Found a new adult adoptee blog that I really like: http://ibastard.wordpress.com/ check it out!
Tell me what you think!

Adoption Reading, Anyone?

Well, here's an idea: a virtual adoption book club! Check out Eva's idea over at Egg Drop Post and consider joining up!

Lovely Lucille is Gone

I just heard today that Lucille Clifton, poet and national treasure died on Saturday, February 6 at age 73. She was wonderful. I had the tremendous good fortune to take three poetry workshops with her when I was an undergraduate. Sitting in a room with her was like being in the presence of a prophet.
I'm very sad that she's gone.

Here's one of her most famous poems:


Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

We'll miss you, Lucille!

How About a Fan Page for "I Love Blinking My Eyes"?

Facebook has a lot of inane fan pages, and this one is no exception: "I Love Adoption."

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Did you read the article in the New York Times Magazine on 1/31/10 about "Solastalgia," a term for " the pain experienced where there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault... a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home.'"?

It's a really interesting article,--read it if you have time--and it made me think about the potential analogue between the psyches of people whose home has been taken away or degraded and the psyches of adoptees and birthparents.

As a person to whom home landscape matters immensely, and as an adoptee, it makes a lot of sense to me.

But what about you?

Grief = Searching

I've been reading this article about grief in The New Yorker. The author Meghan O'Rourke chronicles popular thinking about grief, and mentions that:

"In the nineteen-seventies, Colin Murray Parkes, a British psychiatrist and a pioneer in bereavement research, argued that the dominant element of grief was a restless “searching.” The heightened physical arousal, anger, and sadness of grief resemble the anxiety that children suffer when they’re separated from their mothers. Parkes, drawing on work by John Bowlby, an early theorist of how human beings form attachments, noted that in both cases—acute grief and children’s separation anxiety—we feel alarm because we no longer have a support system we relied on. Parkes speculated that we continue to “search” illogically (and in great distress) for a loved one after a death. After failing again and again to find the lost person, we slowly create a new “assumptive world,” in the therapist’s jargon, the old one having been invalidated by death. Searching, or yearning, crops up in nearly all the contemporary investigations of grief. A 2007 study by Paul Maciejewski found that the feeling that predominated in the bereaved subjects was not depression or disbelief or anger but yearning. Nor does belief in heavenly reunion protect you from grief. As Bonanno says, 'We want to know what has become of our loved ones.'"
(emphasis added)

I wanted to post this to propose the connection between some adoptees' need to search and what is commonly understood about how all humans deal with loss of loved ones. That is all.

Comments?

Are You a Writer? Do You Want to See your Work Performed?

I recently found this posting over at the Adoption.com forums for adult adoptees:

"I am a recently reunited adoptee. I am currently a theatre arts major in New England and composing a senior project that reflects my experiences with adoption. But I would like to give it a wider scope and represent more than my own opinions and emotions. I would like to create a collage of different experiences in order to paint a unified portrait of the truth behind adoption.

I am looking for submissions from all those involved in adoption (adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, foster parents etc.) to include in my piece. These can be anything from memoirs, letters, poems, songs, art etc.

You will be credited if I use any of the material in the production (unless you wish to remain anonymous). There will be no monetary compensation as this is a non-profit, educational production. By submitting your work you acknowledge your approval for their use in an original script and any resulting performances.

I promise to approach all material with the utmost respect. Adoption is often overlooked or stereotyped, it is time to represent the truth. Your involvement would mean the world to me. Please help me tell your story!

You can reply here with your material, message me, or e-mail me at bwing@students.stonehill.edu

Thank you for your time,
Brianna Marie"
Here's the link for her project's website.

Brianna told me she'd love it if I posted her call for submissions on this blog.

Have at it! And let me know if you think you might send her something!!