Adopted Bodies (Part Two)

By Dr. Liz DeBetta
Four years ago I wrote an essay for NAAM called Adopted Bodies Are Good at Holding it All In. Revisiting this piece of writing is an act of reflection and a way to track my growth. To remind myself that healing is possible and that I am doing it one day at a time even when it feels like I’m not. At the time, I was in the midst of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy and had written and performed my now award-winning solo show Un-M-Othered for the first time. I was deeply engaged in the radical act of making my truth known so that I might feel more healthy and whole. So that I might feel worthy of taking up space. So that I might help others to feel seen, heard, and understood. In that essay, I wrote,

The thing I want most in the world is to be healthy and feel whole. In many respects, I am healthy by society’s standards, but I am not healthy in myself because I have never felt like a whole person. I feel unhealthy because I feel like a fraud.

I feel like my insides don’t match my outsides, and I am constantly exhausted by trying to figure myself out. I have struggled to feel worthy of taking up space. I am so used to keeping myself small by not talking about things. By holding it all in. By ignoring my own pain, I have made myself numb. I have made myself a container of fear.

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How many of us adoptees feel like frauds? How many of us feel like our insides don’t match our outsides? How many of us struggle to speak about the pain, grief, and loss we have carried inside of us? How many of us have made ourselves containers of fear?


the quiet descends
reaches into the spaces in between
reminds me of the hollow places that still need to be filled
by reassurance
Going is not Leaving
but My Body does not distinguish between the two
My Body only remembers what being left alone feels like


I try to forget the things I never knew, to start again, start over, revise the plan because not knowing to begin with means that having a plan is ridiculous. How can you plan from a place of confusion and chaos? How can you plan when you feel like you don't exist? this is the existential crisis for me as an adoptee never feeling fully real fully accepted fully able to put both feet solidly on the ground because the ground has always been shifting and I've been living in a body that feels too much nothing at the same time and sometimes I feel like I've wasted so much time or that there's not enough time and I get paralyzed by not having enough to do to fill the time that I do have and then I remember how I made myself busy all of the time in order to keep myself in motion; to keep myself from feeling the fear the uncertainty and the unknowing that has always been inside of me.


I've been living in a body that feels too much and nothing all at the same time because adopted bodies are good at holding in the pain, the questions, the fear, the doubt, and the shame. We teach our bodies to be in control of all the things we have no control over. Our bodies become containers for the pain, the questions, the fear, the doubt, the shame of feeling like we aren't worthy. The feeling that we aren't enough and that we have to hide the pain we feel from being disconnected, the fear we have of being left again, the doubt of our continued existence if we stop pretending that everything is ok, what would it be like to finally get real? To teach our bodies to let go, to breathe, to learn to feel instead of holding it down, holding it in, dissociating it away, what would it feel like to release the control in our bodies and escape the pain that creates and make space for a new reality — one that allows us to expand instead of contract?



About the Author:
Dr. Liz DeBetta, creator of Migrating Toward Wholeness©, is an adoptee and independent scholar-artist-activist committed to changing systems and helping people navigate trauma through creative processes. She believes that stories are powerful change agents, and when we write and share them, we connect and heal. She has published articles on autoethnography and adoptee narratives, has an award-winning one-woman show called Un-M-Othered, and facilitates trauma-informed healing workshops for adoptees and women. Her book Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness is available from Brill Publishers. Website: lizdebetta.com