A Wish for Ashley

When I was in college, I had to take the Myers-Brigg personality test.  I was highly skeptical that any test with seemingly trivial questions could generate any accurate profile; I mean I spent years in middle school tricking Seventeen Magazine ‘do you have what it takes to be a princess’ quizzes- do you like crowns?  YES!  So when I was handed a Myers-Briggs ‘INFP’ profile and then told I scored so far over on the INFP spectrum (highly introverted, intuitive, feeling and perceptive)  that ‘people like me’ comprised  under 2% of the US population… I was less than thrilled. Yeah, as if I’m weird enough being mixed race, now you’re telling me my personality is an oddity too? Great thanks.  However, I remember reading the profile you deal with things based on how they make you feel, and how they fit into your personal value system… do not like conflict… idealists and perfectionists…flexible and laid-back, until one of their values is violated…hard to get to know, they reserve their deepest love and caring for a select few who are closest to them…and thinking whoa.  That’s me.  I was starting to feel like a freak when the test administrator pointed out that two other girls in the group not only scored as INFPs but that the three of us had identical numeric scores for each personality element; ‘that never happens!’ she exclaimed.  Three freaks, it seems, but we found each other.  And to this day they are two of my best friends. 

The irony of a strong INFP-er taking a personality test and reading her profile is that INFP-ers are usually incredibly aware of their emotions and others’ perceptions of them.  The profile was accurate, but it was all stuff I had been writing about in my journal for years.  I had been aware of my tendency to feel hugely loyal to those in my inner circle, blame myself for things and ‘feel the world on my shoulders,’ and to never feel like things that I worked on were never good enough (yeah, remember my running water diorama?).  I knew that I rarely had strong reactions to situations unless I felt one of my values was truly being violated.  I was at a point that I was able to identify what my ‘ruling values’ were.

It is clear to me now that one of them is family.  Challenge my family members, and I will have an extremely strong- and emotional- reaction.  Challenge the values and sense of self that my mom worked so hard to instill in me and there is little hope that I’ll ever let it go.  That’s why A Wish for Ashley is so hard for me; it plays on every strength and flaw in my personality.  I want to right a wrong done to my family 15 years ago and I cannot let that go until I find my missing family member, my little sister.  However I blame myself that we are now 4 months into this and we still haven’t found her.  The weight of the search often keeps me up and I never feel like I’m doing enough.  Miss a few days of blogging because of things going on in my real life and I feel immensely guilty. 

Ashley, I wonder what you’re like now, if you feel these same tensions in your life.  The people who help me balance mine are your family too.  I hope you’ll give us a chance and meet us one day.

I miss you.  

With love (and INFP-ers don't mess around with that word),

Audra
 

Yay! Another guest blog (which is good because right now I'm at my kitchen table helping one of my "clients" write an AP English paper...oh I have so many fake jobs)... Thank you, Tara!

***
(I’ve been dreading this. But like my mom said, anything for Audra.)

I’m the oldest, the one who ran away from New England winters 5 years ago, slow as molasses, and yes I have a penchant for stiletto heels no matter what the weather.

Over 15 years ago, my home was Ashley’s home.  Love, laughter, and unconditional support flew off the walls. I just knew that DSS would see how much fun we all had together and that Ashley would be a permanent member of our family in no time. I naively thought it was a sure thing.

Then the day came that we weren’t going to see her anymore.  Usually one to get sad when I’m hurting, instead I got angry.  They made a BIG mistake, one that I didn’t understand, and one that I needed to fix.  It was my first realization that nothing is a sure thing in our world.  Well, almost nothing…

I too have spent time secretly searching for Ashley online over the years and when I first logged on I faced the questions that all of the members in my family faced.  Am I being selfish by searching for her?  Who am I to disrupt a child’s life? Should I just leave this girl alone?  Those doubts only crept in for the amount of time between the first and second mouse click because for all of the backlash my family and Audra have been subjected to, I know that searching for Ashley is the right thing.  Let me explain.

I am terrified of flying.  I don’t like knowing there is space between my feet and the ground.  I do not belong in a small metal tube with strangers.  I do not enjoy being on that metal tube as it speeds through the sky bumping along the way.  And I derive absolutely zero comfort from the fact that my seat is also a flotation device.  Did I mention my fatal allergy to nuts? Airplanes are not for me. So where am I now? 3000 miles away on the west coast, a 6 HOUR plane ride away from home. What the?!?

I needed to come out here to be with the love of my life, and that would not have been possible without my family. Often when I don’t feel like I have the strength to do something in this tough world, I rely on the same love, laughter, and unconditional support that used to bounce off the walls of our home, to pull me through.  I know that everyone needs a cheering section because, as my brother would say, “Life’s a bitch, be it’s pimp.” While I don’t feel like a pimp, I know I will make it past the next obstacle with these people behind me (alright, and a little Ativan for the long flights), and THAT is a sure thing.  There is no doubt in my mind that wherever Ashley is, she should be able to utilize the same support network and there is nothing selfish or wrong about reminding her that NO MATTER WHAT, we are still here for her.

I derive my strength from my family, and whether or not you know it, Ashley you have always been a part of that. Thank you for the opportunity to come out here and stand by my man.  My address may be Los Angeles, but my heart and spirit are spread around the country with the members of my amazing family and hopefully somewhere in Ashley wherever she is right now.

Ashley, if you’re reading this, I would hop on a plane tomorrow for you. Name the place.

All you need is love,

Tara

I’m pretty predictable.  I like routines, I like rules.  If I write out a schedule, I’ll stick to it.  Just ask my high school roommates: work until 3am, nap 20 minutes, work until 5am, nap 10 minutes… wow, I was kind of compulsive.   I could eat the same thing day in and day out for years and not get tired of it.  Not only could I, I do.  Coffee.  Caesar salad.  Plain chicken. Chocolate. Repeat.  My interests have not drastically changed since the age of 6.  Dance, working with kids, reading, writing, fashion. Check the box.  My friends don’t change much either.  Alex since kindergarten. Janis since first grade.  Priya since sixth grade.  Danielle since tenth.  Courtenay, Ava, Issy since freshman year of college.  And so on.  I’d like to think that I know what I’m looking for so when I find it, I stick to it.  As it turns out, my intellectual interests follow that pattern too.  So I shouldn’t be surprised that six people all saw this New York Times article and sent it to me: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/us/09adopt.html?_r=1&hp   Obama’s buzzword may have been change. My buzzword would be identity, so predictably this was forwarded straight to my inbox.

I’ve shared with you before that I think a lot about race and racial identity.  How can I not when at least three times a week a total stranger will approach me and ask “what are you?” Growing up, my parents did little to influence ‘what’ my siblings and I saw ourselves as- in fact, if anything, they avoided bringing it up.  I believe it was my sister Kayla who stumbled upon her childhood journal a few years ago and doubled over in laughter when she read her 6-year-old astute observation of: “my grandparents are coming to visit today. They are brown.”  We might have been ignorant about race, or what it meant to be biracial, but the “what are you?” questions let us know that we were different. 

So I found acceptance in every ‘different’ community I could find.  Alex?  Black.  We became kindergarten buddies because someone told her she was black because she drank too much chocolate milk.  She befriended me by saying ‘you must like chocolate milk too.’  Janis?  A Korean adoptee.  Your parents look nothing like you too?! COOL! Now let’s go read chapter books!  Priya? Indian.  You’re brown and skinny.  I’m tan and skinny.  Let’s be BFFs.  Danielle? You speak Spanish.  Everyone thinks I’m Spanish.  Amigas!  It wasn’t until college when I came to realize all of my adopted cultures were just that.  I realized that if I wanted to feel sound in my identity, I would need to define it myself.  “Mixed” means little in today’s world.  “Biracial” means Obama.  But wait, he’s black, right? So what is biracial again?   Going to college in the South meant defining it and defending it.  Coming back to the Northeast has allowed me to embrace it.

I think a lot about how Ashley might understand herself.  If she was adopted, does her family understand?  Do people constantly look at her, look at her adoptive parents, raise their eyebrows and ask her what she is?  If she wasn’t adopted, did she find a support network- perhaps adopt cultures like I did?- and come to understand herself that way?  Does she think of herself as a foster care kid? Does she think of herself as special?  

My brother came home this weekend.  He’s a few months into his freshman year in college.  He was beaming when he told me that kids at his college actually recognize that he’s part black- finally! he said.  My baby brother felt validated because for once he didn’t have to defend a part of himself, but rather it was acknowledged without prompting and accepted.  I hope everyday that Ashley’s identity, as a foster care survivor, or perhaps adoptive daughter, a ‘what are you’ young woman or just a 21-year-old girl is validated.  Because she should be acknowledge and accepted. She should be celebrated and loved. 

With love (for all the people who listen to my identity conversations everyday- and Happy Birthday, Janis!  I'll buy you a Boxcar Children novel of your choice...),

Audra
 

I’m hitting another search wall.  We’ve gone through nearly all of the Ashley leads that people forwarded us in response to the Globe and AOL stories and most have simply brought me back to Ashleys I’ve already been able to rule out.  Ashley Marie, where are you?  I’ve been operating under the assumption that her first name is still Ashley.  I find it hard to believe any family would change the name of a child past the age of 7.  Maybe I’m naïve; but at the same time I need to trust my instincts.  So I’ll keep on looking for one elusive Ashley. 

In a moment I’m going to blast our facebook group members and ask for their help in blanketing the Ashleys on the facebook site.  If you’re reading this and are on facebook, myspace, or perhaps some hipper networking site I’m not cool enough to be aware of, I hope that you’ll be a part of this challenge too.

I promised my uncle I’d find Ashley a little over five months ago.  Since I’m looking for an arbitrary number, five seems appropriate.  So here’s my pitch- in an effort to locate Ashley before five more months have passed, I hope you’ll search “Ashley” on a networking site and send a message to the first five Ashleys that pop up.  What should that message say?  Well, I don’t want to dictate your communications.  But if you have writer’s block, a quick message explaining that you a part of a big effort to help reunite a family by locating a 21 year old who was born with the name of Ashley Marie McFarland should suffice.  Ask her to check out this website or the ‘A Wish for Ashley’ facebook group; you never know if it’ll be my cousin, or another Ashley that will bring us closer to her. 

If you complete the Five Ashley challenge, email facebook@awishforashley.com and let us know that you did so.  I’ll soon be making a volunteer page for this website and I’d love to acknowledge all of the people who participate in our outreach challenges!  Five Ashleys… and it’ll take less than 5 minutes of your time.  Five Ashleys… and you may be the person to make this wish come true.

Thank you for your optimism and continued support.


With love (and ongoing gratitude),

Audra

I've been pressuring my family members for a while to submit guest blogs.  I thought it would be nice to 1) present all of you with a better understanding of our family's search by introducing others' perspectives 2) let my family members give voice to their thoughts and 3) well, to help alleviate the pressure on me to come up with daily posts- particularly when my work life gets extremely busy!  My amazing (mini)mom has stepped up as my first guest... 


***

Everyday I put myself together, grab my car keys and drive to work. When I put the key in the door I tell myself "smile. You're ok." I am! on the outside, but inside my thoughts swirl. I have moments of happiness as the memories play in my head, moments of sadness.

Yesterday was different. It was the 2nd anniversary of my brother David's death. I miss him. Five months since Will passed away. I miss him!!

I talk to them everyday.  About family, about love, about everything they taught me. It just doesn't seem to be enough to just whisper the words "I Love You, and I Miss You," everyday. So last night I met with an advocate for a 'child at risk' through family services. I have to do something!  So I'm going to open my heart and my home, and reach out and help. I have to do something.  Shouldn't we all do something?  I'm hoping that this 'child at risk'  will have new hope. I hope she will feel that someone cares, I hope she will feel loved.  

Someone had these same thoughts many years ago when they decided to reach out and share the love they had to give to Ashley. I wish I could say thank you to them, but for now, I will let my actions speak louder than my words.  I'm excited about my new Little Friend. Maybe tomorrow I won't feel like I have to put a smile on my face, maybe it will just come. Just Because.

***
My mom is pretty awesome.  Ashley, I hope you get to meet your 'Auntie Doreane' again soon.  I can tell you she has always loved you; she always said she had four daughters.  

Thank you, Mommy.  

With love (and a smile- reading what you wrote made it just come),

Audra

Five months. Not long enough to stunt my instinct each morning.  Five months and one week.  I could have done my morning routine and found you across the hall. “Hi Paahjj.” Perhaps in a whisper.  But you did what you could to form the words.  Five months. I slept at my mom’s house last night, and when I woke up in my old bed I sat up thinking to check on Will.  But the room across the hall is different now.  Will’s big, masculine- ugly! My mom would fight with him- furniture is gone.  Replaced by white dainty, airy pieces.  The room is empty. I woke up feeling its space inside me.  I thought I’d be farther along now. What is the timeline for grieving? Six months is the window and then you’re suppose to get back to normal.  What is normal? In a month will I be… whatever that is?  There is still fight in me.  Like a child who doesn’t understand.  I want you back.  Will, when will you be back?

Ashley, I’ve said before that when I find you I won’t try to push your father’s memory on you.  I promise I won’t.  For now can you just let me tell you about my great friend?  He understood me.  Understood my silence.  My inability to vocalize so many thoughts and emotions.  But he knew they were in there.  So he read my eyes.  Bright, glassed, blank, dark.  He understood.  Squeezed my hand.  Let me sit, even if I was crushing his blankets.  He was my morning greeting.  He cared when I walked in a room.  Even though I’m quiet.  He noticed.  He made me feel happy that I walked in the room.  We have not lived here long. He turned it into a home.  The big rooms seemed smaller. Because I knew he was across the hall. 

Five months.  That’s when the miracle happened. That’s when we all witnessed the person you have become.  I’m happy you’re up there.  No longer hurting.  No more lemon glycerin swabs.   But I miss you down here. So much.  It’s hard to come home. 

With love (for you always and forever),

Paahjj

It was 1991.  Halloween night.  We lived in New Hampshire back then.  My sisters and I dressed up in our costumes. I was a ballerina cow.  Seriously. It was a custom made outfit.  We each grabbed our orange plastic jack-o-lantern buckets and hurried out the door to begin collecting candy.  “Wait! Make sure you grab a bucket for your brother!” my mom called.  I doubled back to the kitchen counter and scooped up a second bucket in my spindly seven-year old arms.  My brother was only 15 months old, but boy, he loved candy.

My mom drove us 15 minutes- my sisters and I could not be convinced to walk the 100 yards between houses on our streets in the biting cold, so my mom shuttled us to the nearest condominium complex.  5 feet between doors. Awesome.  Yeah, spoiled much?  When we arrived at the complex we tumbled out of the minivan and my mom told us to slow down.  We danced in place- partly out of impatience, partly out of need to stay warm- as my mom strapped baby Ryan into a sling on her chest.  As we approached the first door, my mom handed Kayla my brother’s bucket and reminded us to make sure we asked for candy for him.  We nodded and reached up to knock.  “Trick or treat!”

The kind adults dropped one piece of candy into each of our buckets, as my mom watched- cautious as ever- from 8 feet away on the sidewalk.  They were usually just about to close the door when either Tara, Kayla or I would remember Ryan’s bucket and pipe up: “This is for my brother,” and we would gesture back to my mom and Ryan strapped to her chest, “he can’t walk.”  The adult’s eyes would widen. And my sisters and I watched, confused, as they proceeded to empty their baskets into Ryan’s bucket.  How is that fair?  We each get one piece? And he gets 20?!  We’re doing his work for him!

And so it went door to door.  Us girls earning one piece of candy with each enthusiastic trick or treat.  “Oh and this is for my brother, he can’t walk” we would repeat over and over.  And each time his bucket filled up with handfuls of candybars.  We were nearly done for the evening and my sisters and I were fighting over who had to carry Ryan’s bucket, as it was chock full and heavy,  My mom noticed and asked, confused, why Ryan had so much more candy than we did.  We shrugged.  “Well what are you telling the people when you ask for candy for him?”  “This is for our brother.  He can’t walk,” nine-year-old Kayla told my mom.  She started laughing.  So much so that tears came into her eyes.  We were baffled.  “Girls, when you say he can’t walk, they probably think he’s handicap.  Not that he’s a toddler.”  We laughed all the way home.  And 15 month old Ryan had enough candy to last him to his 15th birthday.   

Words are interesting things.  They can heal. They can hurt. They can be misinterpreted and create funny situations.  They can be misinterpreted and create chaos.  Words have always fascinated me, for their power to break and to unite.  So when I say things, I try to make sure I mean them.  Before I say things, I try to think about how those words will be interpreted.  Ashley, I hope that day we can once again exchange words, you’ll know that mine can be trusted.  I hope that we can communicate in such a way that neither of us will be misinterpreted.  But if ever our words are, I hope they will create laughs.  Maybe we’ll end up with a bucket full of candy to laugh over for years to come. 

Happy Halloween to my amazing A Wish for Ashley-ers. Happy Birthday to my amazing Boyfriend.  I mean it when I say thank you so much. I mean it when I say I love you so much.

With love (and too much candy left over- how is it that we only got 8 trick-or-treaters?!!),

Audra

So after mentioning the glamour.com withdrawal I experienced during my internet hiatus, I was amused to hear from a Glamour magazine writer this afternoon.  Maybe something will materialize from my conversation with her tonight, maybe not.  However, I share this because I need to share Kayla’s response to hearing about it: “if they end up writing about A Wish for Ashley, I think they owe you in return.  You should bring a picture of me and, as payment for offering up your story, ask them not to ever black-bar me.”

For those of you who aren’t also loyal Glamour readers, the ‘black-bar’ section is  arguably the back bone of this great publication.   Officially titled ‘Dos and Don’ts’, the section presents snapshots taken of unsuspecting passerby on the streets of New York.  For those ladies who find a tasteful way to be casually chic, they are celebrated in their full glory as ‘Dos’ and admired by Glamour readers across the country.  For those women who think, sure why not pair shirred jeans with a neon lycra crop top with a fringe vest and jelly shoes… they are captured by Glamour’s ruthless street photographers and splashed across this page with only a thin black bar to disguise their identities.  Since our teenage years, Kayla and I have found great entertainment in these pages; admiring the women with flawless fashion instincts and raising our eyebrows at the poor souls who have earned the ‘Don’t’ distinction.  It was many years ago that Kayla asked, philosophically, "what would you do if you opened up the magazine and looked down and realized ‘that’s me!’?"

Some Americans live in fear of Big Brother.  Wondering, if I do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, will He see me? Kayla and I have lived in fear of the Black Bar.  Waking up thinking, if I wear the wrong thing, will I end up in next month’s issue?  Now for me, the fear is small.  I live in Boston; a good 4 hours away from ground zero of the Black Bar.  Sure, Glamour occasionally travels to other regions for the feature, but for the most part, there is safety in the snowy Northeast.  Kayla, on the other hand, must look her fear in the face.  She lives in New York, and travels into the city often.  Anytime she plans to meet her husband or girlfriends in town, she calls with pressing questions.  Is it ok to wear leggings or are they out?  Can I wear this brown cardigan now or is it still too early to break out my fall wardrobe? When I hesitate to respond, or don’t give her a definitive answer, she protests, ‘don’t let me get black-barred!’ and she has my immediate attention and support.  So far, so good.  No black bar.  But to be safe, Kayla wants the ‘Get Out of Black Bar for Life’ pass on the negotiating table if Glamour wants to feature our story.  

What does the Black Bar have to do with the search for Ashley? Well, depends on how you look at it.  For me, there’s a new sense of urgency, and anxiety, knowing that out there, somewhere, Ashley- or people who may know her- may be watching some of this unfold.  I wake up thinking, what can I do to both honor her and make her understand how much we have all always loved her if today is the day she is going to get a snapshot of the cousin she hasn’t seen in ten years.  I try to be deliberate with the words I share here, and stories I share in our outreach appeals. Not knowing if today will be the day she stumbles upon me, not knowing if she’ll consider my efforts a Do or a Don’t.  The uncertainty can be overwhelming at times- enough to get me to call my sisters or mom and ask if I’m doing the right things.  They convince that today I won’t be black barred.  They push me to think that tomorrow others may join our search after seeing our work in a positive light.  

The Black Bar is scary; it’s unknown.  This search is very similar.  Halloween has nothing on the terrifying, ominous, startling process of putting myself in public view in the hopes of one day finding Ashley. 

With love (for my middle sister as she braves a weekend in the Black Bar land of (mis)opportunity),

Audra

On Thursday, October 15th the internet in my apartment stopped working.  So what, I can’t spend hours at night perusing equal parts New York Times and Glamour.com.  I’ll deal.  On Friday, October 16th the Boston Globe story appeared and the AOL News article went up.  By Saturday, October 17th there were over 900 emails in the A Wish for Ashley inbox.  Hundreds of emails, no internet connection.  So goes my life.  

Excuses, excuses, but fact is my daily blogging has been interrupted because there are only so many Borders, Au Bon Pains and Starbucks’ I can squat at late a night for their hot spot connections before people get suspicious.  I’ve made the rounds.  I’m starting to feel dirty.  So I am very pleased and extremely proud to share that as of 7:14pm this evening I HAVE FIXED MY INTERNET CONNECTION with my own two hands.  I unplugged, I plugged.  I uninstalled, I reinstalled. I turned the lights off, turned around three times, clapped my hands and voila… DSL.   I’m practically Steve Jobs.  

Now that I’m back and better than ever! Ummm or not… ha! here’s your search update:  We’ve gone through about a third of the leads that people have sent on.  No match yet, but ruling people out does get us closer.  This weekend I’ll move on to calling some of the Ashleys we couldn’t definitively rule out.  I love being a telemarketer as much as I love getting shots. One less person in that chaotic H1N1 vaccination line!  Our facebook group has grown to over 830 members so we’re going to have another A Wish for Ashley facebook challenge launching soon.  If each group member contacts X number of new Ashleys we’ll have 830 times X… plus X…. to the exponent of X… see, told you I can’t do math… more Ashleys on our side.  
Anyway, I’ll be back on track with insightful/random/useless/unexpected musings much more often now that my poor ol’ Mac has a wireless connection to bond with. Me, my ancient laptop, HG-TV and chocolate for dinner… a recipe for success… or at least for consistently pushing forward on our quest to find Ashley…

With love (and a new appreciation for Comcast internet service),

Audra