Life after Trauma

Return to sender - of birthdays, silence & sorrow

They say everything can be replaced/Yet every distance is not near

Bob Dylan

Return to sender (Donovan Beeson, flickr creative commons)

 

When I got back from a recent trip, I didn't check the mail for a few days. When I did, I found the card that I'd sent to my daughter - the one who I relinquished for adoption and who I'm estranged from - in the mailbox. There was a yellow sticker on the bottom right hand corner of the card that read, "Return to Sender. Not Deliverable as Addressed. Unable to Forward." I was so upset that I barely touched the card and threw it, unopened,  on the table with the other mail. I was upset because a previous letter that I'd sent came back with a slightly different message: "No mail receptacle." That was a message I'd never seen, so I phoned my daughter's local post office, located in a small town near her rural home. They told me that my daughter was having her mail held or forwarded for a year - I don't remember which - and, then, assured me that if I sent the card  back in a new envelope, addressed as the first one was, they - i.e. the post mistress - would make sure it was forwarded. I believed her and did what she said, only to discover upon my return home, that it had NOT been forwarded. 

 

Angel of sorrow (ekletik2xs, flickr creative commons)

 

I was sad when I made the discovery, but even sadder a few days later when I realized that for the first time since my daughter and I were reunited thirteen years ago, I couldn't send her a birthday card. It didn't matter that I haven't spoken to my daughter in three years. (As of yesterday, July 25.) Somehow it didn't seem so final if I could send her a birthday card, as I've faithfully done on the previous two birthdays since we've been estranged. See more about the story of our estrangement by clicking on the link: Estrangement - telling our stories. Yesterday - July 25th - was the 42nd anniversary of the first time I lost my daughter and the third anniversary of our estrangement. I guess that means that I've only been in touch with my daughter for about ten years of her life. Not for lack of trying or lack of hoping. No, that's the way adoption was done back in the 60s and 70s and, today, both my daughter and I are still living with the aftershocks of the day we parted. We both left the hospital alive on that long ago day, but something died: the normal relationship between mother and daughter was lost forever. Does that make me sad? Yes, yes, yes! More than I can find a way to convey. However, the deepness of the sorrow and frustration I felt yesterday, frightened me. It's appropriate to grieve, but I know that I have to let go of the hope that someday my daughter and I can be a mother and daughter again. 

 

bouquet, flickr creative commons

 

 Letting go of that hope feels so painful that it's hard to think of a metaphor. The best one I can come up with is imagining that the roots of a tree called sorrow are growing around my heart.  Pulling this sorrow tree out feels like it would kill me, but I have to try. "Don't let your grief hold you hostage," my therapist said today, when we talked. Amongst other things we talked about what letting go might look like and we also discussed suggestions for a personal ritual of closure. Letting something go into the ocean - which I live near - was one of the things we discussed. I immediately thought of a small creek in a nearby botanical garden. The woods are deep there, a small wooden bridge crosses the creek, and it's a quiet spot, perfect for such a ritual. Right now, it's too dry for there to be any water in the creek, but come fall and the rains, I can plan a ritual that involves a close friend or, if he'll participate, my son. After all, my first daughter is his half-sister. I can picture the flowers and how they will twist and turn in the current before heading along their journey to the sea. I like the ideal; it's a place to start.

Meanwhile, I still have the card sitting here on the table in front of me. It was a beautiful card, carefully chosen, telling my daughter that I would be in Michigan for a few weeks where I thought she was - indeed, may be - living and suggesting we get together for coffee. Of course, she never saw the card. I'll probably put it in the box with the mementoes I've collected over our decade of reunion. Only time will tell whether someday in the indefinite future we'll be back in touch again. For now, though, I have to get on with my life, and set at least part of this heavy burden down. It's time. 

In the years that my daughter and I led separate lives and neither knew where the other was, I often kept the words of one of my favorite Motown songs in my mind.  "There ain't no mountain high enough/Ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough/To keep me from getting to you." I never imagined that my daughter would be the mountain or the river - that she would be the one who wouldn't let me get to her. More on why adoption reunions fail and how to cope in a future post.

  

Nothing Gold Can Stay: Whitney Houston, my daughters, and substance abuse

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we look for ways to make the pain go away.

Sherman Alexie

           Whitney Houston performing in New York City

It was the 80s and women singers were HUGE. In those days, my husband and I were raising two teenaged foster daughters and every day after school they would plop themselves down on the couch and watch music videos. Today, music videos seem quaint artifacts of another era. In those days, they were the only show in town. Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Tina Turner, our girls adored them all.

They were all great performers, but there was something truly special about Whitney Houston. Young and beautiful and shining. When you heard her sing "The Greatest Love," you couldn't help but get tears in your eyes. "Everybody's searching for a hero/people need someone to look up to." Whitney was "someone to look up to," for our daughters. We believed in her and in them too. 

 

The 80s were filled with bright shining moments. Our daughters were fabulous volleyball players and doing well in school. Whitney kept ringing up hits, seemingly just as beautiful year after year. In those days, I believed that our daughters were going to escape the curse of alcoholism that blighted the native community they came from. Sadly, that's not what happened. Both of our daughters are now in their 30s and struggle with alcoholism. Whitney's struggles with substance abuse were newsworthy and her death put substance abuse and addiction in the spotlight (again). 

Unlike Whitney, our two girls are still alive. One is a binge drinker who manages to hold her life together just enough to stay alive. She's had more than one wake-up call over the years: a nearly fatal car crash while she was drinking, two stays in the hospital with liver and kidney problems, and other things I don't even know about. Our other daughter is one of those drink-every-day-kind of alcoholics. She hasn't - as far as I know - had any close brushes with death, but she has lost four brothers to alcohol or drug-related causes. I'd like to think that Whitney's death will serve as another kind of wake-up call for both of our daughters. One has already phoned. "Is it true," she asked. "Is Whitney really dead? What happened?" When I told her, she said, "That would never happen to me." If only that were true. Sure, she may never drown or OD in a bathtub in a fancy hotel room. But unless she stops drinking - I doubt she'll live to see 50. I really hated to write that sentence, but I think it's true. Just today, she phoned and told my husband, when he asked how she was, that "I am going to keep on drinking." (Photo above, one of our daughters on the beach in Vancouver)

Depressing? Yes.  Hopeless? No.  Today, I ate lunch at a lovely cafe and a man sitting nearby was working on his laptop and, as is my wont, we fell into conversation. They were talking about Whitney Houston on the television that was mounted on one wall of the cafe and, it turns out, the man had been in sobriety for 5 years. We spent some time discussing why it's so hard to "get clean." He thought that the person trying to get sober really has to want it or they won't work hard enough. He also thought that you need to get to the heart of the pain that fuels the addiction. And that's the connection to PTSD: both of our daughters have experienced significant traumas in their lives and they drink to ease that pain. I don't know why Whitney had substance abuse issues or what her pain was. I'm only sorry that whatever her demons were, they destroyed her.

One of the last things the man told me was that sobriety takes a long time to feel good. In his case it took over a year. Then, one morning, he said, he woke up and noticed that the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Here's an iconic poem for all those who didn't make it past substance abuse to the shining sun and singing birds. 

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so for an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.