| This dissertation explored the psychospiritual health and well-being of 10 diverse adult women adoptees who engaged in mindful awareness practices and activities. The main question asked was Do mindful awareness practice(s) and activities help transform adult women adoptees' relationships, adoption stories, and identities, and, if so, to what degree? Although adoptees who were raised within a closed adoption system and their adoption experience, story, and self-identity have been examined, studied, and explored in the adoption literature, a transpersonal psychological exploration surrounding the effects of mindful awareness practices and activities exclusively among adult women adoptees has not been pursued. In the current exploration, intuitive inquiry was the qualitative method used that offered the researcher the opportunity to explore and ultimately transform her own personal lenses surrounding her own adoption experience, views, beliefs, and worldview while engaging with 10 diverse adult women adoptees, otherwise referred to as coresearchers in intuitive inquiry. Coresearchers' adoption stories, relationships, and mindful awareness practices and activities were the topic of inquiry during interviews.;Findings suggested that coresearchers' mindful awareness practices and activities, such as meditation, journaling, yoga, swimming, creative expression, walking, and ritual provided them complementary tools, skills, and resources to positively cope with the complexities of their adoption experiences. Coresearchers, in turn, felt more connection with others and with their bodies. In addition, most coresearchers demonstrated a coherency of narrative and the mechanisms of mindfulness, such as mindsight, mentalization, and earned security of attachment. Contributing factors of mindfulness and coherency of narrative included leadership roles in adoption community, past and/or current active participation in peer-supported and adoption-related events, being connected or having a desire to reunify with biological families, and possessing spiritual beliefs.;Lastly, this intuitive inquiry provides a unique contribution to the fields of mindfulness, adoption, attachment, and transpersonal psychology by exploring the relationship between mindful awareness practices and activities and the cognitive and identity dissonance, the tension surrounding one's adoptive identity and authentic biological self, and mending the broken narratives in adopted women's intrapsychic experiences. Professionals, clinicians, adoptive parents, educators, and adopted individuals will likely benefit from this intuitive inquiry because the results will provide new insight into and expansion upon the already established psychological, emotional, and developmental theories surrounding adoptees by encompassing the otherwise largely unknown and unreported psychospiritual health and well-being of adult women adoptees. |
