Tag: cathartic writing

Permission to Change Course Occasionally

Permission to Change Course Occasionally

Blogging can be a lonely business. You write for yourself –  but also for others, or why else publish your writing on a blog? And you hope people read what you write. Sometimes they do. When I was posting daily on Eric’s Other Mother, readership was pretty steady. As soon as I moved to posting every other day, readership dropped off dramatically. I’m not holding a pity party – simply pointing out that I was rather surprised by the steep decline that followed what I thought would be a simple shift in frequency.

Blog views

However, continuing to post every day was not really feasible. For one thing, there’s the time commitment. Some posts flow easily and are complete in mere minutes. Others take quite a bit of time to conceive, write, rewrite, edit, and tweak. Then there are the photos to find, and sometimes rework.

There’s also having material to write about. I do have an idea bank, to which I was adding with some frequency while I was blogging daily. The only thing is that if I want to write a quality piece, I’ve got to be “in the mood” to write, and lately, very few of the ideas in my idea bank have sparked the requisite creativity to come to life on the page.

These ideas include:

  • Adoptions in my family and Tony’s (my son’s birthfather)
  • Spending a day in Hoboken getting to know Kathy and Bruce
  • “No one wants to hear a story about birthmothers” – saving this for Birthmothers’ Day in May
  • Asking my caseworker if every couple who applies is cleared to adopt
  • The utter dearth of books and literature by and for birthmoms
  • Birthfathers – there are several topics under this umbrella
  • Search and reunion (in general terms)

And many others. I will tackle most – if not all – of them in future posts. That’s the beauty of this blog: although I truly appreciate the readers, I’m beholden to no one in terms of what I write or the order in which I write it. I suppose, if there’s anyone’s approval I’d want, it would be Eric’s. But even as I write knowing he might be reading these posts, he might one day read these posts, or he might one day read the book that comes of these posts – and awareness of him is ever present – it does not dictate what I write.

I have received some really nice feedback from a couple of readers.

Blythe wrote, in response to my post, “The Unique Pain of Being Adopted”:

Thank you for writing this. My husband and I are working with an agency and currently involved in the adoption process (as the adoptive parents). My husband is adopted and it was a closed adoption. After years and years of searching for his biological mother, we finally found her…and he was rejected. Not only by her, but by her entire family. It was devastating for my husband. We have definitely made a point for our adoption to be absolutely open. It is so important and everyone’s right to know where they came from and who they are. I have also been trying to not make this process about us (two people who cannot have biological children because of infertility) and about the child who has no say as well as the birth mother that has made the decision she can. So many emotions… I hope that I can remain selfless in the process.

And more recently, Celeste wrote:

Thank you for sharing your story! I’ve been jumping around reading various posts of yours and now I’m starting from the beginning to read them straight through. 😊 I really appreciate how your blog has been expanding my understanding of what adoption is like for birth parents and adoptees. My husband and I are preparing to become foster parents. Adoption is not our goal, but we know it may very well end up happening. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I look forward to continuing to learn.

Even if Eric never reads any of this, it’s worthwhile to have written for my own peace and processing, as well as knowing that my posts have helped at least a couple other people. Far more people are reading than are commenting, so who knows what other butterfly effects could be occurring that I’ll never know about?

That being said, today I decided to give myself permission to occasionally expand the topics I write about to life in general. I am a birthmother in an open adoption. My kid is brilliant and beautiful, and I have a very nice relationship with him and his family. As adoptions go, we could not be more blessed. That truth runs throughout my life, day in and day out, whether or not I find myself specifically focused on adoption on any given day. So the majority of my posts will continue to be, essentially as advertised, in some way related to adoption. Nevertheless, when I veer off onto the occasional other topic, I’ve realized that I’m still staying true to my own tagline, one birthmother’s perspective. My life, my perspective, wouldn’t you say?

Today, I find myself focused on trying to locate my birth certificate. I had it in my hands just days ago, when I was cleaning and organizing my office in advance of our housewarming party. My husband’s birth certificate arrived in the mail yesterday, so I went to retrieve mine (we’re getting ready to apply for passports) – and I can’t find it anywhere. I know it’s here – probably in a box that got re-stashed in the garage. Or maybe it’s in one of the folders housing the family trees from both my mom’s side and my dad’s side of the family. (I stumbled onto those while unpacking – future blog post, for sure!) My office has never been this organized – so it’s frustrating to be unable to put my hands on this important document.

Deep breath. It’s here somewhere. And now that I’m only blogging every other day, I have extra time to look for it!

____________________
Laura Orsini is an author who works with other authors to help them make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.

The Book I Always Wanted to Write

The Book I Always Wanted to Write
Another letter I never sent…

7 June 2013

Dear Eric –

Writing that graduation letter has opened the door for me to start a series of letters I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time. I realize as I write this that I may or may not ever send them to you. They may just one day become a book that I dedicate to you. The idea of a book has been hovering over me, since long before I moved to Arizona and began my business working with authors. It was actually an adoptive mom in the small basement of a church somewhere near Nyack who gave me the idea.

Interestingly, this was also the same group where another woman was shocked – mouth hanging open surprised – that I referred to you as my son. “What … what … what do you mean, your son?” she sputtered at me.

“Well, he’s my first-born male child. What else would you have me call him?”

“It’s just that I … I … I never expected that somewhere out there, another woman would be referring to my son as her son, too.”

“Well, she probably is. You might want to get used to the idea.”

I was frustrated with this woman – perhaps even a little angry – but I was also empathetic. No matter how thorough the case workers at Spence (or any adoption agency) tried to be, they couldn’t cover everything. And I think they actually dodged some of what I always felt needed to be said – so I said it. I hope I wasn’t bitchy, but just forthcoming as I told them that no amount of wishing and praying and hoping it could be otherwise would ever make the adopted baby their blood child. And the sooner they came to terms with that, the sooner they could move on from the grief and any resentment they might not even realize they felt toward the birthmom or birthparents.

I told you before I never liked the word “lucky” to describe my situation – but I was fortunate in one significant way. Your mom and dad had already had Meaghan, and now they had Jill. They were already parents who had experienced pregnancy and given birth to their own children. Most adoptive parents never experience that, so understandably, they might feel some resentment toward the birthparents, even wondering how these people who can do the very thing they want so desperately but cannot do themselves could just toss away a baby. Of course, it’s usually not as simple as tossing away a baby. I’m not saying abortion is an easy decision – but it takes less effort than carrying a child to term and then saying goodbye to him or her. A birthmom is committed to the life of her child – whether the adoption is her choice or not.

Anyway – I was speaking to this group of adoptive and prospective adoptive parents, as I did a handful of times while I lived in New Jersey. While the one woman had this shocked, seemingly unenlightened response, another came up to me after the end of the discussion and asked if I had thought about writing a book. I kind of shrugged at the moment, because I had considered it and pretty much dismissed it. I didn’t see what I could possibly add to the conversation that wasn’t already out there. Birthmoms writing their stories just seemed boring to me. This woman was insistent, though. She told me I was a really good speaker, and that I could probably translate my story very well into writing. She had no way of knowing I was actually a pretty good writer, that I’d majored in nonfiction in college – all she knew was what she heard as I told my story to the group. I shrugged again, thinking it wasn’t really for me. Then she suggested I might write it as fiction. Looking back all these years later, I told your mom I could never write our story as fiction, because it would be so boring. All things considered, I think we’ve had a storybook adoption experience, and people would either hate the book because nothing happened in it, or they’d feel certain I was whitewashing the story.

The woman’s insistence stayed with me for a while, though. I thought maybe I was different enough from most birthmoms that I could write a story that wouldn’t be just another birthmom memoir. So I started writing. But it was too soon and I was still too raw.

You see, Tony came to live with me after he found out I was pregnant. I think at some point he told me that he wanted to make sure I went through with the adoption – that I didn’t change my mind and decide to keep you. So he was there for the first six or seven appointments at Spence Chapin. He was there on New Year’s Eve 1994 – our five-year anniversary and the day I told him I would not still be there, five years later, unless I was married to him. And he was in the delivery room. He even went with me to the nursery once to look in at you.

But once the papers were signed and you were gone, so was he. He moved out exactly two weeks to the day after you were born, and I was lonelier than I ever could have imagined. He said as he was going that he knew he was making a mistake, but he was already committed to his mistake, so there was no going backwards. I held onto that stupid comment for a lot of years, hoping one day he’d change his mind. Thank God he never did. But, wow – I sometimes want to kick myself now for hanging in there so long. I think, ultimately, three good things came from the experience: you, my computer skills, and my immeasurable patience.

So I wrote the first 80 pages of my story – longhand, on yellow legal pads. And then I got to the part where Tony left, and it was just too hard to keep writing. So I stopped. I know those legal pads are here somewhere – I never threw them away and they moved with me to Phoenix. But I’ve never sat down to reread them, either. I imagine they might bring up some challenging feelings, but if I can write this to you now, I could certainly read what I wrote back then. I’ll look for them – and the photos of Tony I promised you. Maybe it all will come out in these letters anyway.

So here you have not the book I originally imagined. Not the fictional depiction, either. Just a series of letters about things I think you should hear from me. Some of them are about the adoption. Some are about my family. Some are about my beliefs and philosophies and thoughts about the bigger world that surrounds us. Some are about my hopes for you. Some are about my own plans for the future. Maybe you’ll read them, and maybe you won’t. But once I get them down, I won’t have them rattling around in my head anymore. And I will no longer have to “wait to share them with Eric someday.”

I love you, kiddo.

Laura

____________________
Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, and consultant who coaches other authors to make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.

The Cure, Cathartic Writing, and a Berkeley Parking Ticket

The Cure, Cathartic Writing, and a Berkeley Parking Ticket

I’ve begun a habit of occasionally dancing for exercise. Was at it fairly regularly for the middle part of 2017; then the holidays hit, we moved, and I’ve been having trouble reestablishing any sort of routine. Recently, I was re-inspired by this article about how beneficial dance is for staving off the aging process. Today, I finally picked it up again, and all was well. Then I heard a song by one of my favorite bands, “In Between Days,” by the Cure.

In Between Days lyrics

Immediately upon hearing the chorus, I was transported back to exactly two weeks, to the day, after my son was born. That was the day Tony, my son’s birthfather, moved out. A man of few words, he didn’t disappoint that day. The one comment I still remember as if it were yesterday was, “I know this is the biggest mistake I’ll ever make in my life, but I’m committed to it, so I’m going to see it through.” And with that, he was gone, back the apartment we had shared with his best friend, Mike. I know Mike wanted to throw him out on his ass when he showed back up – but that’s not what best friends do.

It wasn’t the end of our relationship – we managed to string things along in the same push-pull pattern we’d perfected before Eric was born for another five years. But his leaving was devastating, nonetheless.

I was still recuperating from the birth – waiting for the last of my milk to stop trickling. That night, I sat alone in my apartment, watching a movie called The Client, about a little boy who witnesses a mob attorney commit suicide. Susan Sarandon plays a character called Reggie Love, the attorney who defends and shelters the little boy. More than anything, I wanted a Reggie Love in my life at that moment, someone whose shoulder I could cry on, who would help me make sense of all the grief and loss and leaving.

My mom really wasn’t a candidate. My sister who lived in New Jersey would have been no help. My younger sister had her own life to deal with. So I turned to the only other person I knew would be there for me, my friend Jane. I called her up, weeping, and she immediately invited me out to visit with her in San Francisco. I booked a flight the next day, and made my (thus far) only visit to The City by the Bay.

Jane was working during my visit, but she went out of her way to make me feel at home. She lent me her car, so I had a crash course in hilly driving, something I revisited on my recent stay in Yonkers, NY. She was a coffee drinker (to this day, I prefer tea), so she told me where the cool indie coffeehouses were. She warned me about the parking police on the Berkeley campus – and I still managed to get a ticket because I forgot to feed the meter. I remember going to a Wells Fargo bank and asking for a money order so I could pay the ticket before Jane even found out about it. I blanched when they told me it would cost $14 – but I paid the fee and took care of the ticket. I also spent an afternoon wandering around Golden Gate Park. These are the details I remember about that trip.

The respite lasted only seven days, and then I had to return to my life in New Jersey, such as it was. Going back to work helped. Knowing Tony was there, even if he wasn’t really, also helped. And somehow I muddled through.

Maybe a year or so later, when I was speaking to one of my first groups of adoptive parents, one of the women told me I should write a book about my experiences. “Maybe,” I told her. But it had already been done, and I didn’t see how adding my story to the others I’d come across would help anyone. While writing my story would probably be cathartic for me, I wasn’t sure it would be of any use to another birthmother or prospective birthmom. I didn’t realize at the time that the few birthmother stories I’d seen were pretty much the only books by and for birthmothers available anywhere.

As it turns out, I did try to write it. I got out a couple of yellow legal pads and began writing my story – our story. I was moving along fairly smoothly, until I hit the part I described in today’s post: Tony’s leaving. That – even two years after the fact – was just too difficult to write. It was like crashing into an emotional wall going 150 miles per hour. So I slammed on the breaks, put those notepads away, and didn’t look at them again until several weeks ago when I was packing to move our house.

Turns out, 21 years makes a big difference, in terms of the triggering of emotions. I got a bit teary today when researching the name of the movie I was watching that night – but the writing flowed easily. And I’ve already written close to 20,000 words for this blog, which is well past the 80 pages of longhand I drafted back in 1997.

As for the book – it remains a maybe. There’s still a gaping hole in the adoption literature when it comes to birthparents. And yet, I’m still not sure how my story would help anyone. I chose to blog, rather than start with a book, because blogging would allow me to be random – describing episodes or discussing topics on a whim and at my own discretion, as opposed to the somewhat neat trajectory the contained vehicle of a book would require.

February 24 will be Eric’s 23rd birthday – and that will be day 53 in a row of blog posts, assuming I write the next dozen or so after this one. At that point, I believe I’ll take the same tack we did when deciding whether and how to continue contact after he turned 10. I’ll reevaluate things at that time and decide whether and how often to keep writing. Maybe, one day, a book. For now, I can only promise to keep dancing.

623-07815969

____________________
Laura Orsini is an author, speaker, and consultant who coaches other authors to make and market exceptional books that change the world for the better. She is birthmother to Eric, who is finishing college in Boston this summer. Their adoption has been open for the better part of Eric’s life. She continues to toy with the idea that these posts will one day become a book. In the meantime, you can learn about her novel in progress, Stan Finds Himself on the Other Side of the World.