Mapping Adoption Journeys: The Cartography of Healing

IMG_0344

As a writer and artist, I see maps in many ways, as canvases, as metaphors, as information. I love this quote from Peter Turchi’s Maps of The Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer.

“…The earliest maps are thought to have been created to help people find their way and to reduce their fear of the unknown. We want to know the location of what we deem life-sustaining and life-threatening. Now as then, we record great conflicts and meaningful discoveries. We organize information on maps in order to see our knowledge in a new way. As a result, maps suggest explanations; and while explanations assure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities.”

I considered that paragraph through the lens of adoption.

In adoption, we tend to create our own maps, and they often are missing significant signage, exact locations, and detailed directions. Our maps often change a lot over time, from what we thought we knew to be true when the journey began, to what we later see through different eyes, with new information, with deeper understanding. There are all sorts of roadblocks, dead ends, surprises, unexpected twists and turns. Maybe if we don’t have a map, we can create our own.

IMG_0346

In addition to Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination, I also highly recommend Jill K. Berry’s book Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed Media MapmakingNeither book is specifically about adoption. I’m drawing (literally and figuratively) from both books in considering ways that adoptees, first mothers, and anyone with “missing pieces” in their family history can draw a new map, whether real or imagined, with the information they have at hand. In so doing, perhaps a new measure of healing can occur.

I think of my daughters, and how they might create a map from the small Ethiopian village where they  spent the first 5 years of life, drawing an arrow then about 200 kms north to Addis for several months, then to Bole airport, to Rome, to New York City, to Washington, DC, to Maryland. Those last 5 locations all were visited in one day.

That map would show an astonishing, life-changing journey. Imagine experiencing it through the eyes of a 6-year-old. Imagine contemplating it through the eyes of a 25-year-old.

I think of adult adoptee friends who traveled to the US from Korea as children, and genuinely have no idea where they were for years of their lives prior to arrival here. The map is blank. But their lives did not start upon arrival in America. Perhaps the creation of a new map could help clarify feelings, could consider possibilities in a healing, calm way.

I think of my friend Angela Tucker born in Tennessee, who then spent about a year with a foster family, and was adopted in northern Washington state. Her map would largely consist of Washington, Bellingham to Seattle, but recently she has revisited Tennessee, no well-marked map in hand, tracking down places and people she once knew, though in a different lifetime. (See the amazing, powerful documentary Closure to learn more about her journey.)

I think of birth mothers who can draw a map of pregnancy and delivery, but then the path goes dark. Their child’s travel continues, but the first mother is no longer part of that journey. Imagine the possibilities of creating a map that the two could share, showing where they’ve been and what they’ve seen in the intervening years.

Take a look at this “Computer Heart Map,” from Personal Geographies:

Computer Map Heart from Personal Geographies, p. 42

Computer Map Heart from Personal Geographies, p. 42

I love the possibilities here: a series of islands, shaped like a heart, with places like “Adolescent Straits,” the “Sea of Forgiveness,” and islands that the artist has named “Dreams,” “Ideas,” “Abandonment,” “Adoption,” and “Learning.”

I’m thinking of all these possibilities in connection with the Association of Personal Historians national conference in November. I’m presenting a workshop titled “Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding a Personal History.” This is the description:

“Many people don’t have the luxury of knowing their family. Those who are separated by adoption or just estranged from their birth family still need to know where they came from and how to embrace their cultural origins. In this workshop, Maureen will discuss methods to find information, help normalize difficult pasts, and celebrate complex histories, even if birth records are not available. You will learn about innovative approaches using mementoes, DNA services, adoption records, new technologies, and more. And you will learn that even if conventional methods and research materials aren’t available, you still can have powerful personal history stories.”

One of the “innovative approaches” I will share include maps, and ways to create and re-imagine them through art, filling in some blanks, or at least re-framing them, with the goal mostly of moving toward healing.

Final thought today: Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps, is quoted in Personal Geographies: “Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory…”

Adoption Stories In the Light of Day, Through Art and Hopes for Healing

About a week ago, I was sitting alone in my house on the eve of my birthday. The last few years have been tumultuous, filled with changes and surprises, some unwanted, some wondrous, some confusing. I was in a contemplative mood, wobbling among doubt, enthusiasm, and bursts of inspiration. I came across this, on the artist Flora Bowley‘s website:

Hi everybody. Have you heard about Life Book yet?  It’s a really lovely year-long mixed media online art class put together by Tamara LaPorte.  I had the pleasure of meeting Tamara last year in the UK and she is super fun and dedicated to spreading the joy of creativity far and wide. Life book offers creative insights through video lessons, prompts, images and writing by 22 amazing teachers throughout the year.  What a great way to learn some new approaches and techniques!

I’m very honored to be one of these teachers this year…my first time.  My contribution to the course will be a class inspired by my recent infatuation with using non-traditional “brushes” such as vegetables, flowers, sticks, etc.  I will also be sharing some Bloom True tips and a meditation track.

And, guess what? I’m giving away one free spot for Life Book 2014 right here today!  Simply leave a comment in the comment section about why you would like to participate in this offering and you might just win this awesome year-long creative adventure.

Hmm.

In May 2012, I happened to be in Portland, Oregon, when Powell’s Bookstore (a wonderful place) featured the talented, warm, inspiring Flora Bowley. She paints big, bold, colorful canvases.

Painting by Flora Bowley

Painting by Flora Bowley

Flora had just published her amazing, empowering book Brave Intuitive Painting, and she spoke that night about it at Powell’s. The book has since sold over 20,000 copies..

Flora embraces life with passion, and generously shares her talents, joys, insights, techniques, and sense of wonder. She’s a successful artist: her work is sold in several galleries across the country, and she has licensed merchandise sold around the world. She teaches hugely popular classes on-line, and holds art retreats in Bali, Brooklyn, Ireland, Boston, Mexico, and other exotic places. Jess Greene wrote about Flora in “Artistic Abundance: Flora Bowley” on Huffington Post: “Flora Bowley’s story is a beautiful example of full, unapologetic knowing that life unfolds and abundance follows when you follow your heart.”

One of my great passions is stories. There is no doubt in my mind that, if we truly asked about and listened to each other’s stories, deeply and patiently, we would have a better world.

When I chose the name for my blog–Light of Day Stories–I did so intentionally, with the hope that it would be a place to bring the light of day to adoption, to stories, and to art, through writing, listening, and creating.

When I read last week about Flora and the upcoming Life Book class, it made me think about how adoptive parents sometimes use “Life Books” with their adopted children. I think they were originally designed for foster children, but they’ve expanded well beyond that. They are special compilations of the child’s adoption story: where, with whom, how a child lived before he arrived in the adoptive family. Life books are a version of a “baby book,” meant to provide a sense of identity and of connection with the past. The books can help parents talk with the child about a complicated past, and are a means of acknowledging the child’s life prior to adoption. They can contain photos, letters, mementoes, and more.

Life books are relatively new in the world of adoption. Keep in mind that there was a time (especially in the days of same race, infant adoption) that adoption policy recommended not telling a child he was adopted. For children from abusive or otherwise difficult origins, there was once (not all that long ago) a policy that recommended forgetting the past, not talking about it, not rocking the adoption boat. That recommendation was passed on sometimes to birth/first/original mothers as well.

For some people, that has been a heart-breaking approach. Birth mothers never forgot. Adoptees, whether from US foster care or another country, wanted to know their history, even if it was grim, or difficult to find.

It’s hard telling stories that are complicated. It’s hard telling stories that have lots of missing or inaccurate pieces, which can happen in adoption.

Still, they are important stories to tell.  We need to tell them, and we need to listen to them, because they help us to heal, learn, and grow.

I’ve been working this past year on developing creative, empowering ways for adoption stories to be told. I’ll be presenting a workshop in November at the national conference of the Association of  Personal Historians. My workshop is titled Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding a Personal History.

Here’s the workshop description: “Many people don’t have the luxury of knowing their family. Those who are separated by adoption or just estranged from their birth family still need to know where they came from and how to embrace their cultural origins. In this workshop, Maureen will discuss methods to find information, help normalize difficult pasts, and celebrate complex histories, even if birth records are not available. You will learn about innovative approaches using mementoes, DNA services, adoption records, new technologies, and more. And you will learn that even if conventional methods and research materials aren’t available, you still can have powerful personal history stories.”

Stories matter. Telling stories matters. Listening to stories matters. Flora Bowley describes her art this way: “a celebration of life: chaotic, subtle, beautiful, mystical, and ever-changing.”

Adoption stories can have some of those qualities as well. They can also be powerful, challenging, evocative, and intense: just like art.

That night a week ago, alone in my house, I decided to post a comment on Flora’s site, not thinking I would win the free spot for the year-long mixed media course.

Here’s my comment.

IMG_0195

And guess what?

IMG_0187

I am so thrilled. I share this with you because I took a chance, a leap of faith, and a deep breath, and I hope you will too when opportunities crop up. I share this with you because this class will allow me to connect with some amazingly talented and generous artists, and I can’t wait to share their insights and ideas in my work with the stories of adoption. Maybe they will be new versions of Life Books in adoption, maybe creative approaches to personal histories, maybe something right now unknown.

The themes of the Life Book 2014 course are self-development and healing: we can use those skills in the adoption community. I am very grateful to Flora for choosing my comment from the hundreds that were submitted. I am in awe of Tamara LaPorte of Willowing Arts for creating this Life Book class, and for partnering with 22 incredible artists who will present mixed media art lessons. Tamara writes that she believes “practising self-care through art and self-enquiry creates happier people, and happier people equals a better world.”

Mixed media: water color, gel transfer on wood. By Maureen McCauley Evans

Mixed media: water color, gel transfer on wood. By Maureen McCauley Evans

So many stories. Lots of hope for healing, out in the light of day.