​Moral Imagination’s definition in Britannica is as follows:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/moral-imagination
 
Moral imagination, in ethics, the presumed mental capacity to create or use ideas, images, and metaphors not derived from moral principles or immediate observation to discern moral truths or to develop moral responses. Some defenders of the idea also argue that ethical concepts, because they are embedded in history, narrative, and circumstance, are best apprehended through metaphorical or literary frameworks.
 
Autoethnography creates the capacity to imagine more just lifeworlds through narrative inquiry. Poetic representations also contribute to forming ideas about what is good and just, right or wrong, in our lifeworlds. When living in an Alpine winter mountainscape, I ski on of fields of snow crystals that reverberate lifegiving energy to my family of snow dancers. Rumi, the Sufi poet, invites us to meet in a field beyond judgements of right and wrong. In this field of transcendence, we get a glimpse of our personal representations of the good life by connecting to our moral imagination.
 
Living in the Alps, highlanders have a different perspective than those living in the valley. We develop different world views that arise from our cultural landscapes. From the top of the mountain, I ask, “What lifts you?”. This chapter moves the story line towards what Kenneth Gergen refers to as “narrative slope”.
 
Climbing to the top of one side of the mountain, leaving the past behind, I ski down the other mountainside towards a vision of a bright future. On this side of the slope, using my ability to perceive through the lens of moral imagination, I envision enriching relationships that bring forth more just societies. I invite you to come ski down this narrative slope with me. Here, we leave behind the snow fields on high, walking through blooming orchards that hold the promise of ripening summer apricots, plums, pears, and apples.
 
Relational research also contributes to moral imagination by co-constructing ways to improve the human condition with research design. This relational approach to problem-solving gives value to transformational processes. Here is a video with Ken Gergen and Sheila McNamee, Taos Institute founders, talking about relational research. I did my PhD. with the Taos Institute, benefiting from the knowledgeability of these pioneering social constructionists. Autoethnography is an important method that they discuss in their conversation.
 
 
Ken Gergen and Sheila McNamee: Invitation to Conversations About Constructionist Practices in Research
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomKu3eOCZc&list=PLlblTswvpXI4JVgL-NI_VVKOfCIJSk4dp&index=4
 
 
Here is the book Moral Imagination, The Art and Soul of Building Peace, by John Paul Lederarch that explores conflict resolution using ethnographic approaches.

Here is a picture of my son Nils, skiing up the mountain.

Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” relationship, the Seven Arrows Medicine Wheel, as well of the saint’s lives are connected by their ability to bring us to higher levels of perception. We experience a form of relational transformation as we are lifted by sacred practices to see the interconnected nature of life and the divine working within all relationships. Spiritual traditions use different languages and representations. Religion can be understood as what we “rely” on, or what we are dependent upon and have confidence in.
Encountering the divine can happen as we journey through life. There is the inner and the outer journey. We can encounter great thinkers through their writings, and we can encounter sacred places through pilgrimages. There are different ways to gain higher knowledge that often transforms our perceptions. When we are lifted, we can see the sacredness of life.
The pain experienced by orphaned and adopted children is understood as the primal wound. It is a wounding that happens when babies are separated at birth from their mothers. The term “innocents” is used in reference to the Biblical story of the innocent babes that were killed by Herod. When I journeyed to Florence, Italy, I went to visit the first orphanage that was built in the 1400’s, known as The Hospital of the Innocents. Connecting with this historical site that received and cared for abandoned children brought me to a sacred place. As I prayed and gave thanks for all those who have cared for the innocents, I became even more consciously aware of the pain of mothers and children who have suffered the consequences of being separated at birth.
This inner and outer journey provided an encounter with higher knowledge through the historical understanding of the evolution of caring for abandoned children as well as the spiritual experience of connecting with these life histories. Through the ages, children like me, and my sister Cathy, have been cared for when the circumstances of our births didn’t allow us to remain in our families. Visiting the museum and attending the mass held there, allowed me to sublimate my personal experience through journeymanship, connecting even more deeply with the story of the innocents.
 
Here is the link to the museum:
http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/ospedale_degli_innocenti.html
 
Here is a documentary film that tells the story of the innocents.
 
The Innocents of Florence: The quest to save 600,000 children
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theinnocentsofflorence

​The Golden Pocket Watch that fell into my lap, brought a needed form of recognition at a threshold moment of my life. As I found the courage and strength to complete my doctorate, this timepiece arrived in a package with a letter that bequeathed the pocket watch to me. This capping moment has come to represent divine timing or synchronicity as well as the confirmation that my ancestors were “watching over me”.
The thought of “passing on the Golden Pocket Watch” has also made me consider what I value and what I want to pass on to my children. This idea of transmission is a central theme that thickens in my storyline. The watch-giving tradition passes forward love from ancestors to future generations, creating a line of inheritance.
Gnothi Seauton, “know thyself” is an invitation to Self-discovery so that we can ultimately recognize our own worthiness. It is also a pathway taking us to the heart of contemplation. As we decipher the enigmas engraved in the timepiece of our life, we experience wholeness. Once knowledge is gained, there is a need or growing desire to pass it on either through family lines of inheritance or fellowship and scholarship. My book has become a teaching story. My website is a way for me to share what I know with educational resources that can be accessed online. Adult online education engages life-long learners in journeyship.
 
Here is a picture of the Golden Pocket Watch, my transitional object:

Here is an article about the adult learning:

Here is the link to Harry Potter’s Golden Snitch that contains flesh memory: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Flesh_Memory
​

The Showings were described by Julian of Norwich, the first woman known to have written in English. She writes of divine love and her personal experience of how God showed his face to her. In Chapter 33, I share my pilgrimage to Turin to visit the Holy Shroud with my daughter Jessica. I also tell of my visit to Bologna where I discovered a sculpture of Jesus made from the Holy Shroud.
Through these pilgrimages, I felt that I had encountered Jesus in an even more tangible way, standing before the Holy Shroud and then later discovering the existence of the sculpture. There is debate about the authenticity of the Holy Shroud, however I invite you to discover the Holy Shroud, as the question is answered in the eye and heart of the beholder. What do you see?
As I prepared this chapter’s message, I realized that this part of the story had fallen into chapter 33 without me previously noticing. Thirty-three is the age Jesus was when he was crucified and died. It is also the age I was when I found my birth parents. Again, I have been blessed with yet another showing.
Here are links to documentaries and articles that can take you to the Holy Shroud of Turin, and to Julian of Norwich’s showings of divine love.

The Man in the Shroud
https://www.messengersaintanthony.com/content/man-shroud
The Shewings of Julian of Nowrwich
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/the-shewings-of-julian-of-norwich-introduction
Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love
https://earlybritishlit.pressbooks.com/chapter/julian-of-norwich-revelations-of-divine-love-selections/

Explanatory models provide a framework to explain how our illnesses and conflicts are affecting our bodies and relationships. The body is the vase or sacred container filled with verses or narratives, expressing our life experiences. The interconnected nature of the mind-body can also be understood by looking at the concept of archetypes, symbolic representations fashioning our becomingness.
Questing for my origins led me to transformational practices. Along the journey, I not only found my birth family, but my intellectual family. My intellectual family and my books that have been faithful companions, provided the springboard for me to muster the energy to change my circumstances.
Embracing Viriditas, a concept from Saint Hildegard von Bignen, allowed me to perceive the generative energy forces that were present in my environment. And as the virtual reality expanded through the new technologies that were made available, I connected with these greening powers, weaving virtual relational templates. In these expanding spaces of becomingness, my mind-body, incorporated the virtual. My odyssey’s sails filled with divine guidance or mediatorship. As I ventured into new dimension of relating, my Self-transformation moved to platforms that ultimately allowed me to connect, relate, and belong in more fulfilling ways. Within my circle of relations, we became more wholehearted, rooted in the Earth, and the sky.
After attending a medical anthropology conference in the countryside near Bologna, I traveled by train to Florence. While visiting the Family Matters exhibit in Florence in 2014, I discovered artwork that portrayed the transformation of the concept of family. The exhibit brought together modern art and photography to represent these changes, underscoring the artistic expressions with social science perceptions that allowed visitors to contemplate these changes through discourses on family matters. Virtual links allow us to investigate the past and contemplate the present in ways that offer new lines of flight. Our conscious awareness is future-forming. Knowledgeability transforms intergenerational life trajectories.
 
Here is the link to the Family Matters Exhibit in Florence:
https://www.palazzostrozzi.org/en/archivio/exhibitions/family-matters/
 
Here is a link to the Healthy Hildegard website:
https://www.healthyhildegard.com/why-is-hildegard-of-bingen-important

Part 3
Belonging: Designing My Medicine Shield
 
Part three introduces the third and final section of the book that begins with exploring the meaning-making process. This chapter is filled with symbolism. I describe my stained-glass window that was inspired by a Medicine Shield that I found in the Seven Arrows book, many years later realizing how much they resembled drawings from Jung’s Red Book.
I speak of running on my favorite footpath that like an old friend, I am forever happy to encounter. I also tell the story of being called to run higher to hear my calling on Poppy’s last day on Earth.
But most importantly the quintessence of this book is found in this chapter, explaining how this part of the book presents meaning-making methods and evidence to my own theory that “each of us are inhabited by a primal urge and capacity to home in”. Homing IN to the good life is an endeavor I share with you my dear readership. This is a call to arms, armoring ourselves with Self-Knowledge or gnothi seauton. Inspired by visions of potentiality, may we walk together like heroes on what Joseph Campbell describes as The Heroes Journey.
 
Here is a picture of Poppy, my dear grandfather, holding me in his arms.

Here is a link to The Greater Good Magazine website at the University of Berkeley, California:
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/profile/dacher_keltner
 
Gnothi Seauton-Here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as an explanation of the Greek tradition. 

Belonging is a challenge for international citizens that have become world citizens or wordlings. There are different forms of bringing people into a community. There are various models including assimilation, integration, and inclusion. When we leave our hometown to study or for work, we move into new communities. Often there are barriers to belonging that we never considered before, lines of separation that we hadn’t previously noticed. Policies recognizing inclusive integration and give value to diversity foster belonging.
My way forward has been journeymanship or life-long learning. Understanding history, being able to analyze behavior that I believe is inappropriate, and finding solutions, are all part of my approach. But I have also had to find the courage to fight for what I believe in, refusing to accept assimilation while striving to demonstrate the values of inclusion.
As a double national, I am able to benefit from being both American and Swiss, but I must also adhere to the rules that govern both of my countries. There are advantages to having dual nationality, but there are also increasing challenges to being both.
I was attracted to Switzerland as a young girl. The beauty of the Alps as well as the book and film about Heidi, opened my heart to a different way of life in the mountains. Later, different Swiss scientists and adventurers inspired me. I have tried to pass on the good life to my children, choosing to model what I consider to be the best of both worlds.
Here is the website showing the Solar Impulse adventure that Bertrand Piccard embarked upon, inspiring us to sour above borders, towards a world of renewable energy. His innovations are piloting us into the future.

Solar Impulse link:
https://bertrandpiccard.com/exploration-solar-airplane?width=1301
 
Here is a link to European policy on inclusive integration:
 
https://rm.coe.int/policy-lab-on-inclusive-integration-inclusive-integration-strategies-t/16808ae1c6
​

​Our perceptions or how we “see” each other, and the world influence our becomingness both individually and collectively. There are hidden layers of meaning in all that surrounds us. Lifelong learning allows us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way. Each era builds on the artwork of the past. Science and art come together in our cosmologies, offering explanations for our lifeworld. I have included an article that shows how artwork from the Renaissance incorporates forms from the anatomy of the human brain. Hidden in the art forms are anatomical depictions of the brain. Here, the perception of the Godhead comes to life in sacred artwork.
Our lives too, are sacred artworks. We look to the heavens for guidance, in the hopes of discovering the best path forward. Our understanding of consciousness and our interpretations of the Divine are multi-layered and socially constructed. The Renaissance artists painted images of Transfiguration, emerging from Christian theology.
The patterns in our lives might be transgenerational patterns transmitted to us, however as we grow old, and become conscious of the patterns that constitute us, we can choose to weave new patterns into the fabric of our lives, weaving together the human and the divine. These multilayered patterns are forever transformed and transfigured. When we connect and reverberate the light of the stars that shine down upon us, we find guidance and inspiration. The heavenly stars even fill our lives with moments of epiphany, when a sense of deeper meaning is revealed to us, allowing us to find our way. Epiphanies can come in the form of insights as well as encounters. Transfigured patterns are woven with these golden threads that sparkle and shine, illuminating our soul’s deepest wishes.
Star light,
Star bright,
First star I see tonight,
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

David was a golden boy, who benefited from the incredible era that followed WWII and all the opportunities in the United States that were offered to men like my father. I was his first child. He offered me a wonderful upbringing. He took me on adventures like hiking in Medicine Bow Peak in Wyoming, a hike my birth parents had also done with their children. It seems my families had been walking on intersecting paths. But David had also made decisions that had caused great pain in our family circle. I spoke weekly with my grandfather Harland, to convince him of the importance of forgiveness.
When David died, I spoke at the funeral, offering my story about David, my father. When I looked out into the faces of those who had come to the funeral, I saw my birth parents, and my father Michael’s supportive smile as I honoured my father David. This moment appeared surreal.
Adopted children often fall “Far From The Tree”, the title of Andrew Solomon’s book. Parents like to see their reflections in their children’s faces. Adopted children cannot offer that possibility to the parents who raise them. I tried my best to be a Mossman, cultivating their ways, and passing on what I believed to be their values, a form of cultural inheritance. But I came to understand the importance of passing on the biological bloodline, and just how gratifying that can be when facing the reality of one’s mortality. This insight came to me as a young mother.
When my father passed on the golden pocket watch, a family heirloom, to my biological sister’s son, I became aware of my difference that I hadn’t perceived growing up. Though I had three boys, David’s choice to bequeath the pocket watch that had belonged to my grandfather, Harland, passed over my family line.
It took time and grace to heal what seemed to be a gesture that overlooked my family, accentuating the difference of being the adopted child. But I came to understand that the golden Cross pen that my father had given me, the pen that had survived a fire, was indeed a symbolic object that suggested my becomingness through authorship. I end this chapter writing, “And my inheritance is this amazing story.”
 
Here is a link to information about Solomon’s film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEZjCgF-No0
Here is a link to an interview about Solomon’s book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgjCEAnxRxw
​

​This chapter is at the core of my book. As I had gone through the reunion process, establishing life-long relationships with my birth family, expanding my relational matrix, my own family grew. Jessica was my 40th birthday present. She arrived when I was balancing my full-time job and raising our young children. The challenges of balancing work and family are central sociological questions that are eliciting transformational processes not just in individual families, but throughout the Western world.
Jessica, our 5th child’s name, means “God behold”. While expecting her, I fell to my knees under the pressures coming down upon me. But in that humble position, I found a grace that has accompanied me even more consciously ever since her arrival. Every Christmas season I am reminded of the words from the well-known Christmas song, “Fall on your knees and hear the Angels voices”. Receiving Jessica into our family forced us to reconfigure our relationships just as one carefully places the figurines in the nativity scene, making a special place for baby Jesus.

​

​“Trying to fit in,” seemed to exemplify the feelings expressed in this chapter. I was the adopted child who learned to fit in to my adopted family, only to later need to go through the same process to “fit in” to my birth family. Adaptability seems to be a quality that is necessary during all phases that mark the process of adoption, the search, and reunion. Our reunion turned in to a long-term bonding process.
 
In this blog post, I have included articles about adoption and reunion to offer research perspectives for my readership. Kinship in the context of adoption and reunion requires a form of resilience that allows family members to overcome the difficulties of complex family relationships. Our family fist looked for likenesses to solidify our relationships in our birth family. But as time went on, we were able to respectfully embrace our differences too.
By sharing family experiences, we got to know each other and make memories that have ultimately linked us. Not only did Cathy and I become part of the Wylie family, but all our relations shifted to incorporate a new matrix of relationships that brought all our families together in a loving embrace. My book is yet another relational space to celebrate our coming together as we look back, reading our lives.

​When my grandparents, Marnie and Poppy died, I said adieu by writing poems for their funerals. I was called to the top of the mountain to run on Poppy’s last day of life, watching the sunset on his life, I ran with a growing sense of purpose through his continual love and support. Poppy died when a friend from Tibet was staying with us. She had been in the Tibetan Parliament in Exile and gave me books signed by the Dali Lama. She was in Switzerland trying to raise funds for a school for handicapped children when my grandfather passed away.

​Here is a link to her work: https://tibetanparliament.org/81761-2/
 
 
Walt Whitman’s poem written for President Lincoln, incorporates lilacs, the flowers in bloom at Lincoln’s burial, that have a heart shaped leaf. Marnie too died when the lilacs were blooming in the back of the farmhouse at Black Bird Bend Farm. Here is a link to Whitman’s famous poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd
Here is an analysis of this famous poem:
https://interestingliterature.com/2020/05/whitman-when-lilacs-last-dooryard-bloomd-analysis/

This chapter investigates the difficulties that surfaced when I found my birth family. Attending my sister Michelle’s wedding and meeting my sister Cathy, who had just reunited with our family exposed challenging dimensions that revealed dark archetypical forces existing within Swiss society. Though the patriarchal powers within the school system emerged to hinder me from reuniting with my family, I pushed forward. I was determined to be with my family at my sister’s wedding. As I organized my way home, I begun to realize my vulnerability as a foreign woman. Even though I had Swiss citizenship, I was treated as though my Swiss rights didn’t apply. But over the years my own matriarchal power has strengthened. Scholarship has allowed me to combat social injustice for myself and others.
 
I have included a full book by Franceska Falk on migration and social innovation that tells the stories of other migrant women in Switzerland. These women had the courage to initiate social change. I am also adding a link to Jung’s writings and concepts where you can delve into the concept of archetypes. These two resources offer my readership further avenues of investigation, looking into the themes of otherness, migration, and the archetype of the“outsider” or foreigner.

​After we all came together, I started asking questions. I was convinced that family secrets were coming through as repeating family patterns. I was compelled to understand. I felt that it was time to unravel the family history that had been spun, weaving together story lines that covered up relationships that needed to be recognized.
Here is a book that addresses transgenerational psychology. Often, family patterns are transmitted in an unconscious manner. Their relation patterns often appear as synchronicities or serendipity that appear to stress the connections that beg to be revealed and brought into the light. This transgenerational transmission can be observed in our family’s case study.
 
This approach goes “beyond what is transmitted consciously from generation to generations to bring to light what is transmitted trangenerationally, that is, what transmitted without being “assimilated” because it was never verbalized and remains hidden among unspoken family secrets (Schützenberger 1998, 4).”
 
https://books.google.ch/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=sYTsAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=transgenerational+psychology+and+adoption&ots=Lu6fVv4bE7&sig=9QH4KHqkntOmFuLSdH6mQQh_FvU#v=onepage&q&f=false
The Ancestor Syndrome
Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree
Anne Ancelin Schützenberger

​The challenges that I faced during the transition from being a stay at home mother to becoming a full-time working mother happened as I began my European Master’s Degree in Mediation. The model my birth mother Ruth Ann provided allowed me to make the transition, as I “homed in” to her example.
 
That period also corresponded with tensions in my relational matrix. As my old world crumbled, and the earth shook under my feet, I was forced to let go of what my life had been, letting God guide me to a new place in my relational network. I had to learn to embody the change, integrating the many relational changes that our reunion had brought. However, it was not only the reunion, it was the loss, and the fear of losing the places and relationships that I so wanted to hold on to that gnawed on me.
 
When my adopted father sold our family farm on terms, the story of the Native American Indian’s Ghost Dance took on even greater meaning for me. The loss of the native lands, the hope for transformation that was embedded in the dance ritual, and the strong desire for reconciliation that ended in devastation at Wounded Knee where all aspects the Great Plains history that enfolded changes that swept through the prairie grasses ending in a massacre.
 
The change that was shaking my life like an earthquake, bringing down the social constructions of my life’s relationships, rattled me. I was forced to look at what I believed constituted, “Nebraska, The Good Life”.  Moving from loss to gratefulness, I walked through the pain in search of a place where the different parts of my evolving Self could find refuge. Through the process of concrescence, the different facets of my identity sculpted a new container and a new life trajectory. As I wailed, danced, and hoped, my ancestors headed me in a new direction. There was no going back. I somehow sensed that I needed to invent a ritual of reconciliation. To affirm life and to survive I entered into an integration process that emerged from life crisis. With the strong intention to become whole, I found metaphors to transform my life story. I began to lifescape a hopeful future.
 
Carl G. Jung’s Red Book was only published in 2009, illustrating his transformational process that allowed him to develop his fundamental concepts. Ira Progoff studied with Jung, voyaging to Bolligen to learn more about Jung’s work, later developing the Intensive Journal Process and Depth Psychology. Their work has informed my own autoethnographic process. Autoethnography is a social science method that draws upon recollecting and remembering. By going deep within, the Self reveals images, dreams, and archetypes that offer a power to endure and survive enkindled by the meaning-making process.
 
Here are videos that share Jung’s life and work.
 
Here is rare documentary footage of C.J. Jung at Bollingen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udKqfxjj_7Q
 
Inheritance of Dreams:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLa_WTcQ4eY
 
Here is a paper about Ira Progoff’s work that uses the Intensive Journal Process for holistic transformation.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3255&context=luc_diss
 
Here is an interview with Ira Progoff:

Here is a video that tells about the Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull, and Wounded Knee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDqnbeyo1sI&pp=QADQAwE%3D

Here is an article about transgenerational trauma and Native Americans:

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/indigenous-apocalypse-and-transgenerational-trauma/2020-10
​

​Chapter 20 shares Cathy’s letters to Ruth Ann and Michael as well as the written responses from Ruth Ann. But Chapter 20 begins with Ruth Ann’s letter to me that explains that I have another sister. When I received the packet of letters, I was overcome with emotion. Far from my American family, I was hit by the news that added on another layer to our family memoire. On top of the mountain, as Fall weather brought cold temperatures, falling leaves, and changing colors in the forests where larch trees were starting to turn golden, my heart was again broken open. I especially felt for my newly found sister and my mother, as I integrated the complexity of the unfolding storyline. The golden relational bond that we had forged was secure enough for us to work through the stories about the circumstances of Cathy’s birth as well as bringing Cathy into the family circle. Giving recognition to what Cathy’s birth had meant for my young parents meant looking more deeply into the relational and societal context of our births.

​Here is a picture of our reunion, the first summer that we met with Grandma Kay surrounded by her great grandchildren in 1996.

​Here is my maternal grandmother, Grandma Kay, surrounded by her grandchildren. I finally joined the clan, much later!

​Here is my birth parents’, Ruth Ann and Michael’s, wedding picture that Grandma Kay included in the photo album that she made for me.

​The pictures in my new family album were both the pictures that represented the life that I had not shared with my birth family as well as our reunion photos caught on film and etched into my heart. My life trajectory integrated a parallel relational reality. After meeting my birth family, we had many reunion celebrations that brought together the matrix of my many relations. My adopted family, birth family, and close family friends all came together in a reunion performance.
The family album that my maternal birth grandmother, Grandma Kay, had made for me attested to many years of family gatherings that I hadn’t been part of. But our reunion suddenly offered us the chance to add new pictures of togetherness. These pictures and happenings all framed my new becomingness. And though Grandma Kay died a little over a year after our first meeting, she was able to bear witness to our reunion. The Three Fates tapestry is a metaphor for the loom of life that miraculously stitched us all back together. Lachesis, the drawer of lots had chosen reunification, permitting Clotho the spinner to rethread our heartstrings, tugging and pulling us all back together before Atropos ended Grandma Kay’s life.
The triumph of this unique “fate” seemed to be an incredible synchronicity and even a miracle of divine timing. The links to Medjugorje, show the miracles that have taken place at this pilgrimage site, including my Great Uncle Bob’s rosary that turned gold. Though miracles are rare and often contested, the miracle of our reunion is the kernel of this story. Medjugorje is a place of prayer and reconciliation where The Queen of Peace asks us to pray more. I can only wonder if Father Bob, a priest, had prayed for our family’s reconciliation on his pilgrimage to Medjugorje. Though there is no one explanation for our coming together, ultimately Grandma Kay’s prayers were answered, and I was welcomed into the family circle.
https://www.medjugorje.com/medjugorje/signs-and-miracles/rosaries-turning-gold.html
 
http://www.medjugorje.hr/en/medjugorje-phenomenon/novena/
 
 
The Three Fates
This tapestry that was originally made in the Netherlands from wool and silk in the 16th century is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The three fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, represent Death in this tapestry, as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity. In mythology the Fates controlled the span of human life; Clotho was the spinner, Lachesis was the drawer of lots, and Atropos represented the inevitable end to life.
This is a fragment from a larger tapestry, from a series based on the poem I Trionfi (The Triumphs), written by the Italian poet Petrach between 1352 and 1374. The poem described a series of allegorical visions.
Descriptive line:
Tapestry 'The Three Fates' ('The Triumph of Death'), Flemish, early 16th century.

​When I walked off the plane to meet my sister Michelle all eyes were on us. Not only did we look so much alike, but we had the same mannerisms and laugh. My children also watched me physically unite with my sister. For the first time meeting someone that looked so much like their mother. It was beyond imagination to finally be together. Michelle was the first child that Ruth Ann and Michael were able to keep and raise. Michelle’s beauty attracted all my family and friends that swarmed around us as the sweet smell of reunion filled the air.
“Who would I have been if we had grown up together?” I kept asking myself this question, as if there could have been another life trajectory. Would I have gone back to New York and modelled while Michelle performed in Broadway Musicals? I had won a modelling contest and experienced what it was like to be photographed in the Big Apple, staying at the Waldorf Astoria and walking through Central Park. But didn’t go back to try my luck as a model. I wondered, “Would coming together make us more complete?”
As we melted into each other’s embrace, we bonded for life. After a few days together in Omaha we took off with baby Yann to Washington D.C. to meet our parents, Kaitie, and then Ryan at West Point. On our family vacation we drove to Cold Spring, New York, where I bought a handmade Wedding Ring Quilt, a symbol of our reunion.
Ruth Ann and Michael had been so young when we were born. The iconic picture of them on my father’s motorcycle captures the mood in 1966 when the Beatles were singing, Revolution.  

As we came together, we too knew that everything was going to be all right!

​“If truth is the object of its quest, the word is the portal through which it passes. For the word is our only access to truth, both the truth of what we know and the truth of what we are” (Patterson, 1988, 2).
 
Our letters and phone calls gave life to our transformational process. But our convergence also trigged physical reactions that were connected to deep sub-conscious memories of trauma embedded in the mind-body. As we stood naked and exposed before each other, we risked reexperiencing the pain from the past so that future joy could be found ‘somewhere over the rainbow’.
As a connected with my birth family, I needed to assure my birth mother that our bond of unconditional love would never be questioned. In this chapter, you can read my letter to my adopted mother Jan. My adopted father Dave had often discussed Greek philosophy and Gnothi Seuton, the Greek wisdom tradition of Self-knowledge. He would say to me “Healer heal thyself; healer know thyself.”
 
Bringing the voices together in a ‘communiverse’ (Gergen, 2020) set in motion a healing process not just for me, but for the entire relational matrix. Here are links to articles, books, and websites that can offer more insight into Bakhtin’s philosophies. We were all asking, “Who are you?” Then we had to pause to listen to the responses that came back to us like echoes bouncing off mountain faces.

Literature and Spirit:
 
https://books.google.ch/books?id=d7EfBgAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
 
Voicing Relationships: A Dialogic Perspective
https://books.google.ch/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=2dMgAQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=bakhtin+and+dialogism&ots=I8Aa__8X-2&sig=EZZkIdJDTFGfNRKYcphA41VprlY#v=onepage&q=bakhtin%20and%20dialogism&f=false
 
In Theory Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and Heteroglossia
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-1/
 
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-2/
 
Traumatic Triggers
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-triggered-4175432
 

​Love letters encapture a promise that is at times mysterious to comprehend. Getting a love letter lights up the heart like a Christmas tree. The love that comes in an envelope makes the heart jump with hope that declarations of love can indeed fulfil the profound longing that we all feel deep inside. Offering loving words and knowing that those words of love are addressed to us personally, take one on a journey that seems to surpass all notions of time and space. The entanglement of loving heartstrings, when awakened, can traverse time. The power of love can pull the other through the veil of whatever separation has been put in place.
 
In my story, I was pulled towards my parents that were living next to where I had grown up, just 45 minutes away. We had been separated at birth, however an incredible force beckoned us together to reunite. Quantum entanglement brought us to each other.
 
Our letters were powerful testimonies of a miracle. Finding each other brought a kind of inexplicable joy. I waited with impatience for each letter my parents sent me to arrive from across the Atlantic. I thirsted for their response. I was satiated by their words. Their letters felt like they were linked to my soul’s salvation.
 
I later kept our first letters in a special box with the picture of our first family meeting in New York. Later, I placed our many correspondences in my great-grandmother Savidge’s trunk at the foot of my bed. When I began writing my story, I wrote in flow, spilling my story onto the page as if pouring water from a pitcher. Only later, did I go back into the special box and trunk to revisit our letters and integrate them into my story to give voice to our correspondence.
 
After I met my brother Ryan, he sent me a gift, The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, that is an exchange of postcards, between writers that never seem to meet up. It is an artistic form of love story. That story seemed to resonate with our family’s reunion, as our paths had criss-crossed for many years, just missing each other, moving in parallel lives. Then, there was a convergence, a meeting point on our lifelines that brought us all together. In the film “Love Letters”, the mystery of entanglement is expressed in a story linking lovers through time with letters that arrive in mysterious ways.
 
My story too encapsulates a mystery. Synchronicity traced a path using heartstrings that could reach through the veil, bringing us together in the written space of our first love letters that we exchanged. Our correspondence became the rope that pulled us back together. But in chapter 16, there are other love letters to discover. There is the love affirming letter that I wrote to my adopted mother Jan. There is a letter from my husband Angelo too. We were all writing to connect and affirm the bonds that held us tightly together, the relationships we wanted to keep and reinforce as well as the relationships we wanted to build.
 
Here is the film Love Letters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggmiyof04nY
 
Here is the Griffin and Sabine Trilogy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW2PPI5Vwko
 
Here is the letter from my brother written on a card from his tour in Africa:

​Here is a box that holds some of our first letters with the picture of our first meeting in New York:

Rebirthing uses breathing techniques to connect to memories of one’s birth. It is understood to be a transformational process. When I reached out to the Nebraska Children’s Home Society to find my birth parents, I began the rebirthing process in a literal sense. And indeed, it was a transformational journey. When I found my birth family, it was a joyous moment of epiphany. I wrote,“This special moment was like catching a glimpse of a moonbow before sunrise.”
​
Moonbow pictures:

Here is a link to Joy Manné’s book about shamanic breathwork:
https://books.google.ch/books?id=prkQ9NXb3wAC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=joy+manné+shamanic+breathwork+article&source=bl&ots=aKyDHxT3Zg&sig=ACfU3U0ZOMno3w41eiEnCncZ7K9Z8Az44A&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ2d_Cu-PpAhWFDewKHb9pBJwQ6AEwBHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=joy%20manné%20shamanic%20breathwork%20article&f=false
 
 
Here is a book chapter that I wrote for an academic conference. It has recently been published. The book chapter describes my autoethnographic writing process:

​I refer to myself in this chapter as a water lily like in Claude Monet’s famous painting of water lily’s in a pond, whose roots go into the water instead of the earth. Here is a video that describes his technique and palette demonstrated in the famous Monet gardens:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JTazf7tH44
When I found my birth family and realized all the similarities we shared, I began wondering how that information was passed on. The nature and nurture debate is especially pertinent for adopted children who find their birth families. The social and cultural construction of our identity is not just influenced by our nurturing adopted families. Other factors come into play.
Our family story or family memoire, became an interesting case study for me to examine with the lens of a social scientist. I was intrigued as I discovered all the personality traits, handwriting similarities, political convictions, child birthing and rearing practices, favourite books, colors, and jewellery shapes that connected me to my birth family’s preferences. I pondered the question, “How had I integrated so much of who they were even though I was raised by another family?”.
When I began reading about epigenetics, I realized that this emerging paradigm could offer scientific explanations for what I had perceived. The patterns that were running through us, our biological connections and lines of inheritance, had been acting on me from a distance.
In this blog I share articles about epigenetics so that readers can better understand how epigenetic research is changing how we understand transmission. The epigenetic paradigm explains how our environment and perceptions bring out our DNA’s expression.

​
Singe Howell’s term kinning, derived from the understanding of kinship in the context of adoption, is a word expressing the relational process of bonding. Her word is a wonderful way of expressing how we make family ties from heartstrings that may even come from different countries, tying them together in beautiful bows of belonging.

She also refers to the process of de-kinning. Much like kinning and de-kinning I like to define mediation as linking, somewhat like a chain that can also choose a process of de-linking. But Howell even has a third option that evolves from kinning. There is also the possibility of re-kinning.

When I decided to search for my biological mother, I truly wanted to repair our relational bond, restoring our kinship. The Nebraska Children’s Home Society mediated my kinning process over the years, accompanying me with the necessary papers and legal documents that were necessary. When I began my search, I returned to the Nebraska Children’s Home to re-kin.
 
Singe Howell’s book:
https://books.google.ch/books?id=CqPBDbjCLsIC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Singe+Howell+kinning&source=bl&ots=ELCJvGZaLf&sig=ACfU3U0O64zUzCC3SyzeIDvAO8Whwcg-lg&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqn4is24rpAhVGxMQBHWIID8oQ6AEwEnoECA8QAQ#v=onepage&q=Singe%20Howell%20kinning&f=false
 
In this article, Kathryn A. Mariner uses cultural anthropology to analyse adoption in the United States using auto/biographical documents. Her article offers insights into other adoption stories that broaden the topic and offer windows into other lifeworlds. Just as I entered into the autobiographical process to write a letter for my birth mother, initiating the search process, adoptive parents are required to create profiles that tell their stories. These profiles are shared with birth mothers. Autobiographical accounts mediate the kinning process as recounted in this article:
https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/4151/477