The ache that remains

Learning to live with the unfixable

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A song I’ve been loving:

Creating color — Polaroid, 2006.

Growing up an adoptee looked normal externally, but it didn’t feel that way internally. Like so many experiences, the surface layer didn’t always match what was underneath.

There was the hiding of my true feelings; the desire to be what everyone wanted me to be; the unanswered questions; the lack of identity, of story, of knowing; the guilt and shame; the fear of being left again; the constant wondering; the hole nothing could fill. There was the isolation and felt sense of something missing; the impossible acceptance of the one person who was never supposed to leave choosing to leave; the confusion of seeing a woman who sort of looked like me at the grocery store and wondering if it was my birth mother; the loneliness of being the only adoptee I knew and never getting to talk about it; the constant urge to “just be grateful” despite the swirl of complexity and pain of relinquishment always floating right below the facade.

When I decided to search for my biological family in my mid-20’s after a lifetime of a) thinking it was impossible and b) not feeling ready, I assumed everything would be resolved if it worked — that if I found them, all my pain around being abandoned, cut off at the root, would dissipate. Finding them became the bait dangling on string, the golden ticket, the magic bullet that would fix it all in one fell swoop. I thought my pain was fixable. I thought there was a fix out there, somewhere. The pressure around it all just about made me burst, yet I was so focused on believing there was a quick and easy healing salve that I didn’t even realize I was putting this single possibility on a pedestal as my only savior, my only hope for aliveness. I had been waiting to fully live from the moment I was born.

Mementos from my beginning.

By some miracle and the power of the internet, I found my biological family, almost eight years ago now. I’ve cultivated deep relationships with some of them and it has changed my life, my cells, my very being in ways I still don’t have the right words for. Yet although some of the wounds got stitched closed, loose ends tied, questions answered, a core wound and pain lingered. It didn’t dissipate. It didn’t get fixed. I was still an adoptee, and I always would be, and the wound contained in that part of me, in the lifelong grief and confusion of what it meant to move through the world in my body and my story, wasn’t something I could ever separate myself from. No matter how hard I tried, I could never leave it. It could never leave me.

The thing is, I relate to that pain differently now. I relate to myself differently now. That is what has shifted everything, even when not everything has changed. Even when so much still lingers. Even when the ache remains.

The ache is allowed now. It matters. It makes sense, and is valid, and doesn't make me bad. It is so deeply understandable and I have so much compassion for it. I don’t need to fix it, or hide it, or resolve it. I don’t need to pretend it away or bury the guilt when it arises. I don’t need to act like I’m unfazed, or puff up gratitude that isn’t there, or perform a perfectly healed conclusion to a messy life (that also includes many more difficult experiences outside of being adopted). I get to just tenderly be with it, every. single. time it arises, and notice when it passes again. And do that over and over, forever. And forget sometimes, and try again, and again, and again. And again.

The truth is that sometimes, we will carry certain parts of our pain for a lifetime. Some of our experiences and wounds will never get totally resolved, because our identity will never exist without them. When our wounds are quite literally woven into the structure who we are, the likelihood of ridding ourselves of them becomes a sliver.

But there is possibility, presence, and beauty to be found in learning to live with the unfixable: when we stop thinking we’re supposed to rid ourselves of the parts of us we can’t be rid of, we learn how to hold ourselves in the wave. We learn how to honor ourselves in the midst. We learn how to be our whole selves, including the parts we were once desperate to wish away or resolve. We learn to stop trying to cut ourselves off at the places the pain meets us, at the root of ourselves. We learn how to live fully not just around or without or over or beyond it, but with it.

The grief around this particular part of me rises from the belly to the throat during this time of year and around my birthday the most. These times of year are complex and stark reminders of what is true, of what I miss, of what I didn’t get, of what I wish I had all along. It’s always a little more tender, a little more at the surface, a little more right here, rather than a few layers underneath. I used to pretend this wasn’t true and move through this time of year with an extra thick performance of gratitude, as if that was the only thing present, as if that made anything below the surface less real. I know now, though, that even if it appears less real to anyone outside of me, I can’t hide from what is true for long. And what a gift it has been to let myself be with what is true— with what is actually there, residing with the hope of being acknowledged, with the hope of being held and seen, knowing it will never fully go away.
And I acknowledge it. And I hold it. And I see it.

We can’t always fix everything that hurts, but we can learn to be with it in a way that hurts a little less. We can’t always eliminate the wounds we carry, but we can learn to carry all of it a little more gently. We can't always change our pain, but we can learn how to relate to it in a way that nurtures our hearts and supports our full humanity. And when we relate to our pain differently, our pain doesn’t hurt so much. And sometimes, this is all we can hope for. And sometimes, we slowly find it’s enough. We find that we can live a full, whole life in spite of it.

I know so many of us hold different parts and pieces that may never fully heal, fully close, fully resolve. I know many of you move through the world in bodies and brains that require ongoing tending. I know each of us carries an invisible sack full of moments and losses, longings and grief, hoping no one sees it, hoping it will slowly seep into the nothingness we try to make it appear as.

All I have to offer is this:
May you carry it with as much compassion as you can muster.
May you let others do the carrying when it’s just too much.
May you let yourself be honest about how heavy it is sometimes — about how hard it is to know you have to carry it some more, and more after that.
May you honor all you show up for in spite of the weight of it all.
And may you look toward all the places and spaces where you get to set it down, where all there is to carry are flowers and other people’s hands and cups of something warm, where your body and heart can be emptied of what hurts and remember everything else here, too — remember everything that is beautiful, too.

△ The Luddite Club, a high school group that promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology — these teens are so rad.

△ The Satisfaction of Practice in an Achievement-Oriented World

△ What I’ve been scrolling on instead of Instagram

△ I loved this conversation with the one of my very favorites, Natalie Goldberg:

△ I’m looking forward to this movie and this movie

△ The Lives They Lived

△ "So, if you did your best when you created a piece of work, but your perfectionism or fear of judgement or lack of confidence makes you not like it, ask yourself: who is this piece for and will it work? And then, allow it to exist, to grow, to evolve, to improve, to fade away, or to shine. But first, make it work."

△ Getting lost in making things

new shapes // new inspiration // new expression

△ When I want to veg and relax with good ol’ YouTube, I love watching these tours
… and then remembering how okay it is that my home looks nothing like them!

△ These words from Bob Dylan

△ What Comes After Ambition?

With care,
Lisa