Monday Musings - Living London, Living Large, Living Loss

photo above: Last week's From Home to Homeland AUTHOR PARTY! (edited by Debra Jacobs, Dr. Iris Chin Ponte, Leslie Kim Wang, Yeong & Yeong, 2010). Thanks, Deb, for sending us photos!

Bonjour à tous!

This Week's Blog Question:
"What Schools Did You Attend?"
-Kate Adie's Nobody's Child (chapter 8 title)

Off to London this week!!! (I'm so excited. I'm giving some presentations at a conference with friends from the UK and the Republic of Ireland.)

Dear Erin ~ I should mention that I recently realized that I feel ever so much more at home in the UK than I do in the USA (will explain later).

Dear Sabrina ~ Last week you asked: "How much does this feeling of loss contribute or take away from our identity formation as Chinese adoptees?"

This is an excellent question. Loss is a relevant subject germane to adoptees, but moreover, it's a subject that's close to our hearts if we are simply human beings! One reporter rudely blurted out, "Jennifer, Do you have a GREAT BIG GAPING HOLE IN YOUR HEART because YOU WERE ADOPTED!!?"

Let's put this into context. Consider this scenario:
Would anyone consider it normal for a complete stranger(!) to ask someone who has lost a parent: "Do you have a great big gaping hole in your heart because you lost your mom/dad?"

Being adopted means that our "loss" -- a loss that is inevitable and universal to all human beings (eventually, who doesn't lose their parents!?) -- is rendered "visible." (And in answer to your question, Sabrina, I think that what "makes one adoptee feel loss and another not?" is simply a matter of life experience, context...and time. For instance, I personally did not experience much (conscious) adoption loss until my (adoptive) mom died from cancer. I was 21. Losing my mom made it impossible not to truly understand (and I mean truly! down to the core) what it meant to lose any parent, including my birthmom. Mine was a double loss, triggered by the death of my (adoptive) mom. But before mom was diagnosed with cancer, I hadn't been conscious of feelings of loss regarding my birthmother or my adoption. I was very close to my (adoptive) family growing up. (Now, this doesn't mean to say that they didn't - ahem - on occasion drive me nuts, or that I didn't fantasize about maybe secretly being a princess from China and that my mom -- naturally, a Chinese Empress -- would swoop down from the skies in pure silk to carry me to my rightful throne in China -- much to the shock and dismay of my snotty classmates!)

When people ask me about loss and how I feel about it as an adopted person, I reply: "Who hasn't experienced loss!" Almost all of us humans are orphaned eventually -- it's merely a matter of time.

Of course loss shapes us. Virginia Woolf had a series of losses in her family, and this greatly affected her writing, and the rest of her life! But she wasn't adopted.

I say, YES, we have lost a lot as adopted people. Let's claim that loss right now. We have lost our parents. We have lost our extended birth family. We have lost our medical history (for many). We have lost our birth cultures (for some). Our birth language(s) - ditto. We have lost our birth histories. We have lost the connection to people and places, sights and smells, stories and symbols, images and dreams of hundreds and thousands of our ancestors and relatives. We have been disconnected. Unplugged. Detached from who we could have become, we have quite literally lost (family, identity, home, history, culture, words and languages) everything that really matters. This is tragic. This is a loss beyond words. This is hard. And harder still for some than for others.

But you know what this means? (Flip over the "loss coin" - after all, loss and gain are two sides of the same coin!)

This means...we are FREE. We are free to CHOOSE who we want to be. We have an opportunity. The gates are wide open. Some say that life is short. I say that life is like ice cream. There are an infinite amount of flavors, and we can create new ones all the time. La vita è bella. So what are you waiting for?

Being adopted means that our ice cream-making ingredients are rich indeed! It means that we have a vast potpourri of "ingredients" from which to draw and create from, a multiplicity of histories (birth and adoptive), ancestors (birth and adoptive), and beautiful stories and dreams of salty tears and (YES!) loss, too (both birth and adoptive losses), an infinite well of possibilities at our fingertips, dipping into the mystical, magical seas of our soaring spirits. Anyway, this is what I think today! Ask me again tomorrow and maybe I'll have a completely new experience. Who knows...? La vita è bella. Why not make some delicious ice creams?

Life is hilarious. Loss is mysterious. But most of all, our loss fills us with power and possibility. Remember that.
P.S.
And on that note, for the first time in my life today I am meeting with a personal trainer to explore new physical possibilities (one of my top 3 Year of the Tiger goals: body, books, Ph.D. dissertation). What are your top three goals this week? See you in London next week!

"BLOOM YOUR BEST"

~Love From Jennifer~

Native Province: Taipei & Jiangsu (mainland China) Hometown: Laguna Beach (OC), California Arrived in the USA: Dec 1979 / Jan 1980 Education: NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Harvard & UC Berkeley Generation: G2, “A Global Generation” Why This Blog: “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller