| CARVIEW |
I live in this nation and out of all the millions of people here, my dad, my husband and my daughter are really my only family other than in-laws. It feels pretty isolating. I wonder…why was I sent here?
Family is something that most people take for granted and have no idea how special it is that they have it. I would do anything to know what it feels like to have that, people who take the time to let you know you are special. I thought… I was adopted because I was “special”. That’s what I have been told anyway.
This December was an eye opener. I ended up in the ER with a ridiculously high blood pressure on the same day that I came from India to my new “family” at six years old but also the same day that I reunited with my mother for the first time 25 years later. All I could think was that I have a broken heart. Why does my heart carry the pain no matter how much I have honed my coping skills?
Regardless of how much we deny it, family and love of family is a basic need and at the core of what makes us feel grounded and able to do anything. Without this I find myself crushed and giving up so many times through the years. Why can’t we thrive without family love but survive without it?
© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2011. 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 last few months have been a whirlwind. I have been so fortunate to have people in my life that are so generous and giving. The person who wrote this song and produced it did it without any payment. The singer and the musician also gave their time, heart and soul to help this project come together. I am so utterly amazed at the generosity of strangers and long ago friends in putting my dreams together.
I will update as we get closer to showing the documentary but for now you can listen to the song along with reading the words here. The lyrics blew me away, so poignant and right to the truth. Enjoy! Get out the Kleenex, everyone gets very emotional!
that was left on the floor
Written By: Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter
Stephanie is a dear friend who just met my mother in India days after my trip to see her. The following is her experience of meeting me and my mother.
Meeting Pushpa
My mother and Kripa
Pushpa and I met through an online yahoo group, South Asian International Adoptees Talk, on May 6, 2005. I remember her post vividly. Pushpa had responded to a thread about child trafficking by sharing that she had been taken from her mother without her knowledge and consent and taken to America for adoption. I think it was the first post Pushpa had ever written there. As I read her brief post, my heart immediately went out to her and I responded to tell her, she was not alone. After exchanging e-mails off-list, we arranged to speak together and on June 3, 2005 – I heard her incredible story over the phone. Pushpa was one of the first Indian adoptees to come to America in 1968 at age six. What was remarkable about her journey was that she remembered her family in India and was strong enough to return to India (25?) years later as an adult to search and reconnect with her family. Pushpa shared she had written her story, and wanted to have it published. I told her she mustn’t give up on her dream – so many adoptees could benefit from the story of her struggles and triumphs – as most of the Indian adoptees I met and knew were like me, with little to no information on their Indian families. Hearing Pushpa’s story brought tears to my eyes – especially as I realized and heard in her voice how isolated and alone she felt as child and into adulthood – Pushpa had never met an Indian adoptee in person before in her whole life! At least I had grown up with a younger sister who was adopted from another city in India than I. And having an even younger adopted sister who is African-American, being adopted within the walls of our home was considered normal.
As Pushpa and I talked on the phone, we realized we each had something the other was looking for – I had always wanted an older Indian sister to confide in, and she had always wanted a little sister. So on that day, Pushpa became my Indian “Didi” and I, her little sister. After hanging up, I prepared a package to send to Pushpa in the mail that represented three things, a card – thanking her for sharing with me, a bookmark – representing her story that would one day be published, and a photo album – to hold pictures of her family in India from the past and trips yet to be taken in the future to India. In less than ten days from our phone call, we began looking at our schedules to coordinate the opportunity to meet in person – I’m sure our husbands thought we were “crazy” as we explained our plans to them, but they supported us regardless. Pushpa and I met in the beautiful North Carolina Mountains and talked for hours sharing about our childhoods, relationships, marriage, parenting, and many other things. I was really struck that I was the first Indian adoptee Pushpa had ever met in person in her 43 years of life. Although I was 32 at the time, we had many things in common – both married, mothers to daughter’s a year apart – and both desiring to make a difference in adoption, in our own ways.
Meeting Shanti
Pushpa left India on December 10, 2009 – the very same day I left the United States to return to India with my family. In a way it was as if symbolically Pushpa had gone before me to India, as any big sister would, to prepare the way – and I, the little sister, was to follow in her footsteps. Without explaining all the details of our journey prior to leaving – we realized upon our return that we e
nded up traveling to many of the same places in Delhi, Agra and Kolkata on our separate – yet spiritually connected trips. On Day 10 of being in India my family and I arrived in Kolkata and went to Shishur Shevay. Dr. Michelle Harrison had graciously arranged for Pushpa’s mother, Shanti, and her granddaughter, Pinki, to meet us later that afternoon. We talked and laughed with Dr. Harrison, ate lunch together, and then went upstairs, to watch the girls of Shishur Shevay rehearse for their dance performance the next day. When Shanti walked into the room, I knew immediately who she was – it was as if Pushpa was standing there right in front of my eyes! My heart skipped a beat – Shanti carried herself with such beauty and strength – the same beauty and strength I had seen in Pushpa on our multiple visits together over the last five years. My daughter, Courtney, and I exchanged glances amazed at the power of biology – after knowing Pushpa, we had now met Shanti. I understand intellectually and now from experience that children look like their parents – as my son and daughter reflect parts of me. But seeing Shanti in front of my eyes – and knowing that her daughter grew up thousands of miles away – and yet still retained parts of her mother comforted me. Both Shanti and Pinki had heard many stories about me from Pushpa. Shanti turned to me and asked, “You know my Pushpa?” And I said, “Yes, for five years.” She then asked, “You know my Kaliyani?” And I said, “Yes, both Courtney and I know Kaliyani, too.” I could see a sense of relief that the person in front of her knew her family and about their life in America.
However, the first order of business was to tend to my son Nicholas, who in his excitement playing with the girls had bumped his forehead on a door which was beginning to swell. Shanti wasted no time in expressing concern for him, applying ice, and stroking his hair. Once a mother, always a mother – I noted to myself as I saw Shanti’s nurturing instinct for children immediately kick in. Once my son had been cared for – we talked together on the couch. Pinki helped to translate at times when our emotions made talking hard. My eyes overflowed with tears as I heard Shanti tell her story of how she looked for Pushpa every day, asking “Where is my Pushpa, where is my Pushpa?” She told me the love a mother has for her child; especially her first, is always special. And that no mother could ever forget her child. Hearing Shanti, an Indian mother, speak from her heart about her love for her daughter was so powerful. I thought about all the years that Shanti had been alone – without her daughter – unable to hold, touch and care for her. Missing Pushpa’s school years, her marriage and the birth of her daughter, Kaliyani. In my humble attempt, I tried to share with Shanti that she should be so proud of Pushpa – when I met Pushpa the pain she held inside was so great – but that today, she was so much more at peace with her journey, because of how their relationship had evolved grown since their initial reunion.
At this point, Shanti had been gently holding my hand and arm and caressing it. The conversation then turned to my family, as Shanti gently asked, “your mother and father?” I told her, I didn’t know anything. The look on Shanti’s face was perplexed. As I turned to Pinki to help translate, my tears again began to surface. I tried to explain when I left India I was just a baby: I had no memories, names, or anything from my Indian family or trace of my mother. Shanti paused and I could tell she was visibly upset with what she was hearing. Then with conviction she said, “Then I will be your mother. Next time you come to Kolkata, come to my house and stay with me. I will cook for you.” I was astounded that this beautiful woman, who had been through so much herself and had so little, by America’s standards, was so willing to open her heart and home to me forever. I could tell there would be no way to argue or protest at such a gift with someone who had such a spiritual purpose. “Ok, I will come,” I said. “You promise, you promise?” Shanti asked. “I promise” – I responded. “Then, I will always be your mother, too,” Shanti replied.
My understanding of family now means something deeper than ever before. A simple gift of a card, bookmark and photo album – five years ago had turned into the gift of family. This is one reason why I know I will return again to India in a few years – I have family to visit.
© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2010. 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.
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We had a wonderful time and after all of these years of visiting I finally feel at home with my family. This trip was so different because I really let my ego go and put my family first. In the past I spent too much energy separating myself from them in fear of what may happen.
It has taken me all of these years to allow myself to let the walls down and become more a part of my family instead of someone separate from them that was just visiting. I came back with a peaceful feeling that I finally belong as a daughter, an auntie, a sister, a sister-in-law. It no longer bothered me that people asked why I didn’t speak Hindi or why they looked at me as a foreigner and why I had so many perplexed looks about why I was so Westernized. I finally came home…to my other home.
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.
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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.
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This journey has been amazing and filled with such a range of emotions but finally through so much work on myself and healing the past heaviness that haunted me I feel I am finally coming together with a book that can encompass all that I wanted to share of my experience as an adoptee but also as a human being that has encountered much pain and suffering. Few people dodge that pain and suffering bullet whether adopted or not!
I will continue to write occasionally in my blog and will let all of you know when I get to the next step in my exciting journey.
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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.
]]>In the last year I have seen middle school hate and viciousness that has been slicing away at the hearts of so many of these young people in my daughter’s school. From my daughter being told someone wanted to kill her and causing great pain daily in my family’s life to other kids being constantly taunted by gay remarks to taking the punishment to another. The kids are deeply hurting and the schools don’t seem to care nor do many clueless parents.
I sense that the feelings I had as a child of not being taken care of emotionally is what is running rampant in these teens. Collectively as humans, we are allowing our children to be mistreated and mistreat without a thought to what the outcome will be to the human soul. Where are the advocates? The same advocates that spoke only quietly out of fear of ruffling feathers when I was being illegitemately adopted raised children to speak quietly.
The social worker who told my family she didn’t think it was a good idea to adopt a child from another country due to my family circumstances, culture and personalities remained only cautious and never truly spoke up for me. The lady wrote in my adoption papers of how she saw the “domineering” personality of my mother and the lack of warmth in her but truly never made a stand for the unsuspecting me that had a life in Kolkata, India. What was the point of this social worker’s visit anyway? I really never had a voice nor a true advocate.
Now I see that this is the one gift we can give to those we love and also to those we don’t know…to make a stand for them and their lives.
© 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.
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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.
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