A Dance into Grief - An Adoptee's Journey

You'll remember that I had gotten a letter from my birthmother, Irene, in January of 1999 (see previous post). I want to diverge for a post or two here to talk about the work that I delved into in graduate school around being adopted. So bear with me, I think you'll find this interesting.

In 1999 I had been working as Assistant Dean at a small art college in Massachusetts. Rather surprisingly (to me at least), I was promoted to the (only) Dean's position that spring during a time of transition. Since the college conferred bachelor's degrees, I was informed that I needed to attain a master's degree to comply with accreditation standards. Fortunately I found a fabulous master's program at a liberal arts college very close to my own college, which made the traveling a lot easier.

The degree was called a"Masters of Education in Creative Arts and Learning" and the premise was that one would learn how to incorporate various modalities, such as art, music, movement and drama and so on, into the classroom. Learning modalities are methods used to teach students using the senses such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. It seemed right up my proverbial alley, so I applied, along with two friends who also worked at my college.

It was a degree designed for those currently working in the field of education. There were twelve courses, nine of which were creative modalities. Each course took one month to complete - two full weekends in person, with a month in between to complete a project and write curriculum using that specific modality. The courses were taught primarily by creative art therapists.

The work and research that I focused on in graduate school became more and more centered around being adopted since it was paralleling my intensive search for my birthmother. I experienced several significant insights during grad school. I'll share more later, but there's one that I want to share at this point.

It was the first weekend of Creative Movement, which I really did not want to take. I did not want to move my body, I did not want anyone watching me, I did not want to call attention to myself. I may have been an artist, but nope, I was having none of the movement stuff. The class was taught by a Dance Therapist and she was great...she actually got me to start moving so that I could join in with the rest of my classmates. Shortly after the first weekend of class, I had an intense dream. In the dream, I had just been born and Irene (my birthmother) held me and then kissed me goodbye (she did, I later found out, actually do this). I wrote about the dream in my journal. (You might remember that this refers back to my very first post in this blog.)

"It was odd, looking through the eyes of an infant with the brain of a 43 year-old. It was almost like an out-of-body experience. Somehow my eyes felt huge, but I think I had them winced up tight. She was holding me. The room was dim, but there was a sort of diffused warm light coming through cracks in the Venetian blinds, the old kind, with big slats. The air was sort of dusty, or misty or hazy. We were in a rocking chair and I was warm and safe and then she left. I thought my heart would break - I've never felt that sort of grief before, not alseep or awake or in a dream. My heart hurt so badly, even in the morning (after I woke up from my dream). It hurt worse than when my grandfather died, or when Cheryl (my best friend) died. I felt it all day. An intense, absolute, desolate sadness. At the same time, I knew how Irene felt too. The same sense of loss, an original loss, grief at the core of my being. A loss that has formed my personality and traits. It has made me terrifed about losing people, family, husbands, lovers and friends. Terrified to be alone, of starving to death, physically and emotionally. It has pushed me to be scared to share emotions. I have had to become strong and independent and aloof because I can never feel that grief or fear again, because it hurt too much. Some part of me holds that memory, and it must have been a combination of the movement and the reading for the class that allowed it to bubble up, unconsciously, in a dream. It needs to be reckoned with. It needs to be felt and understood and examined and allowed to hurt until it can't hurt anymore. It is deeper than anything else, blacker than any other memory. I need to immerse myself in this memory, to be swallowed up by it and understand how it has affected my whole life."

I painted this image during the class - the Venetian blinds in the room where I was born.