A Fresh Take On Fog

Hi, and welcome to a short presentation that I've created this morning called A Fresh Take on Fog. So fog— what is fog? Fog is a term that adoptees use to describe a state, a feeling, a time when they are unaware of the emotional impact that being relinquished, being adopted, has had on them. So, uh, fog. Yeah, uh, that— it seems a little bit strange to me, does that? Because it— we're saying we're not seeing clearly We are blissfully unaware, and being blissfully unaware of of some damage is is is viewed as a bad thing. Anyway, so for those that the those of you that haven't heard my. my story before. So I'm, I'm Simon Benn, I'm 54. I was adopted at 5 weeks old and I was told I was adopted just before my second birthday when my little sister came along. That's it. Little sister Penny. And my mum and dad told me with the aid of a storybook, so a story of how a couple fell in love, got married, and didn't think that their family was complete and adopted some kids. And that's how I was told really gentle and a lovely way for somebody to find out that they're adopted. And this was before— I don't even remember being told. I just know that that's how I was told. So we had a good adoption. Me and my sister had a good adoption. We grew up in a loving family with everything that we wanted, and I felt really attached well attached. And I've only kind of realized how well attached I felt this week, actually, because a thought came back to me of when my sister said something about finding my parents. And I said, well, no, Mum and Dad are my parents. They are. our parents. And this was, I don't know when, I might have been 8 or 10 or something like that, but that's how I felt. That was my truth. So there's a lot of adoptees out there that don't feel as attached as that, um, as well attached. I think that's the, the jargon. Um, I clearly, I clearly did feel attached, but I didn't know how well attached I was until I had that memory and that came back to me. So If you are an adoptee that's listening and you didn't attach as as as as well as that, then my heart really goes out to you because I think that that stability that I felt has actually made my life a lot easier. I did, however, have some kind of I guess what if we were going to sum it up, we could say we could call it. Delayed adoption trauma. I'm just looking for a shorthand to express what happened, so how I felt. So at the age of 40, I found out that my teddy bear, so I'm just going to hold up the teddy bear for the for guys watching on video, that he was from my from my birth mother, and my first reaction to that. Okay, my first reaction—that's quite clear, quite important. My first reaction was one of curiosity. Ah, that's a little strange that my mum and dad didn't tell me that my birth mother had given me this teddy bear. That's a little strange. Later, my reaction—this is quite, quite crucial here, quite crucial. No, it's totally crucial. What's totally crucial is that. I don't know, 2 or 4 months later, I was sharing this tale about the teddy bear with somebody, um, and, uh, she— I, I had this eruption of anger, this huge eruption of anger. My birth mother didn't love me, and lots of swearing and really nasty things directed towards my birth mother. So that sat me, that and some other stuff going on in my life, which was actually all related to business and business success not making me happy, set me off on a journey to finding what happiness was. So in shorthand, business success hadn't made me happy and I thought adoption had made me unhappy. I put those 2 things together and I Thought well, I need to find out what happiness is, where it comes from, and how to be happy. I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. Most of all, we just want to be happy. So I've learned a lot in the last whatever twelve years I've been studying this stuff. Somewhere along the way, I came up this. I came up with this. This. I came across this concept of fog. So fog, as in an inability to see the damage that adoption relinquishment has done, right? So if, if that's true, then I was in— I was in the fog. I was in the fog for 40 years. I was blissfully unaware. And is that a bad thing, or is that— is that even the truth? I was unaware. Well, in my truth, um, that— in my opinion, that is not my— that's not my truth. That's not the truth that I feel. I don't feel that I was, um, suppressing, um, feelings of, of, of, um, uh, you know, abandonment and, and being not good enough for my, um— because of being adopted. Actually, Most of the stuff that was going through my head, especially in my 30s, was the thought that I wasn't good enough because I wasn't good enough in business. So I felt I wasn't good enough, but nothing to do, nothing to do with adoption, all to do with business stuff. And then this, this, this, this thought came along that I wasn't good enough to because I'd been given, given a, given up. Given, relinquished my birth mother. And that kind of compounded that thought that I wasn't good enough. So, but that— the crucial thing here, the crucial thing here is that— how do I express this? My first reaction about the teddy bear was curiosity. My second reaction, second reaction Was one was this anger. So the same thing, the same revelation about the teddy bear being from the birth mother led to two different feelings: curiosity and anger. How can how can one event cause 2 different feelings? It can't, can it? It can't. It can't be the event. It, it can't be the event. It must be the meaning, the meaning that I was putting on the event. There was no meaning at all with the first realization, the first thought. About curiosity. But there was a ton, an absolute ton of meaning when I was having this eruption of anger, when I was taking it personally, when I was taking it— this is a personal affront— where when I was actually driving, I, I was feeling viscerally, feeling all this anger towards my birth mother for, for rejecting me and, and Yeah, it was, it was, it was a horrific, it was a horrific feeling and an overwhelming feeling until the lady that I was talking to said, Simon, I'm a mum. I don't think it was kind of tight like that. That's all she said. What she meant was the thought that I had my mother didn't love me enough to keep me. She was saying very gently, this lady Sarah Kreutzer, she's married now, I can't remember her surname, a new surname. Sarah, she questioned me ever so gently. She questioned my thought, and as she said, I don't think it was like that. She said— what she meant was, I don't think that your birth mother— I don't think that what you're saying here is true. I don't— I think your birth mother loved you. I don't think she rejected you. I don't think, I don't think that the teddy bear was a consolation prize for a little boy, that a little baby that was given away. And in that moment, all that anger, all that anger that had erupted out of nowhere Well, that fury directed towards my birth mother had disappeared. So we've got the same revelation. Reaction 1, curiosity. Reaction 2, fury. And then peace. And the peace was when I challenged— when I was challenged, gently challenged, about how I thought and felt about the circumstances leading to my adoption. So that's my take. On fog. Am I expressing that enough clearly enough? I think fog is when we pin when we pin the tail on the wrong donkey. Our minds are like meaning machines, like they're like you know like a minesweeper. A minesweeper is a, is a, is a boat that goes out into the, um, into the ocean and it sweeps for mines. It looks for mines. Our brains, our minds are sweeping for meaning. So what happens is we go through life and we— our moods go up and down. We feel love, we feel rejected, we feel good enough, we feel not good enough. And then what happens is somebody says something about adoption or, or this fog thing, and we think, I'm feeling the way I'm feeling because I'm adopted, and we pin all our— we pin all our, um, all our bad feelings on this event that happened when we were relinquished. But how can this be true? We're pinning the tail on the wrong donkey. And when we play— when we play this game as kids, you know, we, we're pinning the tail on the donkey, we play it with a blindfold. We play it with a blindfold and, and we pin the tail on the wrong donkey. Because how can something that happened— well, let me put it a different way. My mood, my level of security, and my feelings of self-worth have gone up and down. They've been all over the place in the last 54 years of my life. Right, so we've got a variable feeling, a variable level of self, a very variable level of happiness. How can that be? How can a how can a fix? How come a variable outcome be caused by a fixed? uh, input, a fixed event, the relinquishment when I was 5 weeks old. How can that— how, how can one thing that is set in stone— it's a historical fact, that's what happened, I was surrendered, given up, relinquished, whatever you want to call it, by my birth mother— how can one thing in the past cause my mood when my mood has been all up and down? It can't, can it? It must be something to do with the meaning, the meaning that I attached to being adopted. And, and I'm expressing this purely by— with this example of the teddy bear, the fact that my first reaction was curiosity, my second reaction was anger, And then after the intervention from them and the gentle words from Sarah, peace, when I realized the meaning that I had attached to being adopted was totally, utterly wrong. Thanks a lot for listening. Bye-bye.