Going to India

This week I will be going back to India once again to see my mother.  I feel so fortunate to have that luxury.  I know that so many of you that read this have never met or know anything about your mothers or families and I understand the pain of those deep haunting soul-felt yearnings of something that seems so untouchable and out of reach.  It is one of the most primal needs that people have( in my opinion) in their lives, the connection to that person who carried you and birthed you.

When I spoke to a counselor about this, she said that you cannot help but desire for this connection because you know this person’s smell, their heartbeat, and their body emotionally and physically.  Who else can you say you have lived inside of and been sustained by?

As I make this journey I will take all of those adoptees, adoptive parents and biological families with me that understand this journey that we all go through with adoption.  Each individually in our own ways but also collectively as a support network of people who honestly care about human life and love.

Emotions flood my entire being as I realize that I am one of the few, the lucky, the fortunate that knows my family and my mother.

This journey is not only about returning and connecting but also we will be filming the documentary.  This has already been an exciting process and continues to get even more exciting.  I hope that the documentary in some way may help all of us who have suffered but also flourished to have a voice and a face in the world.  I will continue to keep working to get my story and others out in hopes of healing and transformation.

Also, to those who donated I am thankful.  I will be taking the money to my family to help them to move into a  rental rather than a purchased home.  I was hoping to raise more money but did not meet my goal.  We will continue to get donations through film festivals with the documentary this year so the goal is still possible!  Any of you who would rather I keep the money for the purchase rather than a new rental please notify me through a comment before November 30th and I will hold it for that but otherwise I will be taking it with me to help the family move into a safer and better rental for the time being.

Thank you for all of your support, I know without you there would be no me and I would not have the strength nor courage to do what I am doing!

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Is it so wrong? A poem.

A poem that reflects so many adoptees feelings.

Written by my friend Jennie.

Is it so wrong

To speak out

To SCREAM and SHOUT

Rant and rave

Or should we take this pain

To the grave?

Some say it’s just a stage

Something that comes

At a certain age

We can call it anger

But don’t ever call it rage!

Be grateful –

Life could have dealt

A much crueler hand

Better to join with the happy band

And give thanks

What happens then

To the feelings left within

How long shall we pretend

That we’re made of tin?

Always smiling, always happy

To be freed from sin

You are no expert

On our life

Have you lost your family?

Or borne our strife?

Why do you tell us

You hear our pain?

How can you say that

When our loss

Has been your gain?

Now there’s a truth

That’s rarely told

Bet that makes

Your blood run cold

We give you your status

Make you feel whole

Give you a title

Provide your role

It isn’t enough.

You demand more

And we must deliver

Though our hearts are sore

From the loss and grief

Never-ending pain

Real-life nightmares

Which bring you relief

The loss you once felt

Has now gone away

But your bitterness

Remains to this day

And we must pay

For the babies you wanted

But never could have

Why must our wounds

Provide your salve?

You clean us up, dress us up

Give us a new name . . .

Faith, Joy, Charity

Nothing of our identity

Is allowed to remain

That reality must die

To make way

For the cleaner, whiter version

One great, big lie

But our truth carries on

We keep it alive

This charade will soon end

For now, we survive

And when we speak out

When we SCREAM and SHOUT

We won’t hide our pain

No, we won’t feign

Gratitude and happiness

No more concealing

All of our distress

And what do you say

To these powerful words?

Will you call us ungrateful,

Miserable curs?

You who save children

Such angels, what saints!

Shelter yourselves

From such devilish taints

Spoken by those

Who weren’t heaven sent

Have you forgotten

Who we represent?

We are the past

Of the future you hold

What will you say

When THEIR stories

Are told?

Will you attack them,

Call them names?

When they speak out

Will they too be shamed?

No, not again

Not another generation

Stained by the sins

Of lies, secrecy and deceit

We lay that burden at your feet

And heed what we say:

Do not let their young souls

Suffer this way!

You say we’re ungrateful

This isn’t true

The only ingratitude lies within you

We give you our selves

And what do you do?

You tell us stories

Things you suppose

All kinds of fallacy

Of things you’ll never know.

Make-believe stories

Dreamed up in your heads

We cling to these visions

At night, in our beds.

How cruel, how unkind

To tell these tales

To distort young minds!

But you keep on pretending

Cherish the lies you keep

For this is what you need

To help you sleep

Never thinking that your stories

Cause us to weep

What honor does this bring

To the suffering we’ve felt

Can you call this respect

For the lives we’ve been dealt?

How have we been saved?

When it is your souls

Which are so depraved?

You build your stairway to heaven

On the backs of little children

And what of our origin?

The fiber of who we are

The essence of our identity?

What of our kin?

You tell us they are poor

Illiterate, simple, unclean

Dregs of society

Not fit to be seen.

Yet we exist

In their stead

And your hateful words

Echo in our heads

Fill our hearts

With self-loathing

And disgust

Is this respect?

No, this is unjust

You need us to worship you

And we, we are willing

But you won’t accept this

Without first killing

The beauty within

The tie that connects us

To the place you call sin

Angels in adoption

You need such acclaim?

Does these titles help you

Allay your shame

For delivering so little

And telling your lies

In spite of imploring

Innocent eyes

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The perfect fairy tale

Adoption stirs up many convictions for people no matter if they are somehow tied in with the process or one of the the triad(adoptive parent, adoptee or biological parent), or have no involvement.  Most people have pretty strong beliefs on adoption.

I read various articles in publications with comments and opinions and the beliefs around adoption vastly differentiate as do the people who write these opinions.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t see adoption as a journey but  an endpoint, result or outcome.  It is as if there is a  “happily ever after” syndrome.  The process to many is the getting and not what happens after the adoption.  For the adoptee the journey begins when their “new”  life begins and their old life is dead.

No one ever seems to say “adoption causes…(you fill in the blank)” but war causes post traumatic stress syndrome, abortion causes psychological issues of guilt, seperation causes anxiety in children when their mother is even separated from them for an afternoon while mom works or  sadness prevails when mom leaves a child for the first time at school.  There are cause and affect to many life’s experiences but why not adoption?  So why is not acknowledged that children and their families go through many psychological traumas when adopted.  We are not even allowed to grieve our losses as adopted children but yet if I was not adopted and my mother died I would be allowed to grieve my loss.  None of this comes from a place of humanity and compassion.

There is a woman who carried this “adoptee”, felt him/her move inside their belly.  There is the adoptee nourished from their mother’s body through the umbilicus. There is an adoptive family who pours their heart, time and money into adopting a child they don’t really know and also there is a biological family who loses a limb of their family tree.

So why is it hard for many people to have compassion and understanding for the adoptee, bio mother and adoptive parent?  The mother creates this living breathing human, goes through childbirth and then for whatever circumstances gets separated from the child(willingly or unwillingly).  The adoptee then gets exported to a foreign land of unfamiliar smells, temperatures, culture and strangers.  the adoptive parents are responsible for a child with unknown physical or psychological issues with hopes of loving and being loved.

Still today it is believed that adoptive parents are all perfect wonderful people with no abusive tendencies, adoptees are the luckiest and should be the most grateful people in the world for being saved out of their horrific lives and biological families can be ignored.

It is such a perfect fairy tale story; a child is saved by the person who gives them the perfect life and the bad person is out of the picture as far away as possible and we all live happily ever after.

When is it going to be acceptable to admit that all adoptees aren’t perfect grateful kids that are well adjusted because they were saved and that some of us struggle with many issues?  Or that adoptive parents may have their issues with their adoptive children or themselves.  Very few families are perfect  but yet those of us who have families through adoption are expected to have perfection and no dysfunction.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

As a teen in the 1970’s I searched book stores for anything on adoption and there was absolutely nothing published about the issues of the adoptee or adoption.

Mother-less

Kaliyani(my daughter) and I

Mother’s Day comes once again.  This day only became meaningful to me since I had my daughter and became a mother myself.  Prior to that I had an adoptive mother whom I had not much of a connection with and a biological mother whom I still don’t know really well.  In a strange way I have been mother-less.

Teaching myself through mistakes and odd people who made their presence through rites of passages in my life to become a teen with a menstrual cycle, buying my own first bra with no help, sexual experiences with the support of Planned Parenthood, teaching myself to cook through failing to follow recipe books properly, pregnancy and birthing a baby with no female support, very little parental advice, and no mother’s arms to run to when sadness fell deep within.

Who would I have been with a mother who was warm and loving and took the time to understand me because in me she saw herself?

Adopted or not it is such a different world we live in with an attachment to a woman who plays the role of mother but lack of this caused me to spin through my life with detachment and aimless direction.  Still I struggle with this, no attachment to a mother, how do I have a relationship with a mother now that only sees me as her “naughty little pushpa” in India who loved to eat mangoes, ice cream and wanted the most expensive saris?  To her I am not the woman who gets up at 4:30am and trains groups of people for a living in a language that she can barely speak, the woman who drives herself in an SUV, the woman who has loved and lost loves and has a teenage daughter who gets called Muslim at school or has never worn a sari.  She has never been to my home and seen my life.

We really know so little about each others lives and for some reason a relationship also includes familiarity not only genetics.  We have bits of conversations that sometimes are laughable because of basic lack of understanding language.  She lives in the past with me and I have a life of 40 years without her in my experiences.

I cherish that I have a mother but I know with all the distance between us we will never really know each other fully.  Oceans, continents, years of life, cultures, languages divide us but we will always have a heart and umbilicus connection.

Mother’s Day comes once again.  This day only became meaningful to me since I had my daughter and became a mother myself.  Prior to that I had an adoptive mother whom I had not much of a connection with and a biological mother whom I still don’t know really well.  In a strange way I have been mother-less.

Teaching myself through mistakes and odd people who made their presence through rites of passages in my life to become a teen with a menstrual cycle, buying my own first bra with no help, sexual experiences with the support of Planned Parenthood, teaching myself to cook through failing to follow recipe books properly, pregnancy and birthing a baby with no female support, very little parental advice, and no mother’s arms to run to when sadness fell deep within.

Who would I have been with a mother who was warm and loving and took the time to understand me because in me she saw herself?

Adopted or not it is such a different world we live in with an attachment to a woman who plays the role of mother but lack of this caused me to spin through my life with detachment and aimless direction.  Still I struggle with this, no attachment to a mother, how do I have a relationship with a mother now that only sees me as her “naughty little pushpa” in India who loved to eat mangoes, ice cream and wanted the most expensive saris?  To her I am not the woman who gets up at 4:30am and trains groups of people for a living in a language that she can barely speak, the woman who drives herself in an SUV, the woman who has loved and lost loves and has a teenage daughter who gets called Muslim at school or has never worn a sari.  She has never been to my home and seen my life.

We really know so little about each others lives and for some reason a relationship also includes familiarity not only genetics.  We have bits of conversations that sometimes are laughable because of basic lack of understanding language.  She lives in the past with me and I have a life of 40 years without her in my experiences.

I cherish that I have a mother but I know with all the distance between us we will never really know each other fully.  Oceans, continents, years of life, cultures, languages divide us but we will always have a heart and umbilicus connection.  All of these things that I didn’t have with my mother’s I give to my daughter and now try to break the cycle because neither one of them had much with their mother’s either.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The present

First Christmas in America

Humanity places great importance on what we don’t have in the moment.

As adoptees we have enormous pain and suffering through those things we don’t have anymore; the mother, the father, the culture and that which we had no choice in changing.   Everyone seems to want what they don’t have in the moment.  The white person wants the tan, the dark Indian wants lighter skin, the poor want riches, the rich want more , the Obamas want a dog, and my adoptive mother wanted a child for Christmas(that is what she got).  When we don’t have it then we sink into wishing and hoping or sadness and depression. No amount of sadness or hoping brings those things closer…my wishing doesn’t ever bring me to India to see my mother.

I grab for that one little piece of me daily that might bring me closer to what I am missing but in turn end up missing the beauty of what is presently here to enjoy in my life. Is this not truly the essence of human life?   To be happy and find that joy, love and peace with our present life?  The challenge is to not allow the past pain to affect us as if it is currently happening.  To find joy in the depths of darkness and difficulty is living fully.  The present is truly a gift.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Duality

My mother and I at the Shiva temple

The dancing god in my meditative minds eye is Shiva(auspicious one), swaying too and fro like a refreshing, gentle, crashing wave lapping on the broken shores of the Pacific Northwest.  He is the one who is the duality of destroying and rebirthing.  His praying hands spark above his head as he sways like a seductive snake.   What is it that he has come for?  He has come to bring peace and serenity to the inner soul and to show that there is power in peace from within.

Be true to thyself and all things come out of this loyalty to the self. The inner unraveling shows through authenticity and passion.

*******************************

Since I began a new journey in yoga I have come to the realization that it is difficult to come to that authentic place when I am so muddled with duality.

Reverberating background Indian music sung only in Hindi summons that “Indian part of me” deeply buried that slithers to the surface as if to remind me “I am here, have you forgotten me?”

I miss this part of me; the peaceful relaxed okay with myself one.  Where does it go?  I wonder…

This is just another visit to let me know the other half of me still exists only to succumb to survival and withdrawing so as to live according to the rules of my other half, the well put together oh so Westernized woman with not a hint of Indian heritage.

The duality of international adoption…survival and authenticity.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Race and identity

My sister Marcie, me and Kari(my niece)

This following note was written by a woman whom I grew up with since the first grade.  She lived in the same community that I did, went to the same schools and has just gotten a “glimpse” of what many adoptees or races that are not represented in the United States experience.  We as adoptees not only deal with the racial aspect but being able to just know our health history, our actual birthdays, seeing who we get our crooked smiles or small ears from or our graceful abilities to dance.  This story really says what I faced so much with trying to identify myself in magazines, television, or in a restaurant to no avail. This photo of my sister and niece was taken within the first year of being in the United States.  No one in my family, community or school looked like me.

Hi Pushpa,
I remember reading your blog about not having a Barbie doll that looked like you. I had an eye opeining experience recently that made me think of you. We got the Tiger Woods golf Wee game. So I sat down and began to make my character. I couldn’t find the caucasian woman. I looked and looked went back and clicked all the buttons then realized there was no caucasian woman, the woman was a model with African American characteristics. So for the first time in my life I found out what it feels like to not be able to identify with my race. My frustration turned to pure facinations at how weird it was, this is what others have had to endure all their lives! It was truly eye opening and I think who ever came up with that idea was brilliant. It really helps one to get a glimpse of how it feels. I understand it was a mere glimpse, but a good glimpse for me at least to better understand some things.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

What is in a name?

I have always had my original Indian name but many adoptees do not.  There are many issues that come up with having an unusual name(I know all about this!).  What do you think about what is in a name?  Is it important to have your “ethnicity” show in your name or does it matter?  Please answer with all honesty!  Thank you!

From Kolkata to Mussoorie

Boarding schools of Mussoorie

My first visit to reunite with my mother was filled with wonderment, love, mind-blowing realities, connection, and surprise.

After spending the first three days in Kolkata a reprieve was in order.  The smog that hung without a trace of sunlight, the shock of being in the most densely populated city of India, walking through slums and over sewage canals to visit my mother in her house and the throngs of destitute living on sidewalks was beginning to eat away at my psyche.  My mother decided we must go visit my cousin in the extreme Northern part of India, a small hill station that European tourists flock to in the summer and children from all over the world come to for boarding school.

View from Mussoorie

Giri, my stepfather, went to the rail station and purchased the tickets.  Sadly he said, “there are no seats in tourist class” which meant nothing to me.

The next evening at 7p.m. we boarded the train at Howrah station in Kolkata and began the slow and arduous ride to Mussoorie.  I was happily traveling to some fresh air and fewer people I hoped.The chug of the train was slow and monotonous with the calm sway barely moving us through the city, all the while stopping every few minutes to pick up more and more people.  At this pace I thought we would never get there.

The early evening became late night and it was time to shade the eyes until morning.  Sleeping on what was a metal bunk above two other bunks I felt the uncertainty of where it was we were going and at the same time surrendering to what was unknown.  There was an unbelievable trust that I had in this journey, I knew so little about where I was going that I would not have been able to point it out on a map of India whether located…north, south, or due west. Nor did I know it was going to be thirty hours on this maroon metal clanking steam locomotive.  Every stop even through the night was an affair of foreign language sprinkled with sales of food or chai.

As the morning approached, I awoke to looking down from my top bunk to see my mother standing below looking at my brother, then my sister and I and smiling.  She explained in her gestures, facial expressions, broken bits of English and foreign tongue that she was so happy to see her children all asleep in one place for the first time in our lives.  As the man came through the train with chai I climbed down from my bunk to catch a look out the window at the miles of fertile acres of land as far as the eye could see.  Colors of saffron, orange, fuchsia, emerald, and indigo sprawled the fertile fields of land mixed in with robust healthy fields of crops.  These beautiful colors were not flowers but long pieces of fabric when wrapped around a female figure became elegant saris.  They were lying out to dry in the hazy morning December sun.

After a trip to the bathroom, which was a hole in the floor of the train with the miles of tracks flying by below, I came back to my seat and watched the life around me.  Everyone was eagerly enjoying their morning chai and some folks were eating boiled eggs for breakfast while the signs of rural life passed by outside. A few hours passed and we pulled into Dehra Dun where we got a driver to take us to Mussoorie.  This was the ride from hell.  Looking out the window of the car it was nerve-wracking to be riding in a cab inches away from the cliffs edge that dove down for miles all the whilst scurrying up the mountains in a frenzy.  Approximately an hour later we arrived white knuckles and teeth gritting.  We reached our destination where behind us swept the breathtaking deep valleys below. Alas the smog was gone and the air was refreshing to inhale. The crowds were behind us and the feeling of being in a small village without the constant sound of a honking horn seemed surreal.

My mother spoke with a coolie and within minutes all 90 pounds of him with thin rubber flip flops on his feet piled three suitcases on top of his head and began the hike up a mile long hill to my cousin’s home.  We had finally arrived and now I was about to meet more of my family. We were here to spend the next seven days to experience more connections, love and a surprise was coming…

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Slumdog split

My nieces Pinky and Ritu

Saturday I eagerly and proudly proclaimed to my husband “we are going to Slumdog Millionaire  today”.  It is a movie about India and everyone has told me to go see it.  The thought of this movie being so highly acclaimed and up for the Oscars as “best film” gave me a sense of being a part of something big that was from India, It gave me a reason to be proud of my ethnicity, anything related to India that was so wonderful and highly spoken about brings me to a level of feeling better about who I am. 

I myself want to make a film, and to see something of this caliber done and have attention on India gives me inspiration.  

After sitting through the two hours glued to the screen with not a thought about anything outside of the film because it was THAT well done, a shower of relief fell over me as I realized that my story is also worthy of being told.  

Two days later I phone my family who live in the slums of Kolkata India.  Once we get past the usual obligatory formalities in conversation I tell my niece Pinky “I finally saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire”.  I recall that she mentioned several weeks ago “auntie I really want to see that film but it has not yet come to India”.  When I asked “why is it not playing in India?”  She replied with “I don’t know.”  She was so excited when she spoke of it and how badly she wanted to see it  but this time our conversation was so different.  I thought she would be so excited to hear that I had seen it and want to know all about it but instead she commented “you know auntie, they don’t want it to come to India because people here don’t like that they call the children of the slums dogs.”  My mind went reeling to thoughts of oh no had I just turned my back on something so obvious and on my own people and not even realized it?  Had I become one of them?  The ones sitting over here in another country with no clue as to what the millions of people who live in the slums may feel like?  She continued “in India we believe that all people are children of God if they are living in a slum or not.”

This was a moment of realizing that the life I live here is so far from what even my own flesh and blood live like in those slums and my perspective is from a life of being split between two realities.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.