My Journey To Me

Two years ago at the same desk I sit now I began this blog with the purpose of creating a space for me to exhaust some creative energy.  It was a way to bleed from my system these unusual and imaginative thoughts and pictures I had trapped somewhere inside my skull.  So initially I wrote about writing, and Michael Jackson, and my family, and me.

Slowly the focus organically changed and easily flowed in to more and more posts about adoption and what it means to me to be adopted.  As my writing changed so did my passion.  The passion I had about writing transformed into a passion about adoption which came through my writing.  My thoughts became more focused, more precise, and the inspiration to write always circled back and around to adoption.  The more I wrote about adoption the more I had to get involved and study adoption.  This led to me changing the focus of my book Growing Up Black In White. Initially, it started out about growing up from a young boys point of view very much like Christmas Story or The Sandlot, to a story about this adopted kid and what it was like to grow up adopted and different.

Many times I would joke as I began to speak about my adoption experience, that this was great therapy for me to be able to talk about adoption and me in a way I never had before.  As I spoke early on it was mostly about my experiences.  It was me telling my story about growing up adopted, growing up black in a white house, in a  white community, and in a white world.

I continued to read and learn more.  I began to hear people talk about what was never talked about when I was growing up.  Small thought-grenades would explode in my head as I learned about attachment, rejection, and the quiet collateral damage that comes with adoption.  As the new knowledge came in I would measure it against my life, my thoughts, and my feelings and on these digital pages I shared me and this new awakening.

In this new awakening with new eyes, I often look back at past thoughts or writings and have to admit I may not now agree with certain things at certain stages but that is an exciting way to measure growth.  My view has and will continue to change as I express my view through my thoughts. Sometimes my thoughts and my expression of them make some readers uncomfortable because adoption isn’t getting painted with warm Kum By Ya colors.  I’ve been challenged because some think I concentrate on the darker side of adoption at times and I can’t argue against that.  There are days when my response to this deeply emotional journey isn’t butterflies and puppies.  Some days it’s ravenous hawks and junk yard dogs but that doesn’t mean I hate the butterfly and puppy days.

In my evolution as an adoptee and writer I enjoy my new found freedom to question many of  the assumptions about adoption that I have had and heard.  I enjoy the freedom that gives me the right to be the angry adoptee this week and the grateful adoptee next week.  I enjoy the freedom that allows me to be angry, grateful and contemplative.  This freedom comes from learning and understanding and working through learning and understanding that this journey at 44 years and counting is not close to being completed.  Each step I take is exciting and interesting and difficult and scary but the learning is empowering.  Because the more I learn and apply to me brings me closer to destination me:  a destination that is fluid and no longer static.

This journey is an amazing one and I enjoy those who challenge as well as those who encourage because each moves me along this winding road.  I welcome any and all travelers to watch as I chronicle, laugh, scream, rage, shout, chuckle, ponder, trip and recover, sprint, walk, and stroll to a better understanding of myself.

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   AUGUST & SEPTEMBER SPECIAL

Any one who purchases a copy of my book, Growing Up Black In White, from this website before October 1st, 2011 will get a FREE download of my 90 minute webinar ,  The Transcultural 10:  The 10 essentials for transcultural adoption.