Story—sacred and profane—is perhaps the main cohering force in human life. A society is composed of fractious people with different personalities, goals, and agendas. What connects us beyond our kinship ties? Story. Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Listen Here: https://shows.acast.com/two-lucky-bds/episodes/s1-e18-your-phantom-baby Released on September 24th, 2021 (run time 56m) this episode opened with Lance talking a little about the early stages of his PhD research. He talked about the notion of being an "insider researcher" - that is, someone with intimate knowledge of the subject matter because they are part of the subject community. Lance then shared a bit of his adoption story, as he remembers it and reflects on it all these years later. Sande and Lance then reflect on the differences between their stories, and how each story has helped to shape them and their place in the world. An interesting article on memories can be found here, and not only does it speak to how our subconscious can reshape traumatic memories, but also some ideas about what we can do with memories that might be troubling or unclear: www.psychalive.org/making-sense-of-implicit-memories/ Following on from this, Lance and Sande discuss a poem that Barbara mentions in Chapter 19 of Tree of Strangers, "My Phantom Child" by Emily Long. Lance talks about how he searched for the poem, discovering that it had been written by the author following the loss of a child (still born). The original poem can be found here: www.emilyrlong.com/blog/my-phantom-child Reflecting on the poem, Lance reads his own reimagined version, written from the perspective of an adopted person. His version is entitled "My Phantom Parent" (with thanks to Emily Long for inspiring this rewrite): My Phantom Parent I don’t know what she looks like, but I see her everywhere. I see her with the other mums dropping the kids off to school. I see her in the night time, sleeping in her bed. I see her beside me in the car – some days quiet, her mind a million miles away. Other days talking about her life and asking me about mine. I see her shoes by the door, her things in the bathroom making it her home, her home cooked meals, the aroma in the kitchen as she cooks. Everywhere I look, I see her, she is there. My birth mother. My family. My should be parent. My phantom mum that no one can see but me. She walks with me, every day, this mother of mine who never got to see me grow.. She lives instead in phantom time – the space where life and death combine in flashes and glimpses telling a story of what could have been. I and only I see her life unfold in the mists of phantom time. She is bright. She is beautiful. She is vibrant. Living. Breathing. Laughing. Crying. Existing. In the phantom time. I am the child she did not see but I walk with my mum every day. My phantom mum. As real to me as any other mum. As loved as anyone could ever be. She is mine and I am hers, walking together until we meet again, whenever and wherever that might be, in this life or the next. As the discussion continues, Lance and Sande reflect on reunion. Lance talks about the upcoming TV series by a Russian-born New Zealand adoptee, Alex Gilbert called Reunited (due for release in 2022) www.reunited.co.nz/ In Tree of Strangers Barbara references a UK study into adoption reunions and the varying success-rates for these encounters. Published as Adoption, Search & Reunion : The Long Term Experience of Adopted Adults by David Howe, Julia Feast and Denise Coster (Children's Society (Great Britain) London : Children's Society 2000), the study outlines how many reunion stories end badly. This is detailed in this 2004 Guardian article: www.theguardian.com/society/2004/aug/29/adoptionandfostering.adoption Sande then reflected on her own reunion story and how it eventually broke-down as well. The discussion then turned to inter-country adoptions, and the recent release of a controversial movie called Blue Bayou which has received considerable negative press from the adoption community in the United States for exploiting the adoptive experience for entertainment: www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/justin-chon-s-blue-bayou-faces-backlash-after-accusations-exploiting-n1280255 From there it takes another left-turn as Lance reflects on his adult rereading of P.D. Eastman's book "Are You My Mother," which is, arguably, a reunion story: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRz7srE2K70 and then some discussions about things that can trigger us as adopted people. Lance talks about a Jack Whitehall comedy special and a teeshirt that triggered Lance: "Dave Was Adopted" (shown here in an episode of Coronation Street. The following article, written by an adopting mother, talks about some useful things to do when we are triggered adoption.com/how-to-handle-adoption-triggers
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