Monday, February 27, 2006

Workshop for Adoptee Integration




At the tail end of this posting is a web address of my blog. It describes a workshop that I am offering in my home town. I hope to bring it to a larger audience eventually. It grew out of an exploratory art class that I took where I created my own process of internal healing. My goal was to create a series of boxes that told the story of my life. Each box was interactive and told of milestones and important phases and feelings that have encompassed my life. The final piece to the work was a large canvas with a representation of me "out of the box". The art work has been exhibited twice now. It was in the exhibit venue that I got a larger view of my art piece.

As I created this art piece I worked with the writings of Caroline Myss, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and some of Carl Jung's work. Each spoke to me of archetypes and how the individual has within them these larger embodiments. The universal idea of orphan, mother, daughter, wife, and woman played major roles in assisting me in coming out of my own limited story.

When the art piece was completed and displayed it dawned upon me slowly that I had created my life story and had actually moved out of the role of victim in a very true sense. But what hit me like a ton of bricks is that I had told the story of the adoptee...the larger archetypal story complete with the healing and process stages without knowing that this was happening.

The workshop that I have put together is done really to respond to my longing to assist other adoptees in the healing potential that comes from telling your story and healing the fractured pieces in it in order to move on to a larger definition of yourself. The process has given me such a solid sense of who I am and allowed me to move out of the life long story of being an "adoptee". I will always hold this as a true part of my experience...but it no longer defines me...I have moved to a place where I can feel and be whatever self definition fits me now in my life. In essence I am free of the story and can create a whole new one....this is such a gift!

In the mean time if anyone would like to go to this workshop blog and give me some constructive criticism of it...I would be entirely grateful!

http://tellingyourstoryinart.blogspot.com/

2 Comments:

Blogger Marie said...

so glad i found your blog. i was adopted at three days old by an older couple who couldn't conceive. that was in 1949, so that makes me 56, ten years older than you. i just today began my own adoptee blog at http://emptycerealbox.blogspot.com. it will be therapy and maybe a means to connect this disconnected soul. i will visit your site frequently. thanks for being there.-ecb

5:13 PM  
Blogger Gwendolyn C. Natusch, M.Ed., MSW said...

ecb -

I visited your website today. It is really good to be connecting to other adoptees and to read your experiences, feelings, wonderings. In the sea of this life circumstance called adoption...the comfort of knowing each of us are not alone is quite empowering. Thanks for all of your sharing.

gwendolyn

9:58 PM  

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