ORPHANS GIVING THANKS: Healing my inner foster child.

By A. E. Teller

Healing is my purpose and my passion. I find myself in discussions about healing often; I suppose it is my hyper-fixation. It’s why I built The Dorothy Project and am writing a parable of healing.

Sometimes, healing looks like playing with your inner child, sliding on rainbows toward unicorns and mermaids. Other times, healing looks very different. Some healing is done in the dark, alone, walking through shadowy places you’ve previously avoided.

These places hold information about you, buried in your subconscious, recorded in your tissue, that literally determines your choices and defines your being. Stories you told yourself about life and how you should relate to the world around you.

I’m healing one of these stories this week. It’s a deep wound I’m extracting, sitting with, and rewriting new processes that better align with this healed version of me. Typically, when I feel this type of energy, I isolate and incubate in my sadness until I work through whatever lesson or wound Spirit works out in me. I usually deal with a health flare-up, followed by lethargy and fatigue. It’s like an emotional flu.

In the past, I’ve been able to move through this in 24-48 hours, but this week I’ve really struggled to pull myself out of this rut. I’m taking part in a 40-day ritual, and in financial literacy and social media courses. I wake up each day to go to work and do my homework with little reserve beyond.

Factor in the holiday I hate most with the lack of community since the move. I am sad, and I miss my kids.

I promise that there are happy tears at the end of this post, but before we reach the epiphany, let me help you understand this holiday through the lens of an orphan (spiritual, literal, or foster kid).

As a foster child, I struggled with Thanksgiving. Most of us did, and some still do. For the first eight years of my life, food scarcity was a big issue. When I went into foster care, I struggled to eat because I felt guilt and anxiety about my siblings and mother, not knowing if they were being fed.

Holidays with extended family were extremely challenging for me. They treat the foster kids differently than the “real kids”. As a foster kid, you’re often completely ignored or, worse, on the other side of the spectrum where they are intrusive and ask questions that are simply not trauma-informed, or dignified.

Feeling uncomfortable and overstimulated, I often wandered into unoccupied places. I’d stand in the hallway, examining collaged frames of family members, and generations of interwoven stories that came together to create this family. I would imagine myself there among the collection. What would life be like if I had a family like this one?

And I would disassociate as I daydream, creating worlds that never existed outside of my imagination. Timelines with people who understood me, because they were a part of my being. This custom would become a key component in my art installations as an adult, but as a child this obsession of being represented on someone’s wall, being worthy of a frame, and a nail, and a place of permanent prominence would haunt me much of my life.

Thanksgiving reminded me that no matter how gifted I was, or how well I performed, there was no place on a wall or shelf for my trophies, no frames with my photos, because I was just passing through here. I would perpetually remain a spiritual orphan in this world. It always has been that way, so I busied myself in my community, and in my kitchen, slaving my life away, making my house the home that took in the other orphans of all ages. I cooked extravagant feasts from scratch, pouring all the love I could muster into the moments with my (and others’) kids.

I loved becoming the mother I’d daydreamed about as I cut decorations with safety scissors next to my youngest child, head full of dreads, creating core memories, imbedding my maternal love in his subconscious, shaping new realities through these tiny beings, these smaller versions of me, investing my energy in outcomes that outlive me.

But then, escaping after bed to the quiet of a long, hot shower, where I curled up in a fetal position as the water washed over me, I would weep at the internal wound of a life that never experienced a love like mine. Each year I experienced these juxtaposed expressions: the gratitude for the babies I loved so dearly, and the pain of never being properly loved.

Giving thanks for what I held in my hand, while crying out for more.

This was the Thanksgiving way, before things went sideways and I now have to split holidays. Since I wouldn’t have the kids this year, I wanted to spend Thanksgiving In complete solitude, in silence, intentionally. I adore myself and genuinely like being alone. I wanted to clear my head, and really think about what it was I wanted out of this life. Moving into Solstice, when I do my yearly rituals, I wanted to get very clear about what is best for me.

I basically wanted to go back to the metaphorical hallway scene I described earlier and visualize what reality best fits me in this next phase. Now that I am older, and a lot healthier, what would I choose to dream for myself now?

Earlier, I mentioned a key element of my art installations that I incorporated a few years ago. One was a very long external hallway that led to the outdoor smoking garden. In the hallway, I placed a series of painted empty picture frames with a QR code to the poem about growing up in foster care. These empty picture frames represented portals to new worlds, where we get to write whatever stories we want, now.

The installation with the empty picture frames served as an invitation to everyone who took part in my shows that a box, framed or unframed, does not define them any more than you are defined by family, or the things that happened to you.

You are more than what happened to you, and you, like Harold and his beautiful purple crown, can create whatever life you want.

I stepped back with the inner-child I’ve been re-parenting, and I reminded myself (and her) of all the difficult things we’ve overcome, and all the wonderful things we’ve done since those hallway days.

Smiling through the tears has been a regular feature of late.

I recognize that healing is hard, and dark, and lonely. Sitting in the devastation of your losses is an important aspect of healing. But then, I notice that my heart always fills with warmth when I take time to recall all the weathered storms. And how we always seem to rebuild the damn house from the debris, even cuter and better than before.

This Thanksgiving, I wept hard as I said goodbye to hiding in hallways, afraid to open up to any reality where I might not be invited to pull up a chair and feast with the family. I said goodbye to building tables and baking feasts only to eat over the sink and later weep in the shower, alone and unloved. This year, I set expectations. Channeling Harold, I pulled out that purple crayon and I drew a picture of the life I am building for myself.

And for my little one that lives within me, that has been with me every step of the way. Onward we march toward another day… giving thanks with one hand while stretching to reach for new realities with the other...

This is the Orphan’s way…

Spoken Word: Decades Late