Kakki wrote:
> <<I think she is speaking from some deep hurt that
> apparently she cannot transcend. Don't mean to psychoanalyze her -
> just my 2 cents. >>
and in response, Bob M. wrote:
>
> <<I don't think you're psychoanalyzing at all, Kakki...it's
difficult,
> probably impossible, to care about an artist's work and not care
> about the artist as well, particularly when she has "sondtracked" so
> many life experiences for a lot of us. I feel like we all like to
> revel in her victories and are sympathetic in her sorrows. And I
> think (like Lama so poignantly described) that her relationship with
> her daughter and her mother has been such a powerful driver for her
> all along, I think a lot of what factors into her bitterness is the
> conflicted relationship with Kilauren.>>
I am stopped in my emotional tracks each and every time this issue
arises on the list. I am motivated to write today because I am
particularly drawn to Kakki's descripton of Joni's deep hurt, as well
as the "conflicted relationship with Kilauren" part of your post Bob.
The experience of losing a child to adoption, and the effects thereof,
are life long and deep. Unspeakable. They don't go away, especially
when reunion takes place. Reunion does not create that place of
instantaneous healing or bonding whatsoever.
Imagine what that might feel like, knowing that you are about to meet
the baby-now-adult you gave up many years ago, when, at the time, you
were told you could get on with your life, that you were doing that
"right" thing, that you would indeed "get over it", that you would
never see them again. Ever. And here you are climbing those stairs, a
cold fear moves through you like a damp fog, rolling and rolling
through each and every cell, each and every memory. You know into each
and every step you take, you know. You know they are sitting at that
table at the restaurant. You know they arrived while you were
downstairs to make that one last phonecall to gather up some last
minute reassurance because you are so scared you just might explode
into a million little pieces...and how do you know they have arrived.
You just do. Reunion is like that. Magic. Knowing.
In the moments prior to that first meeting, a visit, rather a head on
collision with fear, like none Ive ever known, occurs. The fear inside
is unbelievable. Unspeakable. Painful. A vortex of 'what ifs' swirl
madly inside, all the while you are trying to be present as this calm,
cool grown up woman who 'made a mistake', and who really had 'no
choice'. All of a sudden you become that young woman, again. And you
cannot speak. Frozen in time. Staring, mesmerized by the image of your
self in a perfect and beautiful stranger. Haunting moment.
To give up an infant and then so many years later, meet that baby
turned adult is one of the most powerful, overwhelming, terrifying
things I have ever done. There is no way that you can ever be prepared.
Ever. You can logic it all out neatly, you can tell yourself, oh yes, I
had no choice, what else could I do.
Joni didnt even tell her own parents, which was my experience as well.
There are so many layers and levels of complicit secrecy and when it
all comes out into the open, all hell breaks loose emotionally. And on
it goes. It never stops. Reunion has a life of its own.
Having been there, I can only begin to imagine what it might have been
and continues to be like for Joni, especially because she is so
exposed, so much in the limelight, or the floodlights at times. I feel
for her and for Kilauren, having to go through this the public
microscope.
I write from this place of the very personal with the hope that I can
bring understanding to Joni's experience. (I am shaking like a leaf as
I write, and yes, the tears still fall, twenty seven years later). So
you see, I can understand. I get it. Losing a child to adoption affects
her. How can it not. She wears it like she wears her skin, it is a part
of her very soul. It is imprinted into each and every cell. It has to
be.
The pain of losing a child to adoption does not go away. Reunion brings
joy, absolutely, and it also brings up old pain as well as new and it
rolls over and over you, especially at those signifiers of maple trees
breaking free each and every spring, or the colour blue.
That old pain flies up in your face like it was yesterday. Some of the
answers to a thousand questions screamed in silence for years and years
appear in fragments. And many do not, because you dare not ask.
Knowing is better than not knowing. However, how do you reconcile who
this person is to you. You are not their 'mother'..they did not grow up
knowing you as that. You remember the baby, and here is this adult
'stranger' who sets off all kinds of biological alarms inside you. And
how do you fit into the scheme of things with the person who is their
mother. You throw up your hands and wonder, now what. Try to create
something new, but what. Thanks for bearing with this. Every so often,
I need to break the silence.
Jezebel. Life sentence.
Mags
>
=====
You open my heart, you do.
Yes you do.
- JM
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com
