A Spiritual Being Having An Adoptee's Experience

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today, yeah, you've just got me again, right? Um, a bit of a, a flurry of these, uh, one-hander episodes. It's just the way that, uh, the schedule works out. So today we're going to dive into a, uh, a quote that I use quite a lot, um, and it's this quote of us Not being a human being having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. And as adoptees, perhaps we are spiritual beings having an adoptee's experience. Do you get that? Um, I, I'm quite proud of that. That's just literally just popped up as I scribbled down some notes, uh, thinking about what I was going to talk about today. Spiritual beings having an adoptee's experience, right? So let's break this down, right? Let's break this down. Uh, spiritual, as in, uh, of spirit. Or for the less religious of you, of us, um, spirit— spirit is often referred to as awareness or consciousness. So what we're talking about here is the, the, the, the thing that is aware, right? Not what we are aware Of. We're talking about the context, us as the context, the space in which the content of our experience happens. So to use the analogy that I use quite a lot, that we're the sky. on which the dark clouds of our trauma appear. Okay, so a spiritual being having a human experience— we're changing that to a spiritual being having an adoptee's experience. So what's in the adoptee's experience? Well, number one, Trauma. Trauma is in the adoptee's experience. Different types of trauma, different amounts of trauma, but trauma nonetheless. So when we look at different types of trauma, we can look at the trauma of relinquishment, we can look at the trauma that perhaps happened within our birth family before we were adopted. We can look at trauma that happens within our adoptive family, uh, after we've been adopted. We can look at trauma that happens in that outside world. So I'm thinking here, um, of a, a transracial adoptee who grows up Um, uh, grows up Black in a world that's very white and, and feels separate, feels different, feels ill-prepared for the way that society defines them by their color, right? Because they may have parents that don't see that. They say, we don't see your— We we don't see your color. Well, the world does see their color and, uh, and treats them differently on the basis of that. So, so we've got different types of trauma there. Um, we've got— maybe we've got the, uh, the trauma that happened to us when we were in, in utero. So we, we've grown up in a— grown up, yeah, we have grown in the womb of our birth mothers, and that has been a stressful place to be. So there's been high levels of cortisol, um, there's been, uh, lots of, uh, shame around the, the, the, the, the, um, pregnancy out of wedlock, you know, um, the, uh, the, all the kind of societal stuff that, uh, hopefully is better these days than it used to be. But we, we've, we've grown up in a, um, in a, in a hot womb rather than a kind of, uh, room temperature womb, an average temperature room. So we might also have like generational trauma. So if we are Jewish, for example, um, we, uh, we've got the, the trauma from the persecution of the past. If we are African American or Black English— sorry if I get these words wrong, if I use wrong PC terms— but, you know, we've got that kind of generational trauma from being descended from a race that has been enslaved, right? So we've got all these different sorts of trauma— generational trauma, trauma in the womb, trauma of relinquishment, trauma within the family, whether that's birth family or adoptive family or both. Um, that is part of the adoptee's experience. Everybody talks about this trauma. We have become, uh, in, in my opinion, trauma-obsessed. Uh, people say, well, we've got to understand our trauma. Yes, we do, for sure. We— until we make the conscious— until we make the unconscious conscious, we will go along blindly through, through life, um, unaware, in the fog about our trauma as adoptees, as we adoptees say, right? So, but we, we are the spiritual being. with a spiritual being having an adoptee's experience, and an experience that is full of this trauma and how that manifests it. So all this anger, insecurity, lack of self-belief, all these different feelings, um, all these different thoughts— I'm not good enough, what's wrong with me— all that. So the, the adoptee's experience is, is one of uh, trauma, toxic emotions, toxic thoughts. And we're great as, as adoptees at explaining that, right? Describing it. What we're not great at is describing the essence of that spiritual being. So where, where are the leaders of the, uh, amongst us adoptees, where I'm thinking about the very, uh, the very influential people there are in the non-adoptive world. So, um, the, uh, the Dalai Lama, um, Mother Teresa, um, Brené Brown, uh, Byron Katie, Don Domínguez Ruiz, uh, Eckhart Tolle. Or my favorite of this, in, in this, my favorite in, in that kind of spiritual teacher, right? Because we're spiritual beings, we're understanding who we are. Who we are is not how we feel. We are not the trauma that we feel. As I say, we are the, um— Trauma is a toxic cocktail of insecurity, shame, and anger. It's a cocktail, but we're the glass. We're not the contents of the glass. We're not the cocktail itself. Separating who we are from how we feel— separating gives us— separating who we are from how we feel gives us distance. We can see a gap. We can see a glimmer of space. And that is great because it helps us realize that, that we're not going to drown in this, uh, this ocean of adoption trauma. But we're great at describing the human that adoptees experience. We're not great at describing the spiritual being that we are underneath that human experience. That's why I work so hard on my metaphors, right? So I talk about the clenched fist, uh, adoption trauma as it, as it, um, as it manifested within me through anger. Talk about the clenched fist of anger that hides, that obscures, that veils, that means that we can't see The the the the diamond that's held in the palm of that fist, and no matter how hard we squeeze that diamond, no matter how terrible the trauma that we've been through, who we are as the diamond is. not damaged by the trauma. We, we, we've got this— we've, we, we feel traumatized, we have traumatic thoughts, but we're not our feelings, we're not our thoughts. We are the, uh, the, the consciousness, the awareness, the spirit that's aware of those. Or in this, using this metaphor, we are the We are the diamond that is not damaged by the fist in which it's been so tightly held. So we're, we're hard— where, where are they? Where are the, um, the, the, the leaders here pointing us to not the adoptee's experience, but to what we are before Prior to that experience, prior to that thought, prior to those feelings underneath that experience, we're not very good at describing that. And so we need metaphors. We need metaphors. Hence the diamond and the fist, right? So we can say, I am adopted. We can say, I am an adoptee. We can say, I am Traumatized. We can say I am insecure. Now, I am angry. I am searching for my birth mother. I am. I am. That's that is who we are. The I amness, the bit that's not tainted. That's not qualified. This is using a Rupert Spira analogy with the, the I am before it is qualified by an event. Before, um, so I was adopted or I am adopted, and I, I, before our labels, before our feelings, before our feelings, right? I am feeling insecure at the moment because I don't know what I, I'm going to say next because I'm making this podcast up as best I can. Do you see what I mean? Uh, I— before, underneath our feelings, underneath our thoughts, underneath our trauma, the I-am-ness. The I-am-ness. And I'm not a religious guy. I have heard that when God spoke to Moses, he said from the burning bush, he said something like, I am that I am. So we're looking at the I am-ness, the spiritual being underneath the trauma that we vote to be. So, so that's today's thought really for you. We are spiritual beings having an adoptee's experience. We're separating Who we are from the trauma that we have, that we feel. Who we are from an event in our lives. For me, 56 years ago, who we are from the anger that I sometimes feel. Who we are, who I am, uh, without my, um, anxiety that I haven't reached enough. adoptees. Yeah, who, who I am without my frustration that I can't put this into simpler terms and actually help you to this insight yourself. I say this, I came up with this a couple of years ago, right? Um, because I, I'm frustrated Because I can't actually give you that insight. You have to have that insight for yourselves. There's no such thing as a secondhand insight. We have to see things for ourselves. So I'll leave that with that thought again. We are spiritual beings having an adoptee's experience. We are the diamond veiled by the trauma we feel. Thanks a lot. I hope that helps, and, um, speak to you again very soon. Cheers. Bye.