I Didn’t Want to Leave.

I was in Phoenix this past weekend, at The Royal Palms. I couldn’t believe how relaxed I was in the midst of this desert oasis. And in the relaxation, my artist pot was slowly and thoroughly filled. I began reading The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. I am on week one, learning how to recover "my artist" (as Cameron would say)who has been repressed for a lifetime. I am doing my morning pages, and dreaming of where I will take my inner artist for our artist dates; wishing I could come every week to the Royal Palms in Phoenix.
This is perhaps the most peaceful and inspiring place I’ve been. It is full of history. The winding paths and hidden trails give way to secret gardens, expansive courtyards, intricate fountains, or tiny nooks and crannies with squishy chairs under orange trees where one can hide, write, think, and be alone. I spent time thinking about who I am as a writer, where I want to go and how I first began writing.

2006

When I first started writing about my adoption (aside from the occasional weepy poem) I was pregnant with my daughter and dealing with some serious processing. It had been six years since my adoption but much of the deep emotions had been set aside unprocessed. The writing at first was jagged, journal-like and, to anyone but me, utterly dull.

It is said that you should not write about a traumatic event until the injury is healed. But I don’t think the adage applies quite appropriately to adoption. I can’t call the mark I have from adoption an injury. An injury implies that I was a victim of some kind of attack and not a willing volunteer.

I think adoption is more like a voluntary amputation or like donating a kidney to a loved one. There is healing that must happen. I have to heal physically and emotionally from the loss that is adoption. There is loss. But unlike an injury from a traumatic event, in adoption there is also great gain; unexpected beauty in the midst of the dust. The motivation to heal and move on is in the joy that the offering has brought.


So part of the adoption recovery for me was writing, even before the incision was healed. Even though the writing itself was wounded, sloppy, ugly, hurting, and worst of all, boring.
Out in unlikely, beautiful Arizona, my artist started to wake up. I began seeing possibility, seeing beauty. My artist began recovering from a lifetime of her own injuries and attacks. Her wounds are not fully healed either; so we are working together to recover, grow, open up to the truth of why we are here, and what we are supposed to say.