In Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, prolific essayist Melissa Febos, author of the memoir Whip Smart; Abandon Me; and the bestselling essay collection Girlhood, blends memoir with insight and guidance about the art of writing, primarily for an audience of memoirists.

Why highlight a book about the craft of writing in a magazine for adoptees, donor conceived people, and others who’ve experienced misattributed parentage? What does it have to do with you?

Possibly everything.

You needn’t be a writer to be inspired and educated by Body Work. The author’s razor-sharp insights are pertinent to anyone who wants to excavate their own truths; interrogate their traumas and their shame; and, especially, take ownership of their narratives.

To be adoptees or NPEs* means that part of our stories—the most foundational parts—were taken from us before we could ever know them. They were stolen for a host of reasons, but typically to keep others from facing uncomfortable truths—a theft that not only deflected shame from them but projected it onto us, suggesting that we are its source. Secrets were kept from us, and our stories were rewritten to better fit others’ narratives and preserve their integrity at the expense of our own. Our stories may be hidden behind closed doors, guarded by gatekeepers who insist we have no right to try to open them. If we persist and manage to unlock the doors, those for whom secrecy was in their best interest may tell us that what we discover is not ours to share. Sometimes we tell ourselves these lies.

Right out of the gate, Febos blows up any responsibility we might feel to hold tight to our stories and privately tend our traumas, and she positions storytelling as a strategy of reclamation. “Writing,” she says, “is a form of freedom more accessible than many and there are forces at work in our society that would like to withhold it from those whose stories threaten the regimes that govern this society.”

In those words it’s easy to see the adoptee/NPE world as a microcosm of that larger society—in which the secret keepers who are threatened by our stories try to inhibit our voices. In this regard, her prescription is equally apt: “Fuck them. Write your life. Let this book be a totem of permission, encouragement, proof, whatever you need it to be.”

In literary criticism, the genre of memoir has been a durable punching bag, dismissed and derided—despite is popularity—as a vain and trivial exercise in “naval-gazing.”  It’s a judgment that tells would-be storytellers their histories aren’t worthwhile and their traumas are unseemly—not for public consumption. Febos annihilates the argument and makes a compelling case that personal narrative can be healing to the teller at the same time it’s a balm for readers. Writing, she says, “has become for me a primary means of digesting and integrating my experiences and thereby reducing the pains of living, or if not, at least making them useful to myself and to others. There is no pain in my life that has not been given value by the alchemy of creative attention.”

She brilliantly explores what’s behind the dismissal of the form and, in particular, the admonition not to write about trauma, and turns the criticism on its head, asserting that writing about trauma is subversive and that resistance to the stories of oppressed people “is a resistance to justice.” Telling one’s story, Febos says, is, in fact, a requirement for recovery from trauma and for integrating the experience into one’s life.

To everyone who’s bought into this idea that trauma is a private matter not suitable to written expression, she’s emphatic: “Listen to me: It is not gauche to write about trauma. It is subversive. The stigma of victimhood is a time-worn tool of oppressive powers to gaslight the people they subjugate into believing that by naming their disempowerment they are being dramatic, whining, attention grabbing, or else beating a dead horse. By convincing us to police our own and each other’s stories, they have enlisted us in the project of our own continued disempowerment.”

Febos acknowledges secrets as the seed of almost all her writing and recognizes the power of untold secrets to imprison. She argues that writing can liberate us both from our fears about the subjects we hesitate to write about and form the isolation we feel about them, demonstrating to ourselves and readers that we’re not alone.

The third of the book’s four essay chapters, “A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables About Writing About Other People,” will be of special interest to many NPEs who wonder how to tell their stories when doing so may cause collateral damage. Febos asks who has the right to tell a story and offers perspective for how to look at the ethical issues that may arise when the narrative you have to share could upset or wound others.

Whether you wish to write to publish or to simply to bear witness and feel heard, there’s much in Body Work that will validate your aspirations and inform your process. Febos inspires and encourages and insists not only that personal narratives are valuable but also that creating and sharing them are imperative. If you’ve been shamed, made vulnerable, been traumatized, told that your story isn’t yours to tell, Body Work will speak to you.

*NPE: not parent expected, non-paternal event, non-paternity event—BKJ

By Lorah GeraldMy hand strokes the smooth white fur of the rug I am lying on. I move my hand slowly along it. It’s soft and soothing. I rub my face into the fur. My fingers dig into it and pull it close. It calms me and triggers Oxytocin—a hormone associated with pleasurable feelings—to be released by the pituitary gland. My breathing becomes slow and regular. The pain I’m feeling slowly subsides. I start regulating the mental turmoil in my mind. I draw on a memory of when I was happy. The sensation of the fur on my skin reminds me of the love I felt for my dog Brizzie. She was my everything. I spent as much time as I could with her, and I’d miss her when I was working or on vacation. I loved that dog with all of my heart. When she passed, my world crumbled.

I bought this rug to remember how I felt when I’d stroke her fur. She was unconditional love. I could feel it when I looked into her blue eyes. She’d look up at me, the world would fall away, and it would be just us. Our walks together were my happy place. Our connection was pure and uncomplicated. I felt she understood me; she could sense my pain and would come to my side. The love she gave flowed from her heart without pause. When she passed, I could still feel her beside me. Blump, blump, blump she would run up the stairs. I can still hear it. Her movement, her fur, her breath were all still alive in my thoughts but I could no longer reach out to touch her. I wanted to feel her again. I felt like a part of me died when she did.

As an adoptee, I’ve always felt closer to animals than humans. My childhood home was a farmhouse that was more than 100 hundred years old. My backyard had a barbed wire fence separating us from the farm behind it. The cows, horses, and ponies would lean their heads over the fence to eat grass out of the yard. Sometimes I’d gather vegetable scraps or handfuls of grass and hold out my hand to feed them. Their noses moved back and forth in my hand as they chewed the treat I held. They felt soft, like a rabbit’s ear. For a special treat, I asked my adoptive parents to buy sugar cubes for me to give to the horses. I’d slowly walk over to them and touch them, my hand softly stroking their hair. I looked into their gaze. Once I felt trust between us, I’d go to their side of the fence and play in their field. After years, I felt like we were friends. One day, I was told not to go into their field anymore. I understand then that the adults wanted to keep me safe, but it was devastating. I felt as if my friends had been taken away. I agreed to the rules but went into the field anyway when no one was looking. I’d already been taken away from my family, and I wasn’t going to let anyone take away my friends.

Being adopted, it was easier for me to have animals as friends. I loved the feeling of their fur, and I understand now that I was self-regulating my emotions when I petted them. I felt they loved me without complications. They helped heal my hidden pain. I loved all the animals and wanted to take care of them. Growing up, my menagerie consisted of cats, dogs, parakeets, fish, and turtles. My adoptive parents allowed one of my cats to have kittens so I could watch how birth happens. I thought it was gross but I loved those three kittens so much. One was white with a couple of gray spots. The others were tabby cats, one grey and one orange-striped. I was sad that we had to find them homes when they were old enough to be given away. It confused me. I knew my adoptive parents didn’t wait that long to get me. Was I given away too soon? I didn’t want to give them away. I felt heartbroken. It made me think about how I was given away. I knew my adoptive parents never talked to my birth mother. I wanted to know where the kittens were going. Why did my birth mother not ask who was taking me? I cared what was going to happen to my kittens. Why didn’t my birth mother care what happened to me?

Now I sit with my white fur rug, petting it and soothing myself. I remind myself that I am loved and I am worthy. The pain of being given away doesn’t go away. We learn to adapt to it.Lorah Gerald—adoptee, writer, intuitive, Kundalini yoga Instructor, reiki master and ordained minister—writes memoir, inspirational, educational, and opinion pieces and blogs on her website, LorahGerald.com, and as @theadoptedchameleon on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. She hopes to help others, adopted or not, heal their trauma by sharing her lived experiences as an adoptee, educating about breath work and energy healing, and using her natural intuitive abilities.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

For many of us, DNA test results have delivered news that’s made nothing in our world seem normal. Our families may not be our families. The truths we’ve known may not be truths at all. We’ve been upside-down, turned around, and left looking for some kind of foothold—a way to ground ourselves in this new unreality. Then came a virus and a quarantine that have made everyone’s lives anything but normal. On top of that, an unprecedented political climate along with civil unrest have been both globally and personally destabilizing. If that weren’t enough, bring on the holidays, which for some in the best of times are difficult, stressful, and grief-inducing. But this year, even those who typically find the season joyful may experience sadness, disappointment, and grief.

If you experience anxiety, it’s likely been magnified in (or by) 2020. If you’ve experienced trauma, the fear and isolation caused by the pandemic may be retraumatizing. If you’ve been alone in quarantine or can’t spend the holidays with the people you love, your loneliness may seem overwhelming. Even if you’ve been holding your own, the common sorrow—the empathy and compassion fatigue for all who are struggling—may be depleting you. This state of life as we know it now may be getting on your last nerve.

If, as so many of us have, you’ve attempted to cope by overeating, drinking, catastrophizing, or hiding under the covers, you’re not alone. As we near the end of this off-the-charts bad year, we may all need self-care, but are too weary to make the effort. Among our resolutions may be to do better, perhaps even to seek the therapy many of us need to help us find our sure footing in our personal strange new world and in the strange new world everyone now inhabits. But there’s one little thing we can do to help ground ourselves in minutes—and it involves something many of us have been missing—a hug.

One mindful technique that can help keep you rooted in the moment and prevent you from focusing on worries is the butterfly hug. It’s a technique often taught by therapists who practice EMDR so that their clients can self-soothe outside of sessions. EMDR (which will be the topic of an upcoming article) stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Developed serendipitously by Francine Shapiro, PhD, it’s one of a number of evidence-based therapeutic modalities used to treat trauma and other painful experiences. It’s based on the principle of bilateral stimulation. While clients discuss an aspect of their painful experiences, they watch a rapid repetitive movement back and forth—possibly lights or the therapist’s finger moving across their fields of vision. It’s an approach that’s been proven to positively alter thinking and feelings relative to experiences—processing the trauma, defusing memories, and allowing people to be more present and less attached to the past. It produces a change in the neural networks that in turn produces a cognitive change.

The butterfly hug is a way to self-administer bilateral stimulation to reduce arousal. It was created in 1998 by Lucina Artigas, MA, MT, while working in Mexico with survivors of Hurricane Pauline. Simple to perform, you can do it any time you feel stressed, notice distracting negative thoughts, or are preoccupied with worries about the future. Make yourself comfortable sitting or reclining. Close your eyes if you wish. Lay your left hand across the right side of your chest and your right hand across the left. Link your thumbs so that your hands look like butterfly wings. Position your hands so your fingertips point upward toward the neck and rest them near your collarbone or your upper chest. Inhale deeply and exhale. Then—while thinking about what’s troubling you—tap your fingers on your chest in an alternating fashion, first your left hand tapping on your right side, then your right hand tapping on your left side, your hands moving like butterfly wings at whatever pace and pressure you like. Notice what your senses perceive: sounds, smells, images, feelings. Be aware of your thoughts without judgment and without trying to influence them. Repeat until you notice a sensation of greater calm and a reduction in negative thoughts. Inhale deeply and exhale. That’s it. It doesn’t take long to soothe yourself. In her protocol, Artigas advises doing the hug for no more than six to eight times to avoid overstimulation, but some practitioners suggest that it can be done for several minutes and can be repeated until you sense an increased feeling of calm. The technique will not eradicate anxiety, but it will bring it down a notch or two, which sometimes is just enough to make the days more manageable.

Click here for a video describing the method.

Keep in mind, the butterfly hug is a method of self-soothing but doesn’t take the place of therapy for extreme anxiety or PTSD. If you’re experiencing severe symptoms or if the hug increases your anxiety, talk with a mental health professional.  

By Sara EasterlyA common mistake adoptive parents make when hearing adult adoptees speak about adoption trauma is discounting their experiences because “times have changed” or their adoptee hasn’t voiced similar feelings. Some parents will straight-up ask their adopted children if they feel the same way and then rest easy when their children deny having similar feelings. Differing details of adoption stories can be used as evidence of irrelevance. Adoptee voices that land as “angry” are often quickly written off as “examples of a bad adoption.”

“Not my adoptee,” is a knee-jerk, defensive response that blinds parents to adoption-related dynamics that may be uncomfortable or painful to consider—especially when everything seems to be going swimmingly in early childhood. This posture, though, discounts the real and proven trauma inherent in adoption, missing an opportunity to fully support adopted children and ultimately benefit from closer, more authentic relationships.

That trauma looks good on you.

One reason it’s so easy to miss signs of adoption trauma is because it can present so well.

Adoptees are unintentionally groomed to be people-pleasers. Once we’ve lost our first mothers to adoption, we can work incredibly hard to win the love of our next mothers. We strive to measure up—doing and saying whatever is needed to keep our adoptive mothers close. This is all unconscious and certainly not meant to be fraudulent. To our brains, running the show, it’s simply a matter of survival. Children need parents, after all, and attachment is our greatest human need, taking priority even over such basics as shelter and food, as explained by child developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

Of course, “good,” compliant behavior is welcomed and adored in our culture. What parent wouldn’t find a well-behaving child absolutely lovely? As a mother, I confess that my job feels so much easier when my kids behave. Unfortunately, though, the more adoptees are praised for our good behavior, the more our unhealthy patterns are reinforced and extend outside of our family relationships. We’ll ditch our true feelings in a heartbeat if it means feeling treasured and keeping loved ones close.

Other manifestations of adoption trauma are valued by mainstream culture: perfectionism churns out hard-working, dedicated students and employees who’ll always go the extra mile—nobody spotting the adoptee’s frantic need to prove his or her worth. Adoptees often make natural leaders—nobody knowing that we can harbor a desperate need to be in charge that started upon relinquishment when our brains decided nobody was looking out for us, so we’re best served when we’re at the helm. People-pleasers can also be charismatic, supportive, empathetic, and generous … others unaware of the self-sabotage that can be at play behind the scenes. We can seem unfazed in the face of stressful situations, many not understanding that’s because we’ve spent a lifetime diminishing our feelings and disregarding deep pain in order to become masters of compartmentalization.

These are traits we value in society. They serve. These traits aren’t all bad, of course. But they can be inwardly destructive—especially if adoptees aren’t aware of them, and most certainly if the cost is the adoptee’s true sense of self.

Adoption blinds.

Another reason it’s harder to spot adoption trauma is because it hides itself from adoptees themselves. The grief of losing a first family member through adoption is so significant it’s not easily looked at by the adoptee. Like looking at the sun too directly, it will burn. What’s more, our experiences of such great loss are often preverbal, before we learned words like loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and hopelessness to help us understand our overwhelming emotions—so overwhelming, sometimes, they aren’t felt. Our brains protect us in that way, because to feel them just might do us in.

Developmentally, most children won’t even have the capacity to reflect upon adoption loss until much later in life. This is what’s known as “living in the fog”—a state of denial or numbness in which adoptees are unable to closely examine the effects of adoption. When directly asked, in-the-fog adoptees often won’t have the consciousness, or the words, to talk about adoption trauma. We spend years, and possibly decades, feeling more comfortable parroting society’s or a family’s lighthearted interpretation of adoption than trying to articulate our underground, confusing, complex emotions.

When we sense a disconnect between our nuanced feelings and culture’s saccharine-sweet story of adoption, we blame ourselves. When we fail at being “perfect,” we are prone toward additional self-attack. When we’re more three-dimensional than simply “good” adoptees, we can resort to secrecy in order to keep the darker parts of ourselves hidden from those closest to us. In any of these ways, we can end up living a double life, censoring large swaths of ourselves—making it harder to feel fully known and rest in a sense of deep love by those closest to us.

This is why it’s critically important to listen to out-of-the-fog adult adoptees. Adoptees who share their stories aren’t usually doing so for fame, glory, or money, but out of a genuine desire to support other adoptees. We share on the other side of healing—or in the midst of our healing—in hopes of opening adoptive parents’ eyes to our innermost secrets that we wish our parents had had access to in our younger years.

Are some of us angry? Absolutely. Society hasn’t made room for our voices in the story of adoption, despite the fact that we’re its central players. Some of us have been let down by the people closest to us—again and again. Some of us haven’t felt seen or known. Some of us have been mistreated. Some of us have sought to take our own lives to stop the pain without having to shed light on adoption’s darkest manifestations.

“Not my adoptee” could easily be your adoptee—whether you or your child recognize so right now. Like all children, adoptees eventually grow older; hopefully, in the name of their mental health and wholeness as individuals, their feelings around adoption will evolve over time. As your child matures, you’ll want your child to look back and know that you did your best to understand them, to see them, to know them, and to guide them. While all adoptees are different, and each story is unique, listening to #adopteevoices—an array of them—is of utmost importance when raising adopted children toward their full developmental potential.Sara Easterly is an adoptee and award-winning author of books and essays. Her memoir, Searching for Mom, won a Gold Medal in the Illumination Book Awards, among many other honors. Her essays and articles have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Red Letter Christians, Feminine Collective, Her View From Home, Godspace, and others. Find her online at saraeasterly.com, on Facebook, on Instagram @saraeasterlyauthor, and on Twitter @saraeasterly.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about adoptees, NPEs, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

Don’ t miss the latest in a series of webinars from Right to Know (RTK), a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of MPEs (misattributed parentage experiences)—including adoptees and those conceived through assisted reproduction—and NPEs (not parent expected).

On Sunday, October 18, from 4pm-5:30pm EST, the webinar will address mental health issues experienced by MPEs. Moderated by DrPh candidate Sebastiana Gianci, the panel will include Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT, therapist, cohost of the podcast Sex, Lies & The Truth, and creator of the innovative training program Parental Identity Discovery; Cotey Bowman, LPC associate, creator of the NPE Counseling Collective; and Lynne Weiner Spencer, RN, MA, LP, a therapist specializing in donor conception, adoption, and the experiences of NPEs and MPEs.

Among the topics to be explored are trauma, identity, grief, ambiguous loss, anxiety, and rejection.

In November, the series’ presenter will be Libby Copeland, award-winning author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are. (Look for our Q & A with the author here.)

And in December, RTK’s webinar features the DNA Geek Leah Larkin, an adoptee and genetic genealogist. If you’d like to attend the upcoming webinar, request the Zoom link at RSVP2RightToKnow.us and check out RTK’s event page to stay in the loop about upcoming presentations.

If you missed the last webinar, “Understanding the Medical Ramifications in Your DNA Test,” you can watch the recording.

Right to Know, created by Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, Gregory Loy, and Alesia Cohen Weiss, aims to educate the public and professionals about “the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics.” It works, as well, to change laws with respect to related issues, including fertility fraud. Find it on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram @righttoknowus.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy. And check out our articles on the topics that will be discussed in RTK’s webinar: disenfranchised grief, stages of grief, ambiguous loss, rejection, and trauma.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines here.
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

Any surprise can be traumatic, but a DNA surprise raises one of life’s most fundamental questions: Who am I? Your very identity is made up of your memories, your shared stories, and experiences with family and friends. When you find out that something is not true, or not exactly true, it is a major shock to your emotional system.It is easy to tell yourself, “This is no big deal. I should be able to handle this.” But “handling something” is a process. And that process may involve feeling upset and expressing various emotions. Like any trauma, the emotional reactions can come in waves and when you least expect them. You and your family members both may minimize your experience by emphasizing you had good parents, you shouldn’t be upset, or even that you’re being selfish by looking for answers. I tell people that I don’t know what qualifies as an overreaction to news that changes your understanding of your world. Your reaction is not a sign of emotional weakness—it’s a sign that you are in touch with reality enough that you react when reality changes. I suggest you accept your reactions, your feelings, as being there. Accept that they are what you need to feel in the moment. There’s no need to try changing them—that doesn’t work anyway. You need to work through the process.There can be depression, with low mood and irritability, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, poor concentration, and an inability to focus on work. There might be anger. Part of what makes this kind of trauma so difficult is that you might think it’s not really that big of a deal—others have it worse. And it’s true, others have it worse. But trauma is not a contest—you can have all the emotions anyway. You are not weak.Yes. Sometimes you just can’t process everything at once and you will feel disoriented and unable to concentrate. The news can be so big that it’s like your circuits are overloaded.Yes. Research has shown for many years that stressful life events (both good stress and bad stress) have an impact on our health. It is important that you allow yourself to experience your emotions and not waste energy on fighting them. You might look at the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory.It’s important to accept our reactions as normal. The more we fight them or argue that there’s something wrong with us for reacting, the longer it will take to move forward, the longer it will take to heal. Journaling can be immensely helpful. Write down what you’re feeling, even if it seems extreme or overly dramatic. It isn’t. It’s the reality of what you are feeling in the moment. Meditation can be helpful, but if you can’t slow your mind down, that’s ok. Notice and accept that your mind is racing. If you’re able to exercise, that’s a great way of dealing with stress and clearing the mind. Reaching out to understanding friends is important. And there’s a large community online going through similar things. (Use the Resources tab on the Severance home page to find some of these.)I encourage people to move slowly in the process—think of yourself as writing a novel. What information do you need to make the characters more interesting, to make them sympathetic. Is there a way that you can make their behavior understandable? For example, a teenage girl that became pregnant in the past may not have been allowed much say in whether or not to keep the baby or put the child up for adoption. Going back even further in time, a single female may not have had the opportunity to earn a living wage and therefore couldn’t provide for a child. A father may not have known of a child’s existence. There are many more examples I can give. On the other hand, what you learn now becomes part of your story and, if you’re someone reading this, you’re likely the kind of person that wants to know your whole story. Being understanding and sympathetic toward others doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to experience your own emotions, though.

The most important thing is to take care of yourself. Ask yourself what you, yourself, need. Try to find a way to meet that need, but keep in mind you can’t control other people.

Therapy can be very helpful at any point in the process. A good therapist helps you reflect on who you are and who you want to be. Ultimately, you are the author of your story, no matter how many plot twists get added to that story. I would consider therapy necessary and would encourage you to seek help if you’re having symptoms of depression or trauma—low mood, irritability, sleep or appetite problems, inability to concentrate, relationship problems.Searching for answers can be all-consuming. We live in an age in which we can binge-watch on Netflix and learn the answer to a mystery on a television show within hours. When it comes to family mysteries, we have search engines, DNA, and genealogy services. There’s a lot we can learn quickly. But definitive answers can take a long time. Others may not understand our obsession—even others affected by the discovery of a family secret may not care like you do. It’s a very personal thing. It’s important to keep in mind that we can’t necessarily find answers quicker by working harder. As an example, I have spent two years searching for my grandfather’s birth parents. I found his likely father fairly quickly, but could find nothing on his mother. I gave up for a while and came back to the search and found I had earlier ruled out a group of people for some reason. This group has turned out to offer my best leads in my search. It’s important to take care of yourself. Meditate, exercise, sleep, stay in touch with your friends, get out of the house. All of these things will make your search more efficient. Taking care of yourself helps you think more clearly. All of these strategies are part of accepting our humanity, accepting that we don’t control how our bodies and minds react. This includes accepting that other people may be doing their best—we just don’t always know their stories, why they react the way they do. We need to take care of ourselves so we don’t lose ourselves in the process.Keep in mind that what you find in the search will trigger all kinds of emotions. You may find people who share DNA with you, but nothing else. A newfound relative may have no interest in a relationship, or on the other hand, may want more of your time and energy than you want to give. It’s a process, and you may not know what you want until you start finding answers to the secret, until you find these relatives. Don’t assume they’ll want the same things you do. Also, it’s important to keep asking yourself: “What is it I really want? What am I searching for? What values of mine will this search, and its possible answers, satisfy?”We are all ultimately seeking connection and belonging. Unfortunately, life is not clean. We don’t all fit into perfectly designed family trees. It’s estimated that 7% of Americans are adopted or in foster care. Add on top of that all the individuals who grew up in a “nuclear” family but were conceived outside of the marriage or through donors. That’s a huge percentage of us. It is important that we work to remove the stigma of this. We didn’t choose how we came into this world. It’s important that we not stigmatize ourselves. We are just as legitimate as anyone else.

We also need to keep in mind that we may be rejected by newfound biological parents. We need to keep our fantasies in check. These biological relatives are human beings, with strengths and with flaws, just like everyone else. Other people may not understand our need to search and they may have no desire to know the answers themselves. We need to accept that.

Greg Markway, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in St. Louis, Missouri. He became interested in genetic genealogy while searching for the roots of his grandfather, who came to Missouri from New York on an orphan train in 1896.

Read more about shock and trauma related to DNA surprises here and here, and return to the home page for more articles about genetic identity.

BEFORE YOU GO…

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines at https://severancemag.com/submission-guidelines/
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/402792990448461
• And like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/severancemag and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag

I circle my birthday on the calendar every year.

As the date draws closer, its approach feels increasingly like warm, heavy breathing on the nape of my neck and I begin to think about it daily, as much as I don’t want to. The breathing on my neck intensifies. I work hard to bottle up anticipation that bubbles up from my soul. When it is a week away, anxiety skyrockets. Try as I might to banish all birthday thoughts and emotions from my mind and body, I’m unable to. The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Thank you, irony.

Then it arrives. It’s here! The big day! Time to celebrate! Celebratory texts and Facebook posts begin rolling in. Regardless of what’s planned for me on this most wondrous of days, I don’t need to guess what this day will be like or how I will feel. It’s my birthday after all. October 10^th is here. Yippy.

Anxiety levels now reach all-time highs, or, to be precise, match the same highs set each preceding year. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco.

For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t. Like a family of pit vipers slithering over each other in a dark den, something buried in my subconscious moves, waiting for a chance to strike. I’m riddled with emotional pain and loneliness even though I’m blessed to be married to a superhero and am a father to two wonderful children who go out of their way to do nice things for me. I feel as if I am seeking something that cannot be found.

Regardless of whether we have a party, go out to dinner as a family, or do any of the other good ideas my wife comes up with, I try my best to be happy. Yet that happiness is as elusive as sleep is to an insomniac. The celebration and presents are never enough to quell the pain, and then the sabotaging kicks into high gear and I turn into a monster in the presence of people doing nice things for me. I snap. I peck at their nests. I bark. I am fussy. This is not me in entirety, but it is who I unfortunately become on this day.

Some form of trauma boils up from the depths of my being. It takes charge as much as I fight it not to. It’s in control, not me. All I truly want is for the day to be over. Please, can it be October 11^th? I am not good enough for my birthdays, and they are not good enough for me. It wasn’t until very recently, when I turned my gaze within and introduced myself to the core of my being that I finally could grasp the source and depth of this angst.

You see, I’m adopted. Born a bastard, I was separated from my biological mother at birth. The woman I spent nine months preparing to meet was gone in an instant. In my most vulnerable state, I was motherless. Without mother. At the time, I was overcome by a high degree of trauma, a trauma that cannot be undone. Worse, this trauma is precognitive. I, like millions of my adoptee crib mates, do not know what life is like without trauma, as we were introduced to life in such a traumatic state. Due to recent scientific studies, we know this to be true. Babies are born expecting to meet their mothers, hear their voices, smell their scents, taste their milk.  When their mothers are not available, they become traumatized. If puppies and kittens must stay with their birth mothers for a few weeks before being adopted, why is it okay to separate a newborn from her mother at first breath?

After reading and processing this research, I could finally grasp the source of my annual torment. It’s my adoption trauma raising its ugly head and expressing itself.

My actual birth day was not a happy day. There were no relatives there to hug me and fawn over me. There were no flowers and balloons in the hospital room. No one was smoking cigars anywhere. I was moved into the natal ward to be cared for by nameless faceless baby handlers.  I cannot account for the first few weeks of my life. There are no photos. There are no family stories. I do not know who bathed me. Who fed me. Who swaddled me. My biological parents did their best to forget about me and move on with their lives while I was swept into the system as a ward of the state. It is hard for me to imagine how a human being could be more vulnerable.

I have been reunited with my biological family, including my birth mother, since early 2017. She and I have become very close since our reunion. We routinely explore our feelings about my adoption and have deeply emotional conversations about my issues. We become extraordinarily vulnerable in the process, and she wants to take all that pain from me. She never knew the depths of trauma adoptees are exposed to, and she suffers in guilt as a result.

As much as adoption agencies and society at large claim one can paper over this separation with love, there is no amount of love that can fix this vexing situation that arises through the act of adoption.

She was not without trauma, either; it has riddled her since my birth. We cannot forget that birth mothers suffer too. I listen and help her unpack her suffering and sadness. We promise each other that we aren’t going anywhere. One separation is enough for her and me.

Recently, my birthdays have improved. It has helped to learn the science behind what a newborn knows and yearns for and how the absence of those things results in trauma. This has truly aided me in my quest to understand myself. Added to that, several biological family members love to celebrate my birthday with me too, as they hold it in high regard and see it as a monumental day that absolutely needs to be celebrated. Some want to celebrate all the “lost” birthdays we didn’t get to celebrate before our reunion. Further, I have found solace with adoptees on social media and in a local adoptee group I run. I’ve learned that there are many other adoptees who find birthdays equally painful and anxiety inducing.

With time and healing, my birthdays are becoming less toxic and angst-ridden. I am more relaxed and I smile more than frown. Birthdays are meant to be happy days, and I am on the path to making sure that my birthdays are happy before they run out.— Adrian Jones, an advocate for adoptees and heart health, lives in Marin County, California with his wife and two children. Visit his blog, An Adoptee Shares His Story. Look for another of his essays here. 

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

Facebook groups and virtual support groups can be lifesavers, but nothing beats face-to-face time with people who know how you feel and have been where you’ve been. That’s why Erin Cosentino and Cindy McQuay have begun organizing retreats for adoptees, late discovery adoptees, donor conceived (DC) people, and NPEs (not parent expected) at which participants can get to know each other and share their experiences in a relaxed setting while learning from experts about the issues that challenge them. It’s not therapy, but it may be equally healing, and undoubtedly more fun.

Since the day that Cosentino, 44, discovered at 42 that her father was not the man who raised her, her mantra has been “Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.” McQuay, 56, has known her entire life she had been adopted. Both married with children and busy schedules, each devotes considerable time to advocating for people with concerns related to genetic identity and helping searchers look for biological family. And each runs a private Facebook group, Cosentino’s NPE Only: After the Discovery, and McQuay’s Adoptees Only: Found/Reunion The Next Chapter.

Among her advocacy efforts, McQuay, who describes herself as a jack of all trades, helps adoptees locate the forms necessary to obtain original birth certificates (OBCs). A strong voice for adoptee rights, she strives to enlighten non-adoptees about the often unrecognized harsh realities of adoption, helping them understand that “not all adoptions are rainbows and unicorns.” Countering the dominant narrative, she’s quick to point out that adoptees “were not chosen, we were just next in line.”

Cosentino and McQuay first encountered each other when they were among 30 participants at an afternoon meet-up in Philadelphia last March. “It was an awesome experience to be able to see and hug these people with whom we’d formed deep bonds over the Internet,” says Cosentino. “We loved that we were able to meet up with others, but felt that there simply wasn’t enough time to share with each other.” Further, she says, McQuay felt slightly out of place because she was the only adoptee in attendance and the agenda was geared more toward NPEs.

After the meeting, a group of attendees went out to dinner and Cosentino and McQuay began to talk about the possibility of creating a retreat. As a special educator, Cosentino says her go-to is always to teach, so planning a retreat where people affected by separation from biological family could gather and “learn and grow while healing” seemed like a great idea. Over the course of the dinner conversation, they’d decided to plan something longer and more inclusive, and, thus, says Cosentino, “the idea for the New Jersey Shore Round Table Retreat was born.”

They designed a program that would include all people facing identity loss and address their issues. It was important to McQuay, for example, to “make sure NPEs, LDAs, and DC people knew what adoptees have been living their entire lives”—how they’ve spent their lifetimes searching for familiarity in strangers’ faces, about the frustrations associated with the laws pertaining to OBCs, and the trauma and loss they’ve experienced.

Their inaugural retreat was held in Brigantine, New Jersey in October 2019 and was attended by 18 women and one man. “We initially and quite simply wanted more time together. We felt we wanted to provide a space where we could all—NPEs, DCs, adoptees, and LDAs—be together and share our experiences,” says Cosentino. The lone man attending felt fortunate to take part but wishes more men would take the opportunity to attend. According to McQuay, “Men may be hesitant to open up, but would be surprised to learn that the retreats are not women-specific. They contain activities that benefit everyone.

At the same time, they wanted to delve deeper into the trauma often experienced in the wake of the revelation of family secrets and so invited Susannah Spanton—a Reiki master and Bio-Energy practitioner as well as a trauma trainer at Lakeside Global Institute, which provides trauma-informed training—to speak about how the body responds and adapts to trauma. According to Cosentino, “Trauma changes a person, but we all respond differently to trauma. It’s a very individual experience. So we focused on asking thought-provoking questions and sharing meals, lots of laughs, and some tears as well. We just wanted to be around people who get it.” In addition, they broke up into smaller groups where they explored hard questions and also enjoyed time for meditation and reflection.Now they’re branching out and planning additional retreats—for starters, a spring 2020 gathering in Brigantine (with half the 30 spots already booked by previous attendees) and an autumn 2020 retreat, tentatively scheduled to take place in Pennsylvania’s Poconos, where participants can enjoy the mountains and the fall foliage. “We can’t help but think of the quote (from an unknown source)—‘Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go,’—and it really is the perfect backdrop to heal, grow, and maybe not let go, but move forward,” says Cosentino. She and McQuay are open to the possibility of hosting retreats virtually anywhere if there’s a desire from people in other areas. Because Cosentino sits on the board of a cancer nonprofit organization for which she plans events in states remotely, it’s a seamless task for her.

The first gathering, says Cosentino, was their ‘guinea pig.’ “We learned from that first retreat what people liked and didn’t like, what they need, and even what they are not ready to experience. The second retreat will take a more therapeutic approach. “Our trauma specialist is returning, but we’ve enlisted the expertise of art and writing therapists as well—Elissa Arbeitman, MA ATR-BC and Chelsea Palermo, MFA—and a licensed social worker, Gina Daniel, DSW, LCSW, will be there as well to educate us on therapies that work for NPEs, adoptees, LDAs, and DC individuals.The most significant benefit to attendees, say McQuay and Cosentino, is togetherness. “We heal simply by being together in a safe place where we already know what the others are experiencing. But of equal importance and value is the opportunity to have trained professionals guide us through different therapies and approaches and provide strategies and opportunities to feel whole,” says Cosentino.

“The best thing was knowing you are not alone and being able to share and talk about your own personal story without judgment or someone saying ‘don’t worry, nothing has changed,’” says one attendee, Da Rhonda Roberts, a 56-year NPE and a human resources coordinator from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. “For me it changed a whole hell of a lot.” The trauma lecture was also informative and helpful for her not only for its relevance to genetic identity, but also because she’s a survivor of domestic violence. Many people with genetic identity loss have experienced other types of trauma, which may be amplified by the distress they experience after making difficult family discoveries, so strategies for addressing trauma are essential.

Not feeling alone was also a key takeaway for Heather Resto. A 39-year-old NPE from Connecticut whose older brother is also an NPE, she also credits the retreat with reassuring her that “it’s okay to feel everything I feel as a result of this discovery—anger, grief, shock, sadness, and joy connecting with new family.” The lecture on trauma, she says, validated her emotions. “There was something cathartic about sitting in a room with 17 other people going through the same thing. While our stories are all different and we’re all at different points in our journey to discovery, we are all connected as NPEs. We all get ‘it,’ while many people in our daily lives just don’t see how a discovery like this is traumatic and life changing,” Resto says.Learn more about the retreats at Hiraeth Hope & Healing, and join pertinent communities on Facebook: Cosentino’s group for NPEs, McQuay’s group for adoptees, and Severance’s group for anyone experiencing genetic identity issues.

Check back soon for more on how to start a retreat or symposium in your area.

By Liz DeBettaMy body remembers

the shiver of separation

the moment of release

from anything and everything I ever knew

My body remembers

the renunciation

the retraction

the ricochet

of loss

Pain becomes an echo of that loss

that thunders through my skull

screaming

Forcing me to remember what my body refuses to forgetTrauma lives in the body. When you don’t have words to remember, your body will store those memories in fascinating and complex ways. Being an adopted person means living with an overwhelming storehouse of anxiety and confusion that comes from being separated from the mother who carried you in her womb. The only safe place you ever knew is gone, and your baby brain learns to operate on hyper alert, constantly on the lookout for danger. Or, as I like to call it, always waiting for the other shoe to drop (or the shit to hit the fan). Suddenly you are untethered and adrift in a new world with strange sounds and sights and smells that don’t make sense except that you don’t yet have words for it so all of that fear gets locked inside and becomes a constant companion. I have lived with so much fear, so much anxiety, and so much confusion that it’s exhausting. I’d love to sleep, to really and truly sleep, but that is difficult because my body remembers and my brain won’t relax.Breathe

Relax

It’s not real, it’s only a dream

But it feels real and I can’t separate from the feelings that bubble up while I sleep

I want sleep to be an oblivion

A place where I can just relax and breathe

A place where I can take a break from myself

Instead I sweat, cry, search —

for something

or someone

I never find

An endless pattern of up, down, into, through —

stairways

elevators

escalators

hallways

rooms

Desperately searching

Knowing that if I can find it

or you

I will be OK

I want to be OK

to breathe

to relax

to let go

So that when I wake up

I can be here

instead of stuck there

where I can’t find you

frantically wandering on the edge of panic

on the edge of despair

where reality is blurred by the darkness that still seems to threaten me

I have a recurring dream that is a manifestation of my fear and anxiety. It’s been happening for twenty years and it always makes me feel drained, panicked, and powerless. I wake up full of raw emotion, vulnerable and scared even though you are right next to me. Even though you are here and I am not alone. Every time it happens I’m less able to focus, less able to feel capable, less able to be present with you or anyone else. I have to struggle to find enough balance between what I know to be real and what, even though it feels so real, is only a dream. This recurrence is a reminder of how deeply embedded my fear of loss and separation is, a reminder of my terrified baby self who didn’t understand what had happened or why it was happening. This recurrence is what keeps me stuck in those preverbal memories that have such a strong hold on my inability to open up and express my feelings. How can I find the words to say how terrified I feel at the thought of losing you, or anyone I love? That losing you in the dream feels worse than death. It feels like I’m drowning in my own panic and I can’t stop moving because if I keep moving I might keep some of the panic at bay. If I keep moving I might get closer to finding you and then I can rest. So I spend most of my time waking and sleeping in a kind of constant motion to make myself feel safe. But I am safe and unsafe at the same time in this pattern and this constant tension creates a cage that I long to break free from. I have to fight my way back to feeling ok again in the aftermath of the dream because it haunts me and clings like a dark shadow refusing to let go. It makes me feel too much like I’m wearing my skin inside out. But these scars are invisible, only I can see and feel them. This is the stuff that love can’t fix.Liz DeBetta is a PhD candidate in humanities and culture, Union Institute & University (certificates in Women’s and Gender Studies/Creative Writing); a lecturer of English at Utah Valley University; and the writing and performance mentor for Act Risk No More. A member of Actor’s Equity and SAG-AFTRA, she’s interested in performance-based narrative writing for healing and social change from a feminist perspective within the areas of adoption culture and reproductive justice as a way of disrupting dominant narratives and shifting paradigms for adoptees and birth mothers. Her writing has been published on “Dear Adoption.com” and in “#MeToo: Essays About How and Why This Happened, What it Means and How to Make Sure it Never Happens Again.” She’s a team facilitator of Adoptees Connect in Salt Lake City and is researching the benefits of creative writing to heal adoptee trauma.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.