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Thank you!
Healing Adoption Wounding:
Carista Luminare, Ph.D., Talks about her True Self Model
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By
Geneva Anderson
As members of the
adoption community, we have all acknowledged that “adoption
is forever,” but how many of us are really comfortable with
how adoption has impacted our sense of self worth, our
ability to trust, and to experience healthy love? Many of
us subconsciously let our adoption wounding run the show,
determining how we feel about ourselves and how we interact
with others. We become “stuck,” acting out patterns of
behavior that we can’t seem to change. We may never
experience the love and acceptance we need to thrive.
Carista Luminare, Ph.D. is a Bay Area counselor and expert
on pre- and postnatal bonding who is a keynote speaker at
this year’s AAC conference. She will present “Getting
UnStuck: You Can Heal Yourself,” the purpose of which is to
show us that, with hard inner work, we in the adoption
constellation can learn to conquer and transform our
unhealthy patterns and beliefs.
In 2000, Luminare
wrote Parenting Begins Before Conception: A Guide To
Preparing Body, Mind, and Spirit: For You and Your Future
Child, a holistic approach to parenthood including
how to prepare for conception and pregnancy, including the
development of body, mind and spirit of the child and future
parent. She also co-founded and directed The Center for
Creative Parenting in Marin County, where she assisted
hundreds of parents in preconception planning and conscious
parenting. Her unique methodology, called the “True Self
Way” was not specifically designed for the adoption
community but it directly addresses how to heal the adoption
trauma that Nancy Verrier, MFT, brought to our community’s
attention 24 years ago with her seminal book, The
Primal Wound.
Verrier posited that
there is a “primal wound” (or trauma) that develops when a
mother and child are separated (by adoption) shortly after
childbirth. This is because the birthmother and child have
a unique physical, psychological and physiological
realtionship which begins in-utero. Disrupting that
abruptly by separating birthmother and child can manifest in
trauma and loss of Self. This wound, occurring before the
child has begun to separate his own identity from that of
the mother, is experienced not only as a loss of the mother,
but as a loss of the Self, that core-being of oneself which
is the center of goodness and wholeness. A central theme is
the assertion that all adoptees, even those adopted at
birth, will retain memories of the separation from their
birth mothers, and that regardless of the way the adoption
is presented and handled by adoptive parents, these memories
will have profound affects on the emotional and
psychological well-being of the child and adult adoptee.
Luminare
believes that many in the adoption community do suffer from
this primal wounding which is very real and this impacts the
fullness of their adult lives. It prevents them from being
their True Self, which is the transcendent or unlimited
potential in all of us, not dominated by our wounding or
conditioned self. “You become your
True Self
when your personality is
able to sense, express and embody the loving presence of
your soul in a sustained way.” Luminare explains that if we
were to imagine an old-fashioned slide projector, our True
Self would be the pure light shining through the lens,
without any lens or filters. However, our adoption
wounding—that unique collection of patterns (beliefs and
behaviors) that we developed in childhood as coping
mechanisms to help protect ourselves against the challenges
and traumas that arose, acts as a filter so that we are
acting as our false self. The false self is
simply distortion of the true nature which is independent
from our conditioning, yet profoundly affected by it. Using
the slide projector analogy, the false self would be slides
(beliefs that are internalized as a part one’s self
-identity) that obscure the light of your true self. The
identity that you project out into the world is the
synthesis of these slides, much like the movie screen that
captures the slide images projected onto it.
Many adults live
their lives unaware of their patterns and are not able to
fully connect with their inherent strengths, virtues and
talents—soul qualities. We flail and sink in despair and
become entrenched, or stuck. We cannot think ourselves out
of this state because even our intellect is hostage.
Actually this situation applies to everyone to some extent
but is particularly relevant to adoptees. Luminare states
“Most people struggle with the impact of their childhood
wounding whether they are adopted or not.” She
suggests that adoptees are often
hit with a double
whammy. They struggle with the impact of prenatal
ambivalence and postnatal separation from their birthmother,
which is a unique set of issues. They also have the
challenges of childhood conditioning that most people get
from their parents. Theirs comes from their adoptive
parents.
Primal Matrix:
birthmother ambivalence, volatile infant---primal
wound/false sense of self
While adoption can have unintended
consequences for all parties involved, the impact on the
adopted child/adult and the birthmother who form the “Primal
Matrix,” are most profound because of the unique in-utero
birthmother-child bonding that begins after conception.
Luminare views the developing fetal child as a
multidimensional being with a physical, etheric, emotional,
mental body, and a soul which is its spiritual, immortal
essence. Healthy ego
development thrives when a child attaches to a primary love
source from the beginning of his or her life. In her book, Luminare
states that leading edge research contends that prenatal
life and the birth experience are often profound
determinants of human personality and aptitude and that
unborn children see, hear and feel in the womb (seen in
studies by Verny, Chamberlain). In
terms of adoption’s impact, Luminare believes that
birthmothers who are deciding whether or not to relinquish
their child typically go through a myriad of ambivalent
feelings during pregnancy, coupled with high stress, which
can create a highly challenging developmental environment
for the growing child. Most birthmothers have stress
during pregnancy and there are many kinds of stress, and not
all are associated with lasting damage but intense chronic
stress and persistent fear have been shown to have adverse
influences on prenatal brain and endocrine system
development that control behavior. This may impact how the
child learns, solves problems and relates to others. (“The
Effects of Toxic Stress During Pregnancy,”
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child,
Harvard University, 2006) The impact of this prenatal
trauma, along with the shock to the new born of
relinquishment and abrupt separation from its birthmother
can negatively impact the adoptee’s self-identity.
Birthmothers are designed by nature to be their infant’s
first unconditional and dependable love source. The
subconscious messages the child may internalize from
relinquishment include “I am not loveable” or “I am not
wanted” which contribute to the development of a “false
self.” Throughout the course of the adoptee’s life, he or
she develops a number of beliefs and behaviors that
compensate for and actually reinforce this false self.
Self
Love can release us from the trauma and negative behavioral
patterns that have come to define our lives. Self Love is a
developed skill—learning to make healthy choices to nurture
one’s sense of self worth and choosing relationships where
one feels valued. This is most challenging for those who
were never taught or inspired by a positive role model. Yet,
with a willingness to take charge of healing the past
wounding, and with a wise guide who understands this self
discovery is primal and essential, anyone can learn to
accept and love themselves unconditionally.
Are You Stuck?
Ask
yourself the following questions:
-
Are your primary love relationships empowering your True
Self ? Or, is the relationship conducted/filtered
through slides (yours or theirs) resulting in you not
connecting in a direct experience of feeling accepted,
empowered and loved? Is your primary love relationship
reinforcing a feeling of abandonment and insecurity?
Do you realize that you have a choice?
-
Do you have acute or chronic dysfunctional or addictive
habits that may be medicating feelings of being unwanted
or suppressed feelings from adoption trauma? (Look at
your choices/consumption of food, alcohol, drugs, self
care practices, lifestyle. Do you love and respect
yourself and treat yourself and your body with respect?)
-
Do you feel healthy or is there a health crisis brewing
due to chronic stress of feeling deeply unsettled with
your adoption experience?
The Negative Love Matrix
As
humans, we learned love from our primary love objects, our
parents. How they modeled love becomes our archetype and
motif for what love is. For most parents, though, due to
their own childhood programming, they did not know how to
nourish our true nature or how to help us develop a strong
sense of inner security. Love was mixed with other toxic,
unhealthy patterns such as shame, control, rejection,
aggression, neglect, abuse, addiction.
When
a child unconsciously adopts its parents negative attributes
and mirrors them back in an effort to be loved and to
demonstrate love (and we all do this, none of us are
immune), he or she becomes a victim of the Negative Love
Syndrome. This term for enacting inherited patterns that
cause emotional and spiritual pain was coined by therapist
Bob Hoffman. How we as adults choose our primary love
objects—our lovers—and how we treat our children—is a
dynamic borne out of this early familial conditioning.
Unless we do personal work to free ourselves from this
negative patterning and re-educate ourselves about how to
make healthy love choices, we will not achieve our full
potential and most likely will live with some degree of
inauthentic, compulsive and self-sabotaging behavior, making
our children vulnerable to our unhealed patterns as well.
The
Negative Love Syndrome disconnects us from our own true
source of power, our inner spiritual self, our True Self.
As adoptees, we suffer twice having been conditioned in the
womb by our birthmothers and after birth by our adoptive
parents. We all pay dearly for our negative conditioning—we
project our parents’ patterns of negative love unconsciously
and automatically onto our lovers and authority figures, and
recreate our early family system with its dysfunction. As
adults we can become triggered and actually recreate our
childhood behaviors---our inner child is in control---
trying to please, avoid pain. We actually do this instead
of resolving the adult conflicts in our lives and moving
forward. We get stuck in childhood, acting like a child.
True Self Recovery
Program
“Valuing and becoming fascinated with your true self is the
key to getting unstuck from adoption trauma. Anyone can
take charge of their inner life and re-pattern themselves to
wholeness. It can be done….but no one can heal you for
you. You must use your free will and do the inner work to
dismantle your false self conditioning. You need to become
fascinated with developing and embodying your true self.
The
big difference between an adult and a child is that as an
adult you can educate yourself and differentiate between
healthy and unhealthy choices. As a child, you did not have
the wisdom, resources or guidance available to you to
separate yourself from negative love influences and to heal
yourself. The True Self Recovery Program is a diagnostic
system that identifies how the Negative Love Matrix has
impacted your self-identity and belief system. It then
helps you dismantle your false-self identity and replace
this with new beliefs and behaviors that reflect your loving
true self nature. This requires that you become the
adult/parent for the wounded child aspect of your self
identity. This generally requires the guidance of a
professional who can model and teach healthy self-love
practices.
The
good news is that the false self is just patterns—in your
mind--that you have come to rely on, that can be changed.
Using Luminare’s slide projector model, you can identify
your false patterns, those slides that project negatively
onto your True Self, and consciously remove them. Those
limiting patterns can then be replaced with a more positive
belief and identity system that empowers your True Self
expression. You can consciously create the life you want to
live by choosing positive relationships that nurture and
embrace you, work that fulfills you, and a social matrix
where you are honored and respected.
Living as Your True Self
As
an adult with new awareness, you now have an intentional (or
conscious) choice who you love, as well as a natural
instinct to protect yourself against negative love
influences and to cherish yourself. Or, you can give your
power away to unhealthy relationships that dishonor and
disregard you. At the core of this is Self Love, a
developed skill set where one is dedicated to making daily
choices to nurture one's sense of self worth, and to choose
relationships where one feels valued and empowered so that
the light of your true self shines through you and is
projected clearly into the other and into the world. The
True Self Way = you consciously create a self–affirming self
identity and belief system that is an expression of the life
you want to live.
If
adoptees internalized the belief that love is mixed with
abandonment, this is often projected in their adult
relationships with a primary love person. This person
either threatens to or actually does abandon them and often
they recapitulate this dynamic over and over. This is
really the wounded personality’s way of trying to resolve
the issue. This can only happen when one recognizes that
they are in a cycle and are willing to dismantle the complex
of patterns to free themselves from it. The inner dialogue
would be: “I don’t have to choose a lover who constantly
abandons or threatens to abandon me in recapitulation of my
past.” The healthy self love outcome is “I can now discern
and protect myself from negating, indifferent love sources
as my primary relationships. I will choose protective
nurturing people who want to love me and cherish me.”
Open Records Legislation in
California: Update AB372, CARE
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By
Gene Sperring (a founding member of CARE)
Although
we cheered last April when AB372 passed the Assembly
Judicial Committee by a unanimous vote, we now report the
bill has died, and with it, our hopes for passing open
records legislation in California in 2010. For the past
months, AB372 has been lying in the Assembly Appropriations
suspense file with a huge price attached to its enactment.
These are estimated costs associated with expected large
numbers of persons applying for their OBC (original birth
certificate) should this legislation pass. A great deal
more research and lobbying effort would have been needed to
get this bill passed. It suffered the fate of a great many
bills last year that were essentially suspended due to
California's extreme financial crisis.
Leadership changes in C.A.R.E. (California Adoption Reform
Effort) had further complicated issues. CARE founder and
President Jean Strauss resigned due to her move to Texas.
Her wish is to continue to help support open records
legislation in whatever way she is able.
CARE’s
executive committee met in December to discuss the
organization’s status. Those attending the meeting in
Sacramento were Stephanie Williams, Executive Director, and
the three Vice Presidents--Bonnie Burnell, Linda Orozco, and
Gene Sperring. It was decided to change CARE’s legal
non-profit status from 501(c)4 to 501(c)3 in order to
simplify finances. CARE set an immediate goal to form
research committees to prepare for the introduction of a new
open records bill in 2011. It was also agreed to search for
a new president.
CARE wishes to thank Jean Strauss for her leadership and
commitment in the important beginning stages of crafting
this complex and vital legislation for our state of
California, which has the greatest number of adoptees and
therefore the greatest number of sealed adoption records.
Thanks is also extended to all those who have helped make
our historical progress possible. We are not giving up but
recognize that we will have to fight for access. PACER, as
an organization, continues to support efforts to restore the
right of access of every person to their original birth
certificate in the state of California.
New California Law AB 1325 Impacts
Native American Adoptions
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By
Geneva Anderson
A new California state law, AB 1325, enacted in October 2009
addresses Customary Adoption Practices and will result in
changes in Native-American adoptions. AB1325 creates an
alternative option to the definition of “traditional
adoption,” in the case of adopting a Native American child.
In traditional adoption, termination of parental rights of
the biological parents must occur for a Native American
child to be adopted. The new law states that a Native
American child’s birthparents will not be required to sign
away all parental rights in certain circumstances. This
bill will add the option of “Customary Adoption.” Customary
Adoption is defined as “a traditional tribal practice
recognized by the community which gives a child a permanent
parent-child relationship with someone other than the
child’s birth parent.”
This new law applies only to California Native American
children and only in California. The intent of the law is
to strengthen the existing Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA),
a federal law. This ICWA states that a Native American
child who is available for adoption because the birth
parents are unable to care properly for the child will be
adopted within the child’s native community and if possible
within the extended family. The next preferable alternative
is adoption within another Native American group or tribe.
If neither is possible, the child will be allowed to be
adopted by non-Native American parents. The ICWA has not been implemented
consistently across the foster-adoption system which has
resulted in Native American children losing their language,
culture and family and tribal connections.
The
intent of AB1325 is to help birth families maintain
connections through continued contact wherever possible and
advisable with an emphasis on extended family raising the
child where possible.
PACER Supports Orphans Affected by
Typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines
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By
Mark Kunkel
On
September 26, 2009, Typhoon Ondoy struck the Philippines,
dropping 17.9 inches of rain on Metro Manila in a span of 24
hours—the most in 42 years. A month’s worth of rainfall in
a single day caused over 350 deaths and $100 million in
damage from resulting floods and landslides. Among those
impacted was Heart of Mary Villa, a Catholic convent and
nursery in Metro Manila that I have a deep connection with.
Heart of Mary Villa is where my birthmother stayed during
her pregnancy. I was cared for there by their staff for
about 6 months prior to my adoption in 1976, which was 34
years ago. The nuns helped me with my 7 year search for my
birthmother. I had my reunion with my birthmother there in
2007 in one of their counseling rooms. The nuns have always
been extremely kind to me and I am very impressed by the
quality of the social workers and staff who work there.
Furthermore, Heart of Mary Villa runs a community center
called Damayan for the children and families who live in the
poverty stricken neighborhood. When I learned that an 8
foot high flash flood had affected the facility and everyone
in it, my heart cried. I approached PACER about helping
with relief.
After the flood hit, Mary Villa sent
out a flyer listing the damage to its compound which
includes a chapel, nursery, maternity home, administration
buildings, community center, adoption office, counseling
rooms, dormitory, kitchen, and bathrooms. All in all, 23
infants (four newborn), 17 mothers, nine caregivers, one
social worker, one driver, three maintenance men, two
volunteers and two executives were impacted. About 80
meters of concrete walls caved in. All ground floor
facilities, including the nursery, were fully submerged and
most equipment was destroyed, including office equipment,
communication equipment, documents, appliances (vital
refrigerators), nursery and medical supplies. The infants
had to be moved.
In response, PACER worked
with two Filipino-American nonprofit organizations, the
Philippine American Foundation for Charities, Inc.
(Washington D.C.) and Mabuhay, Inc. (Maryland) to raise over
$2000 for flood relief. The latest news we have is that the
damage was so extensive that the babies were moved to
another facility while renovation is going on. Ongoing
donations are needed. To find out how you can help, please
email
ebayadoptee@pacer-adoption.org.
A New Study on Identity and Adoption
Affirms What We Have Lived, Plus Important Insights
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By
Geneva Anderson
(Continued from page
3) Still a work in progress!
Check back for the remainder of the article.
Two New Films Tackle What It Means to be
Asian and American
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The
2010 28th San Francisco International Asian
American Film Festival, March 11-20, 2010, included two
films with adoption-related themes that had their world
premieres at the festival. The films are so good that they
have both been selected for the prestigious PBS
award-winning series Point of View and will
screen on public television later this year.
Film: “In the Matter of Cha Jung
Hee” (World Premiere)
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Director Deann Borshay Liem, USA, 2010, 60 min
Reviewed by
Geneva Anderson
Berkeley director Deann Borshay Liem journeys back to Korea
to explore her true identity after living with the knowledge
that the name on her adoption papers “Cha Jung Hee,” given
to her at age 8, is not her true identity at all. Liem was
adopted at age 8 from the The Sun Duck orphanage in South
Korea in the 1960’s and sent to America as “Cha Jung Hee”
for her eager American adoptive family—the Borshays. Liem
grew up as “Deann” in this very loving family and lived her
life quite successfully. She ultimately became the
executive director of the National Asian American
Telecommunications Association. She essentially forgot who
she was before she came to America. Through dreams and
events that jarred long-suppressed childhood memories, the
urge to know her story became an obsession. She began to
believe that she was both victim and complicit in a complex
hoax that altered the course of her life and the life of the
real Cha Jung Hee, whose place she had taken in America.
The film captures her attempts to heal as she pieces
together her identity with what facts she can find and
people she meets along the way. This is a sequel to her
Emmy award winning “First Person Plural” from 1999
(Encore POV performance of “First Person Plural” scheduled
for August 10, 2010. Check your local broadcast schedule.)
Film: “Wo Ai Ni Mommy” (World
Premiere)
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Director Stephanie Wang-Breal, USA, 2009, 76 min
Reviewed by
Geneva Anderson
How do
you adapt to a brand new family member from a different
culture? Director Stephanie Wang-Breal’s first feature
film “Wo Ai Ni Mommy” (“I Love You Mommy”) breaks
important ground as she travels to Guangzhou, China with
adoptive mother Donna Sadowsky of Long, Island, New York,
to meet her 8 year-old daughter, orphan Sui Yong (“Faith”)
for the first time. Wang-Breal acts as a fly-on-the wall
documentarian, capturing the moment by moment complexities
of forging a loving and healthy bond with an older child
from another culture. While over 70,000 children have been
adopted from China into the U.S. since 1992 and everyone’s
experience is different, this story is unique. It is told
in real time and captures the child’s perspective, often in
her own voice. Most adoption documentaries are told from
the perspective of the adult adoptee looking back in time or
the adoptive parents’ experience or even the relinquishing
birthmother’s point of view. This one is straight from the
psyche of an 8-year-old who was abandoned as a 2-year-old
and has been living at the orphanage and in foster care.
She has never seen a Caucasian before but has been told by a
kindly Chinese social worker named Leila that she is going
to have a good life in a place called America.
As the film unfolds, nothing is held
back. We first meet the Sadowsky family in Long Island.
Jeff and Donna have two teenage sons and a 3-year-old
Chinese daughter, Dara, who was adopted at age 14 months.
The decision to adopt another child was agreed upon by all
family members and everyone’s view seems to have been
respected. The action then moves to China with Donna in her
hotel room, a few hours before she is going to meet her new
daughter, Sui Yong. Her elderly father has made the
journey with her. Her husband Jeff made the difficult
decision to stay at home and care for the rest of their
children so that Donna could devote her full attention to
Faith. Donna is anxiously preparing stacks of hundred
dollar bills and organizing gifts for the orphanage. Sui
Yong’s care for 6 years has been subsidized by the Chinese
government and Donna is paying $3,000, a pittance compared
to costs in the US.
At
the Guangzhou Civil Affairs Office, the first meeting
between mother and daughter unfolds in the chaos of what
appears to be a dozen similar introductions taking place all
at once. The tension is palpable. A social worker
carefully handles the introduction and Sui Yong is asked
what she thinks of the name “Faith.” She is then told that
she will now be called Faith and she should call Donna
“Mommy.” She is told many times that Donna loves her and
that she will come to love her Mommy too. As Donna gives
her daughter her first hug and pulls her into her arms,
Faith is stoic, shell-shocked. When given the chance to ask
Donna questions, she asks only one—does the Sadowsky family
eat fish. To which Donna answers yes, “We like fish.” A
smile emerges.
What
follows is a linear narrative—tracking moments of happiness,
ambivalence, sheer fright and acting out, an unexpected
meeting with Faith’s Chinese foster family, traveling back
to Long Island where Faith meets the rest of her new
family, and her subsequent struggles to integrate into
family life in America. Language, food, habits—everything
Faith has known as young Chinese girl vanish as she
struggles to adapt to boisterous Jewish family life. Donna
is a no-nonsense mom and establishes boundaries and
expectations right away–Faith must learn English to
communicate and she needs to learn to share what’s going on
inside so that her family can understand her needs. Dad
Jeff is a very loving father who is keenly aware of the
impact of his smallest gestures of affection or discipline
and is very careful to treat all his children equally and
with sensitivity.
Over
the course of 17 months, we gradually witness Faith’s
transformation into a lively, outspoken American
child. Rapid immersion has had a remarkable impact– there
is a noticeable set of cultural gains and losses and actual
shifts in her personality and identity. She moves
differently, has different expressions and attitudes and now
identifies herself as American. Sadly, she has nearly
forgotten her native Cantonese language but wants
desperately to communicate by Skype with her beloved foster
sister in China. Of particular interest is the rare
footage of adoptive mother Donna meeting Faith’s Chinese
foster mother and family in China. (In China, the law
prohibits foster parents from adopting.) We are poignantly
aware throughout the film that this foster family
nurtured Faith for several years in China. This loving
bond, her most significant source of attachment and love
after her birthmother abandoned her, has been a
healing anchor for Faith. The Sadowskys recognize that and
welcome the foster family into their lives as well.
In
all, we marvel at the courage of the Sadowsky family to
allow a camera to roll uncensored through this intimate and
often raw experience. Some very difficult moments are
captured and this is actually what gives this film its real
force. When Faith does not get her way, she pitches a fit
and says she wants to leave and return to China. When she
struggles with carrying her books due to her impairment, she
doesn’t ask for help and is scolded when they drop to the
ground. At one point she blurts out to Donna “You are a
white person and I am Chinese.” Adoptive mom Donna Sadowsky
has a strong parenting style. She doesn’t always achieve
immediate success but she is consistent, respectful and
always listens to her children. We never doubt her love
for Faith. As the film progresses, we witness the entire
family trying to strengthen their bond with Faith and to
protect her. In all, what emerges is a very realistic
account of the hard work, self awareness and love it takes
to pull adoption off on a daily basis. This is a deeply
moving and intelligent film that probes the very heart of
what family means while exploring issues of identity,
cultural assimilation and bonding.
Film Review: “Lost Child"
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Directed
by Karen Arthur, USA, 2000, 94 min, DVD available on
amazon.com
Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation based on the book
Looking for Lost Bird by Yvette Melanson and Claire
Safran
Reviewed by Vicki White
“My earliest memory is of a
sense of guilt . . . then terror.” So begins the film the
“Lost Child.” The speaker is Rebecca Hoffman, a little girl
adopted and raised by loving and caring Jewish parents.
Prior to her adoption, Rebecca had been passed around from
person to person. When she was about 4 years old, she was
put on a bench in a train station by a social worker, told
to be a good girl and was then left alone. After
awhile, her “new parents” came for her. Her mother said,
“Your mommy’s here now, you won’t be alone anymore.”
Though she knew she was
adopted, Rebecca was kept in the dark about her heritage,
“There were secrets in the big house. They never talked
about where I came from.”
When Rebecca was 12, two
things happened that changed her life forever. Her father
let it slip that she was born a twin. “We wanted you, not
your brother.” Then, one day after school, her mother, who
she adored, was not at school to pick her up. In a panic,
Rebecca ran all the way home, exploded through the door,
only to find that her mother had died and had been taken
away.
Rebecca’s father remarried
not long after and her new jealous and conniving step-mother
did everything in her power to keep her husband all to
herself. Rebecca was sent away to boarding school and felt
she was no longer welcome at home. The final blow was felt
when her father died and her step-mother didn’t call early
enough for her to come home to say goodbye.
Up until this point, the film validates
the inherent unspoken loneliness in the adopted person. I
could feel the depth of Rebecca’s loneliness, especially
when she decided to search for her twin brother. She was
asked why, and answered, “He might be lonely.”
As
Rebecca begins her search for her twin, the perspective
broadens to include the feelings of the birth parents and
birth family and the impact of losing a child.
Via
the internet, Rebecca is connected with a birth sister. She
learns that she is Navajo and has three siblings all living
on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. A horrible piece of her
history is also related to her. A few days after she and
her twin were born, she fell ill and both babies were taken
to the “white man’s” hospital in Fort Defiance and left
there to recuperate. The parents heard nothing back from the
hospital and when they went to claim their children, the
babies were gone . . . stolen!
As
Rebecca’s reunion with her large Navajo family unfolded, I
began to understand the reasons for my inner discontent.
Although my adoptive parents loved and cared for me in a
wonderful environment, I was not allowed to stay “home” and
was taken away.
Rebecca’s birth father was very matter of fact about his
daughter, the “lost bird,” as were the rest of her family.
“This is your home. Out there, you are lost. Here, you are
known.” He assumed she would put her life with her husband
and two daughters in Pennsylvania behind her and come home
to the reservation. This didn’t seem plausible to me, but I
understood it more when the Navajo practice of burying the
umbilical cord was spoken about. “You and the land are one.
Here the wind knows your name. You are not a stranger here.
You knew where you belonged from day one.” The worst insult
you can make to a Navajo is, “He acts as if he has no
family.”
“Lost Child” is a rich and beautiful film. The comparison
between Odette Marie’s Navajo roots and her Jewish
upbringing is striking. You will be moved by backdrop of the
beautiful Arizona landscape and the spirituality of Navajo
traditions .
I
gained this insight. As certain as was Odette Marie’s
family’s assumption that she was their lost bird, far from
her home, that is how big her emptiness was. This film
helped me understand the immensity of the suppressed
feelings I have lived with all my life. These are feelings
that no words can describe but that have steered me much
like an invisible rudder in directions I do not want to go.
You
will have to see the film to find out if Odette Marie stayed
on the reservation. Whether she did or didn’t, she gained
new knowledge about where her “home” is and about who she
is. With this new sense of self, she is centered and can
choose where she wants to go from there. I hope you too
will become more aware of the immensity of the feelings that
have come from “losing your home.” Not knowing something
can shape your life just strongly as knowing something. I
hope that whatever way you find yourself and your home that
your life will be of your own design-- comfortable and
contented.