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:
1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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?
4. Understand the building blocks of what makes for a powerful ceremony based on who your children are and what the ceremony needs to accomplish.
5. 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 (I can do some quick examples to get people thinking)
Beginning Celebrations
Giving ceremony where the BP give permission for the AP 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.
Jean is going to take you through some suggested preparation that we as parents can do to make our use of ceremonies more effective. She is also going to introduce you to something very powerful called the Language of Love. Preparation and learning the love language your child speaks are essential in creating effective and memorable ceremonies. Then at the end of the session, we will showcase some resources for developing your own ceremonies as well as several examples of ceremonies to open communication with you and your children.
I call it 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 intuitwhat 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.