Wednesday, June 30, 2010
August Intensive
The writing intensive, in Portland, Oregon is a three day workshop (actually 2 and a few hours). The dates are Aug. 20, 21 & 22nd.
And we have spots available.
What I love about teaching writing is this. We get to go deep. 
In a world of superficialities-where we so often skim the surface like a pebble tossed by a child-this kind of writing allows that same pebble to drop below the surface and take a vertical journey. What will happen in this group is that you will see deeply into your own questions and start moving towards answers-via writing. I cannot say how fast you will arrive at your insights but I will say you will begin your journey and, as a result of your deep work, you will likely come out with a book, a few books and/or maybe a few essays.
Writing is a journey to the core and I help teach how to take that journey.
Join us. For more details go to the Teachings page on this site.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Mistakes I've Made
I used to think I made so many mistakes, I used to tell myself that other people seemed to get "life" better than I did, I used to curl in on myself, in response to this perceived lack of skill in the area of human existence. I used to believe I was a failure at life and had the track record to prove it: The friendships gone south, the disappointment over lovers who burned so bright and then faded away, the failed marriages (two), the literary agents who were bad for me, the bills that piled up and became too much debt, the wine I drank, the food I ate, the times I wasn't the best mother the kids could have and on and on and on.
Woe is me. Woeful. That was me.
I used to imagine that the best solution for myself was complete and utter isolation. I was estranged from the world.
Until I was born again.
No, not that way.
I was literally born in that I found the woman who gave me life. I had never known my mother, nor did I know the importance of knowing her until I stumbled into research on the human bonding process and it's simple hormonal elements. Once I stopped reading into the basics of human biology, I wanted to ping myself upside the head.
How obvious.
Didn't I know all this? Afterall, I had my own children and had heard, from my obstetrician and lactation consultants, the importance of early bonding strategies that required my physical presence. Even a governmental site from Child Welfare gives advice for new mothers, "The best gift you can give your baby is YOU. The love and attention you give your baby now will stay with him or her forever and will help your baby grow into a healthier and happier child and adult."
This site does not say the best gift you can give a baby is to leave her in the hospital to fend for herself through the complex myriad of survival mechanisms that will kick in once she is abandoned to stranger. No one seems to want to talk about the fact that a baby, naturally, goes through such a shock to the system, that she will literally shut down a huge part of her humanness in order to survive. The government site on human welfare issues this statement to new mothers, "Attachment is a deep, lasting bond that develops between a caregiver and child during the baby’s first few years of life. This attachment is critical to the growth of a baby’s body and mind. Babies who have this bond and feel loved have a better chance to grow up to be adults who trust others and know how to return affection."
I was held by my adoptive mother, I was cuddled and she attempted direct eye contact in order to give me a sense of safety and of being loved but it didn't work. I resisted her, denied her and became stiff in her arms. I wanted my mother.
Do adopted children actually bond and attach or do they adapt and reconfigure? Based on personal experience (and what is better to turn to) I would suggest the latter. What you have in your arms is a miraculous creature who has shaped, for survival, to the environment she is presented with. You have compliance combined with amnesia. 
I would suggest that adoptees, especially those who have yet to pursue reunion, suffer from a form of the Stockholm Syndrome which is the term for a condition that evolves between an aggressor and the victims in situations such as hostage negotiations, kidnapping, and abuse (Auerbach, Kiesler, Strentz, Schmidt, & Serio, 1994; Graham et al., 1988). The main symptom of Stockholm Syndrome is the development of positive feelings on the part of the hostages for their captors or abusers. The hostage is, of course, the baby. What choice does an infant have about her situation? She clearly isn't happy, look at the way she cries, screams, becomes stiff and totally rejects any caregiver other than the birth mother.
Am I saying that adoptive parents kidnap children? Not intentionally, or consciously even. I would say that society has put up such a veil of denial that we don't even know what we are doing. We are part of a system that has legalized separating babies and mothers. We've even made adoption "special" and "unique". But we are still missing what is really happening. A bonded pair, mother and child, are pulled apart and the two parts are required to repair the ripped systems. Babies undergo PTSD, just like any other helpless victim. Blessedly, babies also undergo amnesia and they adapt. But that doesn't make them grow into being happy, fulfilled individuals who trust the world. Case in point, me. Look at the way I lived my own life and look at how I live now. Finding my mother, meeting her, talking to her and even bonding (to the degree an adult is capable of bonding after being kept secret for more than four decades), has set me free.
I do not curl away from the world anymore. I do not berate myself for not getting "humanness" right. I am like other people, I try, I do my best, I apologize when I screw up, I move on. I am on a level playing field with the world now. I am not estranged from humanity but am a part of it. Finally. I have been born. 
My daughter is eight years old. She sees the world as a safe place. She trust others and know how to return affection. She looks at mistakes this way. "That was another chance to practice getting it right."
She is a bonded child who had a mother who stayed. She is blessed to be alive. We both are.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Helping Kids
I love dreams, they say so much about what is happening in the realm of the "rule-less," that is, outside the confines of ego and day time thought.
Last night I had the following dream:
I came to a house where a family was having dinner. The maid said I could not come in and shooed me away. As I was leaving, a small boy came out of the house and gave me a drawing. He was about four years old. We admired his drawing and then he fell asleep on my lap. The mother and father found me, with their son asleep on my lap. I asked them, "is this child adopted?" The mother began crying, telling me about her years of infertility and the great sorrow she had experienced. SHe was very emotional and hard to understand. The father, distressed because his wife was distressed, couldn't say anything. I asked again, "okay, I understand and can you please tell me if this boy is adopted?" Finally, the couple told me yes, the child was adopted and that they were having so much trouble. He was very unhappy and struggling. I told them I could help.
I woke from this dream and looked at the ceiling of my room for a long time. As I have worked through the last three years of reunion and healing around being adopted, I have met so many adoptive parents and their small children. It seems there is an adopted child around every corner now. I've also become quite adept at spotting adoptive parents. I know them by posture alone. Adoptive parents have a look that is a combination of hopeful, distressed and distracted. The mothers are protected, a little defensive and on guard. The fathers look worn down, with furrowed brows and a sloped shoulders. I can tell, in an instant, that these couples are trying so hard.
I love adopted children. This welling up is immediate. I just adore them because, especially when they are young, they are so very authentic. When it comes to adoptive parents, I want to say, "hey, let me tell you what's going on with your child."
But I don't.
I, like so many people, play along as if everything is just dandy even though I know that is not true. I am a parent myself. I understand the distress that comes with raising kids. But I also know, for a fact, that I never look like an adoptive parent looks. There is a confidence in me, even as I am perplexed by my kids. Perhaps this because I have been in several different families, have been adopted twice, have been homeless and moved a zillion times. Perhaps this is because I "get" my kids at the most foundational level. I get them. I guess what I see is that adoptive parents so often don't "get" their children. Not really.
Alas!
I attended a conference in Boston and a key note address was given by a very prestigious speaker (herself the adoptive mother of two children). She is well placed, scholastically, with many letters behind her name. She is a lawyer. (I don't want to mention names.)
This speakers bottom-line, after many Power Point slides and legal case excerpts, is that the mental health issue in U.S. adoptees stems from the fact that birth families are not fully disclosing their family history of mental health (or lack of mental health). She believed, since adoptive parents are doing birth families a favor by taking on their unwanted children, the least birth families should do is be more transparent. This is pretty close to an exact quote.
As it is my understanding that adoptees in the U.S. do suffer from much high instances of mental health issues, included learning and social challenges, I was very eager to hear this speaker but I was surprised by her scholarly conclusions. I wondered, aloud, if the instances of increased mental health challenges in adoptees might be due to the biological connection that the birth mother and the baby share and how, at the point of severance of that connection, the infant experiences severe mental trauma?
The speaker agreed that yes, this brain trauma is possible but inconclusive "Although natal trauma is a possibility, we really don't want to talk about that because such a suggestion would be very upsetting to the birth mothers."
End of discussion.
This speaker is a prominent thinker in the field of adoption in America. She is, in fact, part of policy making in this country.
Upsetting birth mothers is the concern? Wouldn't birth mothers be equally distressed to hear that their children, placed for adoption with the hopes of a better home than they could provide, are suffering from mental health challenges? Wouldn't birth mothers be equally distressed to hear that adoptive parents consider adoption to be a "favor" they are doing for birth parents? And, isn't the conclusion that mental health disclosure issues are the cause of mental health issues in adoptees inconclusive as well?
And, what of the adopted children who suffer the real distress of these mental health issues? How upset would they be to learn that they have suffered severe mental trauma and that their lives could be dramatically improved, almost immediately, by the simple recognition of the trauma? I know I was pretty damn mad to learn this myself and equally eager to get to work fixing the problem in order to lead a happier life!
Is it better to lead these children (and the families that care for them) to believe their mental health challenges are just part of who they are, the legacy of genetics? Or is it better to search more deeply?
And isn't it a little too convenient to blame mental health issues in adoptees on genetics? What of the nurture factor? What of the biological factor? What of this very real issue of splitting babies and mothers at birth and expecting a baby to adapt to a new family without taking into consideration the shared hormonal connection that made up the entire gestation process?
We are just not thinking very deeply or very intelligently about these questions. The one who suffers most, due to our lack of deep thought, is the adoptee. Next, the one who suffers is the adoptive parent-due to a lack of information and confusion.
~
What if this suffering could end? What if a new dawning of intelligence were possible and we could, as a society, see the obvious and then offer modalities of healing?
What an adoptee struggles with is somewhat simple to resolve. But no healing will come without compassion, honesty and the ability to think better.
This is my dream. I hope to bring relief to adoptees, who suffer unawares, and I hope to bring understanding to adoptive parents who accept the standard thinking that says, "your kids struggle because soemthing is wrong with them." Adoptive children don't have anything "wrong" with them. What they lack is understanding and more, smart information.
Gone Home is part of that conversation that hopefully illuminates the minds and hearts of adoptive parents and helps adoptees see their own struggles in a new context.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Released
It's done. Praise the Lord!!!
Gone Home is now available in a fully edited audio format and best of all, it's free. If you listen and want to pre-order your signed copy--something that a few fans have asked for--I've now created a way for that to happen. Just click "buy" and you are there with all my thanks. The release date will be announced soon but I predict spring of 2011.
As to the audio version of this book, please feel welcome to leave comments here, at the site or send me an email directly via the contact page.
`
Friday, June 18, 2010
Time to Write?
There are two opportunities to join the circle of writing.
The Summer Intensive is Aug. 20, 21 & 22
The Weekly Workshop for Portland Based Writers begins in Sept.
Both of these groups are limited to just eight people and we are now taking applications, holding interviews and having conversations with those who are interested.
Go to the Teaching page for more details and send me a note! I'd love to hear from you.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
A Pearl of a Poem
Sit Quietly
If you have time to chatter,
Read books
If you have time to read,
Walk into the mountain, desert, and ocean
If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance,
Sit quiety, you Happy Lucky Idiot.
- Nanao Sakaki
Friday, June 11, 2010
The End?
Spencer asked me, "Mom, why does everyone tell me that the world is coming to an end in 2012?"
We were together, in the hot tub, which is the one place where he can't bring music or a computer. Sensory immersion of another kind. The chicken coop is across the way and our birds cluck and carry on.
In response to this question, I talked about the Mayan calendar and how we near the final rotation of the calendar, which lasts 250+ days and is said to mark a significant time of evolution in consciousness. I said I agreed. I pointed out that we are--at this point--using less than 4% of our brains even though the brain has the same number of neurons as there are stars in the solar system.
"I think the end of the world is coming but it's not like this fire and hell and brimstone thing. I think it's the end, or the potential for the end, of thought based perceiving which, at this time in human evolution, is largely limited to finite views centered around survival and protection of the ego."
You might think he was about to say, "huh??" But he didn't. Spencer talked then about time travel and the ideas posed by Einstein.
Later, that night, he drempt about traveling through time warps with a device that destroyed buildings but that cannot harm people.
~
During my quiet, non-cooking, cleaning, kid moments, I spend a good deal of my time considering thought in general and my own thoughts in specific. I am in the point in the process where I question every thought-especially ones that make me react with some form of upset.
I have come to a few questions. What if feelings, especially negative feelings, are actually an indicator that there is something untrue in my perception? What if, rather than reacting and attacking in an outward way, I look within to discover the source of negativity and then go deeper still to see that my own thoughts, through conditioning, are misdirecting.
This seems to be very true. If I am the creator of my universe via my own thoughts, or lack thereof, isn't what I'm upset about actually coming from within myself? An example would be this. My son says, "I would like to drop out of school." I become tense and even angry. I am consumed with fear about the future--will my kid be one of those drop out video-aholics? I say there is no way he's dropping out of school, he's only thirteen years old for heaven's sake, rant, rage, blather etc.
But hold on.
Why am I upset?
What has happened?
Where did I go?
Isn't he simply making a statement of what might be true for him, at that moment? What does his statement have to do with me? What business do I have telling him what he should or shouldn't do? Am I reacting like this out of fear that he'll be a loser or a failure of that I'll be a failure if he dropped out of school? Aren't my thoughts far away from him then? Am I with him, in the statement he's made or am I in my own thinking based on fear and fear that comes from thinking about the future?
~
Yesterday, my son did want to drop out of school for the last few days of the term. He said he was tired of getting bullied. Kids were bugging him and he wanted a jump on summer break.
Yesterday, I did go ballistic. He had told me this half an hour before school was to begin and I said half an hour is not enough time to let me really think in a deep way. My brain needs more time to shift from reaction and negativity to insight than the average bear.
He went to school.
As I drove him across town, I apologized for reacting so strongly. I told him I would sit, think about this more fully and find my fear, anger etc. I told him he was fine. It was all fine. I suggested we both take a day to see what would happen. "If this day is as bad as yesterday, let's revisit this conversation."
He agreed.
The day was awesome. A new drama teacher was there and he had an incredible experience.
~
And then, someone died. An aunt of my former husband. He called to say he wanted to travel to Spokane for the funeral. He wanted to take Spencer along. This meant Spencer would miss the last two days of school of the term.
~
We only use 4% of our brain. This is science.
There is 96% of something else happening. Space and pure intelligence and what else??
When Spencer said, "I want to drop out of school," was he saying something about the future? About time travel? Had he traveled forward in time to know that he was not going to finish the term and just blurted out--from discomfort about the previous day--that he didn't want to finish?
~
I go back to his question about the end of the world. Yes, people are talking about this. Yes, there are predictions of doom. But this planet has been spinning-impossibly-for 4.6 billion years. Our cells contain the atoms that exist in space. Life forms have evolved from single to multiple cells, from having gills to lungs, from walking on all fours to standing erect. Do I really believe the whole thing is going up in smoke due to a thought based construct like "time"? No. I don't believe time exists, except within my own mind as a structure for which to fit the details of my so called life.
I think it's fear. The talk about the end is uninvestigated fear. There are better questions to ask.
Monday, June 07, 2010
Gone Home, my fourth memoir that brings a full circle conclusion to the journey that began with Blackbird is now available to all who come to this site, in audio format.
Gone Home: A Memoir is a story about the growing complexities of motherhood, a task I attempt despite never being mothered myself and how I am consumed by feelings of inadequacy and sadness. Hoping to find a measure of inner peace, I journey out of my marriage and into Tibetan Buddhism, only to find myself on an unlikely quest for the family that put me up for adoption when I was an infant. When it seems impossible that I will find my people, I stumble into reunion with my entire family, including my mother, a full brother and half a dozen other brothers and sisters. In going home, to the people who are my people, I finally shed feelings of sadness and find peace in knowing who I truly am.
In the spirit of creating and sharing, I invite listeners to Gone Home to make a donation if they are moved to do so.
It feels exciting and good to get the work out there to all the fans who visit this site and ask, "where is your next book??"
So here you go! Press play and enjoy.
Additional chapters are coming each day.
Expect the whole book up by July 1st!
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Through the Dark Valley of Publishing
Journal Entry 1:
My agent has submitted my latest memoir, Gone Home, for consideration for publication. She has written a lovely letter, pitching several editors at houses that include St. Martin’s, Knopf, Simon & Schuster, Tarcher, Little Brown and so many others.
She writes: I'm very pleased to be sending you Jennifer Lauck's new memoir GONE HOME.
This is the book that will take the readers of her phenomenally bestselling Blackbird to the place they will want to go next. Beyond her story of
childhood abuse and survival, Jennifer travels the terrain that brings her
to become a fully realized person - a mother, a partner, and most of all a
woman who experiences the life that's in front of her. It is Jennifer's
search for her biological/birth mother that finally opens her understanding
of motherhood, a path for which she has had neither models nor direction,
and the source of her lifelong elusive seeking. It is her experience with
her birthmother that seals her quest for identity and ultimately allows her
to embrace just who she is in the world.
The power of this book resides in Jennifer's telling. Her subject will also
impact the great number of people who are affected by adoption - the 500,000 U.S. women who seek to adopt each year, the 150,000 children who are adopted annually, and the over 50 million adult adoptees in the US today…
I’m impressed by my agent’s letter. I’m touched.
To this point, I have been spinning from the writing of the story—the sheer intensity of creation, which itself is a process of utter absorption—and haven’t thought of it as powerful or good or even bad. It just is. I’ve witnessed a life. What feels important is to get it right—to have been generous to all who have played a part in the story of my life. I’ve been careful to conceal the identity of those who won’t want their lives connected to mine. I’ve checked in with all those who are beloved to me—the ones in the inner circle. I’ve read Gone Home aloud to my own children, since they are on nearly every page. My son cried. My daughter asked important questions. My former husband read it and he cried too. He wasn’t displeased. He said I had been accurate and fair. He said, “you did it, Jen. You hit it out of the ball park.” 
The day we submit the book to NY editors falls between my son’s thirteenth birthday and my former husbands forty ninth birthday. It feels like carnival to go out in the midst of these celebrations that consume our family attention. I am high on ice cream and cake and gift buying.
Journal Entry 2
Eight days have passed in shattering silence and a form of amnesia has set in. I don’t know what I have written. I’m a blank. In this void, I become sure the book is just terrible. Horrible. No, it’s sauerkraut. Oh, the voices that come in the night—the wailing of doubt. I’m driven deeper into my meditation practice at dawn and at mid-day, I’m the one whimpering in the corner of the yoga studio—counting each exhale and reminding myself that the evilness in my mind are just thoughts. “Thoughts are harmless,” I tell myself. It hurts to breathe and be.
Journal Entry 3
I have a theory. When my agent has bad news, she sends an email.
When she bears good news, she calls.
Ten days have passed when the first email comes. As I read it, my internal organs feel like they are being gripped in a vise. She writes, “It’s BEA (a national book fair in NY), everyone is swamped. No news is good news.”
Journal Entry 4
Twelve days have passed when a new email arrives. “Okay, four presses have bowed out,” she writes. “Too much like Blackbird, one editor said. She obviously didn’t read the book. I expected this. No big deal. We’ll talk next week.”
Another email comes, my agent has forwarded a note from an editor who wants a full proposal and includes this as her reason: “I'm sure you're well aware that a beautifully written literary book isn't enough these days, so if you can prepare some materials for us by Monday that would be wonderful.”
I write back to my agent, “does this mean she likes the book?”
My agent writes back, “she hasn’t finish it yet, she’s only a third of the way in.”
Journal Entry 5
A quiet Sunday. It rains so much, I conjure images of the ark and animals paired up, two by two. It’s June in Portland. The Rose Festival.
While the children play at their father’s house, I pull together a proposal. I compare my book to other books on the market place. I write things like: “My book is better because…” “I am affiliated with all the right organizations like….” “You will make money if you buy my book because….” 
This feels sad to me—like I’m grinding dead fish into chum. I remind myself that fish guts are important—chum helps the garden grow.
Journal Entry 6
What does it mean, to write a book? What does it matter even? Why do we do it? More importantly, why do I do it?
I guess the only answer I can come up with is this. I had to do it.
Did I ever expect publication when I wrote Blackbird, in 1998? No. The opposite was true. I expected nothing and when publication came—I was bewildered and as amnesiac as I am today. When I get a letter saying something good about Blackbird, I re-read pages within my own book. I try to see what the letter-writer saw. I shake my head.
Now that I have had the experience of publication though, I expect to be published and to be successful even. During all this waiting, I tell myself I will be a failure without both.
It is not what happens to my book that hurts, or even if anyone ever reads what I have laid out, so carefully, on the page. What hurts is my own thinking that doesn’t go to the depths of truth. Is a human beings value in being purchased for publication? Is a person’s worth measured by recognition? And yet, I must ask, how does a writer, a creator, an artist, sustain herself without publication? How can a writer, a creator, an artist carry on with her work? What of the future? What of feeding the children? (Questions of feeding my well-fed children can always get me shaking.)
These are the hard questions and the ones posed—in dark hours—by every artist. It’s cliché perhaps but I cannot help but turn to Virginia Woolf, who wrote of a room of ones own and money of ones own too. Didn’t Woolf makes us remember that so many great women thinkers and creators of our time will never put a pen to paper because they languish in busy-ness over pots on the stove and diapers that need changing? Who am I then to complain? To worry? At least I have the freedom to have written four books about my life—and two novels—and countless entries on the blog.
What is true is my true good fortune.
What is true is that I need to think more deeply about my own calculation of success and failure. I need a new system of measurement. 
No one needs to see a flower open to the sky to make that happening a miracle. The flower is sustained by the earth, at its root. And by the water that falls abundantly. And by the worm, that works the soil. And also by the light that rises each day. The flower lives, the flower is perfect and the flower dies—all in a moment—all without fanfare or publication or a paycheck.
Why can’t I be like the flower?
Which one of us is more alive?
Finally, with these questions, my thoughts are silent. I have no more voices that wail of disaster. There is finally quiet—that birthright of life.
I think a taco would be nice, for dinner. I stop writing, for now.