Reflection

How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Something came to me when I came across this quote by Goethe...

When I started a search for my (first) mother I was aware that I was also trying to find myself. What I never anticipated was how fast the “finding myself” part would happen. It was exactly three weeks. The three week mark was the time it took for my birthparents’ non-identifying biography to arrive in the mail from the adoption agency.

Passionately contemplating ideas surrounding “adoption” and “self” may have, over the years, brought me some gain, though I can’t say exactly what. But asking for that letter and receiving it took me directly to Me. I’d empowered myself, taken ownership. The self I was looking for had been there all along, lost under the weight of secrets and shame and grief. Work is always ongoing, but that first action was the catalyst that took me back to center.

Hall of Mirrors

Chris is a shy little guy, 5 years old and black. His parents, Allie and Hal, are white. When I met Chris, I couldn’t help wanting to reach out and say, “I’m adopted, too! Can I help you?”

I’m not sure exactly what in the world “Can I help you?” meant, but I wanted to say it. I think I wanted to invite him to talk about being adopted.

I was aware that my gaze must surely be telling him that I was thinking of his “adopted-ness”. How he must get this all the time- so many thoughts coming through so many eyes. Chris doesn’t mirror his parents. People are wondering, “Where did he come from?”, as did I from my own perspective.

I wonder if the mirroring that Chris is getting from the world-at-large seems to tell him he’s an alien from another planet. Is it like living in the Fun House at the carnival where every mirror tells you something different- and distorted- as though you don’t share the same shape as the rest of the human community? I know I’ve felt this way and I’m not even in an interracial adoptive family.

It must be equally crazy for adoptive parents. Their love for their child is colorblind, yet society, broadly, is not.

Words don't tend to be enough to "cure" any adoptee of insecurities. After meeting Chris, I'm left wondering, "If it were somehow appropriate to tell Chris one supportive thing- as though I could whisper it in his ear, one adoptee to another- what would it be?"

Mirrors Work Two Ways

"She looks like her mother," one said.

"Oh, I think she looks like Dave," the other countered.

I don't look like either of my adoptive parents. I don't now, and I didn't then, when I was 10. My parents' friends were, evidently, seeing what they expected to see.

I stood there chagrined and anxious, knowing that, rightfully, clarification was order. I was adopted. Yet I knew clarification wouldn't come and that I didn't want it to anyway, not there in that moment. I looked to my dad in solidarity. I got something else. He was beaming with pride and, to my account, effectively participating in the collective lie. Eerily, he clearly, sincerely believed it!

We had all looked to the mirrors of one another and corroborated our own realities. The ladies perceived their own presuppositions. My dad saw his pure, sheer love for his daughter. I saw the secrecy of my own origins.

I stood there "safe" in an awkward social situation, yet my own truth had been abandoned. This must be the very definition of the emotion we call "loneliness".

Mirrors, Mirrors, on the Wall

In his book, "Coming to our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West," Morris Berman devotes an entire chapter to the mirror, exploring how its invention and proliferation affected human perceptions of Self. Berman's concepts gave me an idea for an experiment. (I was in art school and working on a series of self portraits at the time, which might have influenced my idea...)

I wondered what it would be like to live a week without a mirror. My first thoughts surrounded vanity- would I go out into the world each morning with Sideshow Bob hair, or with snot coming out of my nose? I could live with wacky hair, I decided, and you don't need a mirror to know your nose is dripping... The experiment proceeded.

I covered the bathroom mirror- the only mirror in the house- with brown paper. I knew that out of habit I'd look to the mirror first thing, each time I went in to the room. I wondered how I'd react, not being able to verify my appearance or confirm my own presence. Would it be too stressful to live out the week without a mirror?

Curiously, I had only one response upon looking to that mirror, and it was purely visceral. Each time I looked to the mirror and saw brown paper, I felt my stomach drop like a deep drum. I snapped completely to my center, looking for myself there.

I wondered whether this experience could be likened to narcissism-effect ascribed to adoptees. Birthmother, as a mirror, is absent, so the adoptee looks inward.

Actually, the experiment could have "meant" all sorts of things. But it was a great experience for me. When I looked inside myself, I found my Center and there I saw myself. I came away totally content.

Mirrors- Looking for the Self

And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of. -William Shakespeare

We’re all "living mirrors," interacting and reflecting to one another the entire range of interpersonal emotions, such as love, affection, envy, and desire. These relationships are what give us our lives. There is truly no such thing as a “me” without a “you.”

Adoptees are deprived of mirroring from their birthmothers at the beginning of their lives. Researchers believe that there is a primal mirroring between infant and mother which can only occur between the two, and that only the birthmother’s mirroring has the capacity to provide the infant with a genuine sense of wholeness and self. [See the research of Donald Winnecott to learn more.] Without the experience of this primal mirroring, adoptees are left forever looking for Mother and therefore seeking themselves, and with a deep sense of anxiety and existential urgency.

The search for self is lifelong for adoptees. Thinking of the search's manifestation in my own childhood, I think of characteristics that I singled out as reflecting my adoptive status. I remember identifying two very concrete things. First, I was the only member of our family- or of anyone I knew, for that matter- who didn’t have a middle name. (I gave myself one later, but that’s another story...) Second, I was the only member of my family with brown eyes.

I thoroughly fixated on these two “problems.” I noted them frequently and was given reassurance that brown eyes, and having no middle name, were perfectly nice things. They weren’t nice to me. They corroborated for me that I didn’t, by nature and by devise, “belong” in my adoptive home.

It occurs to me now that, although these practical aspects of life were the kind of concrete factors a child might focus on, they were also deeply- and perhaps not coincidentally, symbolic. I perceived I was robbed of a name, in this case a middle name. In reality, I had been robbed of a “first name” my birthfamily's name. Additionally, my adoptive families’ blue eyes were substantiation to me that I was not looking into the eyes [mirrors] I most needed. I was being robbed of my sense of self.

Do you remember any facets of your childhood that reminded you that your adoptive family were actually your “second” family?