This post tries to put into words the experiences of grief felt by one adoptee. It is however a feeling that runs within the adoptee community.
The mud is real, the swamp is real, the feeling of walking through it all is real – I am in survival mode. Only this year is different, the whole world has become a swamp. We are all caught up in a slower moving world, where solutions don’t seem to be forthcoming. We are just getting deeper and deeper into the swamp of muddy stickiness. The only antidote to this, I have found, is to go deeper and deeper within myself to find my answers.
Deep, deep, deep into the volcano, to reach the heart that is too hot for the human part of me to go. I can only send my mind and Soul, deep within itself, to find the part of me that is in there, and ask it to come forth of it’s own freewill. The furnace that is within, is where the “smithing” takes place. The part of Joy that is going through the fire at the moment, to be heated, bent, beaten and moulded into a piece of joyful expression, that has been forged through fire.
Now is the season, the time of the year towards the end of January and the beginning of February, that I get catapulted from a time of bith celebrations, into the furnace of grief – to go back through the smithing process again, for refinement.
31 years! 31 years of grieving for a father and son, in the space of 14 days. I have now been grieving longer that I have been living. Or have I? Maybe my whole life has been a life of grieving. Maybe the moment that my mother walked away and was dead to me, I began to grieve. I should have. But does society recognise the need for the child to go throught the grief process, who is ultimately relinquished and adopted?
Society recognises the saviours, not the bereaved. The saviours celebrate your coming into their household, whilst maintaining silence over your bereavement. The child has an air and energy of bereavement surrounding it, but the saviours celebrate, completely oblivious to the need for grieving. The baby, taken into the family, is surrounded by celebration. But who celebrates at a funeral? A life can be celebrated, someone’s achievements can be celebrated, memories are recalled and remembered and celebrated, but the new born has little to celebrate, they are grieving and society does nothing to help them through the process accept to foster them through it. Nappies are changed, bottles are made up and fed to you, clean clothes are provided, a bed to sleep in. All the physical needs are met, but what about the psychological trauma that has been inflicted? The primal wound needs tending to, but who even acknowledges the wound is even there?
Did I have a family who rocked me and soothed me and said “There there, you’re ok now, you’re safe, we’ve got you, grieve away” or did I get a family who said “You’re ours now, forget where you came from. Forget your roots, your culture and your heritage. You’re our child now and we want to celebrate our accomplishments, not recognise and honour your bereavement.” This latter I believe fosters the festering of the primal wound, for as long as the injured party takes to realise it is there and start their own self-healing process.
Thank you for reading. It would be an honour to read your thoughts on this post.
Blessings and Joy, Joy
Thank you so much to Joy, for this beautiful and touching post. She so gently covers a vast and complex field of grief, one I personally had never thought about. Thank you so much for gently shedding light on this topic. Head over to Joy’s blog to read more wonderful posts.
If you would like to submit a post, feel free to email us at thegriefreality@outlook.com, or DM us on our socials. It fills us with a lot of peace and pride reading your submissions.
Have a beautiful day.
Photo from Joy’s blog
Great insight into some of the trauma around adoption. I think it’s hard for some people to understand, when they haven’t had experience or training with it
Very touching text
Thank you. We do need to be reminded that there are many kinds of grief and each need to be processed in their own way in their own time.
Thank you. I had never considered that I needed to grieve the loss of my birth family until I started to write that post. Blessings J x
Thank you Brittany. I have only just started to realise how much it has affected me, and I turned 60 in January this year lol. Bless you for understanding. You sound as tough you have experience? Blessings J x
*though, not tough. Wish wordpress would allow editing on comments lol J x
Evee, Katie Thank you so much for sharing this. It was Jack’s “birthday” on the 12th, and I am so pleased to see thsi being shared with your followers. Blessings Joy x
A moving post.🙏
“Life is what it is *&* this post covers one of ‘them things’ so to speak
*&* life isn’t always steak and cake
but carry you to the point of break
but whatever happens
you must be strong enough to weather the storm.”
_-Van Princde
My heart is with you..it hard to loose a loved one.
Loss is such a painful sting that can last and last and last… The loss of a loved one, the loss of a future planned for, the unjustified loss of a trust, a much loved pet, an object that held meaning… Yes loss is such a painful sting and so personal, some never share what it is that is troubling them and yet we have all been troubled by loss at some point. The saying is so true, but that I cannot recall how the saying goes, sort of: Be compassionate, because you just don’t know what the other person is carrying.
Thank you J x
For a child to have lost so much and to land upon an alien world without that familiarity at all, that sting memory most certainly would last. Putting feelings on hold perhaps, then in later life trying to understand without the words within the book, the images upon the screen, the plate without food upon it. For it is a hard thing to imagine and yet so many go through this. It boggles my mind.
Beautiful post
Thank you. I appreciate your words. Blessings J x
What a wonderful post.
A wonderful post.
Finally, someone somewhere has spoken my language. I thought it was peculiar to grieve for straight ten years.
I somehow thought there was something wrong with me. You know, people do not walk around talking about what goes in their heads and maybe that’s what makes grieving for long somehow off.
There came a time when I would shut those feelings and thoughts away, because the pain was unbearable and worse, there was no one to tell these things to.
But I realize that grieving is something people don’t address appropriately. The bereaved is usually left to wallow in the mad of whatever comes there way and if they hold on to faith and hope, they eventually come out stronger. But life, is never the same.
It is not an easy journey.
Thanks for sharing your story, Joy.
No one addresses grief properly, you are so right x
Hope you are okay, and I’m so glad you enjoyed Joy’s post x
Thank you for commenting. Grief is a strange thing. On the whole I am ok with it, but in the run up to the anniversary it creeps up. I have learnt to just go with the flow. Being February most people are wishing the sun would shine anyway, so I can blend with the late winter blues. Blessings J x
Every year, one is reminded of the death of a loved one. It never really goes away but rather, grief morphes into something else…maybe a better form such as good memories with him or her ☺️☺️
Absolutely x