Journal Writing and Talking Circles With Kids and Teens

I never say we’re going to learn our culture, but the kids learn it because they’re living it. In our journal writing circles I don’t necessarily say, we’re going to explore our identity, yet most of the time this is what we do.

Our classes are held outdoors under a bead-blue sky. We stretch out on the grass, a breeze blowing. I remind the group of twelve-year olds gathered not to worry about spelling or punctuation, the goal is to write as fast as they can, and produce a page or two or three of rough draft uncensored thoughts. To jump-start the kids into writing I lead with a question.

“What are a few things about yourself that you think other people don’t understand?” Then I add, as I do every time I work with students young or old, “Don’t worry if you veer off the topic. Just write anything that comes into your mind.” After each person has had time to write down thoughts, we go around the circle and anyone who wants to, reads what they have written. Confidentially is always a moot point. So, sometimes there are those who want to crumple up the paper after they have written, before or after reading aloud. That’s OK. The purpose is to tap into our minds, and see what might be lurking in our subconscious. We don’t need to save what we have written, or turn it into a monument. Writers are visionaries.

We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance. As a writer, and an instructor of creative writing, everyday I practice this form of faith. As a mother and grandmother with the goal of supporting my children's developing sense of identity of who they are, and where they come from, I also routinely practice faith by trusting that I am doing my best job of helping my kids find avenues to explore and launch their feelings. And silence is silence, and nothing about it is golden if I allow myself to believe that children, who don’t talk about race, or racial teasing or racial stereotyping, aren’t dealing with these issues.

The most effective journaling sessions are when the rules are firm. With kids and teens it’s generally best to set a “no parents allowed” rule. (Generally it is best to set a no parents allowed rule for anybody writing down their private thoughts, even for those of us who are over 50.) No criticizing, no making fun of anything anyone writes, with a focus on compassionate listening offers the best chance for kids to peel back the layers of their personalities, and figure out what they really want to say, and what questions they want to ask.

I’ve found the most successful journaling circles are when the kids have common bonds and emotional links with each other such as growing up Native American or Korean American or having been adopted transracially. I keep the majority of the writing topics open and flexible and not centered on adoption, or ethnicity and identity. Slants specific to those topic areas spring up automatically and will present themselves in a far more creative light than if I’d forced the subject. Yet usually I add one or maybe two writing topics in specific areas common to the group experience. Recently with a group of daughters adopted from China I opened by saying, “Name three ways in which you think of yourself as being typically Asian, and three ways in which you don’t.” I had a second specific theme to suggest they write on later on, except the group bent over their note pads and wrote fast, like the wind, and they spent the rest of the hour talking about a spin off comment, namely “If you could tell the kids at school exactly what you are thinking when they ask—but where are you really from?”

Since our purpose of journaling together is born of friendship, and not a therapy session where the focus is on identifying problems and finding solutions, I find it is best to let the writing flow naturally. Letting go of expectations is a must. As a lover of the written word, I want everyone to fall passionately into writing. But sometimes after a few minutes of writing everyone gets looped into a conversation. Which is why I follow journaling sessions with kids with a “Talking Circle” taken from my own American Indian oral tradition. When we do a Talking circle one person begins talking from their heart and they hold the “talking stick” while speaking, and have the opportunity to talk uninterrupted. When the person is finished speaking they pass the “talking stick” to the person next to them, and we go around the circle until everyone who wants to talk has had a chance to speak.

We are supportive listeners and refrain from offering suggestions or finding fixes because this cuts off the flow of conversation, respect and trust. When necessary I begin the dialogue but I don’t ride herd, my role is to act as guide, get the group going, and then let them drive. Even those kids who stay at the fringe of the group, or appear withdrawn or quiet, are still observing and learning from the group dynamics.

I’ve never facilitated or sat in any of the circles my kids have participated in because I wanted them to have a chance to figure out whom they might be without me breathing down their neck or trying to sneak a peek into their minds. Yet I’ve found when I gave my them the free space they needed to explore, we effortlessly communicated on a deeper level, often when I least expected it.

For example my son liked to tell me his deepest thoughts while I sat in five o’clock traffic, waiting to make a left turn. Looking back I know by timing it perfectly he was guaranteed I would listen, and not interrupt what he had to say.

As hard as it was to let my children go off alone to teen groups (and for my kids this also included transracial adoption groups, and cancer survivor, and siblings of cancer survivor camp intimate discussions) and not have any idea what they were thinking and experiencing— it was good practice for me because I felt those exact same pangs of longing and feeling left out when I dropped my daughter off at college and she moved into the dorm. And I felt that way again four years later when she graduated and got her first job, and moved into her own apartment.

Motherhood is about loving and being able to let go, and if we do the growing up right, our children will be blessed with opportunities to think and speak candidly about their feelings, and will walk away from us, one baby step at a time, towards rich and full lives of their own making.

First published at Adoption Today and reprinted at Speak Mom

Racism and White Privilege: Discussion, St. Louis 2015

KAAN: Racism and White Privilege: Discussion, St. Louis 2015

Mark Hagland, Susan Harris O'Connor MSW, Terra Trevor, Uhriel Edgardo Bedoya, Jen Hilzinger

Understanding the core concepts of race, white privilege and racism is made more complex and nuanced by the phenomenon of transracial adoption. A panel of discussants with extensive experience around all four subjects—transracial adoption, race, white privilege, and racism—lead a meaningful discussion of these topics.

THESE ARE THINGS I NEED TO SAY

STOP JEWISH HATE

TAKE A STAND: ART AGAINST HATE

A Raven Chronicles Anthology

Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, contains poems, stories and images from 117 writers, 53 artists, divided into five fluid and intersecting sections: Legacies, We Are Here, Why?, Evidence, and Resistance. We begin with Legacies because the current increased climate of hate in this country didn’t begin with the 2016 election, and to find its roots we must look to U.S. history.

An All-American Korean American 4th of July

An armload of bulgogi covers the grill and a circle of friends surround the barbecue. Everyone has a pair of chopsticks in hand and turn slices of the sizzling beef. A picnic table is laden with platters of pindaettok, mandu, heaping bowls of kimchi, chap chae, and romaine lettuce leaves with red bean sauce for dipping. There is plenty of sliced watermelon of course, and three rice cookers stand ready in a row. There is laughter around the table.

After another helping of dry cuttle fish, after we eat as much food as we can hold, we find a grassy spot under a shade tree, pull out a folk guitar, stretch back on the grass, and sing. The familiar melody has me humming along, while the group sings the lyrics in Korean. Most of the time I forget that my husband, our youngest daughter and I are the only ones who are not Korean. At these gatherings all my friends are Korean American, like two of my children. The afternoon leaves me with a contented feeling, a sense of belonging, like I have when I go to a family reunion.

However, my friends within the Korean community didn’t feel like family in the beginning, way back in 1987, when my kids were then four, six and ten. I needed to reach deep with faith, because in giving my kids the opportunity to grow up within an all-Asian group I also had to let go of them a little bit in order to allow them to find their place within the Korean community and to learn to identify and express themselves as Korean adoptees, instead of trying to fit into the stereotypical Korean model everyone expected them to be.

I’ve heard adoptive parents say they want the Korean American community to accept their family on the adoptive parents terms and not to absorb their kids. They don’t want them to take over. But I’ve never felt this way. I wanted my children to have the same opportunity to be immersed in the Korean community and discover their identity, as I did growing up mixed-blood Native American within Indian country. The difference is Korean culture was initially unfamiliar to me. We were making new friends and I was allowing them to take my children into a world unknown to me.

I remember my grandmother’s words. “Child,” she said, “We’re Indians, and our culture has been scattered into odds and bits, yet Indian people are determined to keep our life ways alive.”

I wanted to give my kids what was given to me, to make it possible for them to gather bits and pieces of Korean culture and braid it into our lives, and show them how to hold their heritage high. While my son and my oldest daughter explored the constantly evolving questions of what it means to be Korean American, and my younger daughter who is Cherokee, Seneca and Irish, grew increasingly more diverse, my husband and I sank in roots and worked to build lasting relationships and to let our new friends know that our interest in doing so was heartfelt.

For three decades our Korean community gatherings provided me with some of the deepest sharing I’ve ever known. At the picnic we rest just long enough for our food to settle, and then it is time to play games. There are sack races, three-legged races, a water balloon toss, followed by a scavenger hunt. Everyone plays, the grandmas and grandpas, even babies are encouraged to join in, and there is always someone willing to lend a helping hand.

I find it wildly wonderful that fancy equipment is not needed for our game playing. We have a ball, a blindfold, two gunnysacks and we have each other. Just people enjoying one another, a day of slowing down and relaxing at the park, it’s not always an easy thing to find.

First published in Adoption Today. Reprinted in The Huffington Post.

It's A Very Dirty Job

I grew up in a large extended mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German, family of storytellers, and I spent lots of time with my grandparents and great-grandparents.

Recently, my dad, well into his 80s now, pulled out a photograph of his grandmother. She lived in a log cabin in Oklahoma and told stories from a rocking chair. Two flat pewter braids hung down to her waist; deep valleys formed between her cheekbones and chin. My dad grew up listening to her stories.

"Do you still remember her stories?” I asked him. Dad shook his head,” Only one. We went to her house on Saturdays and when I was twelve, usually my mind was on the baseball games I missed playing in on account of those visits.”

My dad perked up. “She told me about the time four men rode onto her land and pulled a gun on her. ‘It happened fast,’ Grandma said. ‘Shootin’ began, one guy shot the heads of two of my chickens. Never saw a better shot in my life. Them fellers weren’t interested in me. They wanted me to cook them a chicken dinner,’ Grandma explained.

I chuckled and looked at the photograph again. She was short, brown and sturdy, with boot moccasins on her feet. And from what I've heard, she was an excellent shot too.

“Grandma told me she cooked a real fine meal,” Dad said. “Then she let out a hardy roar and put her nose right up to mine and said, “Bobby, it was Frank and Jesse James.”

Then my dad’s face grew serious and he said, "Grandma gave birth to eleven babies. The first died at four months, the second at age eight. It went on like that for years—grandma giving birth and grandpa making babyboards, digging holes and lowering those dead babies into the ground. It was a time of measles and smallpox epidemics.”

My mind glimpsed my great-grandma. I felt a distant memory pulling me back, and I could hear her wailing like wind coming up—crying and swaying. I thought about how her cries probably drifted into the cabins of nearby white settlers, and I wondered if they knew the high, shrill sounds pressing against the night came from an American Indian mother mourning her dead baby.

And I thought about my own son, diagnosed with a brain tumor at age seven, but growing well and strong again following radiation and chemo, and then dying at age fifteen when the cancer recurred.

As we walked back, with the lights of the cabin glowing from the dark mist of trees, I felt the boundary of time fall away, as if my great-great-grandma and I had lived side by side.

“Well, six of Grandma’s children somehow managed to survive to adulthood.” I added.

Dad nodded. “The family slept on deer hides, Grandma shelled corn, ground it into meal and picked dandelions for their greens.”

I let my heart drift all the way back to great grandma and I felt her spirit and imagination become my own.

“Do you suppose Grandma really cooked chickens for the James brothers?” I asked.

Dad stared at me with wide brown eyes brimming with question marks.

“It’s hard to say,” he answered. "Maybe what she knew was how to get a twelve-year-old boy to listen.”

Freefall Home

It was a long time ago in the early 1950s, and I was visiting great-grandma in Freefall. I watched her peel and slice apples. I must have been pretty small; I stood on a stool to see what she was making.

She nodded at me; her eyes were quick behind the thick lenses of her glasses. Grandma rolled out dough, filled it with apples, and put it in the oven to bake.

Then I went out back on the porch to watch an orange-black garden spider, her web a zigzag of silk, right above my head. The cousins gave me more reasons to notice spiders. My legs were long and thin, and they called me Spider Web. I imagined myself a spider sitting in my parlor awaiting visitors.

In the little town, Freefall, on the edge of the reservation, laughter comes in handy.

Every Sunday went spent the whole day at my grandparents house, and often we stayed until way past my bedtime. I loved being in a house filled with relatives. It meant cousins to play with, lots of cousins. The uncles talked politics, shouting out their rock bottom opinions, while the aunties gossiped and the kids played together like a pack of wild pups.

Although I didn't know what it was called when I was young, I was raised in what is now known as the mixedblood fiddle tradition. The uncles played fiddle and grandma took out her teeth, dropped them into her apron pocket, and played the harmonica. She could step dance too and do the Bluegrass Clog. Often the kitchen was alive with fiddle music, banjo and guitar playing and grandma’s feet tapping.

Grandma was actually my great-grandma. But I didn't know this when I was a kid. She was just grandma to me. I also had two other grandmas, my dad's mother and my mom's mother. I had three grandpa's too, my dad's father, my mother's father and great-grandpa.

Sometimes instead of music, we watched westerns on television. Since grandma and grandpa and dad and I, and all of the aunties and uncles and cousins were all Indians, I thought it was rather funny that the black and white movies on television showed Indians sitting on horses at the rise of a hill, with their faces painted and living in tipis. All of the Indians we knew drove trucks or cars and lived in houses, like we did.

After dinner, a sweetness of cinnamon and steaming apples brought the uncles into the kitchen. “Grandma’s making apple pie.” Somebody said. I’d never tasted apple pie, but felt positive it would be the best dessert ever.

A few minutes later more relatives arrived. Nobody ever went away without eating. The aunties, apron-bound, brought out platters of fried chicken, biscuits crusty on the outside and soft inside and broiled cracked corn, and everyone gathered around the big table. So much food was pushed onto my plate. Afternoon sun poured through the window onto the table. Tiny dust particles were floating in the sunlight.

“Child, you eat like a bird.” Grandma said. “If you don’t eat more than that you’ll never get fat.” My older, round-faced cousins always cleaned their plates. My family thought it was necessary to eat lots of food to grow up the right way. But I couldn’t eat more, so I plainly could never hope to be normal and healthy.

Finally the pies were brought out.

“There won’t be enough pie to go around.” Someone hollered.

I smelled sweet, browned piecrust. My heart pounded. I wondered since I hadn’t eaten very much, maybe I would not get a piece of pie.

A clatter of plates was passed, with a bunch of forks, sugar and cream stirred into coffee. I grabbed my napkin by two corners and shook it out onto my lap and sat on the edge of my chair, my back bony, my elbows sharp, waiting.

Before anyone else, Grandma, all smiles, lifted a large triangle sized piece of apple pie onto my plate, I took a bite, tasted its warm crusty apple goodness, and I felt lucky and special.

First published in Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Native Realities

The Stories His Banjo Told

I grew up in a mixed-blood fiddle tradition on my dad's side of the family, and my maternal grandpa played the banjo and mandolin. He was widely known for his banjo playing, Eddie Peabody style, Frailing, Scruggs. You name it and he could play it. While everyone in the family liked hearing my grandpa play, I was the only one who liked hearing him play all of the time. The rhythm of his mandolin and banjo speak to me.

He had a long neck Plectrum built in the late 1920’s, three tenors and one old five-string plectrum. He liked to experiment with different tuning and kept each banjo at a different tune.

He got his first banjo in 1922 at the age of ten. It was a five-string banjo bought for five dollars out of the Montgomery Ward mail-order catalog. He earned the money by milking cows and selling the cream. He taught himself to play by looking at songs in old school music books he found at the thrift shop. After studying the song he would shut the book and try to match the tune.

“I left my first banjo in the coal shed at the house on 28th and Race Street.” My grandfather explained. “We moved and I forgot to get it. But it was just a cheap banjo and by the time we moved I had saved up enough to get myself a Paramount banjo.”

“Is that the same house where you slept out on the back porch in the summer and could hear mountain lions?" I asked. Then it dawned on me that Elbert, Colorado is fifty miles south east of Denver and not at all near the natural world. Remember, I had grown up as a child of the mountains, often falling asleep in my flannel-lined sleeping bag with bear noises outside.

“Pappa, if you lived in the city how did you hear mountain lions at night?” I asked. My grandfather peered at me over the tops of his glasses. We were both silent, our conversation about banjo music seemed to have been left on some beautiful mountain on the other side of the continental divide. Pappa answered slowly, “By that time we had moved closer to town and our house was near the city zoo.”

All my life my grandfather has given me stories. The stories I liked best were the ones his banjo told. When he wasn’t playing his banjo he was growing things in the garden. His backyard was the only childhood home I’d ever known that hadn’t gone away. He took care of me when my mom was sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, and I was one, two and three. My mom and my dad were good parents, as good as teenagers trying to grow up with a baby can be.

In my mind today I am again with my grandfather, eating extra sharp cheddar cheese, black licorice and reliving the time he stayed with me for a week. Buttoning Pappa’s shirt for him when his fingers wouldn't close around the buttons. Days and days of rodeo watching and drinking Dr. Pepper so that I can keep up with my eighty-five year old grandfather.

While I am folding laundry Pappa asks, “Honey do you remember that book you liked so much when you were little?” By now I’m already rummaging through the bookshelves, searching for an old book with yellow pages. Pappa clears his throat, his voice is rough with an eighth grade education, yet he is a good reader and for the last time he reads to me. And when the story ends, he pulls out his banjo and plays for me.

First published in The Raven Chronicles: A Journal of Art, Literature and the Spoken Word Sound Track Series

Three Sections from MY LIFE

I received a long-awaited phone call from my social worker. But before I answered the phone I had one of those knowing-feelings and knew it would be the adoption agency telling me about my soon-to-be child.

Then on a crisp morning in Seoul, Korea, a wide-eyed baby was readied to leave his homeland. Dressed in a pink bunting to keep out the winter chill, one-year-old Kook Yung was carried aboard Korean Airlines, and he set off for a new life; adoption in the United States.

When the plane landed in California, Kook Yung was placed in my arms, and I felt awareness deeper than the ocean, grasping the loss his first mother endured. That boy became my son, Jay. The one who would later pick purple and yellow wild flowers for me, and bestowed me with the title of adoptive parent and the pleasure of being his mother.

. . .

We had three kids. First I gave birth to our daughter and our son was placed with us as a one-year old with special needs from Korea. Then we added a third child to our family who came to us from foster care at age ten. When we decided to add more children to our family we wanted to make a difference in this life by parenting children who were already born, waiting, and needing a family. We wanted kids that were considered hard to place because deep down inside I knew adopting children who were waiting to be matched with parents was my calling in life. When I shared this with my husband he said, “I've got that same feeling.” Then we tortured ourselves by examining and delving into the myriads of types of special needs placements we wanted to pursue. We wanted a child with a special need, but we only wanted to take a small risk.

Looking back, I can see that our thinking was pretty much the same as those who claim they only want to parent a “healthy child.” We wanted to believe that it was possible to be in control of the outcome. We wanted to chart our future and to be able to map out our children’s medical conditions. But when I gave birth to my first child we were open to receiving our baby in whatever form he or she was delivered into this world with. Why then when it came to foster care or adoption did we insist on only children who would carry a medical label that felt minor and easy for us to handle?

Today if I were to bring another child into my family, I'd like to believe I would welcome the opportunity to consider all types of special needs, instead of only those requiring corrective surgery. Now I’d consider receiving a child with a host of unknowns, because the unexpected special medical need our son developed much later on, that we did not choose, which we would have given anything to avoid, has reshaped me, chiseled off my rough edges and softened me, made me better, and filled me with tender grace. But back then I was looking for a guarantee that my children would have only minor health issues.

After nearly a year of waiting, finally the call came and we received a referral for a one-year-old boy in Korea who was born with Syndactyly. His fingers on both hands were joined together, bones and all, making his hands look like small mittens. Might this child be right for our family? We wanted this child and we began to do medical research to familiarize ourselves with what this condition would mean. While we considered what might be ahead health-wise for our child to be, our good friend, Bruce, who is blind and lost his eyesight as a young adult, yet went on to become an outstanding wood craftsman and cabinet maker, kept telling us he had a strong feeling this was going to be one of those things we looked back on as no big deal, and that our little boy was going to be fine.

And when my son was placed in my arms, immediately I understood something was far beyond ordinary about him. He was calm and centered in a way that let you know he possessed a great amount of wisdom; his presence made skeptics believe in angels.

There was something extraordinary about the trauma that surrounded Jay’s early life and how he eased his way through it. He endured the first syndactyly-release surgery when he was eighteen months old, and the process involved skin grafting, with grafts taken from the soft skin near his groin area. Every few months he underwent another surgery to separate another finger, and by the time he was five, he had ten individual fingers. Granted they were misshapen and scared. But he had fingers. Fingers that he could now stuff into gloves, or a baseball mitt, which delighted him, and he found his own way of making his new fingers work perfectly for his needs.

Turned out Bruce was right. The condition that caused Jay to be placed with us as “Special Needs” when we adopted him, turned out to be hugely unimportant. We’d managed to have an easy outcome, just like we set out to do in the beginning. It breaks my heart, however, knowing that if my son had congenital heart disease, or a host of other diagnosis, or if I had looked into my crystal ball, chances are we would have been frightened off, and might not have adopted him, causing me to miss out on having him for my son and some of the best years of my life as a mother.

The truth is before we adopted Jay I did look into my crystal ball, or rather I went to the hilltop and I got real quiet, and what I knew for certain was that if we adopted this baby, it would be wonderful, better than anything I could ever imagine, and that his life circle would be small. Within a slip of a moment I could feel my joy and pain braided together, and I knew that I was meant to take this journey. When I know something, I know. But how could I know? As a young child I discovered that often I feel things, and I know.

With my vision tucked into the recesses of my mind, for the next six years I enjoyed a blissful, wonderful motherhood, joyous beyond measure. Then suddenly ours life changed forever. I learned that 7-year-old Jay had a brain tumor.

Following surgery, radiation, and then chemo, the cancer went into remission and the brain tumor was gone, and stayed gone for much longer than the doctors had initially predicted. Each time Jay had an MRI, the scan came back perfectly clear. He was back to snorkeling at the beach, and he looked healthy, if fragile. And on the head of a pin we delighted in eight more wonderful years, joyous beyond measure. And then the tumor came back, and Jay died at age 15.

Following my son's death, I felt the way Mt. St. Helens looked ten years after her summit was removed by a volcanic eruption. I stood under an evening sky watching the slate blue dusk blend into ragged peaks and lava domes.

A friend once had a cabin perched on a bluff overlooking the lake, surrounded by gigantic pines, and now fireweed and purple-red flowers dotted the level earthen floor, in a place where a forest once stood. My son Jay, a pole star of my life, had passed. I knew I would never get over it. Nor would I ever be the same. And I would not give up or given in to societies mistaken notion of getting over grief. I’d find a way to learn to live with it and not allow it to hold me back.

I walked, circling the crater, and saw wild violets blooming. The mountain had been scattered and sundered into bits, and she survived. I swallow a clotty grief deep inside my throat. A grief so wide it gives me laryngitis. Bold and enthusiastic thoughts of my son Jay filled me.

I shuffled out into the empty field of my mind to find enough words to make it through another winter of writing. My life has changed into something I didn’t want, and I began gathering the pieces that were left of me, coaxing them back into growth, and starting again, but like the mountain I’d lost all of my big trees.

I felt myself a part of the mountain, with hills catching the sunset through a furious wind, dust devils kicking up dirt. All my senses became alive, out on the edge. I imagined fireweed blooming on the burned over land in my heart with tiny purple petals, and it was a beginning.

That was in 1999. Like a river stone tumbling in the raging water, my grief has grown softer, and I found gold along the way, but I had to reach for it. If I had the chance to do it over again, I would choose to be Jay’s mother and take this journey again. Everyday I thank my lucky stars. Out of this has come an unimagined gift. Loving Jay with all my heart and soul, and having to let go, gives me the faith to open my arms and embrace each moment. The special need Jay came to this earth with—was to spread his love wide.

When a Child Dies: Living with Loss, Healing with Hope

When my fifteen-year-old son died in 1999, my plans for parenthood sat like scenery on an empty stage. He was my youngest child and I wasn’t ready to have an empty nest. I needed to come up with a new life for myself. But how could I choose my destiny when I couldn’t even buy a new sweater without exchanging it twice before deciding on a color and the right fit. I was starting my life over from scratch, and I was terrified of making decisions, even little ones.

I didn’t think I would ever care about anything ever again. My mind felt glued shut, and my heart was beginning to feel like it was laminated, sealed in plastic to keep out further pain. Then I had a soul-bleaching moment when I understood that I didn’t want to stay closed up and hollow feeling forever.

There had to be a way to allow myself the space and time to grieve deep and fully, and feel every ounce of the pain, and yet continue to walk forward. My child, a pole star in my life had passed. I would never get over it. Nor would I ever be the same. I would not give up or give in to societies mistaken notion of getting over grief fast in order to get on with my life. I would find a way to learn to live with grief and not allow it to hold me back.

The answer came when I remembered a family vacation to the state of Washington. We went to Mt. St. Helens and my son and I stared at the way she looked years after her summit was removed by a volcano eruption. That day I stood watching the slate blue dusk blend into ragged peaks and lava domes.

A friend once had a cabin perched on a bluff overlooking the lake, surrounded by gigantic pines. I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt, my face strained into the wind. Fireweed and purple-red flowers dotted the level earthen floor in a place where a forest and the cabin once stood. We walked, circling the crater, and I saw wild violets blooming. The mountain had been scattered and sundered into bits, and she survived.

I swallowed a clotty grief deep inside my throat. A grief so wide it gave me laryngitis. Bold and enthusiastic thoughts of my son filled me. I was breathing proof he was once more than a photograph.

I shuffled out into the empty field of my mind to find enough words to make it through another winter of writing. Nothing quits. My life had changed into something I didn’t want, and I began gathering the pieces that were left of me, and coaxing them into growth. I was starting out again, but like the mountain, I’d lost all of my big trees. The horizon was still mine. I felt myself part of the mountain with hills catching the sunset through a furious wind, dust devils kicking up dirt. All my senses became alive, out on the edge. I imagined fireweed blooming on the burned over land in my heart, beginning purple petals.

When A Child Dies 10 Ways You Can Help

When a child dies you may feel helpless and ill at ease. You can help, though. Here are ten practical ways to really help a grieving parent— from one who knows.

1. Don’t avoid us. Be the friend you’ve always been.

2. Listen if we want to talk about it.

3. Cry with us and don’t try to find magic words to ease our pain.

4. Don’t say, “Call me if you need anything.” Most bereaved parents won’t feel strong enough to pick up the telephone. Instead offer to do something specific.

5. Give special attention to and offer to take care of our other children. Siblings have not only lost a brother or sister to death, they have also lost their parents to grief.

6. Remember: Grief is exhausting. Grief feels like fear.

7. Marker events like our children’s birthday, adoption arrival day remind us our child is absent. Pay careful attention to us on Holidays. Most bereaved parents dread holidays. Follow your heart and take a leap to reach out to us because we are deeply hurting. If we say no, ask us again year after year. Eventually we will feel strong enough to say, “Yes.”

8. Think twice before referring to your adopted child’s arrival as “Gotcha Day.” Gotcha takes away from a birthmother’s loss, and only focuses on an adoptive parent’s gain. And it sticks in the throat of a mother (any mother) who has lost her child, whether to death or adoption. Adopting a child is a sacred event. Better to celebrate and hold the day in awe without feeling a need to name it. The English language does not carry words powerful enough to convey what loss and gain become when they are mixed. No child should carry the burden of the UNnomymity of this mix. Parents, please claim but don’t name the day....

9. In the days and especially in years ahead share a fond memory and mention the name of the child who died in conversations as casually as you would any living friend or family member. 10. Acknowledging the date our child died by sending us a card or flowers is a wonderful way to remind us that you are remembering our child and we need not walk our grief journey alone.

10. There is no timetable for grief. Be patient with us. We don’t recover from the death of a child, we learn to live with it, and over a process of years we begin to find a new normal.

This article was first published at EMK Press.

A portion of this essay was first published in 2006 in a slightly different form in Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story and is included in We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir by Terra Trevor.

Today I am every age I ever was

Today I am every age I ever was. I am eleven riding the waves on my raft. I am 14 and 17 on my friend's surfboard, on my stomach, slicing through the surf. I am 35 swimming with my kids, with our Newfoundland dog. We hold onto her collar and she tows us to shore. And I am 70 swimming in the ocean with my grandchildren, what a wonderful day I think.