Relentless
Relentless questions drive my soul.
How many hours have the wondering stole.
Like pounding waves that wear away the strongest rock day after day.
My weary bones nearly give in and let the persistent pounding win.
But there are those who lend me power where there is no sun in my darkest hour.
When the doubt hounds daily at my door and I feel I can't take anymore.
They whisper the truth into my ears with hope and love resolve my fears.
I hold the goal within my sight and remember the reasons I continue to fight.
To find what I lost so long ago the place from where those questions grow.
How many hours have been lost in days and years what was the cost?
The time I've spent in somber thought and sorrowful reflection perplexed about.
What I'm to do with all I feel when unseen bonds remain so real.
I had a taste of reality when fractions of truth I was allowed to see.
Fate had brought us back together, the soul deep ties could not be severed.
To know the tragic parting was not in the end to be forgot.
And that somehow soon they'll find a way to share with me those missing days.
I'll wait until the time I'll know.
The place from where these questions grow.
Recently I reacted strongly to a comment from an adoption
related friend I’ve known for quite some time.
I know her boundaries and I crossed them, as nicely as I could but I
did. I couldn’t contain myself and I was
triggered because I am also at a weak place in my life with career, finances,
health, and relationships.
I apologized and attempted to explain however, no other
party is required to be on the exact same page as another is with
adoption. We all in the community are on
different paths with different experiences.
I stepped back, as I have learned to do, and to consider what this
reaction was all about.
It didn’t take long, about five minutes, to understand that
the work, writing, educating, and time I spend in adoption reform, education,
and activism is my lifeline to wholeness and yes sanity. When that is undermined or attempted to be
diminished it feels like a direct wounding and what ensues is the reopening of
older wounds. Right or wrong it is what
it is to us, and so many adoptee continue battle to control outbursts and
explosive eruptions of emotion.
Triggers can be many changes in adoption groups we rely upon
be they search, support, or writing and education. Birthdays, holidays, National Adoption Month,
personal issues, all of this can easily cause emotional outbursts even if
appearing to be self contained via rewritten, back spaced, and reworded
postings and comments. Pain and trauma
is often lurking beneath the surface and yesterday mine found its way out.
I am an adoptee who unfortunately through adoption found
herself the outsider in two families.
The result of the magnitude of that type of rejection, which my former counselor
stated to me, was a huge hurdle to over come, led to several problematic issues
over my life mental, emotional, and addictive, including relationship
problems. When at age thirty nine in
1998 I found the online adoption community it was like discovering the Holy
Grail.
I have always felt like and related to being an orphan. Finding the adoption community has not only
given me a sense of security I have never had in my entire life, but a new
found purpose and direction I did not know I could have. I am no longer floundering emotionally, yes I
wobble and sometimes I briefly trip but I get right back up, and have some
solid ground to stand on and those who continually support me in doing so.
This community has become my family in the last fifteen
years. Finally finding where I belong has been amazing, healing, and empowering. And, as a mother who protects her
children without thought that is exactly how I feel about my fellow adoptees
and adoption community members. Adoption
is a life sentence but I am so extremely proud and glad to be serving it with
so many I admire and love.
