The student is ready

In 2004 I found myself in the back seat of a rented car, bumping down a dirt road somewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula in the southernmost tip of Mexico. The driver had just spent a week teaching us Reiki, and now the four of us were off to explore some of the lesser-known ruins of the area. We leaned in to talk as we sped along the dirt road with hot wind in our hair and dust in our eyes, and we discovered that three of the four women in that car had relinquished our firstborn children for adoption.

Until that point I'm not sure I really knew any other birthmothers. It's not information I'd typically offer at a cocktail party. And yet there I was, plunked down in a speeding car in the jungle with two others like me. Coincidence? I think not.

As the Buddhist proverb goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." These women were my teachers. Each had found her own path toward healing and was continuing on her journey, and at that moment our lives intersected in a beautiful synchronicity. I learned from them new perspectives on adoption and different ways to move forward, and I was reminded of the huge capacity of human love.

Who are our teachers, and what are we learning? When we truly begin to pay attention, we discover that there are many voices out there heralding their perspectives on adoption and everything else under the sun. Sometimes those voices mirror our own, and we get validation and the gift of feeling understood. Other times we hear things that make our skin crawl. The tendency is to dismiss the messages from those with a different experience, or from other triad members, by telling ourselves that they just don't get it.

Maybe they do get it. Maybe we are being given the opportunity to understand yet another facet of adoption. Do we see that opportunity when we're in the midst of an emotional reaction to what we're hearing?

Sometimes we don't. But the times we can manage to stay with our reaction until the intensity has subsided, we can catch a glimpse of a gem of wisdom at its core. Often we don't want that little gem, because in order to receive it we have to give up being right -- a high price to pay. Is it worth it?

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