Post Reunion Poetry

This is a painting I did in 2002 entitled "Woman in the Moon"

It is my interpretation of a Native American art piece depicting the feminine moon spirit.

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After my reunion with my birth parents it felt like the world had been ripped from beneath my feet. In retrospect, after reading Betty Jean Lifton’s latest book, I realized that the 18 months of confusion and heart wrenching pain were about my attempt to integrate my old abandoned self and the truths that this part of myself brought to my consciousness through this reunion experience with the adopted self and woman in the present. Letting the truth in and the reunion experience in fully meant that I had to feel all of the feelings for that child who went through abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It was overwhelming to say the least. What I found was a doorway through it all through my poetry, art, and therapy. Time is also a great healer and I am ever grateful for its medicinal powers.

The following is my poetry immediately after my reunion from those months of feeling lost and broken into a million pieces. It is my attempt to find those shattered pieces of my self and to make sense of them as I put myself back together again, this time with all of the pieces and not my make believe stories that filled in the gaps.

Song and Dance of the Dead

I call out to the soft side of myself
Beckoning the touching hand of compassion
Over and over I break into my desperate song
Whistling and whooping with melancholy whimpers

Who allowed the weakest part of myself to dance in the open
Casting shadows upon my heart
Halting my search of self protection
And illuminating the sores of that small one called child
Welling up to the top of my consciousness?

Again and again I put it away
Close my eyes and pray
Pray it into the deep void in my belly
Still it burns and bubbles
Until its black babblings cause my attention
To focus crystal clear on the moment

Open eyed and stunned I watch
The bounty of my hurt, blame, and shame
Dance unabashed before my eyes.

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Ten by Twelve

The days, the days are numbered by ten
And I know this to be Gwen
Ten by ten and multiply more
Which way to open that closed door
Dance in a flurry
Fear in a worry
Hope seems dead
I’m full of dread

The years, the years they are played out by twelves
Looking at my many selves
Wandering lost
At a great cost
Hunker down into my soul
Knowing this my ultimate goal

The power of ten, the power of twelve
Into my strength I need to delve
Finding myself inside the dark
Seeing me, the whole divine spark

Note: A few years after writing this poem I wondered why I had chosen the numbers ten and twelve to express this journey into these divided and compartmentalized parts of my self. In math wherever ten is found the completeness of order is seen. Ten implies completeness of order, nothing lacking and nothing over. It signifies that the cycle is complete and that everything is in its proper order. Thus ten represents the perfection of divine order.

In ancient Egypt twelve was the number of cosmic perfection. Its surface form, the dodecagon, is nearly a circle. Circles have great meaning to me as they represent completeness, the feminine, the unconscious (Jung), and hold great meaning in Native American spirituality. What is also interesting is that eleven is a number between 10 and 12. It is a number of the inner fight and a number of transition and change. In my understanding of these numbers in my poem I see that it is the soul and the personality attempting to integrate and make meaning of a deep well of experience as an adoptee who sees herself as both human and divine.

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Pieces of the Puzzle

I am a presence unto myself
And in this meeting
I am baffled at the strangeness
Of my face

This part and that part and hidden parts
Are the whole of me
Yet I have been unfamiliar with the whole

I speak in part and know in part
And wait as a silent witness
For those secret compartments of me
To suddenly flash before my inner eyes

When they come it is a surprise
And I am taken aback with the knowledge of them
For this part and that part I took as the whole
Yet it is only in part that I perceive myself.

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Retrospective Birthing

Eased into grace
As I see it
Eased into space
So be it
I grip tight
Want to take flight
See the steeple top
And point to the sky

Ah…
My soul knows how to weep
Keep the sweeping
Hand of God
Beneath, above, around
Until I’m clean, washed pure

I have suffered
And my suffering
Stands alone
As one who is brittle
Gotten hard as a steal drum
With hypnotizing tones.