Category Archives: Personal histories

Art, Storytelling, Alzheimer’s: My APH Workshop

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I’m thrilled to share that my workshop “Art-Full Storytelling: Drawing Out Clients” has been selected as one of 25 to be presented at the 2014 conference of the Association of Personal Historians (APH). To anyone thinking about branching into new areas of creativity and work, I say: Go for it.

In recent years, I’ve been working on ways to combine my love of storytelling, writing, and art–both for the sheer joy of it and for income. While my professional background is in social services advocacy, I have been trained as a facilitator of ethical/spiritual wills, and have presented writing workshops related to personal stories. I’ve been building a new business model based in helping people tell their stories: even when information is missing, there are wonderful stories to be told, shared, and preserved. Sometimes we need to look at new ways to re-create and re-frame stories, in a way that honors and respects both the story and the storyteller.

Here’s the description from my APH proposal: This “hands on” workshop will provide innovative, enjoyable activities related to art, engaging clients in stories and triggering memories. A range of activities and techniques will be shown, tailored to a variety of clients. Activities include writing prompts, color, paints, markers, photos, ephemera, and more. Some activities are particularly suited for clients in early or later stages of dementia, when getting a sense of personal stories can be difficult yet sought after and still valuable. The workshop will help clients reminisce and tell their stories in creative, meaningful ways–maybe not the traditional presentations, but valuable and enduring nonetheless.

The goal is to engage through focused creativity, understanding the realities of the brain’s changes over time. I’ll provide an overview of experience with Alzheimer’s patients in early, middle, and later stages, as well as those with no Alzheimer’s symptoms. I will share art exercises that foster connections and evoke memories. 

My 84-year-old dad has lived in a memory unit of an assisted living facility for nearly 3 years, and I’ve enjoyed learning more stories from him, even as some memories fade. It’s been a powerful journey. I am in the process of getting certified by the Alzheimer’s Association in quality care of dementia and Alzheimer’s patients.

Dad with his great-granddaughter in 2008

Dad with his great-granddaughter in 2008

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Dad and Z in summer 2013. I so love these 2 amazing people–and all their stories.

I genuinely enjoy the challenges of helping people fill in missing pieces to create a valuable history. Last year, I presented for the first time at an APH conference. My workshop was titled “Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding a Personal History.” You can read about it here. I’m pleased to say that my 2014 workshop “Finding the Missing Pieces,” a follow-up to last year’s workshop, has been selected as an alternate for the 2014 APH conference, if a scheduled presenter has to cancel. It’s been wonderful to refine and develop strategies for helping folks to tell their stories through innovative approaches.

Maya Angelou said it well: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” May we ask loved ones to share their stories while they are with us. May we help when missing pieces need to be found, and may we listen well.

 

The Stories of Ethiopian First Mothers, and of Their Children

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Here is something I am working on, that I thought I’d send out to the universe today:

Among the most marginalized people in the world are the first mothers of adopted Ethiopian children. Many of these women would not place their children for adoption were it not for abject poverty.

Since 1999, about 13,000 children have been placed in the US from Ethiopia. Many of their mothers never hear from, or even about, their children ever again. These women don’t have access to the Internet or support groups or media. They often live in isolation, with their memories and sorrow.

I have yet to hear about US adoption agencies offering significant post-placement services to Ethiopian first mothers, in their language, with cultural competence. Fewer children are being placed from Ethiopia. Adoption agencies aren’t working there as much anymore. So what happens to the first families? What sort of grief and loss counseling do adoption agencies provide to the first families? Who do the first mothers turn to when they desperately miss their children, or want to know if they are alive?

We are missing so much in adoption. So much.

Families are supposed to send updates to Ethiopia. Some do, some don’t. There’s a lot of anger and mistrust, among families, agencies, government workers. My sense is, in any case, that most reports don’t get to the people who most deserve them: the first families. The mothers.

US adoption agencies do gather information about why children are placed for adoption. Increasingly, though, adoptees and adoptive families learn the information is inaccurate, or, worse, horrifically fraudulent. What are the true stories, and will anyone really know what they are?

What about the stories of the first mothers? Who listens to them, and records the family stories, and saves them for their children? Who values those stories?

I’ve begun working on a couple of exciting possibilities to change things.

One project is to create a network–an infrastructure–that delivers, to Ethiopian first parents, reports from US adoptive parents about their Ethiopian children. The reports would be in the Ethiopian parents’ language, and would be read to them if they are illiterate. Yes, photos too.

Another project is to work with Ethiopian first mothers, and preserve their personal histories. What a huge honor that would be. I belong to the Association of Personal Historians, and last month presented a workshop “Rebuilding Personal Histories” at the annual conference about personal histories for adoptees and others separated from their original family history. I’ve since talked with a few folks about doing this work with Ethiopian first mothers. Would that not be amazing?

So, I ask you to accompany me on this journey, in any way you can. Feel free to post here, or to email me at Maureen@LightOfDayStories.com.

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The photo is my Ethiopian daughter reuniting with her Ethiopian mother. Aselefech wrote about this journey here: “Far Away, Always in My Heart.”

No mother should suffer not knowing what happened to her child. We can change this.

Rebuilding Personal Histories: The Art of the Journey

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Personal histories are hugely popular. To quote from the Association of Personal Historians: “It could be a memoir, a family biography, an oral history, a legacy letter, or another tribute – and it could take the form of a printed work, a video, an audio recording, or other formats. Whatever form of remembrance you choose, a personal history can have a profound impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones.”

It’s all about telling your stories, weaving together your memories. It’s booming with the baby boomers.

And stories are really important, whether or not we are baby boomers. The stories need to be known, shared, and preserved. Stories matter.

As Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Unless, perhaps, it’s not ever having the opportunity, the choice, or the right to know, and then tell, your own story.

Some 5 million Americans are adopted. So that means there are about 10 million birth/first parents out there as well, plus grandparents, siblings who weren’t placed for adoption, and so on. They may not have the basic ingredients for a personal history that the rest of us take for granted. Some of this involves genealogy, as well as genetic genealogy. There are lots of possibilities to locate information, to preserve histories, and to share stories.

I had the pleasure of presenting a workshop at the annual conference of the Association of Personal Historians. (It was a great conference, and an incredibly nice group of people, by the way.) I’ve interspersed a few of my slides here to give a flavor of the workshop.

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Adoption and estrangement are not the same thing, of course, but there is overlap: separation from family, disruption of the original family, a disconnect, a loss. This is true for adoptees and for first/birth parents, mothers of loss, siblings who weren’t adopted, and anyone else whose family connections were severed, for whatever combination of reasons.

There is a spectrum of responses to these separations and disconnections. Some people are idly curious about the missing parts of their pasts. Some are consumed to the core. Some had very happy childhoods, Some were severely traumatized. For those seeking to learn and tell their stories, that spectrum can affect the way they approach their search for information and the way they process it.

In my workshop, I talked about a variety of ways that information can be found these days, even with the absurd restrictions on access to original birth certificates. I talked about the Internet, of course, and the remarkable story of Saroo Brierley and his journey from India to Australia and back, via Google Earth. Saroo’s story is not typical, but it does give hope. There are many ways to gather information, and many ways to tell our stories.

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I shared information about DNA testing, how that’s enriching our understanding of (and access to) all sorts of information: medical conditions, race/ethnicity, and connections to cousins, maybe even closer relatives. I mentioned search angels, sibling registries, online adoptee/first parent groups, vk.com (the Eastern European Facebook), and more.

We talked in my workshop about ways to normalize the past, to deal with complicated realities, and celebrate complex histories.

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As an artist, I also mentioned some less traditional ways of telling one’s stories: through SoulCollage, through The Sketchbook Project, through the book Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking, and other means of re-creating one’s past and re-mapping one’s journeys.

Adopted persons and birth/first parents should be able to know their own histories and tell their own stories, without shame, fear, or agitation. The stories can be very complicated. Some are sad and painful. They are our stories nonetheless, and it is possible to acknowledge their pain and not be drowned by it. We can learn from them, and share that wisdom with others. We should absolutely tell the happy, funny, and joyful stories as well, and share them with our loved ones.

Among the participants in my workshop were two US adoptees (one a genome expert), an adoptive mother of a girl from China, and a woman whose 80-year-old mother was adopted and wanted to get information about her origins before she died. Each of these folks had a different perspective on the search and the stories, the pressure of time, the ways to share and tell information. Each has possibilities.

Starting in January, I will take a year-long, online, mixed media course called Life Book 2014. I can’t wait: the focus of the course will be self-development and healing, and each month a new artist will share techniques and ideas. I wrote about it in this post: Adoption Stories in the Light of Day, Through Art and Hopes of Healing. I’m hoping to build on my work with personal histories and with art, to bring more stories into the light of day, where they deserve to be.

I plan to do an online presentation of my workshop, “Adopted and Estranged Families: Rebuilding A Personal History.” I am in the process of developing resources around personal histories for adoptees and first/birth parents. I’ll post details soon on my Upcoming and Ongoing page.

Mapping Adoption Journeys: The Cartography of Healing

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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.

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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 Mapmaking. Neither 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…”