Letter From the Facilitators
BY ridghaus with sara easterly, alice stephens,
jennifer dyan ghoston, and kate murphy
Body. (Em-Body-Meant)
After 26 hours of labor, my wife pushed out a blue-eyed, red-haired lad. I held him after some momma skin-time and I could not break my gaze. He laid there in my hands, squirming slightly, a little baby burrito that entirely captivated me. This continued for many, many years.
In his infancy as he napped in the crook of my arm, I’d fall asleep watching him. At times, I’d sneak into his room after he fell asleep to watch his chest rise and fall and look at the shape of his slumbering face.
While my red hair had eventually turned auburn, to brown, to gone, I could see my self in him. Mirroring, it’s called. But unlike looking in the mirror, where only the mirror has solidity, what I actually saw was embodiment. My looks embodied within his form.
At times, I felt silly. I mean, isn’t this just fathers loving their children? Why did it draw me so, so often, so long, and to such a depth?
My fascination finally landed in a sensical world, when I discovered this child was the only genetic relative I’d ever watched grow. As he turned nine, I found out my childhood family had adopted me, but never told me. I grew up believing I had no mirrors in the world. I felt only disembodied, as if I existed as an apparition from some long-forgotten battle, left only to hover as a memory.
So here was the only genetic connection I’d ever lived with. And my eyes opened to all of the ways I never had embodied words, ideas, characteristics, and features. As I read adoptees’ and late-discovery adoptees’ words, I finally started to settle into myself. To find my words. To find my body. To embody meant to extract my ghost from the air and root inside. To fit and to inspire. To find wholeness.
Herein, we have adoptee writers embodying their lives, their words, their community, and their experiences. Sharing the words they can in-body, embody—and in so doing, create their own body of work. Some talk about bodies of water. Some talk about their own sacred bodies. Some share how their bodies were violated. We sit. We witness. We nod and share our own bodies’ experiences and feel embodied with one another. I hope you do, too.
Ridghaus relinquished a son at age 19 and then later, at the age of 35, learned that he himself had been relinquished and adopted.
He is the co-creator of the documentary film Six Word Adoption Memoirs, which has been shown to rave reviews and many tears at various adoption conferences nationwide.
Ridghaus has a Master’s degree in English Composition and Literature and has taught university-level writing and media courses, including poetry, for the last 20 years.
