Adoptees and Natural Mothers,
Parapettio - Our Awakening
by Mark Walter
If you watch the movie, The Human Stain, with Anthony
Hopkins, you will see a scene early on where Hopkins asks
a younger writer why that writer has secluded himself away
in a cabin in the wilderness.
The writer's answer is, "What is it in a Greek tragedy
where the hero suddenly finds that everything he thought he
knew was wrong?" Hopkins answers, "Parapettio."
While some may accuse me of being overly-dramatic, many of
us - adoptees and natural mothers - have gone through, or
are beginning to go through our own version of "parapettio."
(And certainly no one could say that our stories do not rival
any Greek tragedy!)
In an earlier commentary, I referred to adoptees being as
Sleeping Beauty - asleep and blissfully unaware. Some of this
is the training we recieve, and have reinforced every minute
of our lives from the moment we are adopted, but some of it
is of our own making as well. Those little babies so lost
in the world simply cannot, at laest for the time it takes
them to find their strength and be independant, risk the devastation
of that inital loss of our mothers again. It almost cost us
our existance the first time, and deep, deep down, we know
we cannot stir those still waters until we are ready.
When we first "awaken," we are likely to be more
confused than ever. Now, not only are we painfuly aware of
what has been lost, we don't even have the comfort of the
illusion we've lived with for so very many years. We feel
that terror the baby has felt once again, but we cannot articulate
it. We feel again, the rage, and the absolute injustice of
a universe that would allow this. We feel guilty because we
can no longer live up to the role set out for us by others,
and because they blame us for their pain. And almost worse
- we feel alone...again.
This is our parapettio. This is us coming to understand that
everything we thought we knew about the meaning of family,
parents, and siblings, and in many ways the world, is wrong.
The very basis for our identity, false though it may be, has
been stripped from us. We are left not knowing who we are,
and with no one to help us find out until we find the mothers
and families so long lost to us.
But in this lies the genesis of true strength and identity.
In going through this and finding our mothers, fathers, and
families, we gain a kind of strength that no one will ever
be able to shake again. We build from the ground up, not a
new identity, but rather the identitiy that was always ours
by birthright. We learn who we are. We claim what has always
been ours, and was NEVER anyone else's to take. And we have
this to pass to all our children and the gemerations yet to
come. We have corrected a monstrous wrong.
I have talked to many adoptees recently, and read many of
the comments written by those at various points on their journey.
I promise those of you awakening, unsure, terrified, and feeling
guilty, that your pain will be your new beginning. There is
a YOU there that perhaps now you can't imagine, that will
amaze you! Yuo'll like the person you find in yourself! It's
ok if everything you thought you knew is wrong - you'll be
replacing it.
- Back to Adoptees Speaking
Out -
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