People often say they are overwhelmed when what they really mean is that they are afraid they will be overwhelmed. If one is truly overwhelmed, I suspect one would be on the floor, under the table sucking one’s thumb. Since the way we refer to our state of mind affects our state of mind, I have chosen to use the word whelmed as a substitute where it seems to be appropriate.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to this page which is no small accomplishment. Adoption is a terror topic for most of us (unconscious as that fear might be.) It can be a very scary subject indeed. You have overcome much fear and anxiety just to open this book and now the real work begins. Let us continue with a visit to an adoption support group meeting. It is my hope that all of you will attend meetings such as this on a regular basis. The introduction to a typical support group meeting for those who have been separated by adoption goes like this:
Welcome to our support group meeting, especially those who are here for the first time. I would like to explain why we run the meeting the way we do and how to get the most out of it. Most of us, as mothers and as adopted people are not allowed to express feelings about the experience. We may have been told not to be angry or that we weren’t sad or that these feelings were not permitted. We were told we should not feel these feelings. Unfortunately, these messages do not work well. Feelings cannot be right or wrong. They just are! We need to be able to say what we feel to validate our experience. There are no shoulds when it comes to feelings. Can you imagine someone telling you that you are not allowed to say or should not say that it is cold outside or that saying you are hungry is not permitted?
The most difficult task we face is learning the language of our experience. We need to learn how to say, “I feel... (plug in: glad, sad, mad, ashamed, hurt, afraid, etc.) because... (fill in the blank in terms of your adoption experience.) When we say things out loud, they become real in a way they can never be if left unspoken; and when they become real, we can start to understand why we feel what we feel; and when we understand why, we can start to change the way that our experience affects us. We can begin the process of not being afraid of our feelings. We can learn that our feelings will not kill us, although it often feels like they can. When we become unafraid of our feelings, the world changes. Imagine being unafraid of your feelings!
Imagine that you wake up in the middle of the night with a most terrible pain in the right side of your abdomen. You might well be terrified that the pain is the signal of the beginning of the end, an indication that your appendix is going to burst or that you have inoperable cancer. So you go to the doctor and he says that it’s indigestion and tells you to take some Maalox. The pain will not change but your experience of it will. You will be unafraid of your pain and it will be perceived very differently.
What a glorious day that will be. This can happen for you, and by opening this book, you have just begun the journey toward wholeness by starting your adoption healing. The way we think about things has a great deal to do with how we experience them, as the example below shows very dramatically. A large portion of this book is about looking at things differently (“reframing” in shrink parlance) to change their effect on us and ultimately to understand that we actually can control how things affect us and how we feel. No one can make us feel anything. Contrary to what we were taught, no one is responsible for our feelings as adults and we are not responsible for the feelings of others. What? That’s right. You are responsible for what you feel. I can say ugly words to you but you are responsible for your reaction to them. This is an important concept and key to doing your healing. How we think about things can change how we feel about them!
Let us now continue on our journey. You should know that it is okay to put this book down from time to time, perhaps to process what you have read, perhaps to take a break from the highly emotional content. You should also know that only the truly brave and strong will read this book, so take the compliment! Only the brave and strong face their demons and that’s what you are doing by reading this book.
As long as you are reading this book, it would be a good idea to start a journal now. Write your thoughts and feelings down as you progress on your journey toward healing and wholeness.