The First Time I Held You Was The Beginning of My Healing: A Poem

The first time I held you was the beginning of my healing. But first you had to break me. The truth is, you keep breaking me.

It’s in the breaking I find healing, though. I’m convinced it’s the most painful breakages that provide space for the deepest grace.

Adoption breaks a family before it ever makes one.

And is the breaking worth the making? It’s all achy, life shaking, mind shattering, heart breaking. It’s worth it for me one thousand times over, but I’m the lucky one.

It broke your family, uprooted you from where your roots were planted & placed you in soil foreign.

Each of you eventually landed in a home unknown; my home, my arms, my heart forever yours.

Even you who were moved from my home; one of you returned to roots original. Loss still scathes your soul, scarred on your heart never to part. You others moved to arms you weren’t born to, but hearts hopefully ready to carry you.

My heart breaks + aches at the thought of the pain you each carry from the top of your head to the tip of your heels. Pain placed upon you from no fault of your own.

How can breaking become healing, you may ask?

If some breaking helps become whole, isn’t it healing? Isn’t healing being restored to how we were meant to be? Isn’t it healing to see with empathy, and not just sympathy, or pride or entitlement? Isn’t it healing to break & bend, & in so doing pour out love because it’s all we have left?

But is it healing for me and you both? All of us? The fissures from this question aren’t lost on me.

It’s in the breaking I have learned what it means to love. It’s in the breaking I set down my pride, ego, selfishness.

It’s in the breaking I’ve found healing.

I broke when I held you. And this was the start of my healing.