One of the subjects I want to have a conversation with Tin about is abandonment. I’ve squarely given this issue to him because of adoption. But I’ve learned in the last year and now realize so well in my ACA meetings and readings that abandonment doesn’t have to be a parent giving you up physically. Your parents could give you up emotionally, and their physical presence while they do this makes it sometimes even more…
I have been writing in a journal – paper and pen – with my arthritic hand. No one can read my chicken scratch, not even me. Today someone showed me a tablet where you can write and it transfers to a file, to a text, to a message and I thought, yeah right, no one could read my handwriting – including me. But despite the fact that I’ve been doing this new writing, in a…
Yesterday, I went to visit my son at Stonewater, which is a residential treatment center. It’s not intuitive to hand over your child to someone else’s care when they are struggling, but that is what I did fourteen months ago. Then I signed up for weekly Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings, and I joined a Monday night virtual parent call – a gathering of parents whose child is in treatment, had been in treatment, or…
Last week, my son told me he is scared to change. This was miles away from a year ago when he told me that he would never change and no one could change him. Imagine a journey that takes you deeper into yourself? It’s like your innards unclench and you feel what you’re feeling for the first time. This to me is knowledge. I remember the first time I was able to individuate someone else’s…
I was underneath the canopy of the giant willow tree in an area we call the grove, but that is a euphemism for a place that never sees the light of the sun and is usually damp and buggy. There I was in the grove and as I came out towards the sun, I saw the feathers – they were white and grey and shaped like a V with downy white puffs of baby feathers…
Yesterday, an American bald eagle soared above the Hall and landed on the cell tower. When I was a young girl, bald eagles were an endangered species. They were listed by the government in 1978, a year after I graduated from high school. What followed were nationwide conservation efforts that included the banning of DDT, and by 2007, bald eagles were removed from the federal endangered species list. Several years ago, I did a vision…
So many times I’ve wanted to call my mother since she died. Today, I lay down in the green grass by her grave and let the sun shine down on me. I changed her flowers (thanks Martha at The French Potager). I brushed the sand off the black sentry dog. All the feels squished into one plot of land. My grandmother’s grave is behind my mother’s. Two women – two forces – in my life…
I’m wondering how you tell someone how you’re doing when there is no real word for it, no simple phrase for it, no cliché for it, and the truth is so multi layered – even one of my closest friends, Susie, struggles to remember each detail that is intertwined with a narrative so dynamic even I struggle to encase it in an elevator pitch that might make sense to someone who simply wants to know…
The infant’s face turns purpleHis first display of anger The mother yells and threatensThe boy’s anger masks his fearThe mother abandoned his formulaTheir hunger will follow him The little girl’s face freezesHer first visceral reactionThe dad yells and threatensHer paralysis masks her fearThe father postured and struckTheir terror will follow her Pivot: The new mom smilesShe can’t help but fawn Pivot: The boy yells and threatensHer terror trapped so deep Pivot: The teen strikes the motherOur karma…
I’m living in a world where everything that I used to reach for has become uninteresting. And I’m trying to suss out what is interesting to me. And I don’t have answers (yet). I was always the one who loved arriving at happy hour to have that first glass of wine with friends. I loved the warmth that would spread through my body as a delicious glass of pinot noir worked its way down my…
