Rituals and Ceremonies for Families Formed through Adoption
A talk by Jean MacLeod and Carrie Kitze
At the Midwest Adoption Conference
November 7,2004
Introduction
Rituals and ceremonies are an important part of the fabric of a family. They can offer a sense of clarity, a bridge to healing and some continuity as we make the journey from birth to old age. When we are born, we are named, christened or perhaps have had a bris held. We are baptized, confirmed, batmitzhvad, married and many have a funeral when we die. Some rituals are conscious and follow milestones on our life journey; others are the little things, the mundane which form the fabric of our lives together as a family. For my family, weekends were family time from Saturday morning pancakes that my Dad didn’t use a recipe to make, to Sunday night “junk suppers” when the leftovers from the previous week were shared. Christmas saw 40 different kinds of cookies and silly stocking gifts that made each of us howl with delight. We always knew there was a connection to family and in many cases, it was the ritual that cemented the feeling.
Sharon Kaplan Roszia, in the forward to Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges states beautifully that: “rituals are powerful containers of emotion that we can draw upon as we wish for comfort, clarity, and memory. The world of adoption has not traditionally tapped into this rich resource.”
So how do we as adoptive parents do just that? When a family is formed or added to through adoption, many of the standard rituals or ceremonies that a family might have done with the addition of a child to a family have been disrupted. Perhaps the child is not an infant so the usual christening or naming ceremony doesn’t fit the standard mold. A child may already come with a name or be able to walk down the church aisle at his own christening. How do we honor the family our children have from before and extend the honoring to encompass the family they have now? How do we honor and help explain who are children are and where they have come from and where they are headed?
Ceremonies can help us do just that. They can bring the pieces together and be a part of working through issues of loss, transition, self-esteem, fears, learning and remembering. What a powerful tool we can create in our Adoption Parenting toolbox. We can create ceremonies that help to celebrate the joys and challenges of everyday life. We can create ceremonies to normalize issues that might be unique to the adoptive experience and to open the dialog surrounding these topics. We need to congratulate our children as they navigate life challenges and their changing awareness of adoption issues as they grow. And we need to congratulate ourselves for the work we do for our kids and for the major progress they have made.
One other very special area where rituals and celebrations are important are in the area of defining our understanding and honouring of the birth families each of our adopted children have. Whether we have met them or not, welcoming them into the circle of family is a powerful connection for our children to have us make with them. Leceta Chisholm Guibault ( Canadian adoption writer and adoptive mother) wrote the words “our mutual family” during some recent discussions online with adoptive mothers talking about the relationship possible between birth and adoptive families. Hers is an internationally adopted family from Columbia and Guatemala.
She has used these words to describe how she has made a relationship with her son’s birthfamily (an open adoption) such that now she considers that he is the mutual son of her family and his birthfamily. What a powerful and dynamic phrase. And it shows how families can adapt and make a positive out of loss…together. It points to how adoptive families can grow not only with the arrival of their children, but through vital connections to their birth-families, either real or in their hearts. Families become mutual when relationships are acknowledged, fed and then grown together (even when far apart). All of us with adopted children are in a mutual family with our children’s first families, even if we do not know who those people are. We can make them a part of our life, and we can toast them on special days….. and with special ceremonies.
What we are going to try to accomplish today is to share with you the wonderful benefits of honouring your children, their accomplishments and the circumstances of how they have joined your family. We will try to give you tools for your adoption parenting toolbox to:
- Define what we mean by ritual and ceremony and give you an overview of some of the life events and challenges that make good ceremony or ritual material
- Determine the most effective way to communicate with your child (the Language of Love). Once you understand that, it is easier to create more targeted and powerful rituals that truly speak to the audience of the ritual.
- Understand some of the underlying feelings that might surface or have surfaced as some of these rituals and ceremonies are performed. How can we prepare ourselves as parents to answer questions and deal with the feelings?
- Understand the building blocks of what makes for a powerful ceremony based on who your children are and what the ceremony needs to accomplish.
- Take you through several ceremonies to get a feel for truly how easy they are to put together and how powerful they are for all participants.
Ritual vs. Ceremony
For the purpose of this talk, we are going to break these down into two separate groups.
Rituals are simple and spontaneous ways to spread the warmth of family love. We use a red plate at dinner to showcase when someone has had a special day. It might be a birthday or just a day someone did well on a math test. Jean’s family uses something called high/low where each family member recounts the best and worst thing that happened that day at dinner. These are simple things to keep a family supporting each other and talking to each other. Communication is the key. Does your family have a special ritual?
Ceremonies are a little more thought out and structured. They are designed for a life event or for working through some particular type of struggle.
Types of Ceremonies
Beginning Celebrations
Giving ceremony where the Birth Parents give permission for the Adoptive Parents to parent
(usually done in the hospital and generally open adoptions)
Naming-the first step in becoming part of the family
Legalization/ –when the child officially becomes a family member
Extended Family—introducing the child into extended family
Transitions—these ceremonies are designed to express sadness for what is left
behind and hope for what will happen in the future
Creating Normalcy in transitions
Adding a new family member
Returning home ceremony for after a hospital stay or even vacations
Ending of the school year or beginning of the school year
Bolstering Self Esteem
Feeling good about who we are
A place for everyone
Loss
Remembering when we met (Anniversary)
Honoring Birthparents
Loosing a loved one (person or pet)
Honoring
Mother’s Day/Mother’s Day Eve
Father’s Day/Father’s Day Eve
Ceremonies make things concrete so that you can address issues that might be troublesome for you or your child. But in order to make the ceremonies the most effective for you and your child, there are some background steps that you will need to take to prepare everyone for what might surface.
Conscious Parenting. Therapist Dan Hughes calls it attunement, Dr. Dan Siegal calls it collaboration, but it is the act of parenting your children with an extra level of awareness. Our adopted kids come to us with an extra level of grief, loss, & trauma- to effectively parent these kids, we need to meet them halfway with an extra depth of parenting. Rituals and ceremonies can help us pull our kids into our family fabric
“I LOVE YOU RITUALS” book
We build love with repeated demonstrations of caring. But an “I Love You Ritual” will be meaningless without the connection of underlying communication. When we put a loving note in our kid’s lunchbag, it is just a sweet gesture, unless that child truly feels loved. Adopted children may feel shame about being abandoned or relinquished- they internalize feeling bad or unworthy. To simply tell an adoptee that you love them isn’t taking the extra step to reach that child’s extra level of emotional need.
WHY do you love this kid? If he is so great, why did his own birthmom not want him? Now this is not something you go into in a lunchbag note, but it is the kind of homework over the long haul that is necessary to make these rituals and ceremonies authentic.
Why do you think your birthmom didn’t keep you?
Did you think you were a bad baby?
Did you know that there are no bad babies, only adults with big problems?
Did you know it’s okay to love a birthparent, AND be really mad at the choices they made for you?
Honest communication is part of the connection that makes the ritual work
Demonstrating that you can talk about tough feelings is vitally important before a child can integrate the full meaning of a Ritual or Ceremony. Honoring a birthmom without exploring the context and meaning of a birthmom or of losing a birthmom (at age appropriate level) is an empty gesture.
Imagine the affirmation a child receives who gets an note in a lunchbag that differs from the usual “I love you, have a great day, XOXO mom”
What if a kid who’s been having a tough time, got a note that said:
“Do you know that I love you in part because you are an incredibly brave child? Because you have so worked hard to understand your feelings? You are an important part of our family, and you have made an amazing place for yourself in this world. That everything you do, that everything you feel, that where you came from and WHOM you came from is all part of why I love you!”
The ritual of a lunchbag note, the ceremony of Mother’s Day Eve- they can all be taken to the next level of parenting- the level we need to be on to meet our multi-leveled children.
Total acceptance from mom or dad of “the good, the bad, and the ugly” is important to any child, but especially to an adopted child carrying the heavy burden of previous rejection.
When feelings are shared, and honesty is allowed- it acknowledges the relationship. It’s a child knowing his mom knows the true him, and loves him anyway.
In addition to your willingness to walk on hot coals and talk about tough subjects, you can do something else to make your child feel special. You can tailor your rituals, traditions and ceremonies to your child’s particular Language of Love.
“THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES OF CHILDREN” book
Author Gary Chapman, who wrote “The Five Love Languages of Children” with Ross Campbell, contends that there are five major methods of love-giving (or "love languages"), and that each person responds differently to each type. Each person also "speaks" a primary love language, and responds strongly to one of the types of love-giving. In order to best make someone feel loved, you must "speak" their primary love language to them. Chapman says that love languages can have a major effect on your children’s behavior and happiness.
The 5 Love Languages are:
quality time
words of affirmation
gifts
acts of service
physical touch
Most people have one or two love languages that are much more meaningful. The difficulty is that we tend to express love in the ways that are more meaningful to us – not in the ways that are more meaningful to the recipient.
I think many of us intuit what our children like and need in the way of "love", but I like this love language cut-to-the-chase guide. Helps me quickly step into my kid’s shoes, and be more understanding. And it helps to figure out the misconnects two people accidentally give each other when both are speaking different languages of love-giving.
My nine yr old daughter is unmoved by expensive, special gifts. I can’t tell you how annoyed I’ve been in the past, after choosing a perfect “I love you” gift, only to have her be under-whelmed. She used to drive me nuts, hanging on me, grabbing my arm, in my space…until I realized that physical touch was her Language of Love. Gifts were much more meaningful to me. Now when we have time together, I suggest that we do each other’s hair, or that I paint her nails. I make an effort to give lots of hugs and hold her hand.
My youngest deeply craves “Quality Time”, and is at her happiest when playing Hello Kitty Uno with me.
How can you tell your child's MAIN love language? Chapman offers these suggestions:
1. Observe how your child expresses love to you.
Watch your child; he may well be speaking his own language. This is particularly true of a young child, who is very likely to express love to you in the language he desires most to receive.
2. Observe how your child expresses love to others.
If you notice your child making crafts for relatives, or wanting to take presents to classmates or teacher, this may indicate that her primary love language is Gifts.
3. Listen to what your child requests most often.
If your child often asks you questions like "How do I look, Mommy?", "What do you think of my drawing?", or "Did you think I did well at practice today?", this pattern may indicate that his love language is Words of Affirmation.
4. Notice what your child most frequently complains about.
Frequent complaints such as "You never have time for me", "Why don't you play games with me?" or "We never do things together" would be indicative of the need for Quality Time.
5. Give your child a choice between two options.
Chapman and Campbell suggest you lead your child to make choices between two love languages.
Dad:
*Would you like me to fix your bike?
*Would you rather go to the park together and shoot some hoops?
(Acts of Service vs Quality Time).
Mom:
*Would you like to go shopping, and I'll help you pick out a new holiday outfit?
*Would you rather stay home and we'll do a puzzle together?
(Gifts vs Quality Time)
As you give options for several weeks, keep a record of your child's choices. If most of them tend to cluster around one of the five love languages, you have likely discovered which one makes your child feel most loved. At times, your child will not want either option, and will suggest something else. You should keep a record of those requests also, since they may give you clues.
What does knowing your child’s Language of Love have to do with Rituals & Ceremonies? It is part of knowing and understanding your child, and understanding how to design a simple family ritual to make it meaningful for your son or daughter.
For my daughter who likes Physical Touch, I make sure to give her 9 kisses every night at bedtime (one for every year). I rub her back with a towel and wrap her up in it in the exact same way after every bath. We hold hands when we give thanks at the dinner table.
My daughter who craves Quality Time will remind me if I’ve forgotten to do our ritual Hi-Lo’s at the dinner table. She deeply appreciates me working in her school classroom every week. She used to be in afternoon preschool, and since neither of us are morning-people, our ritual after I got her big sisters off to school, was to have breakfast on my bed in our pjs, and watch Sponge Bob together. She’s in all-day K now, and still talks about the good old days!
Our family rituals, traditions and ceremonies can be small, intimate celebrations of love and ongoing commitment. They are made special by our understanding of our children’s needs.
“THE HEART OF THE FAMILY” book
Meg Cox, in “The Heart of a Family” advises that:
- Rituals are more likely to be successful if we design them for the benefit of our children
- That we need to think ahead, plan for the unexpected, and not take ourselves too seriously
- We shouldn’t assume that others come to the ritual with the same goals and purposes that we have
- And that no matter how prepared, and how loving we are, some rituals will inevitably fail: ‘”family rituals born of love may crash & crumble, but the love will outlast the disappointment”
Don’t be afraid to eliminate your ritual if it isn’t working, or change it to fit growing children.
It doesn’t have to be a big, formal ceremony to be special. Meg’s book stresses that it’s the quiet thoughtfulness of a ritual that touches the soul of a family… and it happens with our extra awareness of our children and knowing what makes them feel loved. It happens with our Conscious Parenting. ~
Ideas for Celebrations, 2 examples
Anyone can design a celebration that fits the exact fabric of your family. Keep in mind the level of reading and types of participation your children might be up to or able to do based on their skill levels. For little children, perhaps they can help create decorations, blow out candles and learn one or two lines that repeat. For older children, enlist their aid in crafting the words and sentiments that are important for them to be included. For a Mother’s Day ceremony done by a friend, Sheena Macrae in England, instead of using bulbs that the she had planned, her daughter Heather requested cut flowers since her roots had been severed by adoption. Heather was adopted in China and has no contact with her birth family at this point. This ceremony could be revisited as her understanding and awareness change as she grows.
The key with any ceremony is flexibility. Participants shouldn’t be too tired or if it has been a hectic day, save the emotions some of these ceremonies surface to a calmer day. There are no right or wrong answers, just the wish to honor or celebrate some certain something about our families and our children.
Family Anniversary Celebration
Perfect for around a dinner table with a special meal to follow
(Dad speaks) Each family is unique and so is ours! We are made up of people who have come together from different places and in different ways. We love each other and today we want to reaffirm our commitment to each other. To share in the joys, work through the differences, support each other through sad or difficult times. Today, August 20, is the day we have chosen to honor our family. We have chosen August 20 because we are always together at that time of year and this celebration honors our togetherness as a family.
(Unison): We are a family and our commitment to each other is for forever.
(Mom): I joined this family thorough marriage with your father on May 21, 1988
(Dad): I joined this family through marriage with your mother on May 21, 1988
(Brother): I joined this family when I was born in Neenah Wisconsin on June 3, 1995
(Sister): I joined this family when I was adopted in China on February 21, 1999. I was born on May 6 1998 to my birthparents in China.
(Unison): We are a family, and our commitment to each other is for forever.
(Mom speaks) Each family has members who are not with them that they would like to honor. Some of the people we honor have died and are no longer with us. Some of the people we honor are people who live far away who we don’t often see. Some of the people we honor are people we don’t know yet.
(Brother): We remember Besta, Pops, Aunt Toots, Great Grandpa,
(Sister): We remember Uncle Chris, Aunt Barbara, Isabelle and Alexandra
(Dad): We remember Jennifer’s birth family in China
(Unison): We are a family, and our commitment to each other is for forever.
(Dad speaks): As a family we support each other through the good times and the bad. We are always there for each other. We share in each other’s joys and we help each other in time of sorrow or difficulty. Each of us will share our happiest time from the past year and our biggest challenge from the past year.
(Each participant takes his/her turn):
This year my happiest time was_____________
This year my biggest challenge was __________
(Unison): We are a family, and our commitment to each other is for forever.
(now the family lights a candle with three wicks or three candles)
(Mom Speaks): As a family, we light this candle together. One wick is for our family, all here surrounding this table. One wick is for each of us as individuals because it is our special and unique selves that come together to make this the special family that we are. The third wick is for those family members that we are separated from either by circumstance, distance, or death.
(Unison): We are a family, and our commitment to each other is for forever.
I will forever be your Mom
I will forever be your Dad
I will forever be your Sister and Daughter
I will forever be your Brother and Son
(Unison): We are a family, and our commitment to each other is for forever.
Celebration #2
A Celebration of the Circle of Family
This ceremony is based on one created by Rev. Katie Lee Crane preaching at the First Parish of Sudbury, November 14, 1999.
Spoken from different places in the room:
Reader #1
You see the one that I am, not the one that I was
But the one that I was is still part of myself.
Jean Amery
Reader #2
May I claim my motherhood in all fullness and diversity, joy and
sorrow, moments of discomfort and ambiguity. May I let my daughters
each fashion their own many-colored cloth of life, densely woven from
all their threads of identity, made steely by truth.
Becky Miklos (adoptive mother)
Reader #3
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted:
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
They that go forth and weep, bearing precious seed,
Shall doubtless come gain with rejoicing,
Bringing their sheaves with them…….
For all flesh is like grass and all glory of people
like the grass flowers.
The grass is withered and the flower falls.
Brahms German Requiem verse 1 and 2
Reader #4
Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.
Salman Rushdie
3 wick candle lighting
Reader 1
We light this candle to honor the circle of family
Reader 2
The first light is the flame of truth
Reader 3
The Second light is the flame of love
Reader 4
The Third light is the flame of understanding
Unison
We light this candle to bring together all people who
are in our circle of family. May this light nurture and sustain
the light that is within each of us.
With thanks to Makanah Morris
Reader 6
Where do we belong?
“Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!” from Horace by Holly Keller.
This is the story of Horace who was yellow with black spots. He came to live with a wonderful family who were orange with black stripes. Every night his Mama told him the same story. “We chose you when you were a baby because you had lost your first family and needed a new one. We liked your spots and we wanted you to be our child.”
It was a very happy family. They loved Horace very much, and he loved them. Yet there were times when Horace wished with all his heart that he could have stripes instead of spots. Once, on his birthday, he tried to erase his spots and paint on stripes.
He tried different things, but nothing seemed to help. One morning, he left a note on the refrigerator: “I’m going to find a family where I belong.” That day he discovered a family who looked just like him – they were all yellow with black spots. They played and played and played; they had such a good time together. But then it was time to go home. “Come home with us,” they insisted. But Horace went home to his family, because that was really where he belonged. That night when Mama told him the story, he asked: “If you chose me, can I choose you, too? And he did.
We Need One Another
Responsive Reading with two readers or the congregation
Readers 2 and 3 alternating
We need one another when we would mourn and be comforted.
We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.
We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again.
We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.
We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs.
We need one another in the hour of our defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again.
We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.
All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.
Reader 5
“My Cinderella Story” from An Adoptee’s Dreams
by Penny Callan Partridge
Maybe seven years old, I was in that magical time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother and I were getting out of a crowded elevator in Bullock’s Department Store – Pasedena, California – when I saw two Cinderella dolls. One was in a patched gray and brown cotton dress. The other was in aqua satin, dressed for the ball. I can see myself stuck in front of them, with my mother finally saying, “Well, Penny, would you like one of those dolls for Christmas?”
How to tell her? The magic of those dolls was seeing them together. Before I could figure out what to say to my mother about this, I was crying. My mother must have been amazed, because I was the opposite of a temperamental or demanding child.
I eventually managed to say that the dolls had to stay together. If we bought one, the other would be alone, How awful to pick one over the other. And I wanted to play with them together. My mother then said, “Well, I want you to think about this. If you decide you want these two dolls for just about all of your Christmas, I’ll come back in a couple days and get them.”
That’s when I started crying even harder at this sensible but totally unacceptable idea. What if someone else came and bought one of the dolls? I pictured this man coming in and buying the fancy Cinderella for his daughter. We’d get the store to tell us where he lived, and we would drive around and around looking for him so we could try to get the doll back.
Fortunately, my mother understood that I needed this pair of dolls. Also fortunately, she was ABLE to buy them both that very day. I had to agree that I wouldn’t see them again until Christmas morning, but that was nothing!
We brought them home, she hid them away, and I felt I had averted a disaster. These two Cinderellas were going to see and know each other. They would even come to realize that they were the same person, even through a magic transformation had occurred, turning “the one” into “the other.”
In my one clear memory of actually playing with the dolls, we are under the corner windows in my bedroom and I am introducing them to each other. They’re shy. They’re different. But all three of us – or all four of us – know what an important moment it is.
I am fifty now, and I still have my Cinderellas.
Reader 4
"Giving Love Away"
by Beverly Walker
Fully awake, I am surrounded by broken dreams,
so painful and throbbing I long to re-enter my nightmares.
Past memories of a perfect love, shattered by lies, a suffocating reality leaves my limbs numb, my body shaking.
The never ending flow of tears pour from my soul,
leaving my heart cracked and empty.
A dreaded future, too unbearable to comprehend,
shows no mercy, offering only more grief.
My womb so full of life, drinking up my love,
coming into a world of suffering and pain.
A small glimmer of sunlight touches my soul,
blending with my tears to form a promise!
Caring, loving, aching arms of strangers anticipating loves arrival.
When I see the rainbow of joy and hope in their eyes,
the gaping wound of my heart will mend....to love again.
August 1996
Reader 5
What if you are from the Bear Clan (from a sermon by Rev. Katie Lee Crane)
When a child is born of the Bear Clan, you’ve got to tell him what it means to be of the Bear Clan. He’s got to be given a name that fits with Bear Clan customs. He’s got to know that he has this whole identity and that identity goes right back to the myth, right back to the beginning of time. That is strength. That is power. That makes you feel good about who you are. And if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know where anything else fits.
Searching becomes the metaphor. Just as Oedipus sought “the mother from whom I sprung,” so do we all. It is not merely about finding a mother or father; it is a spiritual quest. It is about finding yourself. One scholar, Jean-Paul Vernant, examining myth and tragedy in ancient Greece, said this:
When a man decides, like Oedipus, to carry the inquiry into what he is as far as it can go, he discovers himself to be enigmatic, without consistency, without any domain of his own or any fixed point of attachment, with no defined essence, oscillating between being the equal of the gods and the equal of nothing at all. His real greatness consists in the very thing that expresses his enigmatic nature: his questioning.
Two of the basic human questions are: “Who am I?” And “Where did I come from?” It is questions like these that not only form our spiritual identity but also shape our spiritual quest.
How is it that we nurture and grow our spirits?
One way, is through stories. We make meaning from the stories we are given. Our own. Others’. And the stories that shape our religious and cultural heritage and traditions. It doesn’t matter if you are Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic or Atheist. Inez Talementez, a member of the Mescalero Apache Sun Clan and professor of religion at Harvard and Santa Barbara, says: “Telling and retelling the stories is a way to keep meanings alive.”
Our identity – individual, cultural and religious – comes to us through stories. We need to know our stories. We need to tell our stories … the whole story, no matter how unorthodox or even unattractive it may seem. We have a right to privacy, but not secrecy. Let us know – and share – our whole story. It tells us who we are and where we belong.
Reader 6 a poem to adoptive parents
from The Family of Adoption by Joyce Maguire Pavao
You cannot change the truth,
These are your children,
but they came from somewhere else.
And they are the children of those places
and of those people as well.
Help them to know about their past
and about their present.
Help them to know that they are from extended families,
That they have only one parent or set of parents,
but they have more mothers and fathers.
They have grandmothers, godmothers, birth mothers, mother countries,
mother earth.
They have grandfathers, godfathers, birth fathers, and fatherlands.
They have family by birth and by adoption.
They have family by choice and by chance.
Childhood is short;
They are our children to raise;
they are our children to love;
and then they are citizens of the world.
What we do to them creates the world that we live in.
Give them life.
Give them their truth.
Give them love.
Give them all they came with,
Give them all that they grow with.
Your children do not belong to you,
But they belong with you.
You cannot keep them from what is theirs, but you can keep loving them.
You do not own your children,
but they are your own.
Recessional song
May the circle
Be unbroken
By and by, Oh, by and by
May the circle
Be unbroken
In the sky, Oh in the sky.
(Repeat)
Books for Parents
Creating family rituals & ceremonies:
I Love You Rituals by Becky A. Bailey, Ph.D
The Heart of a Family by Meg Cox
Designing Rituals of Adoption for the Religious and Secular Community
by Mary Martin Mason
Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges
by Cheryl A Lieberman, Ph.D. and Rhea K. Bufferd, LICSW
The Five Love Languages of Children
by Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell
