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| Trace on Twitter: @Trace15 |
How adoption affected me: I'd never told my story of opening my adoption while I lived it. A few friends knew details but not all of it. I got the idea for a book when I wrote an article in 2005 about stolen generations of North American Indian children placed for adoption with non-Indian parents. That article, "Generation after Generation, We are Coming Home" was published in Talking Stick magazine in New York City and then in News from Indian Country in Wisconsin. It took me down a path I never expected.
I'd lived as an adoptee but had not done research into its history. I was not aware of the various medical terms for adoptee issues such as severe narcissist injury or post-traumatic stress disorder. There is new science called birth psychology so I read studies about adoptees in treatment for identity issues, reactive attachment disorder (RAD), depression and suicidal thoughts. Then I found statistics. So I wrote my memoir as an adoptee and wrote about the history and business of adoption as a journalist. I found more adoptees after my article was published, which really added to my understanding of the devastating impact of the Indian Adoption Projects.
Read the rest here: http://poetsonadoption.blogspot.com/2012/09/trace-demeyer.html
ghost shell
what we inherit. . . a ghost shell. . .
I dream of this, the weight,
a tortoise shell on my back, a heavy hull.
Did I choose its protection? I was asleep.
No one ever said, “You can drop it now” or
“It’s safe to drop that, you’ll be ok.”
Maybe the shell did protect me at one time
when I needed armor.
Maybe it isolated me for reasons
I do not know or understand.
It was heavy and hard to balance.
When I woke up, I could feel its weight.
I can still feel it, like a ghost,
like an arm or leg amputated.
Somehow it still signals my brain,
“Protect yourself.”
Maybe my mother put this shell on me before she left me.
Maybe I inherited it, like a talisman.
Maybe the shell was what women in my family wore to survive.
All I know is I was born with it.
[First published in Sleeps With Knives by Laramie Harlow, my pen name (Blue Hand Books)]
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