m.

I am going to pick her up at the airport.

We get a day together—just this day. She has a sick cat, a job that needs her and appointments in her date book she cannot possibly reschedule.

Catherine is my mother and we have never met.

~

I stand in my closet and look at all my clothing—jeans, tops, sweaters, skirts. What to wear? What to wear? Should I choose a fancy combination that makes me look pretty or perhaps something professional that makes me appear credible? Perhaps I can pick an ensemble that says “Love me. Take me home with you. Don’t leave me again.”

~

Catherine and I have talked, several times, on the phone. We’ve exchanged emails with photos from her life—Christmas holidays, anniversaries, birthdays and graduations. In her pictures, I’ve seen aunts, uncles, a grandmother, and a brother and sister. My people. They all have the shape of my smile, the curve of my eyes, the size of my chin and the span of my forehead.

As I look at the life my mother has had without me, I tell myself this story: She had a decent life with family who loved her. That’s good. I’m happy for her.

Deep in me, though, pushed low and flat, is a seething rage that turns the contents of my stomach to toxic waste. To get by, I drink way too much wine late at night. Or, I get my bike out of the garage, pedal hard and sweat myself blind as if in training to complete in the Iron Man competition. Or, I press my children to my sides and read silly books like Captain Underpants and Bad Kitty. The latter is the only way to actually calm the fury. Warm bodies, sweet breath, steady hearts and the familiar sound of their laughter. They are whole and loved and kept children. Their proximity makes me whole and loved too—for a while.

~

Beige cords and a black cardigan. I pull myself together in these clothes because they are everyday attire. Comfortable. After I am dressed and ready, I make a top down survey in the full-length mirror. There I am—Jennifer Lauck. I have long dark hair, deep dark eyes, a narrow face and a slim form. My sweater is pilled and has a hole under the arm. My pants have a ripped pocket. I don’t care.

I don’t need to impress Catherine. Meeting her isn’t a contest or a job interview.

Over these forty-four years of life, I have been adopted twice. I have been homeless, ripped off and thrown away. I have been relocated twenty seven times. On my own, I have put myself through college, have been an investigative reporter and have written three books. I have met Oprah Winfrey and toured around the world. I’ve seen my work in languages I cannot read: Finnish, Dutch and Japanese. I have married twice and divorced twice. I have had two children—who are now seven and eleven. I have become a Buddhist; I have meditated in the high, thin air of the Rocky Mountains. I have taken spiritual teachings from His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

I have done so much and yet a part of me waits and has always been waiting. It’s as if I haven’t gathered enough speed to lift off the ground and truly take flight. I’ve been a bird without feathers but today, I get what all human beings are supposed to have—a mother—my mother.

Meeting my mother will serve just one purpose in my life.

~

In the main terminal of Portland International Airport, I am surrounded by a fast moving stream of travelers—arriving and departing.

I hold a bundle of roses cut from my back yard. They are the best of the year, the buds the size of extra large eggs. I’ve added sprigs of rosemary and lavender. The arrangement is wrapped in a white silk scarf.

This is a perfect demonstration of the kaleidoscope of conflicting emotion within.  I hate the mother who gave me away. I care enough to bring her the best from my garden.  It’s a miracle I am functioning at all.

At the inbound waiting area, I sit and wait.

I check the time on my cell phone and then I check the time on my watch. There is a five-minute difference between the watch and the phone. I readjust the time on the watch.

In-bound travelers fill the corridor, people with busy expressions and quick strides. A businesswoman pulls a wheelie travel bag and talks on the telephone. Another woman, with a baby in a stroller, goes by. Next is a teenager listening to his i-pod—jeans around his hips.

I shift to the edge of my seat.

Did she change her mind? Was her flight delayed?

I check my phone. No message.

A tall woman in high heels walks my way. She’s wavy in my field of vision, like a mirage in the desert.

I stand up.

The woman wears open toed strappy heels and slim fitting jeans. She has narrow hips, a lean body and wide shoulders she rolls back with the stance of a trained dancer.  She has high round cheekbones and her hair is a lovely shade of auburn.

“Jennifer?” she asks.

I nod. I think I nod.

We embrace but it’s not like a hug, it’s more like a magnetic slap against her body and on pure instinct, my arms go around her back, my chin digs into her collarbone and I inhale the smell of her almond perfume. A flood of primitive relief moves through me.  This is my mother. She is the one.

Catherine is more restrained. Her side of the embrace is brief and stiff. I’ve heard it is that way when the birth mother has been found—they feel exposed and embarrassed.  She has lived all my life in shame and secrecy.

She is the first to break away.

While I make a mental note to give her room, an arms length is all I can allow. I keep my hand on her shoulder and feel the shape of her bones and even the texture of her muscles and skin through the fabric of her silky blouse. My mother is utterly familiar—like a dream I’ve been having all my life.

I regress as if I am one of my own children when they are in proximity to my body.  I assume ownership of this stranger, my mother.

“My God, you are amazing,” I hear myself say. “Look at you.”

I take her in from the top of short auburn curls down to her toes painted a shining red. I touch her arms, to her elbows and wind my fingers into hers. “Do you play music?” I ask.

“No, no,” she laughs.

I touch her hips. I turn her right to left and then left to right. I go around her, full circle—one way and then the other. “Look at your fucking legs,” I say. “They are so incredibly long.”

She laughs out loud.

“Look at your fucking legs,” she says. She does this flashy gesture, opening her hands like a game show hostess.

I look at my own hands, which are just like hers and I see them in a new way. I have my mother’s hands.

“How tall are you?” she asks.

“Five nine.”

“I’m five ten,” she says.

She holds out her foot. “What size are your feet?” she asks.

“I’m a nine,” I say, kicking my foot out of my sandal.

“Me too,” she says.

We laugh as if our shoe size is hilarious.

~

I take Catherine to breakfast. A pancake and coffee place called Zells. We order the same thing, eggs on toast. While we eat, we talk fast. My words spill over hers and her words spill over mine. We are the same that way. We are talkers.

We drink cup after cup of coffee, reaching for the cream at the same time and then crack up when our hands collide.

We use our hands when we talk. We make windmill-sized gestures to get our points across. Our voices rise and then fall in the same vocal range.

When we have wiped our mouths with our napkins and our plates are cleared, Catherine reaches into her purse and takes out a photo. She places it on the table between us—as if relieved to unburden herself. “It’s the only photo I have of him,” she says. “It’s not very good.”

The photo of my father is on a large sheet of color copy paper and he wears a military uniform. He poses next to a cannon six times larger than he is. He looks like a child playing dress up in grown man’s clothes.

“I don’t know a lot. We were just kids. I know his mother was divorced. I don’t think they were close.”

Catherine searches over my head, as if more memory lives there. “Um, he came back to Reno not long after you were born—we kind of fell back in together, eloped when I got out of high school. I got pregnant on our honeymoon. After that, he was stationed in Germany. I had our son. It was a bad marriage. I missed my family. I left him in Germany and came back to Reno with the baby. I never saw him again. I wish I could tell you more. You know he’s dead now?”

“Yes,” I say, “I heard.”

Catherine shrugs her pretty shoulders.

I study the photo with more intensity. The man is out of focus to me. All I know of my father is that he became a house painter and he smoked. He died of emphysema in 2005.

Catherine reaches to tuck a loose strand behind my ear.

“I can’t get over being here, together,” she says. Her voice is different, soft and a little sad. “I’ve missed your whole life.”

She drops her hand into her lap. Did she touch me to begin with? Did I make it all up?

Sometimes, when I touch my own son in a casual way—running my hand over the shape of his head or rubbing his back—and then stop, he’ll take my hand and put it back on his body. It’s his way to say, “Keep touching me, Mom.”

I want to take Catherine’s hand and have her keep touching me but I don’t. I am too shy.

~

We leave the restaurant and go to a house that has been offered by a friend. The kitchen has been stocked with cheese, fruit, bread, chocolate, wine and teas.

Catherine and I spend our day on the back deck, surrounded by vines and passionflowers. We drink pots of tea and eat dark chocolate in the September sun. She likes dark chocolate as much as I do.

We perform an awkward dance of togetherness with steps we don’t know how to execute. If I were a baby, I’d be naked in her arms and she’d touch me everywhere.  She’d count my toes and press her face into my belly. But I’m a grown woman and neither of us knows how this is supposed to be. The threat of intimacy between us is overwhelming and intoxicating. She holds my hand for a long time and then, without warning, pulls back and crosses her arms over herself.  I lean into her, closing my eyes to take in the sound of her voice and then scoot away, a twist of queasiness in my stomach.

~

“Do you want to see my photos?” I ask. A thick manila file holds images that go back to infancy.

“I want to see everything,” she says.

I move swiftly through my life story, using each photo as a marker on the time line. I don’t linger on the losses or the pain or the loneliness. I tell myself Catherine doesn’t need to know, not now, not today. I want her to see the good things, the accomplishments and the success. I sit close to her while she looks at younger and still younger versions of me.

“This is me in high school,” I say. “Can you believe the size of my nose?”

“You have your father’s nose,” she says.

“Really?”

“It suits you,” she says. “I like it.”

I am down to three photos, all baby pictures. In one, my first adoptive mother Janet poses with me in front of our little ranch house on Mary Street in Carson City. I’m swaddled in blue and yellow and have a bonnet on my head. Janet wears a matching outfit with a big yellow hat tilted in a jaunty angle.

Catherine removes her glasses and looks at the picture as if trying to find a way to pass through and go back in time.

“She’s not holding you close enough,” Catherine finally says. “What’s wrong with her? I thought she was a mother already?”

I don’t answer because I don’t know how to tell her that nothing is wrong with Janet. It’s called being a stiff armed baby. I’m not letting Janet hold me closer because she’s not my mother. I am rejecting Janet.

Catherine looks up, ready for the next photo. It is another of Janet and me.

She makes another sound of disgust. “Why isn’t she holding you closer?”

Anger flashes in me like a lighting hit on a dry hot night.  I want to say, “Where were you? Why didn’t you come?”

But I don’t.

~

The sun arcs over the house and a squirrel leaps from branch to branch of an old maple tree.

My photos are fanned out on the patio table. She holds the three of me as a baby and studies each one for such a long time.

When Catherine finally speaks again, her voice is so low I have to lean closer still.

Read Part Two

View the FAQ’s

This comprehensive series is designed to meet most recommended pre-adoption education requirements for international or domestic adoption or to supplement agency trainings. We believe history is important in defining the issues adoptive children face and creating positive outcomes. Successful parenting comes from being fully aware and prepared for potential difficult issues that some families may face. Our goal is to provide participants with tools and resources for the lifelong adventure of being an adoptive family.
This 10 hour class (separated into two workshops) will include:

• Adoption in the U.S.A
• Becoming an adoptive family
• The attachment process, parental claiming, and bonding
• Communicating with and advocating for your child
• Lifelong issues of adoption
• Nurture vs. Nature
• Adoptism, racism, and diversity in the U.S. culture
• Preparing for the first hours and days of being an adoptive family

Here are some comments about this class from past participants:

• Thank you for a safe environment to share our excitement and our fears.
• Very, very eye-opening, and very positive too.
• I liked all the first hand information we got from real experience.
• Gave me brain food to review and plan for how to parent my new child.
• This made me see the adoption process through my child’s eyes.
• I feel much more prepared. Anyone adopting should take this class.

Details
Instructor(s):  Mina Bacigalupi
When:  2 day class – July 31 & August 1 ,2010 (8:30 am- 2:30pm)
Where:  Portland, Oregon
Cost:  $250.00 per family for whole series (singles are encouraged to bring a support person)

Registration is required.

.

.

Cancellation Policy

Where I reside in Asian-American society, as a Korean adoptee, has been referred to as the “third space.” It is a place that hovers between who I was raised to be and who I was born to be.

I am a Korean adoptee. I was raised in rural Minnesota by white Lutherans of German and Scandinavian descent. Both my parents are generational farmers. My dad and sister have blond hair and blue eyes, as do many of my cousins and friends. I spent a good piece of my life in envy of that blond hair and, especially, those blue eyes. Even though I do not remember a time when I did not know I was adopted from Korea, I do remember a long period of time when I was raised to forget that I was from Korea; to believe that I was the same as everyone else around me, and that everyone else would treat me as if that were true. It seemed to work . . . for a while.

Being familiar with an entire community’s life stories is an advantage and disadvantage of living in a small town. It was an advantage for me because everyone knew how I came to be in my family. I could claim membership to my family with no questions asked. Small town living was a disadvantage because my family and I didn’t have to deal with my race. I could easily become “just like them,” “just a daughter,” “just a friend,” “just a sister,” “just a cousin.” Just, just, just. Even though I was very comfortable with just being “me,” I can see how my affinity for rooting for the underdog, by being moved every time we learned about civil rights in school, by not wanting to eliminate people based on their surface appearance, was me telling myself that I was more than just; I was something other.

In college, I constructed my world to resemble my childhood world. People who would say they saw me as “just” were happily welcome to be a part of my life. I craved others who would accept me as the person I was on the inside and not be guided by my physical appearance. I went on one date with an Asian man, but couldn’t do another because I was convinced I wasn’t Asian enough for him. I didn’t have Asian parents or Asian friends. The whole time we were on our date I was waiting for him to yell, “Phony!” and make me confess I wasn’t a “real” Asian. With my college friends and colleagues, my ethnicity was discussed only within the framework of comedy, as if being the only person of color in a group of white people was always hilarious. I thought this humor helped me own my ethnicity, but it only created more distance between my identity and my ethnicity. Throughout my young adult life, I carried around this sense of being lonely, even in a crowd of people. However, I couldn’t pinpoint the source of this melancholy feeling.

Later in my college career, I transferred to a much larger university. I had the opportunity to take classes specifically related to race, to explore the idea of white privilege and to understand that I no longer had access to this privilege via my family. I started to accept myself as other. However, my social circle remained very white, as I was too afraid of rejection by communities of color. I feared that the people in this community would discard me because my white upbringing made me unauthentic. I only looked like a Korean women, but I thought, talked and walked like a Caucasian.

When I first heard the term “twinkie” to describe a person who was ethnically Asian, but was culturally white (or strived to “act” white), I was so relieved to finally have a label for myself. Even though the person who was describing this term was referring to twinkie as a pejorative term, I was just so happy to learn there was a group of Asians with whom I could identify. But, I did not know where these twinkies were or how to find them. So, I remained in isolation and alone in my struggles.

Then I discovered the online adoptee community. I devoured a handful of blogs that spoke to my race and adoption experiences. I was astonished and relieved to read that other people had experienced many of the same racist encounters that I had; that the authors found it difficult to feel like a “real” member of their ethnic group. Reading these blog entries and comments was the first time I ever felt validation about my own experience as a transracial adoptee. I could read something and say, “I know!” authentically and with authority. A few years later, with help from my therapist and some new friends in the adoption community, I have fully incorporated adoption into my life experience. Where I once thought of adoption as a finite event and something I should “get over,” I now acknowledge that adoption is a lifelong experience that will always be an influence on my life. I can confidently identify as a Korean adoptee. Something I was raised to be, but something different than my birthright.

My current challenge is about authenticity and authority. Given my upbringing, do I know enough about Asian-Americans to claim membership to the group? I know a lot about the culture of rural Minnesotans, but I have never had an Asian-American role model in my everyday life. Do I have the authority to claim to a part of the Asian-American experience based on my physical appearance and the fact that I was born in an Asian country?

I think a lot about what I now believe to be my birthright and how it was taken away from me by many different forces – social, economic, political, religious and individual. Because I am aware of these forces, I am comfortable laying claim to a heritage that was afforded to me by birth, but denied me in my adoptive family. I have not been raised by Korean parents or even lived in a Korean community, but I am living out a piece of the Asian-American experience; an experience that is unique to the Asian-American community itself. Even though it is often downplayed or ignored, I am an Asian immigrant who was sent as a baby to fend for myself in a land of strangers. A land where I could not be comforted by the sound of my language or filled with food cooked by my grandmother’s hand; where I was raised to become a stranger to my own motherland.

I am part of a people that must find the balance between our white families and our needs as Asian-Americans. We have to find acceptance from our white families that we are in fact Asian-Americans and the courage to seek out other Asian-Americans for guidance and support. I am still building courage to seek what I need, but I have been given confidence by my fellow adoptees and by a welcoming Korean-American community. Their acceptance and guidance has slowly been fusing the gap between the person I was raised to be and the person I want to be. And, always, I will hover in the “third space” with my fellow adoptees. We cling to each other as we each try to find our own balance.

Instructor: MereAnn Reid, MA
When:  Three part series, TBA
Where: Collage Art Supply, Portland, Oregon
Cost: $65 per person

Registration Form

View the Flyer

Join us for a hands-on, creative workshop and adoptive parent discussion group. This 3-session series will include a review of major themes in adoption and child development, help using honest and positive language in sharing difficult pre-adoption history, and work on actual pages for your child’s lifestory book. Creating an accurate, beautiful, and lasting account of your family’s adoption transition and life together is an important step in helping your child make meaning of their pre-adoption history and identity as an adoptee.

This workshop offers time, space, and support in creating a tool for bonding, healing pre-adoption trauma, encouraging healthy attachment, and making memories as a family. Sessions will include small group discusssion, time for working with words and images on the page, and suggestions for mapping out your next pages.

The series will be facilitated by MereAnn Reid, MA, a child and family therapist certified in working with adoptive and foster families. Topics will include child development, trauma recovery, openness in adoption, finding your voice as an adoptive parent, and looking at your family’s adoption journey from a child-centered perspective. Some starter craft supplies will be provided, along with general discussion topics each week. Participant input will be encouraged throughout the series, and a 10% discount on additional supplies is being offered by our community partner, Collage Art Supply, who is hosting the event in their NE Alberta store.

This class is also offered on a request basis. Please contact us to discuss details.

Cancellation Policy

Facilitator:  Astrid Dabbeni
When:  October 2,  2010
Time:  9:00-11:00 am
Where:  TBA in Portland, Oregon
Cost:  $30 per person

Registration form

Cancellation policy

View the Flyer

Adoption begins with the birth mother’s story, yet often their voices go unheard. Even in open adoption, the intimate experience of the birth mother may be unspoken. Though often difficult to hear, the birth mother experience is an integral part of gaining a better understanding of adoption and the impact relinquishment may have on all members of the mosaic. This is a unique opportunity to hear from local birth mothers.

In addition to sharing their personal experiences of being birth mothers, the panel will also discuss why it’s important to know and understand these stories.

Topics that will be covered:

• Dispelling the birth mother myth
• Social, religious, and political views influencing the choice to relinquish
• Connection of the birth mother’s experience with the adoptee’s experience
• Past and current support and legal protection for birth mothers
• Ways to honor the birth mother

Connect. Support. Create.

Facilitators: Astrid Dabbeni  and  Shelise Gieseke
When: 6 week session begins Monday, September 20
Time: 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm 
Where: TaborSpace, 5441 SE Belmont , Portland, Oregon
Cost: $180 per person (Full and partial scholarships are available; email info@adoptionmosaic.org for details)

View the Flyer

Common Threads is an adult adoptee group open to adoptees over the age of 18. In this 6 week group we will:

• Share our common threads & experience a sense of community
• Explore how our identities can change over time
• Discuss frequently asked questions, such as “Is search & reunion right for me?” or “How do I integrate my birth culture into my life?”
• Inspire and empower the community of adopted adults in the Portland area
• Discover ways to tell our stories through the creative art of your choice (writing, art, music, etc.). No artistic talent is needed to participate.

Join us in building our adult adoptee community; to share and explore how adoption shapes who we are today.

Cancellation Policy

Kelly: is a mama, writer, reader and thinker. She has a graduate degree in sociology with her thesis research focused on heteronormativity and resulting health care disparities. Kelly is mama to one child, adopted transracially through a domestic open adoption.

Shelise: is a Korean adoptee with an undergraduate degree in communication and is interested in the way society shapes the adoptee experience through language.  She was raised on a farm in southern Minnesota with three siblings who were not adopted.  Shelise is excited to work with all members of the adoption constellation to create a safe and open learning environment.

Shelise: There are a lot fantasies surrounding adoption. For instance, in literature “orphans” go to seek out their roots and it often gifts them with something extraordinary, or rejects them and they choose to embrace their adoptive family only.

Kelly: Yeah, there’s the dualism of fairy tale or tragedy, of one or the other. There’s little in our language that allows for complexity and nuance–holding history and present circumstances all at once.

As an adoptive parent, one thing I’ve seen in my family of origin is a situating of adoption as a rescue–comments about “how lucky” my daughter is, and how “good” we are to seek openness.

Shelise: I agree. There is the implied dynamic of gifting and gratitude. One of the things I’ve talked about in therapy and with my mom is that my family really needs/needed to believe that I was born into our family. So instead of trying to negotiate how I could be thought of as a “part” of my family, we pretended that I was born into my family, to the detriment of us all, I think

Kelly: So, your parents were negating this huge part of your life and existence in order to become more comfortable with adoption?

Shelise: Absolutely. I can’t speak to why they needed so badly to pretend I was born to them, but I think part of it was because they didn’t have any tools to navigate their feelings.

Kelly: I think that the dynamic of gifting and gratitude is a fantasy script–it allows adoptive families to ignore grief and loss.

Shelise: Exactly. That’s what my parents were doing. In turn, as an adult I have very few coping skills, except for avoidance.

Kelly: And what you’re talking about, Shelise, sounds to me like a coping mechanism to get around looking at the really painful parts of adoption. If the story can be constructed as “born” or “natural”, then there’s really no impetus to dig further. I can see what you’re saying about avoidance.

Shelise: For example, one of our cats has been missing for nine days and I’ve barely processed this loss. To the detriment of my relationship, my husband is grieving alone. And it’s hard on him. I just can’t go there, but I’m trying.

Kelly: So, you’ve learned to avoid difficulty, as a way to survive it. At least for a while.

Shelise: Yes. The way I see it, for me, personally, since I’ve never had a chance to relieve some of those feelings of grief and loss, I now have what I call a bottomless well of sadness, and having to deal with that is painful. I’ve never had a chance to relieve some of the burden and now I carry an unlimited load.

Kelly: It sounds so painful, Shelise. And I feel like I understand that by not having the chance to process loss all along, now it’s just this incredible load of sadness.

Shelise: I hate to admit it, but it is. In turn, I feel resentful because I’m left figuring out how to cope on my own.

Kelly: And really, if your parents were trying to convince themselves and you, that you were born into your family, then you were left alone to figure out otherwise and deal with it.

Shelise: Agreed.

Another fantasy we hold is that once a child is with their adoptive family, there will be no issues – especially if the child was placed as a baby.

Kelly: Yes, and this is tied tightly to the fantasy that adoption is the best thing for this child–period. As long as we’re unwillingly to dissect adoption as an institution, we have to make ourselves feel good by suggesting that this is the best case scenario for everyone involved. So, of course, that kiddo is going to be just fine now!

Shelise: Agreed. I often hear people say: “You were just a baby” or “Good thing they’re so young.” This also hurts older kids eligible for adoption, this idea that they are already damaged and that babies are “pure” and completely impressionable.

Kelly: Yeah, it does hurt older kids. And this language hurts first/birth parents, too, I think.

Shelise: In what ways?

Kelly: It suggests that the child is damaged by time with their first parents–there’s the assumption that the child is better off if s/he is adopted quickly. I think this is in line with the fantasy we were talking about earlier- there’s an oversimplification of the players and possibilities.

Shelise: Yes. Also, there is the idea that there is a lack of love on the part of birth parents.

Kelly: How so?

Shelise: Another kind of fantasy is that adoptees are unwanted by their birth parents. I feel when people say “unable” they are often implying “unwilling.” Maybe for some adoptive parents (just a guess on my part), if they believe their child was unwanted that makes the child more “theirs” because they accept the child.

The overall fantasy here is that adoption is simple and a win-win situation.

Kelly: I’ve heard “unable” paired with love, too–like: “Your birth mom loved you so much, but she wasn’t able to take care of you.” This feels different than “unwilling” to me. For me, talking about why a child was placed for adoption is really daunting.

Shelise: And the statement: “Loved you so much she gave you away” is so hard for adoptees because it suggests that people who love you will leave you.

Kelly: Yes, that pairing of loving and leaving is rough. It’s so much easier if we can make everything win-win. But that’s not real. It’s not just that! It’s so much more…and it’s not linear either. There’s loss and beauty and love and grief on all sides.

Kelly: is a mama, writer, reader and thinker. She has a graduate degree in sociology with her thesis research focused on heteronormativity and resulting health care disparities. Kelly is mama to one child, adopted transracially through a domestic open adoption.

Shelise: is a Korean adoptee with an undergraduate degree in communication and is interested in the way society shapes the adoptee experience through language.  She was raised on a farm in southern Minnesota with three siblings who were not adopted.  Shelise is excited to work with all members of the adoption constellation to create a safe and open learning environment.

Many people outside of, and within, the adoption community don’t realize there is a specific “language of adoption.” What do we mean when we talk about “adoption language?” What do we mean when we refer to “positive, or respectful, adoption language?”

Kelly: Basically, we’re referring to terms and ways of speaking that define and describe the experience of adoption. Positive or respectful language is the thoughtful use of words–situating terms with an awareness of differing experiences.

Shelise: I think that adoption requires a narrative outside the status quo, as to how families are made. Also, since there is usually a lot of emotions involved in the adoption process, how we talk about it can become very tricky.

Kelly: Absolutely, Shelise. Adoption requires that we talk about families in ways that we may not have familiarity or practice with. And I agree that the emotions involved make this process challenging.

Shelise: Since it is an experience that hasn’t exactly been “normalized” in society, it is important to have words to describe choices and feelings to those outside and inside the community of adoption. I think we have to talk about positive or respectful language, because there are a lot of hurtful ways ignorance can influence how one talks about adoption.

Kelly: True. Ignorance and lack of exposure do influence that.

Shelise: For example statements like: “You were unwanted,” “You can’t have kids of your ‘own’” or “Who are your ‘real’ parents?”

Kelly: Mm-hmm, there’s a lot of language around ownership.

Shelise: I think it is interesting when ownership becomes important to adoptive and birth families.

Kelly: In part, I think it’s about how children are situated in our culture, but it’s also about the need for reassurance, about belonging and security.

Shelise: I agree. There are also a lot of class issues going on. And I think one of the reasons we need adoption language spelled out and defined is because there is a lot of fantasy surrounding adoption and language perpetuates it.

Kelly: I agree.

Shelise: For example the idea of whom and what is an orphan. Technically, orphans have no living parents, but many contemporary orphans do not qualify for this definition. Currently, orphans are synonymous with abandoned or relinquished. Even if we are conscious that a child’s parents are living, we often talk about them like they are not.

Kelly: Disempowering language like “gave up” and “couldn’t keep” constructs a picture of first/birth parents as helpless and victimized, whereas often adoptive parents are described as “choosing” children and constructing “forever families.” There’s a duality there that divides parents into separate constituents with the child put in between.

Then we ask adoptees to participate in the story by figuring out who their “real” parents are–as a society, we aren’t living out many models that are more complex than this.

Shelise: Agreed. Through language, we have defined the roles for birth parents and adoptive parents. Who is the bad guy and who is good.

Kelly: Yes, Shelise, wow. It’s so true–there is a constant erasure of birth families. I hadn’t thought about this notion of orphans in terms of adoptees: Who is bad, who is good and without the possibility that there’s more than that.

Shelise: Yes, it speaks to your comment about how limited it seems we are in facing complexity. I think another fantasy is that material gain equals gain, period. Look at how celebrity adoptions are talked about.

Kelly: Right, because if our language demands that we figure out who’s at fault, and who’s the “real” parent, then there’s no space for building relationships across categories. Oh! I’m so glad you’re bringing that up–such an important element in the fantasy.

Shelise: Yes. It also goes back to what you said about ownership. Who is the more qualified or rightful parent? The one with resources or the one without? We know who the mainstream picks.

Kelly: It’s so short-sighted to suggest that a child has elevated into a better life because they have more economic privilege. And, in fact, instead of working to support parents, we suggest that folks without resources are simply unfit.

Shelise: Yes and again, I think this is to mitigate the loss component in adoption and also to avoid talking about why this have/have-not dynamic exits.

Kelly: I really do think that these are all tactics to erase the complexities of adoption–to wrap it up in a pleasant package.

Shelise: Yeah, because it’s true face is kind of ugly.

Kelly: Otherwise, it just gets too messy–too much emotion, too much to figure out, too much to look at.

Shelise: Also, somewhere along the way, people not involved in adoption were given license to assume and talk about adoption any way they like.

Kelly: I agree. Adoption, when we’re being honest, is brutally painful. It’s not just a happy ending.

I wonder, who do you think defines adoption language? Where is it coming from? Who has the power to create and perpetuate it?

Shelise: I think the current paradigm has been created by adoption agencies and adoptive parents-the kind of parents who fantasize about adoption.

Kelly: So, bluntly, the people who have the most to gain from adoption?

Shelise: Yes. There is a shift happening, but the mainstream is most influenced by these parties.

Kelly: I agree. These also happen to be the people who hold the most power institutionally and economically.

Shelise: Do you feel this paradigm accepts you, being in a same sex partnership?

Kelly: Can you clarify? What do you mean by this paradigm?

Shelise: I guess I mean agencies and the adoptive parent community. Is there an assumption that heterosexual families are the only deserving parents?

Kelly: There are definitely barriers for LGBTQ folks considering adoption–many countries won’t allow queer folks to adopt and many agencies deny LGBTQ people access to their services. My partner and I worked with a queer-friendly agency and chose open adoption, so our sexualities were never in question. But I do think that in larger society, there is still the assumption that hetero folks occupy the role of parent.

More generally about language, I feel strongly about creating a language of adoption that is supportive and empowering for all folks in the adoption constellation. But at the same time, the task feels insurmountable sometimes–how can we create a language that speaks to all? How can power be shared? How can we start to topple some of the myths and fantasies so that we can hold onto more of the truth?

Shelise: Good question. One suggestion is to give power to the voices other than agencies.

Kelly: Yes! And create more opportunities for dialogue across and within groups.

Something I’ve been wrestling with is the idea of “honest adoption language” rather than “respectful adoption language.” It’s super hard to think about–and even harder to talk about! I think that honest adoption language–language that really gives voice to individual experience–is powerful. It is a fire that can burn away the social engineering of adoption into a pretty package.

Shelise: I think people some times perceive honest as scary. For instance, people try to attribute adoptee anger to bad parenting and that’s all. Often we want to discredit other’s experience if it adds to complexity.

Kelly: At the same time, for example, if a first parent’s honest adoption language is used by someone outside of the adoption community, or by someone with questionable ethics, then it’s really dangerous and can be hurtful and damaging. It’s so tricky. The same can be said of an adoptee or adoptive parent’s honest adoption language.

Shelise: Yes, there is always this fine balance going on.

Kelly: It sort of reminds me of discussions about reclamation of labels, like “queer.” Taking something that’s been constructed as harmful and claiming it and redefining it. This is well and good when queer folks choose it, but not so great when used by oppressors. I remember when I first came across an adoptee blogwriter’s use of the word “abductee” to describe the transracial adoptee experience–it was so incredibly hard for me to look at.

Shelise: Yes. In the end, adoption is almost always complex. But complexity and happiness are not mutually exclusive, as many people think.

Kelly: I agree–complexity can be so hard to hold sometimes, but it does not lead only to misery!

The plane is beginning to descend on the island.

It is still too early – the city lights are just starting to come on amidst a dull bluish-gray fog. I take out my camera in the hopes of getting some first shots of my birth country, to capture this moment – but I cannot get a good view: I am in a middle row, and the window closest to me is on the right, but the passenger has closed it. So I contend with the view on my left, which happens to be nearly two rows away, and I only see bits and pieces of my homeland.

Somehow the shock seems so surreal. Is that really my birth country? Am I really “back”?

My vision blurs and a tear rolls down my cheek. I wipe it away quickly.

I wonder if my brother is awake, I wonder if he has eaten and is on his way, how will I recognize him in person, how will I communicate with him? My acquaintance passenger who – in her visit to see her relatives – has graciously agreed to “guide” me through my first overseas flight and help with the introductions, but she will not be by my side much longer. My brother knows my arrival time and is picking me up but will he be there in time and what if he isn’t? Then what?

My thoughts keep running around in crazed patterns, each more panicked than the last as the plane dips downwards into the airport. My nerves are on such high end that I visit the bathroom multiple times in an attempt to relieve my anxiety, but it doesn’t work.

Oh god, oh god, we are landing in a place where no one speaks English, where I’m meeting people I haven’t seen since my birth.

~

We retrieve our luggage. I go through customs and pray the man checking for citizenship does not ask me any questions in Mandarin. The signs by customs and luggage chutes are bilingual, but as soon as we reach the main area, most only continue in Chinese. I cannot read them and my temporary state of calm starts to dissipate. We reach a payphone and I tell my acquaintance, Yuan-Feng, to please dial my brother’s number so we can ensure he is actually at the airport.

She takes out her international phone card and then glances up, looking over at someone past me. “Is that your family there?”

I turn around.

My father and sister are standing there a few feet away, looking at me. So this is Xiao-Ping, my sister. No words are necessary to confirm that they are indeed biologically related to me. We mirror each other’s facial features. She is nearly identical in height to me. I stand there, staring at them; I am well aware that neither of them will understand any English I could say, and they have been made aware of the fact that I do not really speak much Mandarin. But there are still no words to describe the surrealism of that moment – when I met my father and sister for the first time in person.

My sister stands there, clutching her cell phone in an awkward manner. Our gazes meet, and then my father smiles a bit and asks me something. Instinctively, I turn to Yuan-Feng, and she responds accordingly. I watch, baffled, as she continues the exchange with him and gestures to an exit inside the airport.

We head outside of the airport to where a van is waiting. I can immediately tell from the facial features that he is elder Brother. He wears glasses! That is surprising since none of his pictures have ever shown any indication of weak eyesight; I suppose those glasses are just required for driving. He says something to my father and they organize the suitcases into the back of the van. I look to Xiao-Ping and she points to the backseat of the vehicle. Yuan-Feng relays that my brother will be giving her a ride as well.

The van is quiet with the radio turned down low. The music emits a blur of Mandarin news and pop songs. Xiao-Ping is sitting next to elder Brother in front. I sit in back with my backpack on my knees, Yuan-Feng on my right, and my father next to her. It is so odd to be seated in a car with people I am genetically related to, yet who are by many accounts mere strangers.

My father says some things in Mandarin, but I am helpless to respond, and so Yuan-Feng does that for me. After each exchange, I ask her for a brief summary. Of course, she has been living in Canada for a while now too, so she can answer his questions without needing to clarify with me. Silence descends upon the van. I take out my phrasebook and flip through it for a moment.

Phrasebooks are pretty useful for travel dialogue. Unfortunately, they aren’t exactly loaded with dialogues meant for an adult adoptee who has returned to her birth country. I throw it back into my backpack and watch the rainy weather as we pass out of the airport highway.

Yuan-Feng nudges me. “You should speak Mandarin,” she tells me.

I glance at my father, who is watching my siblings. Then I look back at her. “I can’t! They won’t understand my accent!”

“But you should try. You’re going to be staying with them, aren’t you?”

She has made a point. My gaze lingers back to my father. Er, what do I call him by? I look helplessly at Yuan-Feng, who seems to take the hint, and uncomfortably nudges him. “Xian sheng?” she says, in the polite way to greet an elder male who is not of familial relation.

“En?” he says. She motions to me and his gaze meets mine. I take a deep breath and try to ask my first question.

“Mingtian ni shang ban ma?” Do you have work tomorrow?

He looks baffled at my accent, and then proceeds to ramble on. Yuan-Feng re-translates my question in the proper tonal inflection and is also quick to relay that they were able to take the day off to meet me but that tomorrow and on weekdays I will be by myself.

Much of the ride back is spent in silence.

*

After about 45 minutes in awkward silence and the occasional exchange, Yuan-Feng is dropped off at her relatives’ place. I really am all on my own now.

Fear threatens to overwhelm me and my vision blurs again, indicating that emotionally I am at my breaking point. Intellectually I know I am safe, I know I am with people who will take care of me, but being surrounded by shop signs that I cannot read, a dialect that I do not decipher and pronunciations that my mouth will not enunciate is not an encouraging feeling.

I sort of want to just somehow ask them to drive back to the airport so I can go back home.

Of course, that’s not really an option.

After watching my siblings tease each other in the front seat for a few minutes, I take another deep breath and try to ask another question, speaking slowly and as clearly as possible. “Women hen kuai hui jia ma?” Will we be returning home soon?

My father glances at me. I wonder what he is thinking of me so far, what he thinks of my pitiful Mandarin and my overall receptiveness while in their midst. I wonder what he thinks of me – his daughter from over twenty years ago. “Hen kuai, dui.” Soon, yes.

*

I soon discovered that once we were in their residence that communication was not as difficult in context, aided by body language. My first few days were an incredible strain because I had not expected the local dialects to be spoken so quickly. I had taken classes and done some language exchanges, so I knew Mandarin would be spoken at a much faster pace than what my previous experiences indicated, but it was still a shock and complete readjustment when the reality surrounded me.

My phrasebooks did not help. My dictionary – and recalling the grammar syntax I had absorbed from my textbooks – saved my life, allowing me to communicate basic needs. For example, when Xiao-Ping led me to the bathroom, she pointed to the towel, said “maojin” and imitated scrubbing her hair. I connected the sound to the object and repeated her actions to indicate I had understood.

I would also point to an object such as a shampoo bottle, motion to the shower head, and say “xi toufa” while doing the charade of lathering my hair to confirm that I could use that shampoo for washing my hair. Xiao-Ping would also point to the shower dial and say the words “leng“ while turning it to the left, and then “re” while turning it to the right, indicating that the left was to make cold water come out, and turning it right meant that hot water would come.

In some ways, the language barrier gave some fairly comedic moments, as my siblings had to act out things. In other ways, it remained a nuisance more than anything, particularly when I could not clarify about family photos very well because of my accent. Sometimes I could ask simple questions and use body language to compensate for when my accent made my Mandarin incomprehensible, but that didn’t always mean I could understand the responses.

Perhaps what remains the biggest obstacle pertaining to this barrier is the heartache at not being able connect emotionally – not having the memories of this family, being locked out linguistically, and feeling as though any chance at rebuilding a relationship is based on my Mandarin survival skills.

But if given the chance to do it again, to step back onto the plane and return, to go through that moment of terror where I truly did not think things would be “okay”, to navigate my way as a long-lost family member, would I do it?

Absolutely.