Two more things
My much maligned forgiveness article is online at Yoga Journal now and you can find it here. (Wish it’d be online when the furor was actually happening so that people could have made their own decisions. Oh well!)
And my latest entry for AntiRacistParent.com is here.
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Saturday list
Jul 28, 2007 Friends, work work work
1. The first thing Madison said upon waking up this morning was, “I like that Jamie because he has a great giggle! I want him to come over again!”
2. In case you don’t know this, Charlie is, as we said in the 80s, a babe! Ice blue eyes, salt and pepper beard — handsome handsome handsome!
3. His wife ain’t bad either. Frankly I was nervous about the meeting and I shouldn’t have been. Cecily is even funnier in person, which you might not think possible but she is. On the way to the restaurant I told Brett, “If they lived here in town, I think they’d be some of my favorite people to hang out with!” I just liked her. And Tori? She is a child that I’d like to get to know better. Spunky and smiling and full of sparkling personality — she’s gonna be one helluva grown up person, I know.
4. My thiswomanswork email wasn’t being forwarded to my gmail account for some reason and now it’s trickling in. Thanks to all of you who sent me notice about the NPR adoption series! I have it bookmarked but am not sure when I’ll get to listen to it. I have a hard time listening to talk radio/spoken word when I’m working unless it’s on something like web design. I revamped my sister’s web site listening to Fresh Air, for example. (We’re still tweaking it — she doesn’t like the white buttons.)
5. I got a call for a possible job from that networking thing that I figured would be job-less — go figure! And I forgot to tell you all that I brought cookies to hand-out (’cuz, you know, smart cookie) and that turned out to be a good idea. Everyone was enormously pleased to get a cookie, even the people who did nutritional coaching and probably create plans that leave little room for cookies. I also ended up meeting with Cheryl’s Cookies, from whence I bought said cookies. He’s going to call me with information about creating tins with our logo to bring to meetings. (The tag line of my postcards say, “Call for a meeting — I’ll bring the cookies.”)
I’ll share my postcards as I send ‘em out. I sent out 79 of these last week. I’ll follow up in a couple of weeks and then a couple of weeks after that, I’ll send the next in the series. Here’s my first batch, front and back:
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Tags: Erica, Madison, networking, wordpress
One more thing
Jul 27, 2007 Adoption
About my last post.
I know that fueling these questions will be a primal (that word again!) need for answers but that adoption can’t be addressed in a simple mathematical formula like “Jessica had X and there was Y and so Z — you’re adopted!” I think when a child who is adopted says, “How could you give me up???” there is no answer that will make that pain go away. So I think part of the job is to just hear, “I am angry and hurt and grieving!!!”
I relate this to my relationship with my dad. As an adult, I now understand why he wasn’t the father I wanted but in the midst of it I was just in a lot of pain that he was missing and that he was able to be present for my little sisters. He could have said, “But Dawn, I was on the moon during your early years and couldn’t get back to earth!” And I’d have said, “But if you loved me enough you would have flown home!”
And so I think that also what I will say is something like, “Sometimes things happen that hurt so much that we want to make sense of it so the hurt goes away. But sometimes the hurt is something you need to learn to live with and grow from. Sometimes there are no answers to make it all better.”
I just always think about my friend, L, saying, “He’s not the daddy I wanted but he’s the daddy I got.” (I know I’ve blogged that line at least twice before.) When she said that, it was a huge relief somehow. It acknowledged how I wished it were different but also gently said that this was the way it was for me. That’s what I want Madison to understand. Maybe that’s what I’ll say, too, “It’s not how you would have chosen things to be but it’s how things were.” And then hug her a lot.
Life is not easy.
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Jenna asks…
Jul 27, 2007 Adoption
From The Secret Life of Bees:
I wish she’d been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don’t give up their children.
Then Jenna asks,”Adoptive parents: have you had to field a question like this from your child about his/her biological parents? How did that go? How did it leave you feeling? If you haven’t, are you preparing for something like this?”
I haven’t yet but yes, I’m bracing myself for it. I know that most of this discussion is Madison’s to have with Jessica but I also know that I will be a part of it, too, and that what I say will influence how open Madison is to talking about it.
When I think about it I think I’ll say something like we were all doing the best we could at the time. And that knowing what we know now, there are things we would have done differently.
I have to be careful here — I don’t want to get into Madison’s story more than I need to but I will talk to her about the way the world looks at women in Jessica’s situation as well as circumstances specific to Jessica’s life and specific to our adoption that helped contribute to her decision.
Another thing (thinking as I type) is that I want to be able to convey that she can experience and address her sadness/anger/confusion but she can also look ahead to what she wants to build with Jessica now. I’m not talking about an “open adoption cures all wounds” mythology here. I’m talking about helping her grieve but not dwell. Helping her see a way to process ongoing (because living with adoption isn’t a singular event) but in a way that feeds and nourishes her. I want her to be proud of her survivorship and to learn to appreciate and accept Jessica’s survivorship.
Jessica’s little sister is up and spent the day with us yesterday. In the evening Jessica and Nate ran home for a bit (they just moved and have much unpacking) and D. stayed with us to play with Madison. D. isn’t happy about the adoption — I’m not sure how much she’s reflecting back how her family feel about it but I know there’s some of that, too.
I wasn’t really expecting the specifics of this conversation. When it comes to kids, you just kinda fake it when they ask the hard questions. There was a slew of them yesterday. D. with her questions (and opinions!) about adoption and her very apparent grief over it. And then Madison said, “Do I have a baby in my uterus now?” so that was a chat. (Also our first introduction to “the woman has an egg and the man has a seed”.) I usually don’t know what I’m going to say until it’s time to say it but I’m fueled by my belief that talking about things moves us forward, no matter how painful it is to say or hear. I don’t think it’ll be easy for any of us but I have high hopes.
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Tags: Madison, open adoption
My turn to network
Jul 26, 2007 Writing, work work work
The way I’ve got it divvied up is that Brett does the easy networking (the socializing with food kind) and I’ll do the hard-core networking. So this morning I went to this speed dating kind of networking where everyone lines up and you get 90 seconds to pitch, they get 90 seconds to pitch and then there’s 90 seconds more to wrap it up.
I don’t really see myself getting any work from these kinds of events. I wouldn’t mind a one-shot job from a small business but truthfully I know that my living lies in bigger companies who can keep sending work my way. The people who come to these front-line networking events are usually in sales either for themselves or for their company. Like one person I talked to sells clothes at those home parties people do? And someone else was selling their hotel as a venue for conferences. Neither of those people are in any position to hire me. But here’s why I go to these things now while I have time (because I hope to be so busy in the future that they slide off my to-do list):
- I appreciate finding out what’s happening in Columbus. For most of my writing career I’ve been telecommuting and except for a brief stint as a stringer for a Jewish newspaper here in town (cut short by Madison’s arrival) pretty much all of my writing work has either been for national magazines or for custom publishers in other towns. I like seeing what my city has to offer.
- Besides telecommuting, my only grown-up job (read: not childcare or food service) was at the shelter, which was absolutely NOT a corporate environment. I don’t really understand the 9 to 5 world. I’m still learning the dress code and the language and — most significantly — the values. This outsiderness I think is an asset in some ways because it’s awfully easy for me to separate the rhetoric from the reality. It’s very easy for me to cut through what someone’s saying and ask questions to figure out what exactly it is they need. But I’ve definitely got a learning curve to understanding water cooler thinking. It’s pretty foreign to me.
- A big huge part of networking isn’t getting a job from that handshake; it’s connecting other people so that they will, hopefully, connect you. So even though I’m very unlikely to buy wash-and-wear culottes (and even less likely to host a party given the fashion taste of my friends) or to put together a business conference at a local hotel, I very well might meet someone who’s looking for just the right outfit for her next vacation or is thinking about holding a workshop but isn’t sure where. Sometimes networking is about finding other people work and prospects but one hopes they will do the same for you.
- I also know that the things I’m learning here definitely apply to having a creative career. Networking face-to-face is making me less intimidated by editors or by the business side of publishing. It doesn’t seem as rarefied a world as it used to because I’m understanding in a very concrete way that it’s a business. I’m also understanding that the more I can appreciate how it for the number-crunchers and the more I can help them, the better luck I’ll have being successful.
For a long time I really resisted the reality of being a writer in America today, which is that it, like any industry, comes down to profit. I wanted it to be about artistry and craft and skill and it can be, but it’s also about marketing and money. It’s HUGELY about marketing and money. I was watching someone I know from a distance who’s had a recent surge in success and a third person was ranting about how unfair it is (life is unfair) and I said that this person was having this surge because this person was great at marketing. If I were a numbers guy, I’d totally hitch my wagon to that train even though I agree that this third person is more talented, a nicer human being and has a better body of work. But this third person doesn’t want to sell-out. I get that but it’s hard to be successful at a game if you don’t want to play the game.
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Tags: creative, Erica, Madison, networking, Shelter