You are so much more than your adoption experience
Yesterday I received a familiar email that said “Can you help me realize that I am wanted and help me understand myself and that being adopted doesn't define me. Also help me through all the feelings I have towards my adoption.”
Heart wrenching questions asked from the core of this human experience. I want to shout at the top of my lungs - you are so wanted, you are so much more than your adoption experience, you are already worthy of love, belonging and connection.
I know this place, and what she is asking for is possible. I know that it is possible to meet her own longings in a way that she simply couldn’t as an infant or child. I can be her growth partner for some of this work but the question or challenge is, will she be willing to partner herself.
Despite how complex, painful, heavy and ongoing this experience can be for us all in the adoption constellation, there are choices that we can make for ourselves to navigate our lives in more life enhancing ways. Self-partnering is one of them. It is the key that unlocks the shackles of this experience.
Self-partnering involves a decision to turn towards oneself, not away. It is a daily practice learning to be your own best friend, an inner ally as opposed to an enemy. It is self-leadership where you choose the best for you, opposed to looking to others for worth, connection and belonging. It is being kind and loving yourself unconditionally while you work on understanding and changing outdated and untrue beliefs. It is allowing yourself to be just that, you.
These choices interrupt the impulse to please, abandon or reject oneself. Kind warm self-talk can soothe your body’s defense system releasing oxytocin and endorphins (natural feel-good opiates).
Self-partnership is a rebellious act. We are encouraged to be a nice person and a good friend to others, but not ourselves, that is called being selfish. It goes against the many beliefs and attitudes we absorbed from society and family about adoption and ourselves. It is hard because choosing self-partnership means staying close to home, to our hearts, to our emotions when we have put so much energy into avoiding these. It doesn’t feel at all safe or comfortable as we sit with the ‘trauma, tangles and tensions’ of this experience. But what if we don’t?
Anne Heffron says, “But how can you grab hold of the gifts the universe wants to give you if your hands are wrapped around metal bars that keep you in? You, I have found need to get out in order to thrive because out is where your growth lives. You go out, I have found to go in.”
Imagine for a moment, trusting yourself, your body, your heart, your intuition. Imagine loving the parts of you that you previously viewed as negative. Recognizing that they were really on your side protecting you from re-experiencing the original trauma and now you see the gifts beneath them. This is belonging to yourself, all of you.
It is courageous, it might be the hardest thing you do. It is counterintuitive, outside your comfort zone, uncomfortable, even terrifying. It can seem daunting at the outset but you do know how to do it. Most, if not all of you will be in relationships with friends, your partner, your children and grandchildren where you love them unconditionally. Have you ever noticed how a child can go from being distraught one minute to laughing after receiving tender loving words, a gentle touch or cuddle… see you know how to do this!
Belonging is not just a ‘nice to have’. Without it we suffer, we are hard wired to have it and will get it any way we can. For adopted people belonging has more layers to it than our non-adopted peers. We don’t feel like we belong at home in ourselves, our bodies or our feelings because from the outset of life we were catapulted away from the natural experience of it.
“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world…. true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” Brenē Brown P.156 Atlas of the Heart.
Self-partnership is the key that opens the door within to a sense of true belonging but we do also need the support of others on our growth and healing path. However, given the low numbers of adoption competent therapists, counsellors and coaches available in NZ, self-partnership is an accessible and potent healing relationship.
Exciting news - Anne Else introduces the new eBook she has written with Maria Haenga-Collins in her own words. Heartfelt appreciation to you both for this ground breaking comprehensive account which effects so many of us and children in the future.
“A Question of Adoption, my history of post-war adoption, came out in 1991. The first part of this ground-breaking new digital edition makes it easily available again. But Maria Haenga-Collins and I have added seven new chapters, bringing the full story right up to the present.
As well as adoption, we cover the related processes of state care, donor conception and surrogacy in Aotearoa. All of these feature deliberate transfers of babies and children involving more than two original parents – and all are at least partially controlled by the state.
Over the last seven decades, each process has acquired its own set of contradictory laws and regulations. The worst example is the Adoption Act: this outdated relic, passed in 1955, is still in force.
“Ko wai au? (Who am I)” details why and how so many Māori children have been (and are still being) cut off from their whānau and whakapapa through adoption and state care, both stemming from colonial ideology.
We then go on to explore the complex connections between adoption and the use of ‘third parties’ to create children through reproductive technology, leading to long, still unresolved debates over regulation.
The bad news is that despite the two reform projects on adoption law and surrogacy law which began in 2020, it’s now looking all too likely that no new legislation will be passed before the election this November. The final chapter looks at the big picture of local and global risks now facing human reproduction, connection, and reproductive justice.
We set out to produce the first detailed, accessible, moving account of these vitally important aspects of our history, which affect so many New Zealanders. We hope you’ll find it helpful.”
Anne Else with Maria Haenga-Collins
A Question of Adoption: Closed Stranger Adoption in New Zealand 1944–1974 and Adoption, State Care, Donor Conception and Surrogacy 1975–2022
Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, March 2023, 534 pages.
Ebook only, available from: Amazon, Google Play, or Kobo.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZWWF7FP/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1YIISNWA60SWR&keywords=anne+else&qid=1680129633&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Cdigital-text%2C770&sr=1-2
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Anne_Else_A_Question_of_Adoption?id=_RqsEAAAQBAJ
Kobo https://www.kobo.com/nz/en/ebook/a-question-of-adoption
Update on The Royal Commission
The Royal Commission has advised that the report date will now be March 2024. This is a huge knock, especially for those who made submissions, attended focus groups and endured the emotional toll this process takes. Like myself, I know that there are many of you out there who will be feeling let down, disillusioned, even betrayed. Delayed justice is justice denied and will likely be given as a justification for putting adoption law reform on hold.
WATCH - I AM TVNZ
Brigs, (my co-author of Adopted) and her birthmother Jan (who also contributed in the book) will be featured in the TVNZ programme I AM on Tuesday 9th May 2023. While I have not seen it yet, I know that Jan’s courage, her genuineness and humility will shine through. These qualities combined with her ability to articulate the heart wrenching account of her journey of being an unwed mother during the closed era of adoption in NZ, relinquishing Brigs, the impact of this and how it shaped her life, reunion, and up until now, will be incredible and a must watch.
I also know that for both Brigs and Jan, it was a hugely triggering and emotional experience. So incredibly generous of them both to go through this process to raise awareness and educate on behalf of and for our community.
Heartfelt appreciation to you Anne, Maria, Brigs, Jan and so many of you in our adoption community who work tirelessly educating, researching, writing, helping and supporting those impacted by adoption. Together we are strong.
Be well and be kind… to you. x