one leg of the journey

last night, i was surfing youtube and came across one of the "adopted" documentary clips featuring lynne connor.



i posted it on my friend luz's wall.  she came back and asked me, "Did you feel this way sometimes? (Not the Asian-ness, specifically, but some sort of different-ness)?"

my answer to that was affirmative.  "Almost all times. I just never had the words. I couldn't figure out how to say it. And if anyone tried to help (my mother mainly) the guilt overrode everything and I just shut my mouth and tried to be grateful."

my mother, however, wasn't exactly the source of my always feeling weird surrounding my adoption. it's almost ingrained in an adoptee.  "man, these people went out and paid good money for me.  i better come through....."

looking back, i remember typically feeling weird surrounding my adoption.  genetically- a total misfit.  physical appearance-  i looked like no one, and that made me mad.  i didn't have any of the musical talent that everyone in my family had, and the guilt from that alone was incredibly overwhelming.  i grew up being the 4th generation of living on a lake, but i was terrified of deep water an still am.

my mother was the source of everything good for me to feel like a normal kid.  she never babbled on and on about how "special" or "chosen" i was, which 99% of adoptees hate hearing.  all that term does is put pressure on us to be grateful.  if we're not grateful, we have a lifelong fear of being 'given back'.

instead, my mother treated me like an average kid, just like she did with my brothers.  but still.........that doesn't cure my "adoptee syndrome", which i consider to be a very real problem.  nor has anything in my 43 years cured me of my own primal wound.

i think luz takes an excellent approach to parenting adoptees by educating herself through books, movies, documentaries, and, wait for it!  daring to DIALOG with real live adult adoptees!  shocking, i know.

i don't claim to have any answers, and i don't think luz has them all either.  but i do know that the closer we get, the more i tell her how much i see my little girl self in her young daughter. in fact, tessa and i are now penpals.

i don't see adoption ending in my lifetime, although i would love to see it abolished.  but in the mean time, i'm happy to have luz to hear my feelings, my explanations of behaviors and even some of the good things..................

my main example being my mother.  she is the best woman on earth, and even though she didn't have all the answers either, she loved me through it, and continues to just hear me.  we can't undue my adoption, but we can at least  journey through it together, and there's always room for one more person on our train, and for me, that's my luzzy.