Developments

Last week, I accepted a full-time job with my Big Client, which will start on July 1.  This is a move away from freelancing, but we're happy about that.  This position will give me economic stability, plus retirement benefits, and I'll be working from home several days a week, with a flexible schedule.  The boss and coworkers are super lovely people, the organization is very functional, and they're really financially sound (hiring up during the recession!). It has all the elements of a dream job, and I am optimistic that this could be a long-term solution for our family.

Revelation

There is a whole world of religious podcasts that I never knew existed - on iTunes! This is huge for me - what a breakthrough!

I can listen to whole services from the comfort of my commute. It doesn't remove me from my family on the weekends. Yet I can still explore the world of religion, safely sample different religious traditions. I've downloaded a raft of Pagan, Unitarian, Episcopal, Jewish and Quaker podcasts, and I hope to be discussing them here.

Today, I listened to the "Alone in the Wilderness" service from St. Augustine's Episcopal Chapel at Vanderbilt University, with a sermon by my new virtual minister, Becca Stevens. It was lovely, with heart-stirring music performed on the acoustic guitar. I wonder if those hippies who wrote "Time to Every Season" and "Come Together" ever imagined their songs would be used in church.

Stevens' sermon about the need for journeying into the wilderness was inspiring, thought-provoking and accessible.  She describes how each person has their own personal vision of wilderness. Mine looks like this:

Longing

Becca Stevens starts her Hither & Yon podcasts with a lovely meditation on longing for God, and it reminded me that how similar that feeling is to the yearning for my mom.

Then I think: is a relationship with god/dess always built on loss and grief? Of course, we are separated from god/dess, as s/he is "beyond the veil" like our beloved dead. But doesn't loss mean that we were once together - whether it was in the Garden of Eden or in the cosmic soup of souls?

Water mother

How beautiful is this?

"A mother is likened unto a mountain spring that nourishes the tree at its root, but one who mothers another's child is likened unto a water that rises into a cloud and goes a long distance to nourish a lone tree in the desert."

- The Talmud

Inspiration

I stumbled upon this artist, Arthur Douet, in Google Image Search, and was struck by the resonance of some of his pieces with my journey here.

In the Flow of Life

copyright Arthur Douet

My Cup Runneth Over

copyright Arthur Douet

Both of these pieces seem to reflect the feeling of goddess energy flowing through me, of filling the chalice that I have been seeking and recently experiencing.


He describes the second piece as: "When one listens inwardly, taking time to reflect on the Beingness of Life, the cascading flow that infuses our mind, body, and spirit replenishes the joy of life in the heart."

Mother may apple

The mayapples grow in the woods around our house, spreading as far as you can see along the forest floor.  I've seen its fruit, but not smelled its lemon-like aroma.  

I just discovered Magdalene House, Thistle Farms, and Becca Stevens.  She wrote this beautiful prayer for a baptism that took place alongside a river.

Mother May Apple

Rain fell on spring-soaked soil so much it pooled and flowed unbounded.

Love, blessing and abundance poured out on all God's green earth.

Thick new growth sprouted from every pore from this water feast.

In this vast wilderness, the Mayapple comes prepared for the rainy season.

Her single leaf, an umbrella, lets water flow and protects her single blossom.

That flower, like all creation, is made in secret,

intricately women in the depths of the earth.

It is not fragile or sweet, but miraculous and healing.

Before we ever dreamed of this flower or this rain, her eyes beheld it.

When it finally opens for the world, it is a wondrous delight.

Mayapples flourish in wet Springs as they gather gather in community on hillsides.

Come, celebrate our Mother May apple and the Mother who bears all fruit. 

Sing praise to her and to her waters that bring new life to everything.

Count her blessings that number more than all the widflowers in all the woods.

Then pray her waters bring us new life worthy of her children.

Yearning

Since my mother died in 2004, I have been very interested in grief and mourning customs.  So I jumped at the chance to read the article on "Good Grief" in a recent New Yorker.  Most of it was old territory for me, and I'd recently pretty much thrown the "stages of grief" out the window after reading this blog post by a birthmother.  But one paragraph was like a door opening:

"In the nineteen-seventies, Colin Murray Parkes, a British psychiatrist and a pioneer in bereavement research, argued that the dominant element of grief was a restless 'searching.' The heightened physical arousal, anger, and sadness of grief resemble the anxiety that children suffer when they’re separated from their mothers. Parkes, drawing on work by John Bowlby, an early theorist of how human beings form attachments, noted that in both cases—acute grief and children’s separation anxiety—we feel alarm because we no longer have a support system we relied on. Parkes speculated that we continue to 'search' illogically (and in great distress) for a loved one after a death. After failing again and again to find the lost person, we slowly create a new 'assumptive world,' in the therapist’s jargon, the old one having been invalidated by death. Searching, or yearning, crops up in nearly all the contemporary investigations of grief. A 2007 study by Paul Maciejewski found that the feeling that predominated in the bereaved subjects was not depression or disbelief or anger but yearning. Nor does belief in heavenly reunion protect you from grief. As Bonanno says, 'We want to know what has become of our loved ones.'"

Eureka, as we say in California. I have found it. Yearning is pretty much my constant life state, and it drives my near-compulsive web-searching.  (Isn't it interesting how search is the key to the web? Yearning seems to be so common - is grief a near-universal state?)


I also think this idea has such relevance for people suffering from adoption loss.  Adoptees and birthparents speak of this yearning for each other and invest great energy in seeking each other out. They even cite basic attachment research and describe the "primal wound" of being separated from your mother. And the final quote in the paragraph could be a perfect echo of what they say about their need to find each other, to be reunited.  


Our adoption is fully open, which means that we share all identifying information and communicate regularly in letters, emails, photos, and videos.  We haven't visited yet, but we want to.  It's only been 18 months, so it's very hard to see any benefits for Baby E from this openness, but I work very hard to maintain the relationship.  I don't want E to feel like he has to search out for answers, but I see now how unrealistic that is.


Even with all the information we can provide, there are no easy answers to the question "Why?"