HOW TO COMMUNICATE WHEN THERE’S NO COMMUNICATION
*When you haven’t found your child or birth family yet.
*When you meet and it didn’t go well, and now they don’t accept calls or texts.
*When you’ve had a great reunion and then there’s very little communication after.
When communication is not satisfying.
*When you’ve had a good relationship for years and then it’s cut off.
*When you’ve been flat out rejected.
When communication ends or is limited, we are left feeling devastated and powerless to change things, a feeling that mirrors the root of our deep pain over our great losses, a profound and sometimes unconscious feeling of helplessness that both adoptees and first/birth parents share.
Adoptees were powerless over decisions others made for them, decisions that would impact their entire lives. First/birth parents were powerless over the circumstances that caused them to have to give up their child. Powerlessness is a feeling you never want to go back to, yet here it is again years later. You believe you have no control over your life and nothing you can do can change the situation when you can’t communicate with someone important to you.
A sense of alienation is at the core of the feelings of powerlessness. Alienation is a feeling of estrangement both from others and from oneself, of being cut off from some essential aspect of our true nature. How can an adopted person not feel alienated from his or her true nature having been cut off from one’s original family and genetic and ancestral heritage, so essential to knowing oneself. For many first/birth parents alienation occurs from being cut off from family and society and most times from one’s own true needs and desires and having to live with lies.
We have reached an abyss. But the abyss can be a good place, a place to discover healing.
Sometimes the feeling of powerlessness can be masked with anger, or sorrow, or indifference in order to feel in control. It’s frightening to feel estranged from someone with whom you share an innate bond. It’s easier to find a reason not to want a connection, much harder to stay open to them. (Except, of course, if the relationship is abusive, although there is a way to still communicate in a safe way, if you feel the need.)
My therapist, Toni Trieste, was the first person to introduce me to this idea of being able to communicate with my son, even though I was still searching for him and had no idea where he was. “In a meditation or while walking in nature, send him love.” Just that simple suggestion brought up all sorts of confused feelings. Do I have a right, I asked her? “Of course, you do. You’re his mother. And so, he will feel it because you two are bonded.”
That afternoon, I took a walk among the trees in our neighborhood and thought about her suggestion. First, I had to take in that she had said that I was his mother. No one had said that to me before, ever. As I walked, I got centered in my heart and sent love to my son out there in the Universe somewhere. It felt so surprisingly powerful that I hoped he wasn’t driving a car! As I walked along through the trees, I realized I had stopped feeling helpless in my search. Even if Toni was wrong about his being able to receive it, I still felt calmer and more peaceful about waiting to find him. That was big progress. The search for my son had turned into a search for spiritual answers to life’s mysteries as well.
When I still couldn’t find my son through normal channels, I went to a psychic. Even though I wouldn’t be able to confirm what he told me until I met my son, John Norman was able to describe his life and knew the part of the country where he lived. Again, until I found him, I wouldn’t be able to know if he was right. But, after meeting him, I had the sudden realization one day that John was getting all his information from me, from my energy field. I’d known deep down all along about my son. I began to read everything I could about such a phenomenon, already struck by the many stories in the adoption community about synchronicities and psychic experiences. Such phenomenon of going into the deeper dimensions of the mind seemed much more common in adoption circles, most likely from the trauma of being apart and the primal need to connect. In ancient times, primitive survival required telepathy so a child would never get lost. Maybe this was what we were tapping into – our most basic instincts.
To communicate telepathically it's essential to find a peaceful place in your home with no distractions. Or a special place out in nature, or a quiet church - anywhere you can be that’s quiet and where you won’t be interrupted. It should also be a beautiful and inspiring place, if possible. Already then, your energies will at a higher vibration, which is important. You will need to allow an uninterrupted space of time the first time, because you may experience a whole gamut of emotions, resentments, and doubts coming up. That’s great! Healing is happening when you become aware of your deepest thoughts and emotions. Try not to stay stuck there. They are showing themselves so you can let go of old baggage. You want your energy to reach a beautiful, loving place, so that your communication can be received in a beautiful way.
One of the women in the first/birth mother support group I facilitated decades (!) ago held so much anger that most of the women threatened to quit the group if she continued to come. I connected her with a shaman, and during their powerful session the woman let go of all her anger. The next day, she wrote a letter of apology to all the members of our group. And believe it or not, her son, who had refused to speak with her for three years, called her and they met. He sensed her anger was gone. She was a changed person from then on. Even though her anger was completely justified, it didn’t serve her and alienated her from others – and most importantly from herself.
This way of communicating when there’s no communication is not about planting thoughts in someone’s mind but about energy. We all have the capacity for telepathy. We experience it when thinking about someone and then they call. We all feel energy and can discern good or bad energy in a room or from someone, for example. The fact that we can pick up on energy and get an accurate sense of things makes it vital to be in a good space when we attempt to communicate on the level of spirit or soul to soul. One way to do that is to imagine the translucent colors of the rainbow one at a time in the following order surrounding you: red, orange, yellow, emerald-green, sky blue, indigo, and then gold. Each color has an increasingly higher vibration. If you know the person, you can visualize them within the same translucent colors. When you finally feel at peace, you can have that conversation you’ve been wanting to have.
Susan, an adoptee, first contacted her mother February 2021 by letter. Two weeks later, they spoke on the phone, when her mother called Susan in response to Susan’s letter. The next time they spoke was over a year later in March of 2022 in response to Susan’s letter sharing her deep desire for a relationship. Susan did not receive a direct response to her invitation for a connected relationship but did receive some hope for the future in her mother’s text. Buoyed by this glimmer of hope, Susan to send a card monthly. When Susan sent an album of her life, she received a thankful text from her mother. Susan confided in me that she was hurt that she didn’t receive a phone call. Susan so wanted to talk with and connect with her mother about her album and the important moments in her life her mother had missed. She continued the monthly cards up until this past Christmas, when she sent her mother a beautiful China plate. When she received no response, Susan decided to stop sending the cards. The next contact she would make would be on Mothers’ Day, unless she heard from her mother before then – and she didn’t.
"Good morning, Carol,
I hope you had a beautiful Mother's Day.
I wanted to share that I took your advice. I bought a pink candle, and I left the house early yesterday morning to get to our local state park before sunrise (figured I could get back for Sunday brunch that way!). I hiked around the lake, read a sweet picture book about mothers' love that I bought a few weeks ago and then I lit my pink candle by the lake and thought about my birth mother and how we are connected in the universe but just not connected in the reality of daily life. I felt really peaceful after that and took a picture of the beautiful candle lit and blowing in the wind by the pond and set it as my Home Screen and left.
Late in the afternoon yesterday, my birth mother texted me and wished me a Happy Mother's Day and thanked me for my card. It was pretty pro forma but seemed a tad more upbeat than over the past year. I was glad that she texted and did not ghost. So, I texted back a joyful text and was pretty teary eyed that texting is all we do - then she texted a heart and then I sent her the picture of the candle and told her that I lit a candle for her that morning - she replied with more hearts. So - we did connect. This is hard - but beautiful.
Thanks for everything,
Susan"
Eckhart Tolle was on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday recently talking about how most problems with relationships stem from the ego’s desire to control things, have things our way, but then we miss what is really going on and why. Most of our reactions to what’s happening with others is just surface stuff when the mind and consciousness operate at deeper dimensions. When we allow deeper dimensions, we can let go of the ego’s needs and discover what the lack of communication is teaching us.
Even if this way of communicating never brings about a real conversation, we have begun one with our self that will take us to deeper and deeper understandings of our inner truth.
