Danna D. Schmidt
Master Life-Cycle Celebrant®
Ordained Wedding Officiant
Funerals/Memorials Specialist
Certified Grief Educator/Tender
ADEC-Certified Thanatologist®
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Do a quick internet search for adoption ceremonies and you’ll find loads of resources for welcoming and entrustment rituals which serve to welcome the child into a pre-existing family fold.
Sometimes, you might even find a mother & child reunion ceremony, such as the one I helped my celebrant colleague Alisa Tongg develop for her friend, the birth mother. Rarely though will you find ceremonial options and healing rituals for adoptees to enact along their complicated life’s journey.
If you’re an adult adoptee reading this and you find yourself in need of some ritual medicine, take heart. There are as many ways to honor your lived experiences and passage points as there are adoptees.
And I note this because we humans love to make sense of the world and categorize people into monoliths. As adoptees, we have many such umbrella terms – transracial, transnational, late discovery, Baby Scoop…the list goes on. Factor in foster care, DNA surprises, open versus closed adoptions, and the intersections become more complicated.
That said, I sing from the song sheet that if you’ve heard one adoptee’s story, you’ve heard only one adoptee’s story. We might share similar feelings, primal wounds, microaggressions, and search methods, but each of us has a story as particular as our genes.
I’m a ceremonialist who believes it’s never too late to go back and reconsecrate moments from the past as a way to reclaim (and reframe) our identities. Rituals of empowerment are just that…empowering. They allow us to remember that we are the brave protagonists of our own stories. And such rituals permit us to wrangle the narrative and place ourselves back at the center so that we might gain new perspective, acceptance, and healing.
Sometimes that entails correcting an old wrong. When my husband and I got married a zillion moons ago, I took issue with our pastor for having to say obey in my vows like I was his chattel. When hubby and I renewed our vows 25 years later, I wrote my new vows without the word and he insert it into his own! It was a reconsecration. a sacred corrective, and an important do-over.
So if you’re an adoptee at such a crossroads in your own adoptee travels ~ perhaps feeling jaded, disillusioned, or even sorrowful that you missed out on the baby announcements, balloons, and other celebratory hoopla ~ these ideas might be exactly what you need to give pause, embrace what is, celebrate a milestone, turn a corner, cross a threshold, honor what was, close a door and invite what might be next for you.
I recommend taking the time to think through what feels do-able, resonant, and energizing for you. If wordnerding isn’t your thing, the poetry activities might not appeal to you. But try on a few of these or better yet, enfold them into a larger ceremony structure.
I know what you’re thinking. But wait, what do you mean, a ceremony structure?
And then decide how you want to close your ceremonial time and be reincorporated back into your community. A reading, a community welcoming (I’m a big fan of community fanfare like a tunnel of love, bubbles, or a closing circle so everyone can reflect on what they just heard and experienced.)
OK, so now that you have a sense of the elements you might include and in what order, let’s turn to some solid rituals.
Writing and journaling can be powerful healing modalities. Here are some writing project options you could easily incorporate into your healing ceremony.
Healing work entails excavation. See if you can go back in time to unearth the jewels and shiny bits of your adoption story. Consider your highs, lows, learnings, and curiosities throughout the decades. Once you’ve mapped out your timeline, turn it into a creative project, as follows:
Don’t forget to include the senses and the elements – enliven your ceremony with multi-sensory elements such as tactile items, aroma, food and beverage, music, and visuals. And make room for earth, air, fire, and water in your rituals of transformation. You can choose to burn, dissolve, bury, or compost a ritual item, such as a letter, paper slips, or a Despacho aka a healing bundle (scroll to the bottom of the page to find the story).
If none of these other modalities resonate with you, consider making an art project that represents your story to this point, such as:
This is only a small sampling of ritual ideas for adoptees. I could go on and on with ideas that include dollmaking/paper dollmaking, a secret lockbox, truths and lies, custom wooden puzzle fitting, stork delivery, and rebirthing certificate. But you get the point. True ritual inspiration must be mined from the stuff and story of your own life, and some of those items might be connected to your cultural heritage. For example, nesting dolls connect to mine and so that’s a ritual item I have used in a couple of ways.
If you’re stuck for ideas, start with telling your story to yourself, even if that’s just a bullet point list. Once you’ve mapped the many faces, places, cherished items, and key experiences along your pathway, you’ll find ritual ideas and symbols will begin to jump out at you.
Or perhaps they won’t. In that case, maybe you’ll want to do the good work of hiring the services of a celebrant or working in tandem with a therapist to help you identify the wounded places that still bruise to the touch and to discern what form of healing feels right for you.
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