23 & Me Does It Again

Today’s story from an adoptee (not me) –

Just found some family members through 23 and me, and posted about it to a moms group that I’m in. One of these moms is cautioning me that it might be too upsetting for them to find out about me. I thought that group was supposed to be there for support for me? I guess that can’t really happen anywhere except among fellow adoptees have been told their whole life that their very existence might bother someone. I’m so done with that. My existence is amazing and wonderful and if it bothers anyone else that’s not my fault. I am treading lightly and my note to them was very sweet and sensitive I think. If they have signed up for 23 and me that, they know what might come. They don’t have to have their family tree public.

I am shaking and feel like crying now honestly. I’m so done with people lecturing me about how important everyone else’s feelings are. Wasn’t that what my whole life was about? Shame and secrets? Wasn’t that what caused the 20 years of connecting with my birth mom to be partly wonderful and partly stressful? I wasn’t even invited to her own memorial service. My own birth mom that I was close to, I thought, for 20 years. Connection and truth should not be traumatizing. If it is, the trauma was caused by other people and there is healing that is possible. That’s the energy and vibe I feel and I’m not going to march into somebody’s house screaming who I am, either literally or energetically.

I do have concern about how they will emotionally feel and let them decide how and when to talk to other family members if they ever do. Or not. That’s their choice as well. But I do think I have a right to know who I am and I’m very excited to at least know the names of some of my relatives in my ancestry a lot more.

Thank you for having this group (an all things adoption and foster care and not of the rainbows and unicorns sunshine always variety on Facebook) because I know that the adoptees feelings and experience is centered and of primary importance. They always talk about adoption helping the baby so much and how grateful we are supposed to be. We’re supposed to be grateful for being told our whole lives that we should be careful how everyone feels? And worship only the adoptive parents in this triad? Nope. Everyone in this experience deserves their feelings and thoughts to be fully 100% honored. There is no competition. I’m just sick of people making this like a competition for feelings.

Trying to focus to get ready to go to a job interview now and it’s pretty challenging with all of this on my mind but mostly I am very excited. (Oh, and I might’ve actually gone to school with one of my 2nd cousins….!)

Trauma And Polyvagal Theory

Trauma is a FACT of being adopted or of giving up a child to adoption. While adoptive parents may believe they are traumatized by behavior they don’t understand, their trauma is more a lack of understanding than an event that happened to them at an age when they had no conscious ability to understand what was being done to them.

This concept of Polyvagal Theory is new to me today, so this particular blog will not be complete in the sense of connecting all the dots but a dear friend I trust has made a point of bringing me to an awareness of this and so, I am sharing it for whatever good it might do someone else.

Polyvagal Theory can help with –

Understanding trauma and PTSD

Understanding the dance of attack and withdrawal in relationships

Understanding how extreme stress leads to dissociation or shutting down

Understanding how to read body language

Emotions are responses to a stimulus (internal or external). Often they happen out of our awareness, especially if we are out of touch, or incongruent, with our inner emotional life.

Our primal desire to stay alive is more important to our body than even our ability to think about staying alive. That’s where polyvagal theory comes in to play.

The nervous system is always running in the background, controlling our body functions so we can think about other things—like what kind of ice cream we’d like to order. The entire nervous system works in tandem with the brain, and can take over our emotional experience, even if we don’t want it to.

Animals are a great example of how we handle stress, because they react primally, without awareness. They do what we would, if we weren’t so well tamed.

If you have ever watched a National Geographic Africa special, you’ve seen a lioness chase a gazelle. A group of gazelles is grazing, and suddenly one looks up, hyper aware of what is happening around him. The whole group notices and pays attention.

After a moment, the lioness starts her chase. The gazelle she’s singled out runs as fast as he can (sympathetic nervous system), until he is caught. When he is caught, he instantly goes limp (parasympathetic nervous system).

The lioness drags the gazelle back to her cubs, where they begin to play with it before they go in for the kill. If the lioness gets distracted, and the gazelle sees a moment of opportunity, he’s up and sprinting off again, looking like he suddenly came back to life (back into sympathetic nervous system response).

When the gazelle was caught, with fangs around his neck, his shutdown response kicked in—he froze. When he saw the opportunity to run, his fight or flight kicked in, and he ran.

Polyvagal theory covers those three states—connection, fight or flight, or shutdown.

During non-stressful situations, if we are emotionally healthy, our bodies stay in a social engagement state, or a happy, normal, non-freak-out state.

I like to call it “connection.” By connection, I mean that we are capable of a “connected” interaction with another human being. We are walking around, unafraid, enjoying our day, eating with friends and family and our body and emotions feel normal.

It’s also called ventral vagal response, because that’s the part of the brain that is activated during connection mode. It’s like a green light for normal life.

In fight or flight, at some level we believe we can still survive whatever threat we think is dangerous.

When our sympathetic nervous system has kicked into overdrive, and we still can’t escape and feel impending death the dorsal vagal parasympathetic nervous system takes control.

It causes freezing or shutdown, as a form of self preservation.

I have Dr David Puder’s podcast text to thank for today’s blog. You can go there for more information.

There is also this audio by Deb Dana: Befriending Your Nervous System that my friend offered me (I haven’t listened to this myself yet).

Bear Hunt

It may seem a bit off topic but really not. Whether an adoptee or a foster child, all children seem to bond with inanimate stuffed animals that seem very much alive to the child that loves them. My daughter once had an enormous bear she named Mellisica. My older son had a red fox that we once lost on the way home from a long journey. We tried to replace it with an identical one but he was never deceived. The youngest one had a white tiger he named Lazha.

In this time of physical distancing as children are no longer crowded into the schools a new effort to bring smiles and something more sweetly novel than the virus has begun. Many people are putting teddy bears in their windows and families who go out to walk together (keeping their distance from other people) or get in their cars to drive around kept distant by the encompassing form of their metallic vehicle are playing a game with one another – a new way of connecting with the rest of the human race.

In 1989, Michael Rosen wrote a children’s book with the title “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”. Our modern day version is a scavenger hunt or kind of I Spy activity for every who who is stuck at home, adults included. In some neighborhoods, kids are in full safari outfits, binoculars included, to get into the role. Some families have turned it into a safari instead of a bear hunt because you see other species of stuffed animals. Or some are putting bear prints on their sidewalks with chalk.

It is really heartwarming. One can get quite emotional looking at all the pictures coming in from every corner of social media. People are seeking to hang onto anything positive, even if it’s a stuffed animal in a window.

From a mental health standpoint, this is more than just a children’s game. It is a way of communicating with other people while staying safe in isolation. It is a silent visual message that families and individuals are sending to each other from their windows that says, “We’re all in this together. I’m experiencing what you’re experiencing.”

So, if your circumstances allow it (we no longer have any stuffed animals in our home having long ago given them away to the regional women and children’s shelter for protection from domestic abuse), do put something cute in your window and share a feeling of connection even though it isn’t currently possible to have direct physical contact with other people.

You Have To Get Over It And Connect

If you gave up a child to adoption, regardless of the reasons and whether it was totally your own choice or someone pressured you to do so, you have to get over the trauma and connect if the opportunity for a reunion comes your way.

Today, I was reading about the unbelievable pain that a young woman is experiencing. She is an adoptee and her original mother lives in the same city and refuses to have any contact with her. She lives in total fear of an unintended encounter and how painful it would be to be snubbed in person.

One such mother shared – about how she thought about the daughter she gave up all the time. I don’t doubt it. A piece of a mother’s heart is torn out with any surrender. Deep down she always did hope her daughter would get in touch with her once she was grown. The day came. She got a Facebook message from her daughter. Next, the Face Time started to ring and she just froze. Unbelievably, she couldn’t answer the phone.

Fortunately, her daughter was persistent. She called 5 times in a row before this mom had the guts to pick up. She acknowledges how selfish and f’ed up that was. She admits that the anxiety of talking to or eventually seeing her was just so overwhelming. She understands now in hindsight that the reaction comes from a place of fear and self protection.

The story does have a happy ending and an encouragement for other women who might be in the same situation. Once they got past that initial step, now they talk every day. And even though they live 100s of miles apart, they find a way to meet face to face on a regular basis.

Don’t let fear keep you apart. The only way to heal is to reconnect.