Grief, Loss, Adoption
 & The Tapestry of Life

Nowhere in our Adoption Journey do we find more complexity than in the areas of losses and the grief that is intrinsic to all parties of the adoption triad. Adoption is a complex process, and the most prominent place we can experience these are in the many forms of dichotomy that are woven into the fabric of our lives, once we embark on this life long process. For adoption is not an event, but a life long process.

Many of us come to adoption after suffering the losses of dreams associated with the process of becoming parents. For many, it’s after years of infertility. For some, it’s a choice based on our own experiences. Many adult adoptees choose to adopt even though they may have the physiological capability of pregnancy. Some of us choose to mix having children via biology and by adoption. Some of us meet a special child, or have a Dream or feel a spiritual calling to adopt. No matter how we get to parenting via adoption, the vast majority of us have experienced deep losses in our lives, whether related to parenting or not. Life is full of losses, losses of loved ones, losses related to lost dreams, moving, relocation, the passing of contemporaries ‘out of time’, and many more. All of these losses combine with our own individuality, our own personal resiliency and personality to create a number of choices we have available to us, and a past pattern of behaviors when those feelings of grief or loss surface. We then draw on these (feelings and behaviors) with each new related experience.

New concept
 I’d like to invite you to imagine a beautiful, woven wall hanging or rug. Each strand has it’s own color, it’s own brilliance, it’s own meaning. Each thread has been woven with feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences, values, beliefs, all the variations on human experience. Each Tapestry is as different as the person’s who’s life it represents. As our lives are expanded, by time, other people, the addition of our children, friends, relatives, and support system, our Tapestry changes. Some times it’s bright and sunny. Other times it looks and feels like there is a cloud hanging over it, obscuring various pieces and colors or parts of the design. Our Tapestry is ever in flux, every changing. And we are in charge of how we weave it, how we make meaning of our lives, and of our families life.

Each strand of our experiences is mixed into our Tapestry. Some strands are filtered by our ages, our culture of origin, our family of origin, the family of origin of our partners, our mutual ethnicity, economic background, or race, and gender. Others that may impact on us our families beliefs about adoption, (often are a severe challenge) and for those of us who choose to parent at what society considers an advanced age, physical changes, or attitudes of already grown children. Other strands might include trans-racial issues, the customs and background of a child we adopt from another country, prior life experiences of the child/ren we bring into our lives, abuse, neglect, post institutionalized challenges, or unexpected emotional or physical challenges that suddenly become a larger part of our daily lives than we expected, no matter how well prepared we thought we were when we started.

For some of us, additional threads include having little or no birth family information, or having too much information, the strands of open or closed adoptions and all the variations and challenges within these complex processes, all affect our Tapestry. Not only are we trying to reconcile all of OUR losses, but we have the increasingly complex variations and challenges of our precious and beloved children. These loss come into our lives NO MATTER WHO our beloved children come to us and deeply affect them, even those who come into our lives as brand new infants.

The dichotomies are many. That of our joy at bringing our precious son or daughter to our family, juxtaposed on the losses that our children come with. Their losses can include loss of birthfamily, loss of language, loss of culture, loss of connectedness to the KNOWN and familiar sights, sounds, smells, cultural expectations, and others. In order to help our children move forward, we need to recognize and acknowledge as many of their losses as we can – and the resulting emotions and actions. Moreover, sometimes we will never know the specifics, but we DO need to know how to deal with and comfort the emotions that are the result of loss.

For those of us in open adoptions with our children’s birth families, the joy we feel is directly contrasted with the losses the bio family, of all generations. Learning to honor those losses, while maintaining as much of a relationship as we can, and as positively as we can, while not going into our own ‘stuff’, can take more energy than we ever imagined. For those of us lacking any information at all about the families and past history of our children can be hard pressed to know what we should do, and what we CAN do, to help our children build resources and successes in coping with their own feelings. And what do we do, if we have one child who has information, or connection, and another who doesn’t? As our knowledge of prenatal experience grows, we are more and more aware that even children adopted immediately after birth suffer deeply from the losses of familiar voices, smells, and sensations they knew before birth.

So what can we, as parents do?
In my experience the first thing we MUST do is to deal in a healthy way with ALL of our own personal losses, both those that related directly to adoption, and those that may have accrued over the years of our presence in this world. And if this isn’t possible, at the very least, we can struggle through that healing together.

As an adult adoptee who has NO information about my biological family, (I have some good guesses, but no real information), I’m intimately familiar with the holes that I’ve learned to incorporate into my sense of self and the grief and losses I experienced in my own life. Grief and I are old friends. Grief and loss are familiar to me, often as close as the air that I breath. Using my own experiences to make meaning of the losses and grief that my children live with each day, helps to strengthen my relationships with my children, and where possible, with their birth families. Being Native American, my worldview, my personal Tapestry, is drawn from my earliest memories, teachings, values and beliefs found in my first community. And that is where I go when I need to connect with those feelings in a way that is useful, healing and resourceful. In my community, there are many rituals of passage, traditions and formula’s for dealing with, and making meaning from, my journey in this World of Physical Things. Many of us today don’t have those rituals, or a framework of meaning to help us make sense of the complexity of adoption and our own lives.

So here, for any of you who wish to make use of it, is the framework that I started from. You are all invited to take what ever parts of this that you wish to use, add in your own rituals, healing, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and concepts to help you, and build stronger resources within your own families. And you are further invited, and free to ignore, any parts that don’t ‘fit’ for you. In that community where I was raised, I was taught that we often use words without really understanding the basic or intrinsic meaning that they have. Words have an inherent meaning that is often unrecognized. If we understand the true meaning of the words, we can develop a better understanding of what we see and hear.

We are taught that when we sound our voices, we create an energy that is experienced by those around us in the form of feelings and emotions. We are encouraged to be careful in how we sound our Voice, to be aware that we are creating our own experience and shaping that of others, in how we sound our Voice. Words can hurt, or words can heal. They can create bridges of understanding or walls of separation.

 Words are given to us as one of the tools we have, as friends, to help us make meaning of our lives and experiences, our personal understanding and knowledge. The Traditional Teachings of the First Nations Peoples of Turtle Island (North America) encourage Kindness, Co-operation, Respect, Truth, Honesty, Humility, Sharing and positive learning. We are taught to respect the visions and beliefs of our Human Kind brothers and sisters. To disagree, or to insist that there is only one path of forward learning is deemed both rude and unnecessary. The Teachings that I, as an author, adult adoptee, mother by biology, and by adoption, are lent here, and I share them with you, with positive intention of adding to your own internal and external resources. These are not the only interpretations, nor are they to be taken as such. They are intended as tools for learning and growth.

You are invited to “Take only the Teachings (including ideas, suggestions, and concepts, that will help you move forward in a good way, and leave all else behind”

Coping with Grief and Loss
From the moment we are born into this physical world, we are subject to growth and change in all areas of our lives: emotional, physical, social and spiritual. Change can be something which we actively seek, or it can be thrust upon us from outside in ways over which we have no control. And almost no where in our lives do we have a greater loss of control than when we embark on our Adoption Journey. As babies, we have no control over our physical growth, or how our needs for food, warmth, love and safety are met. As we grow into children we begin to have some control over certain aspects of our lives. But as adoptive parents and families, many more things are thrust into our lives, including grief and loss and their associated challenges.

As we become adolescents, the amount of areas we can directly influence increases. As we accept the roles and responsibilities of adults, this continues to increase. As we grow older, our wisdom and learning may increase, as our physical condition decreases. As this is as it should be. All change is about loss of what is current, moving forward into that which is new or different. Irrespective of our physical age, some changes occur over which we have no control or influence. The loss of family members, community members and friends to death (often through suicide, family violence, accident or disease) happens to everyone. The losses inherent in adoption add another layer of loss for us and for our children. For those of us who form our families by adoption, we immediately step into a world of complex grief, and loss.

Dealing with losses, the grief and pain that accompanies these realities, is difficult and painful. By having an understanding about the process involved in grief, loss and change, and having information about the resources available to us, we can make better informed choices, assist our friends and families in making better choices and improve the quality of our lives. By understanding our own grief related losses, we have more tools to help our children become more resilient. We can weave the Tapestry of our lives, into one that is, at the very least, full of with healing, joy, understanding, and stronger relationships with those we share our lives with.

Since we are all Human Beings (last time I checked, anyway), we all respond to change, loss, grief and death in a predictable manner. There are six stages of grief and loss. There is not set time that each one may take. Individuals may spend different amounts of time in various stages. Some may remain ‘stuck’ in any of the six, or progress rapidly through all. Because no two people are ever alike, each of us has different ways of expressing our feelings, different ways of acting out pain, but overall, we follow the same cycle. Being complex Human Beings, we can experience several of these stages at the same time. Our children, once they reach the age of operational thinking (beyond six or so for most children), can experience more than one feeling at the same time, often with an over arching or over riding meta feeling. Anger and Guilt are the two most common meta feelings that we may have in place of more vulnerable ones, like loss, sorrow, sadness.

Tradition First Nations Cultural Attitudes towards Death

For those who follow the Old Ways, the Traditional Ways of First Nations Indian peoples, Death is viewed a transition, a change from the World of Physical Things into the World of the Spirit, where the sacred Grandfathers and Grandmothers reside with our Creator. When we grieve , we grieve not for the one who has passed on, but for those of us who are left behind. Life is viewed as a Circle of Birth, Growth, Death and Re-birth. Death is seen as part of the natural order of Life. For many of our adopted children, their experience of transitioning from one family or institution to another, or one family to another, or through a number of families before Homecoming to their Forever Family, may very well feel, at a very primal level, like a death.

For those of us who follow Christian teachings, Death is viewed in many and varied ways, mostly that those who live good lives will be rewarded after death in Heaven, and those who fail to live good lives will be punished. Each spiritual belief system has it’s own way of making meaning of the stages of our lives, and that final transition when we leave this World of Physical Things. Other folks with other belief systems all make meaning of this event in different ways. Each way has meaning to those who hold it.

Like a Death, adoption forever alters the fabric of our lives in many ways, irregardless of our personal beliefs, or lack of personal beliefs. NEED References TO Kuebler-Ross here..

Stages

Stage One: Denial and Isolation

Denial and the need to be alone to process news of someone’s death, is the first step. For our adopted children this need to be alone takes numerous forms, and each of us can no doubt, make a list of how our own children have found ways to do so, rather overtly or covertly. Denial means to refuse to accept the reality of the losses (what ever they may be, named or unknown) being experienced. When the person dies and lives at a distance, it may be easier to ‘forget’ or not accept the finality of our loss.

When a child leaves another country, or even another home, many will make up stories about that time in their lives. Those stories may have little to do with the reality they have experienced. They may deny being adopted, or being removed from their families because of abuse. They may believe and make it THEIR reality that their families DID die. Denial often gives us a buffer, a breathing space, to begin to accept the alteration to our own personal reality that the losses and life’s experiences, creates. As adults, our need for isolation may take many forms: Staying in our rooms, listening to music, avoiding discussing our feelings by staying very busy, actively refusing to answer the telephone, or talk to others. It can be in the form of grandiose stories, or making up an entire history. It can be in the form of denying that WE are now their parents. How many of us haven’t had a child say “You’re not my REAL mother/father?”

Stage Two: Anger
Anger is a feeling. In the framework I was raised in, I was taught that all our feelings and emotions are given to us by Creator to help us make meaning of our lives in this Physical World. All of my training over the years in many forms of counseling, human development and life experience, have not altered my thinking and agreement on this! Our feelings and emotions, in and of themselves they are neither good or bad. They just are. It is how we choose to act or react that creates positive or negative energy, and positive or negative consequences for each of us and those around us. And how we react to our children’s expressions of loss, grief, anger, rage, pain and sorrow, set the stage for the dynamic of our relationships with them, in the present and over time.

Please take a moment to think about how do some of us, as human beings, express our anger? Do we squish it down, minimize it, deny it? Do we pretend that as mature adults we don’t get angry? And are we realistically angry about some of the challenges that adoption has foisted upon us? Do we want to rage? Or can we find positive ways to honor those feelings? To give them a Voice that becomes healing and helpful? Can we set a positive example in OUR WALK? And not just our TALK? Can we share with our children, in age appropriate ways, how we manage our own tougher feelings? When we loose someone to death, part of our grief process is to want to blame someone, another person, agency, the government, ourselves, or God (Creator). When those losses are related to adoption, the person who most often will be blamed by a child is, and I’m sure we all know that answer to that, their primary care giver. The person our child feels safest with to share those feelings with. And that sharing can be very volatile. Our children might ask questions, like ‘why did it have me?’, or ‘what’s wrong with me? What did I do to cause everyone who loved me to go away?’ and others.......It is the same in our Journey through Adoption. And all of our feelings, are NOT good or bad. They are. How we model that for our children is important, vital, crucial. And so is our own self awareness, and willingness to take on and deal with big feelings.

Stage Three: Bargaining

This stage deals with our attempts to change our reality, by bargaining with God (Creator) for something that will change our reality. We may find our children as they grow older wanting to make ‘deals’ with us, or with others in their lives, to change the hurt, to lessen the sorrow they feel for the losses that are an intrinsic part of their life experiences. For older children with distinct memories of their first families or first caregivers, this can create many challenges for us as parents. And create many fears.

Stage Four: Depression

Symptoms of Depression range from withdrawal from family and friends, social activities, use/abuse of alcohol or drugs, feelings of exhaustion and extreme fatigue. This is much more common in children who experience adoption, particularly at key transitional points in their lives, like going to school, entering puberty, late adolescences, or early adulthood. And the incidence of mood disorders is well known to be much higher here as well. Watching for the symptoms, without taking it on as a measure of our failure as parents, seeking professional help when appropriate, can be vital to long term success of our children as adults. (Sheena citing one or more research reports with these conclusions might be useful here, I can’t recall them exactly at this red hot moment)

Stage Five: Acceptance
Acceptance means coming to terms with the losses our children are experiencing and the related changes, accepting the changes that go along with that, and beginning to ‘get o n’ with life can happen at almost any stage of life, for us and for our children. Some children feel this more intently than others. A few will skip a lot of the intensity, but most of our children will fight their way to this stage. And then have it all rearranged as they face a new life transition, or experience a change that brings all of this, once more, back to the surface of awareness.
 
Stage Six: Hope
Hope means moving past acceptance of the loss, and finding some meaning or learning in the experience that adds resources to our lives. Strength, understanding, higher self knowledge and awareness of hopes, dreams, feelings and emotions, and many others are part of this stage. Reweaving our own personal Tapestry, with awareness of and some meaning associated with it can take many forms for us as individuals, and for our children. The last thing on the stages of grief that I wish to say is that perception and attitude are all important. The old ‘glass half full’ or ‘half empty’ thing. It truly is about personal choice. We CHOOSE how we interpret and make meaning of our lives and our experiences. We can CHOOSE to be over whelmed by the complexities of adoption and it’s associated grief and loss. Or, we can CHOOSE to find ways to make bring more joy into our experiences and that of our precious children.

Small Steps towards Success

Personally, my ‘mommy’s goal’ for each day, is to create ‘bubbles of happiness’ each day. As many as I can! I check in with my children often, and ask them regularly, ‘what’s the best thing about today/this month/this week?’ Then I ask them what they ‘remember most’ in the same time frame. When both things match, I count that as a success. What they will take with them into their adults lives are the small joys, celebrations, successes, those moments of fun, and laughter. Creating these each day, both in thought, mind, experience and how I SHAPE the meaning my children are making from their lives is something that I have lots of fun with myself. I tell my children often: “I’m not the entertainment committee. I am in charge of the FUN committee!”

This brings things down to a very achievable goal that if more often successful, than not. Success encourages me to keep working on it. And the more positive interactions I have with my children, the stronger our relationship becomes. Since I chose to adopt children with significant mental, emotional and cognitive challenges, to me it feels like I’m in a race. My race is to build the strongest possible parent/child bonds before we begin to negotiate the rapids and whirlpools of the teen years. We each shape how our children make their own meaning and weave their own Tapestry. How we frame things, how we teach values, how we weave our perception of their personal Tapestry. might be something that we haven’t truly been conscious of before. How do we do that? What skills do we have? What resources do we have? How might we improve what we’re doing now? And not in a ‘I have to be perfect’ thinking, but in the spirit of continued self assessment and forward growth.

Tools to put in our parenting tool kit/resource base

I’m a big fan of solution focus strategies. This is such a large topic, and with so many complex facets, that for me it’s crucial to have really solid ideas, suggestions, and processes to use when ever possible. Here’s my ‘short list’ of very concrete ways to help our children be very resourceful in dealing with their own feelings, including those of grief and loss.

Validation In my worldview, Validating is an important resource. To validate another’s experience means to accept that for them it is real, and has meaning, regardless of the reality of what the words may be. For instance, if my daughter, adopted at age 7 from the foster care system begins to tell me an incredible story about her life with her biological family (who were violent, drug addicted, mentally ill and very low IQ), that has NO basis in any reality that’s in her records or reports, I will say something that is value neutral. Like “gee, if that had happened for me, I’d feel very happy.” Then move us to another subject, rather than dwell in a false or imaginary memory. Learning not to take these confabulations as any comment on my ability as her mother to provide for her was hard work. She WANTS to believe that they lived in a fabulous house with a maid, with all of her biological sisters (two were removed from parents at birth), and had a huge yard full of toys. The reality, that they lived in the ghetto’s of LA, went without food or shelter often, and were abused and beaten is too painful for her to face. Other validating comments, that are value free, and judgment free, might be: “Oh what a wonderful memory for you.” “Gee, I’d love to have that memory! Thank you for sharing.” “How wonderful!” When my children talk about the hard times, the sadness or violence, I might say: “I’m sorry things were so hard, or so sad, or (insert primary feeling here) for you.” “I wish things had been better for you back then.” “How hard for your parents to have only sad and painful choices.” For transitional comments? To transition from an unreal, made up memory, or one that’s so sad, (or insert other emotion here) ? “ I’m sorry you went through that. It wasn’t our fault. I’m SO happy that you are my daughter. I’m so glad we’ve found each other.” “That must be very hard. What can we do to help you feel better? Would you like to (insert suggestion here.)” Or maybe, a wordless response, just a hug and a cuddle is sufficient.

Affirmations are positive statements that reinforce a specific area of need. The need can vary, and might be about self esteem or connectedness, or grief, loss, etc. ”I’m sure if that were me, I’d feel (insert feeling here).” Sometimes it ‘s hard for children to know what they are feeling. The four primary emotions are Sad, Glad, Scared and Mad. Most of the others are mixtures of two or more of the four primary emotions. Sometimes we need to help our children understand what they are feeling and give it a name.

Ritual
Rituals are really lacking in today’s world. Children derive feelings of security and safety in knowing what the limits are, what is going to happen next, and being able to predict with some measure of success what’s going to happen in any given situation. Developing family rituals and traditions are great ways to build family strength and increase parent/child bonds. For my older children, all coming with memories of sadness, abuse, abandonment and associated losses, we have a day before ‘gotcha day’ to talk about sad feelings, and find ways to accept them, and then move through them to feeling hopeful. On ‘gotcha day’ we have a family party, with lots of favorite and comfort foods from their past lives, as well as favorites from our family. These family parties are ‘big business’ in our family and days and days are spent planning them.

During our meal, we go around our dinner table and offer some of our favorite memories both from initial homecoming and the most recent year that we’ve completed. For our older children, they write down things they really have enjoyed to put in their Life Book. We might spend part of a day making new pages, and writing down stories to go in them, beside the pictures. This always gives lots of time to talk about feelings, successes and continued challenges. Knowing what’s going to happen for various holidays, and blending their memories, if they have them, into our family celebrations can also lessen grief. For one of my sons, adopted at age four and half, this meant adding vanilla to the pancakes we eat each Saturday morning. His foster family did this, and the smell reminds him of feeling loved and cared for. He’s since asked us to add vanilla or cinnamon to his oatmeal, as the familiar smells help him remember his foster parents of almost three years. He has few memories of his biological family, and hangs onto those of his foster family tightly.

For his older sister, it’s about writing her birth mom letters about what she’s accomplished, and what her life is like. Sometimes they’re sad and sorrowful, sometimes they’re angry and full of pain. These go into a file that we keep for her. When she’s ready, we take a letter and go outside and burn it, and envision all the pain and sorrow going up in the air in the smoke. She says ‘thank you’ to those feelings for helping her and asks them ‘to go and help another little girl in a ‘good way’ in the future.’ For my other girls, we are slowly building a relationship with a bio auntie who’s raising a sibling along with her own little one, in letters and pictures. They are beginning to ask her hard questions about ‘why’, and learning to accept that both parents were sick, and in their sickness, made unhealthy choices.

Some times we get my Drum out, and weep and wail, as loudly as we can, allowing all their sadness to be translated into voice, and then do a ‘happy dance’ when we’re done, to help them ‘change state’. We often use jumping jacks to help their brains make better choices by giving their brains more blood an oxygen. The older two will ask to do them when the sadness or anger seem ‘too big’ for that particular moment. We use visualizations, to give feelings a ‘size, shape and color’ and a place in their bodies where they ‘live’ Then we imagine the size getting smaller, and the color fading out, and the feelings flowing down their bodies and out their feet into the Earth, again with a ‘thank you for helping me’ and ‘please go find another little girl to help’. Then we ‘fill them up’ with another color and feeling, and allow that feeling to climb all the way up their bodies and fill them to the tips of their fingers and the tops of their heads.

Measuring success

Because of the complexity of my children’s mental health needs, I use ‘youth outcome questionnaires’ that chart various behaviors, moods and cycles each day/week. You might wish to make a small list of things that concern you, and then track for a month or two how things are changing. This can give you really concrete places to focus. Things like conflict resolutions skills are also a good resource to teach and make available to our children. Even teaching them validation and affirmation skills can increase their social skills, give them ore places to achieve success. The higher a child’s sense of self, identity and self esteem, the higher the probability they will navigate the seas of various feelings. Grief can be like an ocean. Some days the waves just sort of gently tickle one’s feet, sometimes they’re up to one’s ankles, and occasionally an unexpected wave can sweep in, up and over us, leaving us drowning in a sea of strong feelings.

As children learn to process, a Journal can be an effective means of helping them not only recognize their feelings and successes, but allow them to look back over time and see how much progress they’ve made.
For our children with challenges in reading and writing, a video or audio Journal can be really effective. Setting aside time each day to focus on feelings, successes and challenges, can become a great place to share with our children. Two of my children are very good at writing, and often create stories from their pasts, which they write down and we read together, (if they wish to share). As a writer, I often print off stories of my own childhood, in which I may have struggled with an issue that they are now struggling with. Sometimes they read them in silence, and don’t mention the similarities at all. Other times they just over flow with words, talking about how much what I lived through is like what they’re struggling with now. Using my own hurts and trials builds bonds of commonality that help cement our parent/child relationship here and now. It also gives a ‘larger’ meaning to my own life and aids me in my own healing.
For one of my older daughters, adopted at 7.5, the fact that I had a dream about a little girl who looked just like her, and that I searched for years and years until I finally found her, gives meaning to her pain and sorrow in a way that empowers her. She is able to find meaning in her life, knowing that we both struggled to find each other. She waited for three years to be adopted, and cried, and prayed each day for a forever family. Finding an over riding Meaning to our experiences often helps us create a Tapestry for ourselves and somehow diminishes those losses because we’re replacing something sad and sorrowful with something glad and joyful.

Learning to embrace our own losses, and feelings of grief in healthy ways, rather than trying to constantly OVER COME them is a new concept for many of us. In my own life, the biggest chunk of personal healing for me was learning to embrace and love ALL of the parts of myself, even those of revenge, or wanting to ‘get back’ at my parents for the poor choices they made that hurt me so very deeply. Once I could welcome those parts INTO myself, I was able to feel healed and more whole. Coming to terms with my own ‘holes’ where I don’t have the information I’d like to have, and don’t know my own Adoption Story, accepting that I can’t fill those holes, was empowering. The last part of what I’d like to share about this, is about how we can shape, reframe, and strengthen our children via our own Stories, and their personal Adoption Story. By creating one, sort of like the ‘Neverending Story’ movie idea, can be not only fun, but in repeating it, building it, rewriting and reframing it as time moves on, gives our children more personal power, and fills in the ‘blanks’ in ways that are hard to put into words. And what do we do when we ‘don’t know?” Well, we can PRETEND with our children, creating and recreating many scenarios over time. My now eight and a half year old daughter often wants to hear the story of how I Dreamed about her, searched for her, and how happy I am that we finally found each other. We had a story telling event at her school, and at her request I went and presented her Adoption Story, which we co-wrote together, complete with a storyboard and pictures of her family and her life. It was a huge success, and somehow made her sadness less than it had been. Stepping outside our own personal feelings of failure when our children grieve their losses is hard work. And might be worth it’s own topic one day.

Respectfully

Deedee