137 [Healing Series] Hiddgen Dignity Part 2
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/137
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You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.
Today is Part Two of my conversation with Pam Cordano on Hidden Dignity. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Pam Cordano. Hi, Pam.
Pam Cordano: Hi, Haley.
Haley Radke: Oh my word, I'm just so excited to talk to you again. And last week you were talking to us all about grievances and some really foundational principles I think a lot of adoptees need to hear.
And we're talking about things that are found in your book, 10 Foundations for a Meaningful Life (No Matter What's Happened), to Viktor Frankl with love, and I want to continue that conversation. I think it's so important and I don't know how many times I can say valuable in the same breath, but truly, you're sharing some things with us that I think everybody needs to hear, adopted or not, but specifically adoptees.
Thank you. Thanks for writing this book. It's so good. I gushed last time, so I'll try and hold back today.
Pam Cordano: And thank you for reading the book. It means a lot to me, really.
Haley Radke: I don't know if you saw, I'm going to show her. I have these beautiful book darts that my friend Carrie gave me. So there's like all these places I've marked up because I don't like to write in books, but these precious book darts I did use on your book, so that is like priceless.
All right. You have this really interesting story about a horse moment. Should we start there?
Pam Cordano: Yeah. I love that story. My friend Cynthia and I went to a silent meditation retreat north of San Francisco at a place called Spirit Rock. And I don't really meditate and I'm not Buddhist, but I went on this thing.
I thought what would happen if I were just silent for an entire week? I didn't know what would happen. I thought it might really be nice for me or it might be Hell. So I was curious, a little frightened. But anyway, we get there and I was excited also because my job involves so much listening, mostly listening, but some talking. And I was excited to just be quiet and not have to listen to anything except nature, birds and quietness.
So we get there and I was really, really upset to find out that this was not a silent meditation retreat the way I expected. It was a meta retreat, which means we had to say a meta practice, which is if I said it to you, Haley, I would say (there are different versions):
May you be happy. May you be healthy and strong in your body. May you be safe and protected. May you have ease.
And for the course of an entire week, we were going to be doing that for hours and hours, dawn to dusk, or actually till 9:00 PM, with easy people all the way to difficult people. And I was just really annoyed I was going to have to work. I was going to have to work and not to just sit there and relax.
Haley Radke: Did you have an instinct to fake it? My first thought is they're not gonna know. They're not gonna know what I'm thinking about that.
Pam Cordano: I could have done that. I'm sure I did some of the time. Yeah, yeah.
But so, day two, we were supposed to do a walking meditation, which is just going back and forth across 10 feet and then various things very slowly and I didn't want to do that. So I did break the rule and I walked way down to the edge of the property where I found a horse. It was a whole day that I'd been eating really healthy food and been silent.
So I thought the horse would be really drawn to me, like equine therapy or you can tell how you're doing by what the horse is doing. And so I kind of called to get the horse over and he came right over and I was really happy and I felt, oh, it was sort of a spiritual moment and clearly that had something to do with how clear I was getting in my heart and all this.
Well, I went back the next day and called him over and he didn't come and he was just in the middle of his pen eating his food. And I was mad at him. I was offended, I was hurt, I was emotional. I was probably going through sugar detox because all the food was really healthy. But I took it personally that he wouldn't come to me and I felt rejected by the horse.
And so part of me was really triggered by the horse and part of me was just rolling my eyes at myself and how ridiculous I was being and just watching myself react and knowing that it was whatever, just my own BS.
So, because I had nothing else to do, I gave a lot of thought to how I was feeling about this horse's “rejection” of me, and I started realizing over the next two or three days where he kept rejecting me again, that I wasn't really being loving toward the horse. I wanted what I wanted: his attention. I wanted his compliance, his obedience to me. I wanted it to be the center of his life. I wanted it to be more important than his food.
And I think, in some ways, silent meditation retreats are like this, like we don't think in our normal ways. Things get very exaggerated because we're in our own heads and, well, there's just nothing else to do. I mean, people react about crazy things. I mean I am probably not as crazy as I might sound right now in the story, but yeah, so I go in and sit on the cushion and I'm imagining this horse and I'm doing the meditation with the horse.
So I'm thinking, may you be happy. And I felt like, I guess so. May you be healthy and strong in your body. Yes, of course. May you be safe and protected. Yes, of course. May you have ease. I guess so. And I was just watching myself struggle with it. And as I went, as I practiced that over and over, eventually I did start to feel those things.
I did want the horse to be happy. I did want the horse to have ease. It kind of cleared it up. So as the week went on, I made going to see this horse twice a day a part of my practice. And it was a symbol of what I do with other people in my life and with grievances from my life.
And so I started trying, from that place of getting more clear about loving the horse and wanting the horse, truly wanting the horse happy and to have at ease and all the other things, I started walking toward the horse wanting to just be present for whatever the horse was doing without any attachment to what the horse did or didn't do with me.
And so I became horse-centered instead of Pam-centered, and it felt really good. It felt like suddenly I was really truly loving the horse and not just wanting from the horse in a self-centered kind of way. And then that led to me thinking about my kids and my husband and friends.
And with these meditation retreats it gets very subtle but clear that it takes a lot to just love a person and to be willing to see them and what they're doing or not doing as valid in its own right and not about me. So this goes back to our discussion last week, or last recording, where we talked about the idea that grievances require us to put ourselves in the center of a situation.
So here was me taking myself out of the center and really putting the horse back in the center because the horse's life is the horse's life. And I felt better. So, I mean, that's not to say the whole week was like that because I was on the cushion doing this meta with my biological family who I'm estranged from. I was doing it with my adoptive parents who died and we didn't have a good relationship. And I was doing it with hard people, too. Political figures, all kinds of people.
Haley Radke: Well, even when you start talking about it in the book, you talk about doing it with your daughter's dog.
Pam Cordano: He was my first one.
Haley Radke: This was the easy one and I thought, wow, okay. I mean, it's so true though. It's easier to put an animal in that place at first because no matter what person you're interacting with, there's always like a little something.
Pam Cordano: That's right.
Haley Radke: How did you feel at the end of that week? Five days feels like such a long time to be doing that.
Pam Cordano: It was seven. Seven full days.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh!
Pam Cordano: Yeah, seven full days.
Haley Radke: Okay. Seven full days of doing this over and over and over with all kinds of different people.
Pam Cordano: I felt really good because the thing was, there wasn't a lot of input. There wasn't a lot of input. I mean, I would see birds, I would see people out of the corner of my eye but we weren't really supposed to pay attention to each other.
So because I wasn't having interactions that might have typically set off my own grievances or triggers, it was like I had a break from all of that and, really, the worst problem I had of things that were there was me with this horse.
That was the hardest, my hardest relationship that week was with the horse. And it was hard. I mean, it was hard for a couple days in a very exaggerated kind of way.
Haley Radke: But even as you're just going through this world, right? You're always interacting with people and there's always little things that come up here and there that you're like, oh, really? That's what you're choosing to say? Like, there's all these little things, little tiny grievances we collect along the way.
Pam Cordano: Yeah, but luckily there we're all kind of our own worlds.
Haley Radke: The horse is the only one to give you…
Pam Cordano: Grief.
Haley Radke: Oh, I was gonna say it. And then I was like, oh, this is that. I'm glad you said it.
Last time we talked, you mentioned to me that you don't really like the word “forgiveness.” Can you talk more about that?
Pam Cordano: Yeah. I grew up in a non-religious family, so I didn't understand forgiveness from a religious or spiritual point of view. And every time I heard it, it just sounded like the cherry on top, as if we're supposed to know how to do that.
It felt like bypassing, spiritual bypassing. Grievances are full body experiences. So we can think we want to “forgive” somebody, but first of all, why? We would need a reason why to forgive somebody. And our bodies sometimes take longer to come along for the ride.
Like, I could think to myself, oh, I just wanna let that go. But yet my body could still react in a patterned way of threat and of anger and grievance. So I just don't understand the word forgive as a verb because it feels like it's just the top, like the head but it's not the whole system.
I think of forgiveness sometimes as more of a consequence. Like meaning: Okay, if I reconnect with my own sense of my dignity, if I get the things I need from other places, if I maybe unwrap some of my grievance stories, then eventually forgiveness might happen.
But it's just more of a consequence to these other efforts. I don't know if that's true, but that's sort of how I think of it.
Haley Radke: So when you are saying this meta prayer or mantra, you're kind of releasing things, right, over time about someone. How does that contrast for you with forgiveness? Is that linked in some way?
I do come from a religious background and so a lot of times people will talk about, oh, you're forgiving someone, you're taking them off your hook and you're putting them on God’s, and there's a real sense of there's going to be justice at some point, but I'm not going to be the one to give it to them.
Pam Cordano: And that's why I can let go of it because someone's gonna do it, right?
Haley Radke: Someone's gonna get 'em in the end. Which doesn't necessarily have a nice connotation to it either. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, though.
Pam Cordano: I think the value for me wasn't in feeling everything I was saying. Like, when I would put my biological family in my mind, I really didn't want them to have any kind of danger or illness.
Those were the easier ones for me. I could pretty much across the board not want people to be sick or in danger or unsafe, but it was more the happy and ease. The first one and the fourth one. May you be happy. May you have ease. That I would struggle with because what does it mean if my biological family is happy and has ease with me not in the picture?
What does that mean? And my old way of thinking would be what does that mean about me? And I could even start doing that right now. It's not that I'm over that. It’s like if they're happy and they have ease, maybe I'm just so inconsequential and it hurts, you know. So it wasn't that I was saying these things to pretend I felt that way.
It was more like I would wish it, and then I would see what happened. And you're right, it was a process. Like, I would have body tension. I would say “F that” in my head afterwards. I would have these phrases I would say after in my own mind.
But with the repetitive aspect of all this, it just started to ease a little bit. And the weird thing was I started to feel more free rather than like I was in an even more unfair situation. Because that had always been my thought before. If I give up my grievances, I'm really ripping myself off.
So the opposite happened.
Haley Radke: Did you keep up this practice after your seven-day retreat? If you had somebody that you were like, I'm collecting some things against this person. Maybe I need to do this a little bit.
Pam Cordano: I probably did it more for maybe the next two or three weeks. But then I stopped.
But now when I would do it would be if I were really suffering in a grievance. If it was the kind of thing where it was keeping me up at night, like being so mad at somebody or feeling so hateful towards somebody, I would do it to save myself. That's why I would do it. I would do it to remind myself, I was going to say, of who I am and I feel that way because who I am is I want to be better to myself than that. I don't want my night eaten up by an experience of hatred that's alive in my brain and in my body, and I don't want to go through that. I don't want it.
Haley Radke: What's that saying? There's this saying it's about unforgiveness, right? It's about, like, you're drinking poison and hoping the other guy dies.
Pam Cordano: Right, right. Yeah.
Haley Radke: It's not that exactly, but it's along those lines. So I kind of feel like that's what you're saying there, it's for you.
Pam Cordano: Yeah, because, like we talked about last conversation, the link for me and it was a link I had to try on, observe, play with over time that the grievances were hurting me more than they could possibly be hurting anybody else on the planet, and I didn't want it anymore.
Haley Radke: Well, I don't know, this might feel broad because there's so many things you talk about in the book, different practices that you've done, different things you've learned and it's great. There's so many valuable practices and examples in here.
Can you talk about that in maybe a more broad way of how you have taken this concrete base of grievances about adoption that we talked about last week, and added these practices in over time and in order to find that sense of freedom and actually enjoy your life and not have this cement block on you.
Pam Cordano: Well, what comes to mind when you ask that question is just, it is almost like I want to keep saying this because I don't imagine that anybody would believe me, although I know who I'm talking to and I'm talking to you and people who are adopted or care about adoption and the impact of adoption.
So probably the people listening to this care more than almost anybody. But the thing that really comes to mind is I really did not want to be alive. I never attempted suicide, but not attempting suicide doesn't mean you want to be here. So as soon as things would go wrong, I was on such a slippery slope of falling into a very overwhelming, tight trap that I couldn't easily get out of.
And also, I've had a lot of addiction and I had such a desperation to find a way to stay here. If I was going to stay here, I had to find a way. So I had this therapist in college, I write about that in one of the chapters, and I saw her for 11 years and she came to my 40th birthday party and she wrote me a card and she said, I’m going to start to cry if I say this.
She said: Has anybody worked so hard? She said, has anybody worked so hard? And I felt so seen by that because I've worked really hard. But the point is it's less about, like, my life feels so much better now. It does. And I believe in the things I'm teaching in the book. I believe in them. I believe they work.
But the thing that I was really dreading and avoiding by doing such hard work in so many different ways was I didn't really want to die, I guess, and not just die by suicide, but die by just never finding a way to be here comfortably. And kind of the agony of that, like the purgatory, the agony of that.
So that's what's behind all this effort and still is. I mean, I still have grievances. I could probably name five off the top of my head.
Haley Radke: Do you need to find a pasture somewhere and hang out with the horse for a bit?
Pam Cordano: I feel like it's a relief to name that because I think so many of us live with that underneath somewhere, and clearly the statistics tell the truth about how hard it is for us. And I do think it's a miracle for so many of us with our histories and with bonding trouble that we're here at all. Really, it's a miracle and we all should have the superhero logos on us.
Haley Radke: Well, I think it comes back to something that we talked about last week again and saying that expressing these feelings and, you know, there's that deeper meaning below: Okay, we actually are valuable even though we feel like we're just thrown away, rejected, unworthy, all the words, we know all that language. So discovering that you're meaningful and what does a life look like then?
Pam Cordano: That's right. That's right. Something I also realized, like sort of an Aha! moment for me was, well, no wonder we're mad because we actually deep down believe we're worth something and that we didn't deserve this. That's the basis of it all. It's this hidden dignity that we have. The other thing I realized is that a meaningful life is available to all of us.
Like a meaningful life isn't just for the people who had intact lives and minimal trauma. It's for us too. So how do we get there and how do we tap into that so that we're not just feeding our minds and our hearts with the grievances, but we're also, again, subversively and powerfully taking what's our birthright, which is life. If I'm going to be here, I want as much as I can have.
Haley Radke: Can I read a short paragraph from your book? Okay. So here's a paragraph from one of your chapters. I think this is chapter nine. And you've already shared with us before that your adoptive parents have passed away but you didn't have a very good relationship with them, and you were estranged from your biological family.
Okay, so here's the paragraph:
“I don't think about my adoptive parents or my biological families much anymore. When I do tension and heat don't accompany the thoughts. I don't need my past to be different. I don't need my family members to be different. What happened is I've become far more interested in something else. How can I serve the most people in my life now that I'm finally invested in being here? This is my new primary question.”
I read that and I thought, wow, isn't that exceedingly powerful? And I'm not like, oh, so everybody should be estranged. It's not about that, right? It's about what is your purpose? Can you talk about that?
Pam Cordano: Yeah. I thought that my biological family was going to be the golden ticket. I thought I got a bum deal and I was going to suffer until I was about 18 years old. And then I was going to go on the hunt and find them all, and it was going to be a beautiful reunion.
And to meet them again and connect with them was going to be like going back through the birth canal and being born as a real person. And I needed them to do that. And with that, they were everything to me in my mind. So when that didn't go well over a period of 10 to 15 years on both sides, I was disillusioned and I was full of despair.
So again, what am I going to do? Am I going to say, well then, I've lost my access point, forget it, or am I going to find another access point? And so part of the hard work has been how do I find another access point?
And when things really failed, I think I said this to you before, when things really failed with the last connection I had with my father's family, and when things failed there, I started doing pushups every day to counteract the weakness I felt inside. I felt so weak from the failure I felt weakened in my whole system, and part of me just wanted to lay down and give up. So I started doing push-ups to counteract it and to just fight.
To fight. Staying in the ring, staying with the push-ups and staying, fighting for myself, which is what dignity does, that's where the heat and attention calm down. And it's kinda like with the horse, like it does feel better to me now to give than to take. And when I'm in a bad mood, one of the first questions I try to get back to is, what's something nice I could do for somebody?
Because I know that's not how I grew up. I grew up thinking about number one, and self-preservation was everything to me. Self-protection, self-preservation, and the world was dangerous. So for me to think that way it's almost like I'm this angry adoptee that's become, God, I don't want to say the G word, but that's become, ah, connected. Connected.
Haley Radke: I'm like, wait, what G word? I know it. I know it.
Pam Cordano: Okay, but there's another G word, which is generosity. I'm interested in generosity because it feels good and it feels better than grievances. We've got two new G words. One is grievance and one is generosity.
And also, I know Victor Frankl, who I've talked about before, he did it and his story helped me. And so I think I'm out of the woods. I know I'm out of the woods and I hope my story can help other people.
Haley Radke: I love that you said that.
Pam Cordano: I’m not trying to compare myself to him, by the way. He's a hero to me. I'm just saying we all need each other. We all need each other's stories.
Haley Radke: Yeah. I haven't shared too much, but I went through extremely challenging year last year, and I don't talk about it publicly, and I don't know if that'll happen or not yet, but on my worst days, I would go out of my way to write a note to someone just telling them how much they meant to me and how important their work is.
And yeah, there's nothing like that, right? Because it's not out of a selfish place like I genuinely want to give them this gift of my words and encouragement, but man, I probably feel the best out of anybody.
Like I just feel so good. After it's hit send and hopefully they'll feel good receiving it. But that was something that I just had to do because I just feel like nothing. And that was the best thing I could do for myself in those really horrible moments.
And the responses I got from people were always, oh my goodness, this is so nice. Like very kind things. And people were often surprised that I had written to them. But, I mean, truly I felt so good after, and I don't know I see a little piece of that in what you're seeing, like those acts of generosity.
Pam Cordano: And I think that when you did that, it's a part of you that is still intact, that isn't damaged or obliterated by the other stuff going on. It's a part of you that's still whole. And so to work at those parts of us that are whole is powerful.
Haley Radke: All right. Thank you, Pam. Your book is just so beautiful. There is so much we can learn from it, and I especially love the structure. Can you just tell us a little bit about what you have at the end of each chapter?
Pam Cordano: Yeah, so the book has my 10, my literally 10 favorite foundations for living a meaningful life, which is also a way of saying my 10 favorite ways I learned how to save myself from death. And I think it's a hopeful book, even though it's an honest book. And at the end of the chapters I have four questions for each chapter to just think about the material and try to integrate it and apply it to your own life.
And then I have two immediate actions to increase your life force, like right now. Because I'm a practical person and I like the idea of what can I do right now to get this or to try it on or to see how this might work for me? So I tried to come up with two of those for each chapter.
Haley Radke: They’re so good, there's so many good things in there. You guys, you have to grab this book. Let's end on that practical note. Can you tell us the meta mantra again, because I think that would be a nice call to action for people to maybe practice that today, maybe for your dog, for a start. Or the most neutral person or your pet. A pet of some sort that you have neutral or good feelings toward.
Pam Cordano: Yeah. So you just sit somewhere comfortably. You don't have to sit on a meditation cushion. You can just sit on a couch or anywhere you're comfortable. You can even do this in bed before you go to sleep or when you wake up in the morning and you just quietly say to yourself, you think of a person or an animal, like Haley said, and you just say:
May you be happy. May you be safe and protected. May you be strong and healthy in your body. May you have ease.
And you don't have to fake it or pretend you feel it more than you do. You just try saying those words and try on that intention, and then you just see what comes up. And if you do it with something that's easier, like my daughter Sarah's dog Joey, he's so easy for me.
I want all of those things for him forever. And so it was really easy, and we did that. We did the easy thing for two whole days before we even got to somebody mildly complicated. So, and it feels good. And you can even do it for yourself and I do it for myself. Sometimes you could put your hand on your heart and you can close your eyes and just say it to yourself.
May I be happy. May I be safe and protected from danger. May I be healthy and safe in my body. May I have ease. Something like that. And you wish that for yourself. And then that helps. Now we're coming full circle. That helps reconnect with our lost dignity.
Haley Radke: Thank you so, so much. I want you to share where people can connect with you online.
Pam Cordano: You can find me online, I'm on Facebook. My website is yourmeaningful.life, or pamcordano.com. Same thing, same website, or my email is pcordano@comcast.net.
Haley Radke: And where can people find your book? 10 Foundations for Meaningful Life, (No Matter What's Happened)
Pam Cordano: You can find my book on Amazon or through Balboa Press.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And I hope you'll remember us all after you’re rich and famous and it was so fun to see my name in your book that was like, oh my gosh. Insane.
Pam Cordano: Oh yeah, you're in chapter 10, right?
Haley Radke: Yes.
Pam Cordano: We didn't even talk about that in this, but yeah. How was that for you?
Haley Radke: Well, I don't know if Anne told you. So Anne Heffron and Pam do healing retreats together. They're very good friends and she writes about their friendship in the book. And I had Anne on an episode for my Patreon podcast. So if you're a monthly supporter of the show, I have a weekly podcast called Adoptees Off Script.
So Anne was a guest, she's a frequent guest on there. And I had ordered your book and it came and while I was recording with Anne, cause you guys are like besties, I grabbed my package and I was like, Anne, I wonder if you can guess what's in this. And so we opened it together while we were recording, which was so fun.
And I flipped through and then I was talking to her like, oh, you're in the acknowledgements and everything. And so that was really special. And then once we had hung up, I mean officially like the Patreon recording was all done and we were still kind of chit-chatting. I was just kind of flipping through and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm in here! Which is so funny.
Pam Cordano: Of course, you're in here. Yeah. I mean, the last chapter's on spectacular community and really defining what that is and why I think that's important and without the work you do and what you give us, I just wouldn't know chapter 10. It would be nine foundations for meaningful life, seriously.
Like, you were the link to put all of this together and also for the adoptee retreat, people who are still in touch and rely on each other and travel together, and it's just amazing what's come out of all of this.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
I feel like Pam has this magical combo of wisdom and experience, and especially because of all the clients she's served over the years who've had a myriad of life experiences, right? She's worked with people who are dying, who've been diagnosed with very challenging illnesses, and adoptees, and her experience with grief and meaning, and is just so valuable.
So I'm so grateful she shared with us, and I hope that you take something really great away from this conversation. Maybe your next action step is you pick up Pam's book and you find more insights in it. I think there's something really valuable for you to take away from today's conversation and I hope that you come back and let us know what that is.
Maybe you send Pam a note on social media. Maybe you comment on the Adoptees On Instagram post of this episode and just share what you've learned, what your takeaways are. I'd love to see what you're learning from Pam and maybe something you'll share will trigger something else for someone who's thinking, oh yeah, I needed to remember that, too.
Another thank you I need to make is to my monthly supporters. Thank you so much. Without you guys, there would just not be a podcast. It just would disappear. And so if you think Adoptees On is important, if you want to keep hearing from other adoptee therapists on a Healing Series, if you want to hear from adoptees sharing their stories, if you want to reach other adoptees around the world to know they're not alone and feeling this way about adoption and the impact it's had on their life.
Consider going to adopteeson.com/partner and joining us. There's so many fun bonuses. I have a whole other podcast every week that we talk about some really interesting things that we might not talk about on the main feed here. And I have a Facebook group for adoptees only. And there's just so many wonderful things that are happening in the community, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it, and I wouldn't be able to do this without your support.
So thank you. I'm so grateful for you if you're supporting the show in that way. And if that's just not on your radar, what about sharing this episode with another adoptee? Maybe there's an adoptee that you know that could use a little encouragement, a little bit of wisdom, and this would be a great episode to introduce them to the show and to Pam.
Yeah, I would encourage you to do that, and sometimes people just would love to listen to a podcast, but they don't know how. So just grab their phone, subscribe to the podcast for them, show them how to play it in their app and download it so they can have it with them on their walk with their dog or driving in the car.
That's the best way to introduce someone to a podcast, so thank you for doing that. I appreciate that. It also means a lot to me when you share the show. Okay. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
