update #9 on Kickstarter.

I am placing this update here as well as on my Kickstarter board because I know that not everyone will be able to see the update.  I still haven't figured out who gets sent what, so if you have read it, I apologize for the repeat, but if not, I hope you do.

 

 

This project is about healing.  It is born from the belief that telling one’s story, telling the truth is a road to healing.  I believe the secrecy and shame are like slow internal infections and that it is extremely important to remove them from ourselves.

I have spent the past few days just reading adoption blogs.  There is so much anger in them.  There is good reason for people to be angry.  There has been a lot of harm, a lot of lying done in the name of being good.  Shame and secrecy have lead peoples’ lives for decades.  Once they discover they are not alone and that they didn’t do something because they were bad or sinful, but vulnerable and scared, anger arises in volcanic bursts.

One major focus of the anger is the new cultural norm to label everything a disorder; everyone has a mental illness or a disorder.  Adoptees that were removed from their mothers at birth and never found a sense of belonging have a disorder; this disorder has made them high risk for depression, acting out behaviours, suicide and addiction.  What good does it do to label them with a disorder?  Why not address the cause not the symptoms?  Why not help people understand the feelings, not label them with a disease?

It has long been recognized that “calling it by name” is the first step to recovery or to changing.  My therapist once told me that “emotions are like dogs, you have to call them by name and then tell them to sit.”  That has lead me to naming my emotions, recognizing them for what they are and not labeling myself as sick.

This project is about healing; it is about naming our truths, removing shame and guilt, taking care of ourselves.  To do so we’ll have to name cultural conditions that facilitate our guilt, our shame.  “How could you do this to me?”  “How could you ruin the family?”  I was never asked those questions, my mother never uttered them.  I was lucky.  I read those words a lot in other mothers’ stories.  My guilt came from thinking only someone cold and heartless would give away their own baby.  That is the shame that has directed my life until recently.

Why should everyone else care? They should care because we are talking about healing people, family and community. Our communities have hundreds of people in them wrestling with their own reasons for shame and secrecy, their own reasons to tell stories.  Adoption is just one such issue, the one I care about the most, the one I understand the most.  But it is not the only one.  We need to begin to heal as individuals and as communities.  We need to be a society that embraces grief and makes room for it instead of choosing addictions or other means of shielding our hearts from those strong emotions.  We need to grow; we need to make peace with our world.

So yes, I believe you need to care about this issue, but more importantly you need to care about the issue that strikes at your heart.  If you follow the process of this project, the development of this book you may get an opportunity to witness healing at least that is what I am aiming for.  Join me!