"When relinquishment is your first experience, your brain wiring changes to accomodate it. This alters how you might handle stress. How you might process the world. It changes you." Barbara Sumner, Tree of Strangers, p 144. Listen Here:
play.acast.com/s/two-lucky-bds/s1-e17-your-limbic-brain-on-relinquishment Released on September 12th, 2021 (run time 1h 2m) this episode considers what arose for each of us as we read and reflected on Chapter 17 "Your Limbic Brain on Relinquishment" and Chapter 18 "Sort of an Orphan." The episode opens with a break-down of the week that has been. Sande reflects on life in lock-down and what it means to live "on-line" and the Lance and Sande reflected on the process of making a submission to the New Zealand Adoption Law Reform. The Social Fabric of the Baby Scoop Era in New Zealand Spring-boarding off the opening of Chapter 17, and the story Barbara tells about what happened when her birth mother's pregnancy was discovered by her maternal grand-parents (and how she was disowned), Sande reflected on the social fabric of the 1950s and 60s and the attitudes towards unwed mothers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This was a time when things were not spoken about openly (such as infertility or teenage pregnancy). This was well before the introduction of solo-mother benefits, or readily available contraception, or safe abortion practices. It was a time where stigma, shame and secrecy prevailed, particularly when considering sex, fertility and pregnancy outside of marriage. A very different culture to that of today. Sande reflected on the authoritarian nature of society during this time, and the objectification of women that occurred. Rehoming Dax Lance then talked about a story he read about a teenager named Dax in the United States who featured in the news during the week, because after living with their adopted family for seven years the family disowned them for coming out as gay kfor.com/news/a-place-to-call-home/give-me-a-chance-oklahoma-teen-hoping-to-find-a-forever-family-after-seven-year-adoption-ended/ Jean Paton & the Story of Sisyphus In considering how little society has changed, in many ways, Sande considered the story of Sisyphus who was doomed to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. In many ways this is what it is like for society, in that we think we have become more humane - only to find that the focus of hurt and pain pops up elsewhere. Lance then talked about a biography he had been reading about a pioneer US Adoption Reform Advocate, Jean Paton (known as the Mother of Adoption Reform) www.amazon.com/Paton-Struggle-Reform-American-Adoption-ebook/dp/B00ZYLD8OU. Jean Paton believed that adopted people have a choice to make, when considering the adoptive experience; the choice to wallow in the adoptive experience or to reconcile it and to ask 'how do we make sense of this for ourselves?' Lance reflected on the fact that some days the 'boulder' of the adoptive reality is heavy, as he tries to push it up the hill, and other days it isn't. This then led onto a discussion of how some adopted people cannot seem to see beyond the pain of adoption and can feel trapped, and even angry towards those who may have done some of the essential work of reconciling their experience. Catastrophic Thinking In Chapter 17 Barbara touches on the self-destructive behaviour that many adopted people can participate in, (citing the work of Psychologist Paul Sunderland) describing it as 'catastrophic thinking' (p144). More on this, can be found here: www.icaad.com/blog/relinquishment-and-adoption-understanding-the-impact-of-an-early-psychological-wound Paul Sunderland's lecture can be found here: www.icaad.com/videos/relinquishment-and-adoption-understanding-the-impact-of-an-early-psychological-wound The Triad of Loss (actually Four kinds of loss) Sande then reflects on the four kinds of loss that Barbara suggests permeates the adoptive experience. She says "in adoption we talk about the triad of loss. The mother loses her child. The child loses her mother, and the adopters lose the child they might have had. But there is a fourth loss, a different kind that no one speaks of. It is the loss of who I might have been. As a daughter, a mother, a wife, a write. As a women. As myself. A whole life spent attempting and mostly failing to create a coherent self", (p144-145). This then resulted in some lively conversations about how we might respond to the adoptive experience. Baby Moana The conversation then turned to a story in the local media about calls to have a young Maori girl in New Zealand removed from a foster care placement because the foster parents were European www.stuff.co.nz/national/126334548/judge-dismisses-oranga-tamarikis-bid-to-remove-mori-girl-from-pkeh-couple and the anger that has resulted. The argument by members of the tribe related to what happens when Moana tries to reconnect with her culture. Th head of the tribe said that the connections could never be healed. Sande then reflected on what this meant in the adoptive story, and another lively debate about being separated from our culture through adoption. Which led Lance to having a considerable "aha" moment for his own experience. Social (and other) Orphans The last part of the episode focussed on material from Chapter 18, and started with some consideration of the meaning of the word "orphan". The technical definition of an orphan is that one or both parents has to have died. Jean Paton came up with the term "the social orphan" in that adopted people are made orphans through a legal process - in that when we were separated from our first parents we became "social orphans". This is a great example of reconstructing the narrative around adoption. The discussion then continues to consider some of Jean Paton's other beliefs around adoption, including the search for self. The episode concluded with another discussion around the place and role of rituals in our lives.
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