A Space for Grief

We hold it in different places, in different ways. Over the years, I have found that mine sits in the narrow spaces between my ribs. Sometimes, when it expands, I hold my breath to keep it in as if — like an open wound — that will keep the pain out. 

We have had a rocky relationship, grief and me. Looking back, I can’t really remember a time when it was not a resident of my body. It was there well before I had a name for it or the language to describe it, bursting forth in a monsoon of inexplicable tears. And it was there when I stubbornly pretended it wasn’t. I spent years tamping it down with enough smiles, determined that if I compressed it enough, one day it would just disappear. But as stubborn as I was, grief was even more so. It pushed and pressed through the thin fractures of normal childhood losses, a relentless teacher of its own nature. In doing so, it created space for itself within me where I felt it had no right to be. 

On a sweltering summer day in China, the adoption papers were signed and I was handed — a shrieking bundle of fear — into my new mother’s arms. In that moment, I was not only given a new family, but a new identity and a new story. I was no longer an orphan, detritus cast aside by my biological family and birth culture. In an exchange of hands, I became one of the chosen, gifted with a bright new future in America. 

My new identity was christened in China when sun-worn faces beamed at me in my mother’s pale-skinned arms. Weathered hands reached to pat my cheeks as they murmured the phrase “Lucky Baby” over me like an ancestral blessing in accented English. This identity followed me to the United States where everyone — from family friends to grocery-store strangers — produced some iteration of this byline when they met me. 

As a child, I wore this name proudly. I parroted back my story of good fortune and great blessing to anyone with ears and the patience to be lectured about Chinese politics by a 5-year-old. But as I grew older, the weight of it grew heavier and more confining. It began to feel less like a badge of honor and more like a straightjacket. Each time I told my story to someone new, both my words and theirs felt both emptier and more oppressive at the same time. 

It still happens now. Though the phrasing is different since I’m an adult, the message is still the same: You are lucky. You are living a golden and blessed life. You couldn’t ask for anything more. 

In recent years, beneath my acquiescent nod and affirming smile, a new question has been churning. Where, in all of this, is the space for grief? Where, in your definition of me, is the space for me? 

Because before being chosen, I was discarded. Before being loved, I was left. Before being a lucky baby, I was an unfortunate mistake. While all of this happened before my conscious memory, it is still a very real part of me. 

It’s not that I wholly disagree with what they are saying. I know that in many ways I am blessed and I am fortunate. My life could have gone so many ways, or my life could have ended at so many different points. I fully recognize the blessings I have been given. However, through the gentle yet persistent proddings of my therapist and the quiet explorations and acceptance of my own emotions, I have also come to realize that adoption doesn’t erase the loss — that the “now” doesn’t eradicate the “before.” 

Just to be clear, I don’t expect the curious stranger or the average acquaintance to understand this. How can I expect them to understand in a few moments what I have spent nearly a quarter of a century learning? How can I expect others to readily accept a truth that brings many layers of discomfort and deconstructs the happy image of adoption that permeates our present culture? How can I demand that others acknowledge an experience that I still struggle to let myself feel without self-judgment?

As I leaned into the new identity that everyone was so eager to bestow upon me, I also learned how to silence the hollow of grief that was growing inside of me. With age came awareness of all that I had lost: a mother, a father, the siblings I had always dreamed of, a family history, my own history. While I loved my mom, I longed for my own roots that might secure a place for me on this earth. I wished for the things that most people take for granted: a birthday, a birthplace, a beginning. And each time I indulged these desires by wondering about my biological family or feeling the echoes of sorrow resonate beneath my skin, I was flooded with a sense of shame and guilt. My sadness and grief felt like the ultimate betrayal to all the people who told me how lucky I was; to my mom, who had sacrificed so much for me to be here; and to God, who had blessed me with a second chance. 

I grew up watching Anne of Green Gables on repeat. Early on, Anne — an orphan — arrives at Green Gables. She immediately falls in love with everything, particularly the idea that she has finally found the home she has spent a lifetime dreaming of — a home where she is wanted and loved. When she finds out that she is there solely on a communication error, she tells Marilla Cuthbert, the woman she believed had requested her, that she is “in the depths of despair.” Anne then asks Marilla whether she, herself, has ever felt that way. The no-nonsense, devoutly Christian woman responds firmly, “No, I have not. To despair is to turn one’s back on God.” 

In my mind, to grieve what I had lost was to turn my back on what I had gained. It felt selfish to let myself wallow in what would never be. It felt sinful to acknowledge the secret desire that things could have been different. The constant barrage of reminders that I was lucky, blessed, and chosen left me convinced that I should be nothing but happy, grateful, and honored. My anger and sorrow felt misplaced and inappropriate. In my new, adopted identity, there didn’t seem to be room for my grief, longing, and loss. 

It has only been in the past couple of years that I have learned that these things can coexist. Grief and joy are not necessarily in opposition to each other. Blessing and loss do not always stand as foes at war. Rather, these things are more-often-than-not bound together, twined and tangled into each other in a way that makes them difficult to separate. There is sometimes a tension between them — a pulling — to be sure. Yet, they do not need to battle for space and credence. 

Grief, I have begun to learn, is complicated. It is not five linear stages that you “work through.” It is not a terminable state that eventually goes away with enough time, tears, and chocolate ice cream. Grief is persistent, though not necessarily constant. It ebbs and flows, sometimes rising in the times and places where you least expect it. Some days it is overwhelming and torrential, while other days it is a gentle, whispered memory of something loved and lost. Grief needs space to stretch and grow. It needs time to settle into the spaces left behind by loss. It needs to be seen and heard, nurtured and accepted, until grief no longer feels like a foreign object hellbent on destruction, but rather a bittersweet reminder of the beauty and fragility of life and love. 

As often happens with adoptees, my story was overwritten by others before I had the chance to live and experience it. While part of me wants to protest, this also seems to be a necessity since we are often too young to tell our own stories. They must be told for us and to us so they are not wholly forgotten. But at some point we may feel it is time to take ownership of our own stories and begin to rewrite ourselves back into them. Grief and loss were redacted in early edits of my story, but now I am beginning to learn how to write them back in. In both my story and my life, I am learning how to create a space for grief. 

Lydia