Deep down where soul, spirit, will, heart, mind, meet, I have a magnificent gift – the instinctual, God-given, desire for INTIMACY.
Togetherness.
It comes wrapped into my humanity. I want to be intimate, to belong, to be part of a family, groups, teams, causes.
I don’t want to be alone.
I want to know others and be known by others. This desire usually whispers, but must sometimes yell, for recognition, especially when my equally powerful instinctual desire for autonomy has enjoyed its pleasures.
I want to be heard and treasured as a companion and friend. I want to be an integral part of the lives of close family and friends.
I want to be fearlessly open with a handful of loving friends and for them to be similarly open with me. If I repeatedly ignore this primal desire, I place my emotional well-being and physical health at risk.
I was not designed to be alone. I am designed for connection with others.
Acknowledging this essential part of who I am, respecting it, enjoying it, enhances my capacity to love myself, love others, and become fully, and more beautifully human.
*to be read in tandem with A is for Autonomy
My 1st born son and I enjoying our beautiful connection which is as meaningful today as it was the day of his birth…. He’s 26 now!
The “outside world” can be a dangerous place for children.
Another exceedingly dangerous environment for children can also be their own homes. While medicine cabinets, cleaning materials and unlocked swimming pool gates are a legitimate threat to the child-safety, the unguarded mouth of an angry adult can inflict grievous harm to a child.
A vigilant parent might install childproof locks yet leave a totally exposed web of anger in every room of the house. Unresolved anger in a parent, expressed through unpredictable displays of frustration and annoyance or rage, can quite effectively sabotage a childhood and even pass a baton of anxiety and rage to unborn generations. It is in their own homes that children might be at most in danger. At home they learn about trust, and exercise the most trust. It is at home they will learn, or fail to learn, by watching and experiencing, almost everything they will ever know about love.
It is at home they will make the most mistakes and receive the most affirmation and correction. It is at home that children will learn about fear and hurt and rejection and empathy and love and acceptance.
Children are constantly seeing, feeling, learning, trying, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, watching, waiting and taking it all in.
Monitoring diets is a crucial aspect of childhood health. Another “diet” is the calm, security, predictability and warmth healthy parents can provide.
If you have the opportunity to see “The King of Broken Things” run at it.
It’s doing what’s good and right to the best of your awareness, as limited as your awareness may be, for the greatest number of people possible in your immediate circle of influence, including those whom you don’t know and even those who may have rejected you or may even hate you.
It’s gathering your strength and harvesting your latent patience and shopping at your store of inner kindness when others test you your many daily contexts, and then being strong and patient and kind even if it feels like you’re surrounded by people who don’t appear to think very much, and, if they do, their thinking appears limited to considering only what pertains to themselves alone.
It’s paying for someone’s groceries or petrol (gas) or electricity, but it’s also stopping to consider why it is that you are able to and trying to understand what circumstances have placed the recipients of your generosity in such vulnerable, often humiliating situations, that they need your help and thinking these things through without resorting to low-hanging stereotypes like “I’ve worked hard and ‘they’ have not.”
It’s seeing people’s faces, acknowledging their unique stories, accepting that all people want to be seen, heard and included, even if their day-to-day behavior suggests volumes of evidence to the contrary.
I have the writer’s permission – for which I am most grateful – to print this letter, one which touched me deeply for the deep losses the woman faced. I am grateful the “adoption process” has undergone many necessary modifications making this scenario extreme and unique. Thank you, dear writer, your letter may assist others to also speak up.
Dear Rod:
I have just read your article about Mothers who gave up their babies for adoption. My heart bleeds for such mothers.
I’m so sorry.
But what about me?
I was adopted. I am also so sad and heartsore that I never was given the opportunity to meet my Mother.
Let me tell you my story…..
I was given away as a two-week-old baby to an old Afrikaans couple. I am 77 years now and have never forgotten the hardships I endured, day after day. She was a disturbed, neurotic woman. Religion was her obsession and he was an alcoholic.
I was beaten relentlessly with a stick, plank or by physical force. Slaps in the face was a common occurrence for any minor misdemeanor or suggestion. Never was I ever told that I was loved. Never was I loved, sympathized with if I was injured as all kids suffer minor accidents. I instead was sworn and cursed at and threatened that I would be given back to the orphanage if I didn’t behave. I was blamed for anything that went wrong even if a light bulb fused. I was not a bad child. I studied hard at school and was well behaved.
Nobody told me that I was adopted whilst I was young and I only got confirmation of that in my late teens, but believe you me, I just knew that I was adopted and always wondered why did my Mother give me away?
I knew there had to be a valid reason.
My adopted Father in a drunken stupor tried to kill me when I was 5 years old. I got a big hiding for that, as if it was my fault.
When I was 16 years old he tried to rape me several times. But I fought back each time. Why I never told any of my teachers I never knew. I thought at that time it was my fault.
I missed my Mother so much and always thought how wonderful it would be to meet her and always dreamt about her coming to fetch me from this hell hole.
But sadly, it never happened.
In my early thirties I could then afford to hire an agency to look for her. The Department of Adoption (or Welfare, I think it was called) gave me her name but was advised that she had passed away in her early forties.
I was devastated and heartsore that I had never looked for her earlier in my life.
I investigated her family and met her brother who told me that she was 16 years old when she was pregnant. Her Mother from a staunch Afrikaans background, forced her to give me up for adoption as it was a skande (SCANDAL) on the family name.
He told me that once a year on my birthday, she would lock herself in her room and just sob and sob.
How sad is that?
I was also given the details of the man who was supposed to be my father. I met him and he clearly remembered my Mother very well and was shocked to hear that she had a baby. We had a blood test done and it was told to us that out of a very low percentage of men in Kwa Zulu Natal who could be my father, he fell within that category.
That was a small bonus for me.
Adoption is a very sad part of life.
Sometimes you are given to wonderful parents and sometimes to terrible parents.
I do believe that for at least 5 years Social workers should stay connected with the adoptee.
To the Mothers who gave up their babies, I feel for you with my whole heart and soul.
I cry for you.
I too would like to attend the lunch and would gladly be a guest speaker to all the Mom’s who gave up their babies.
This is a wonderful service you are offering to the Mothers who gave their babies away. I applaud you.
A few years back my sons and I attended a Birth Mother’s Day Dinner with about 19 brave birth moms, women who’d chosen to place their babies for adoption.
They lit candles.
Some held treasured ear-marked photographs.
There was talk about their love and support of all moms everywhere who have made the powerful choice of adoption.
All were deeply contemplative – for a few, memories from hard choices made 50-plus years ago were revisited.
A few women remained silent, holding tightly to affirmed, supported anonymity.
Mothers who have chosen adoption for their babies are often ignored on Mothers Day.
And, how their hearts must surely ache.
May 12, 2024, several nations, including South Africa, will celebrate Mothers Day and an unseen army of brave women will quietly witness other families rightfully celebrating Mothers Day and find no place at the tables with the children whom they generously offered to families eager to love their babies.
I admit, my awareness of birth mothers is acute.
These women, often shamed, labeled as irresponsible, hard, or uncaring, have radically shifted my life. Each of my boys’ mothers fought untold difficulties – unknown to me – while carrying her child to full term, in full knowledge other options existed.
Despite abandonment, derision from family members, financial difficulties, and who knows what other pressures, each delivered a beautiful baby and made the hard choice to forever enrich my life by allowing me, a single man, to adopt her infant son.
I know you are not forgotten – not on Mothers Day weekend or any other day.
You are so deeply etched into their individual psyches and into our family experience that you are regularly part of our awareness and conversation.
So deep is their desire for you, so deep is the urge for a mother that my boys sometimes called me “mom”.
I have never stopped them. I let it go because I think I know what it’s about.
It’s a primal urge.
It expresses a heartfelt longing.
To stop them, when each was learning to talk, seemed unwise, as if I were stopping something deep, powerful within each.
“Mama” or “mom” and even “mother” seemed to come as easily as rolling over, as cooing, as first steps, and as all those things that come with early development – and so I let it go.
It was as if “mother” and all forms of Her names were buried within each boy to emerge and be attached to the nearest, warmest person no matter what his or her gender.
Yes, the woman waiting your table at your Mothers Day lunch, the teacher whom your child adores, the woman co-worker who goes silent for no identifiable reason or who appears to be sometimes lost in another world when the conversation turns to babies or showers or Mother’s Day, just may be a member of that unseen army of birth-mothers. She may be one of the gracious, brave women who have made Mother’s Day complete for countless women around the world and given a man like me the unique pleasure of sometimes being called “mom.”
I ache for the millions of women whose Mothers Day is tainted with shame, loneliness, disconnection, for having made the tough choice for adoption.
If that’s you or almost you, and are in KZN, and your adoption was recent or decades ago, I have an invitation for you.
Please join me for lunch or an early dinner on May 11, 2024 – yes, the day before Mothers Day is referred to as Birth Mothers Day.
Come alone or bring a friend. I shall speak briefly, simply to thank you and honor your bravery.
Expenses for your lunch will be fully covered – I have already received several financial gifts to cover costs.
The venue will be beautiful and private and safe —- details are unfolding.
Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za so we can get you — and a friend — onto the list and get details to you as they unfold.
Generous readers, restaurateurs, sponsors, gift bag creators, please email Shirley you’d like to pay for a meal or sponsor a table or assist in any manner.
Closing note.
I know this is a tough invitation, Birth Mom.
But, you have already demonstrated your strength.
Join me, please.
[if you’re in the USA and want to give, all gifts are tax deductible— contact me and I’ll guide you through the easy process of giving to OpenHand International, a 501C3 corporation]
Soon several nations, including South Africa, will celebrate Mothers Day.
In affluent areas restaurants will have table reservations for several generations of mothers. In modest settings a bowl of flowers may be arranged for mom.
As a dad to adopted sons I ache for the millions of women (and who sometimes sit silent at the same tables) whose Mothers Day is tainted with shame, loneliness, disconnection, for having made the tough choice for adoption.
Many women have expressed Mothers Day is not for them, that it’s among the most painful days they endure.
If that’s you or almost you, and are in KZN, and your adoption was recent or decades ago, I have an invitation for you:
Please join me for lunch or an early dinner on May 11, 2024. Come alone of bring a friend. Expenses for your lunch will be fully covered. The venue will be beautiful and private and safe —- details still unfolding.
Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za so we can get you — and a friend — onto the list and get details to you as they unfold.
Happy Birth Mothers Day, brave woman.
Generous readers, restaurateurs, sponsors, gift bag creators, please email Shirley you’d like to pay for a meal or sponsor a table or assist in any manner.
Words (sentiments) I’ve never heard uttered in decades of counseling, marrying, burying, teaching, traveling, hearing confessions, and responding to groups large and small in 50+ nations…..
“I started saving too early. Managing accumulated resources is tough. It’s an uphill battle trying to dig myself out of wealth.”
“I wish I’d held more grudges. My life is meaningless without bitterness and blame.”
“I laughed too much. I’ve been too generous; given too much away. Spent too much time outdoors.”
“I read too many books.”
“I settled too many differences and have given the benefit of the doubt to too many people.”
“When people have betrayed me I used it to learn about love, forgiveness, grace.”
“I spent too much time investing in others.”
“I wish I had more stuff to fill a few more plastic tubs in my storage units.”
“I’m glad I rejected people who disagreed with me, who lived in ways I labeled unbiblical — especially family.”
“Regretfully, my spouse and I kept our marriage vows until death did us part.”
“I discovered google too late in life.”
“People see me as a softie.”
“I spent whole days without using my cellphone.”
“I affirmed my children and told them I loved them much too often. I should have withheld my love and focused more on their faults.”
I have thought a lot about how family members are linked – connected: nourished, or drained? – and checked out exactly how it has been for me in the past 24 hours I have talked to my sister (Cape Town, South Africa), to my brother (Christchurch, New Zealand), to my older son (in New York, USA) and to my younger son who lives with me in Indiana, USA.
When my sons call or text and want to talk or tell me something I experience an immediate and involuntary sense of urgency. Duty or protection mode kicks in. Part of me – a small part – wants to drop everything to hear from them. It is a physiological reaction and I feel it. Almost instantly thinking takes over and delivers context and reason and I relax. “Just checking in, Dad,” from New York, and, “Can you pickup curry for dinner,” called from downstairs nourishes me through the invisible connections my sons and I enjoy.
When my brother and sister phone I am always nourished and encouraged. There is no “alert” within. I like to think it is the same for my siblings when I reach out to them.
Your family – blood-, marriage, relatives-by-choice, adoption, and any other means people become family – is vastly more than a list of people on your group-chat or birthdays to try and remember or the ready-made crowd for weddings and funerals.
The hundreds of links (a family of 4 has 16 relationships) in your network – your family – and how you are linked (just right, over-connected, under-connected, loosely-affiliated, cut-off in anger, the “I’ll never talk to him/her-again” kind of connection) is of crucial importance.
How you are connected will either sustain and support and nourish you or drain and exhaust you. And, there is no escaping. Severe disconnections can wield a driving power even in a so-called non-relationship.
We are all “linked” and positioned in a variety of ways within the same extended family and so a family can nourish and support while, at the same time, it can rip to shreds and bleed someone dry.
I’d like to avoid this dramatic contrast but simply look around — listen to people’s family stories — you’ll see it is so.
We are each integral to the health (and un-health) of our family.
We are each a cell-within-the-whole.
The healthier we are, the more “just right” our connections, the more we will be nourishers and be nourished within the unique group of people we each call family.
The healthier I am will lead to a healthier “we” even if it results in hardship* along the way.
* attempts at greater health will be met with resistance from those around, especially those who’ve “benefited” from unhealthy habits and patterns.
Backbone — a metaphor for courage. Your literal backbone keeps you upright. It keeps you standing. Your metaphorical backbone symbolizes your courage. I’ve met many people “slump” through life and stand for very little, people have been successfully filleted by themselves, by life’s trials, or by others. Spineless people are “easy meat” for high-maintenance, low functioning relationships. Access your backbone and shimmy up your spine. Love it. Strengthen it. Enjoy it. Deploy it.
2. Creative Brain
This is the part of your brain where you can think about thinking. It’s where you appreciate art and humor. It’s your realm of infinite possibilities. It’s your spiritual mind. It’s NOT your explosive or “fighting” brain or your “loves-me-loves-me-not” feeling brain.
Access your creative brain. Explore it and explore with it. Try to live with this part of your brain “driving” your behavior.
3. Voice
Your Voice and using your Voice embodies your willingness to speak your unique mind, to say what you see, think, and want, express what you think and want. It’s realizing that silence born of lack of courage or lack of confidence is seldom helpful to anyone. Many people have lost their voices in the name of love, submission, or in keeping peace. Access your Voice, deploy your voice, and persist with expressing the things that are important to you.
1+2+3=YOUR FORMIDABLE TRIANGLE
Once you embrace your Formidable Triangle you will be free to love yourself and others in ways that are healthy for all.
Over time, awareness of the three corners of your formidable triangle, and accessing each when necessary, will become “second nature” to you.
The corners will merge and form a firewall to protect you from draining relationships and exchanges. They will also merge and empower you to be your healthiest self under most circumstances.
To enjoy your Formidable Triangle ALL three corners are required.
Treasure and use your BACKBONE. Access your THINKING. Express yourself — your VOICE — loudly and clearly and you will attract healthy, high functioning adventures and relationships.
difficultrelationships.com 