"Inside every adoptee is an abandoned baby" Nancy Verrier The Primal Wound, p110. Listen Here:
play.acast.com/s/two-lucky-bds/74cf9660-e2fa-488b-8c3d-79b78433cffa Episode two of Two Lucky B*#%*@ds was released on October 30th, 2020 (run time 52.17). In this episode Sande and Lance consider two of the themes that emerged for them from chapter two of Barbara Sumner's wonderful book Tree of Strangers; attachment & loss (which Sande refers to as disconnection from 'the divine feminine') and adoption labels (including the orphan archetype). The episode opens with some reflections on the week that has been, and the fortnight since episode one was launched. Both Sande and Lance share how talking about adoption has given them new and unique perspectives, and how freeing it is to speak out loud something that has been unspoken for so long. As they introduce the themes for the episode they take a slight detour, exploring the notion of foundlings, the emergence of adoption as a process in Roman times, and a brief overview of modern adoption law, starting with The Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act, enacted in 1851, which is widely considered to be the first “modern” adoption law, and New Zealand's Adoption of Children Act, 1881, which was the first modern adoption law in the British Empire www.nzlii.org/nz/legis/hist_act/aoca188145v1881n9268/ New Zealand's first adoption law was very different to the adoption processes still in practice today (the Adoption Act, 1955) which moved to a stance of closed stranger adoption and denies access to the majority of the original adoption records, as detailed by Barbara Sumner in her Radio New Zealand interview, which can be listened to here: www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018763739/barbara-sumner-opening-up-about-the-pain-of-closed-adoption Attachment & Loss/The Divine Feminine In her book Barbara beautifully reflects on how she'd "heard her voice (her birth mother's) for nine months, her heartbeat, the rush of her blood and the click of her bones". She also says that "a mother posses you within herself. And you are secure there. You make a snug cavern of her body, a nest, or a burrow, and it is all yours. She shares everything with you. Her nutrition and discomfort, her anguish and joy, even her temperature". Yet through adoption this was lost. As Barbara says, "I have no sensory memory of her". In discussing this Lance reflects on the importance of attachment and the fact that for nine months the growing child absorbs the sounds, tastes, smells and emotions of the mother. Adoption severs this vital connection with the one being that has embodied safety and life for the child. Sande has a different take on the same passage, which evokes in her ideas around the connectedness that we all share (and yearn for) as people of the earth/the land and how adoption rips an individual away from the source of all being (the Mother). She then explores mother images in other cultures including Kali in Hinduism www.ancient.eu/Kali/ the great mother/dark mother jenniferlinton.com/2012/05/14/the-great-mother-vs-the-terrible-mother-the-dual-nature-of-the-jungian-archetype/ and the Christian notions of Father/Mother God. Sande also refers to the work of Rose-Emily Rothenberg: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00322928308407903?journalCode=upyp20 and Maureen Murdoch: www.amazon.com/Heroines-Journey-Womans-Quest-Wholeness/dp/1611808308/ref=pd_lpo_14_img_0/130-8537875-0871969?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1611808308&pd_rd_r=bdab6cd9-2739-4a86-93af-bea1378cee08&pd_rd_w=1rR7d&pd_rd_wg=HUSch&pf_rd_p=7b36d496-f366-4631-94d3-61b87b52511b&pf_rd_r=9HTN1SNM00DMEZB9VPNW&psc=1&refRID=9HTN1SNM00DMEZB9VPNW Orphan Archetype & Faith Development Conversation quickly moves to the Jungian notion of the orphan archetype exploringyourmind.com/twelve-jungian-archetypes/ and the impact of abandonment, loss, rejection and pain. Lance refers to another image of the orphan, being the Victorian notion of the foundling which is the title of an album by the American Country artist Mary Gauthier, which can be listened to here: www.marygauthier.com/the-foundling As an aside, Gauthier was herself born to a mother she never knew and relinquished in St Vincent's Women and Infants Asylum in Louisiana. Adopted when she was about a year old by an Italian Catholic couple from Thibodaux, Louisiana, struggling to deal with being adopted and started to use drugs and alcohol. At 15, she ran away from home, and spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, and living with friends; she spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell. These experiences provided rich fodder for her songwriting. On her album The Foundling Alone, she asks the biggest questions of all: "Who am I?," "Where do I come from?," and "What do I do when I find out?" In considering the impact of loss Lance also refers to the writing of Annie Murphy Paul, author of Origins : How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives. Paul's research is explained in her TedTalk which can be viewed here: www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born/transcript They then consider the impact of abandonment and loss on relationships. In the second half of the episode Sande and Lance consider adoption labels, including adoptee and adopted child. Lance considers the comparison between adoption and amputation. His thoughts on this are explored further here: confessionsofahopefilledadoptee.weebly.com/blog/category/so-youre-an-amputeecd31bec7f6 Sande then returns to thinking around the orphan archetype and the skills/strengths that adoptees can learn from their lived experience. She also warns about the temptation that adoptees have of falling into the role of the victim. Lance then springboards into a discussion about National Adoption Awareness Month (November) and encourages people to watch the documentary Three Identical Strangers www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-three-identical-strangers-documentary-20180702-story.html This leads into discussions about how not to fall into the victim role, but rather how we can live positively as we reconcile our adoptive experience in creative and life-giving ways. Lance reinforced the importance of adoptees connecting with other adoptees, and Sande emphasised the need to tell our story to others so that they better understand what adoption means - "speaking our truth". The episode concludes with considerations around the experience of adoptees today (and those who are the result of new reproductive technologies) and how different that is to the adoption experience of those from the baby scoop era. Lance highlights the work of the Russian-born New Zealand adoptee Alex Gilbert who has created an online community for adoptees called I am Adopted imadopted.org/ Alex's experience of adoption was very different, born out of better understandings that his adoptive parents had of the need to connect with "who we are". Which leads the discussion onto the reality that for many today (who have not experienced what it means to be adopted) there is a belief that adoptees ought to be grateful that they were adopted by parents who wanted them. Yet, as the New Zealand adoption campaigner Keith Griffith's notes, "the adoption process is the only trauma where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful." Stay tuned to see where chapter three leads us.
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