I wanted to thank you for the book you recommended to me - The Primal Wound.

I ordered and received it immediately after you recommended it, but just recently had the nerve to open it.

I haven't read it yet, but explored a little bit of it. There are some things that stood out to me in it that I strongly identified with very strongly.

I wondered if you might be so kind as to share your observations on these things, if you have any.

I am asking you because you seem to have an understanding of adoptees and are familiar with my history. I am trying to explore some concepts from the book and how they apply to me, but am struggling with objectivity and am worried that I might be understanding or applying it incorrectly - I guess I'm saying I don't trust my own perceptions right now and I don't want to screw it up.

The things that stood out to me that I identify with are:

While adoptive parents may refer to the child as "chosen" and to themselves as the "real" parents, the child has had an experience of another mother to whom he was once attached and from whom he is now separated which he can never completely ignore. The words we use to describe that separation or the cognitive reasons we give for it make no difference to the feeling sense of the child. As one adoptee told me, "Being wanted by my adoptive parents didn't compare to being unwanted by my birth mother." Whether we refer to this separation as surrendering or relinquishment, the child experiences it as abandonment.

I did feel this way as a child. I feel that way now, in a way, even though as an adult I understand the logical reasons for the choice she made.

I believe that this connection, established during the nine months in utero, is a profound connection, and it is my hypothesis that the severing of that connection between the child and biological mother causes a primal or narcissistic wound which often manifests in a sense of loss (depression), basic mistrust (anxiety), emotional and/or behavioral problems and difficulties in relationships with significant others. I further believe that the awareness, whether conscious or unconscious, that the original separation was the result of relinquishment affects the adoptee's sense of Self, self-esteem and self-worth.

I don't know how I feel about this, but it stood out out to me, I guess because it makes the feelings of the child seem natural.

This scenario is sometimes played out in reverse where the child, having been told that he is "special," feels that he has to be perfect in order to retain the love and acceptance of his parents. This need to be special can put a great deal of pressure on the child to live up to some perceived expectations which are frequently unattainable. This often leaves the child feeling inadequate and worthless, a reinforcement of his feelings of having failed his first mother. The need to be perfect for the "rescuing" parents makes the child suppress his own true self in order to submit to the wishes of his parents. This seems imperative to his survival: "You have to be good or you're gotten rid of."

I identify particularly with this paragraph. I was always told that I was "special" because I was adopted. I have always felt the need to try to be perfect in order to be worthy of love so I wouldn't be abandoned again. I had described it to Patriot before as feeling as though I wasn't "shiny" enough or I wouldn't have been abandoned or rejected.

The insecurity of his being good enough to keep can be made even more acute if he is also insecure about the meaning of love. Many children are told that the reason that their birthmothers gave them up was because she loved them and wanted to do the right thing. This sets up a cognitive context for a prevailing feeling: that if one is loved, one is abandoned.

This spoke loudly to me. I was always told that my birth mother's choice was a loving act. Maybe that did set up the idea for me that love=abandonment. I remember saying before that everyone who has ever claimed to love me has abandoned me. Maybe I have thought that love=abandonment.

Adoption for these children isn't a concept to be learned, a theory to be understood or an idea to be developed. It is a real experience about which they have had and are having recurring and conflicting feelings, all of which are legitimate. These feelings are their response to the most devastating experience they are ever likely to have: the loss of their mother. The fact that the experience was preverbal does not diminish the impact, it only makes it more difficult to treat. It is almost impossible to talk about, and for some even difficult to think about. Many do not feel as if they were born, but as if they came from outer space or a file drawer. To allow themselves to think about being born, even a feeling sense of it, would mean also having to think about and feel what happened next, and that they most certainly don't want to do.

Wow, do I identify with feeling like I came from outer space. I think I shared one time here about my weird fantasies as a child about where I came from...I thought maybe God made adopted children out of playdough and cookie cutters and put them on a conveyer belt and sprinkled them with magic dust, leaving them to set overnight until the next morning - and POOF, they became alive adopted children. I had other odd theories in my five-year-old mind, too.

One memory I have from around four or five years old is of asking my mother if she got me from a garage sale (I think she took me to garage sales a lot). She told me that she did get me from a garage sale - for five cents.

I know she didn't realize the way I perceived that remark and how I have carried it throughout my life. I know she was probably teasing me. I also understand that I probably wasn't old enough to express my perceptions or communicate them to her.

Yet all adopted children begin their lives having already felt the pain and, perhaps, terror of separation from the first mother. They experience the environment as hostile and their bond to the mother as transitory. They may also unconsciously experience themselves as having been somehow lacking or unworthy of their birth parents' love and protection.

Knowing that I was different from my non-adopted brother and sisters and the fact that my mother didn't know how to deal with me - not her fault, she just didn't know what to do for me - made me feel terribly unaccepted and flawed.

I think maybe I then began to feel unworthy of my adoptive parents' love and protection also. I remember feeling very confused, alone, and misunderstood.

I think I then began to do this...

because the child is rejected by his biological parents, it is not surprising that he repeatedly tests the commitment of his adoptive parents. The problem is that in so doing he does not relieve his anxiety. Instead, he increases his demands for acceptance by engaging in behavior which is more and more destructive and less and less acceptable until he brings about the very outcome which he feared in the first place.

which also relates to...

One will notice that a great deal of the time much of the destructive behavior of the acting-out adoptee is his way of calling attention to his pain. He feels chaotic inside, so he causes chaos outside. Many adoptive parents, not understanding what is going on and having their own feelings of rejection triggered, argue with their child rather than validating his feelings. This only serves to reinforce his feeling that no one understands him, which causes him to have to act out over and over again in order to find some way to call attention to his pain.

I know that my parents didn't understand, know how to respond, and felt rejected.

I remember everyone in my family telling me that I didn't feel like part of their family because I didn't want to be part of their family.

I did want to. I think I was testing (and re-testing) their commitment, as explained above.

When, after three years of therapy, the preconscious feelings of separation from her mother began to emerge into consciousness, she fought this happening as if her very life depended on it; for allowing those feelings meant also having to feel what she perceived as her vulnerable, "defective" self, the reason for her mother's having given her up. If she could keep those feelings at bay, her integrity could be preserved and she could escape, for a while longer, annihilation. Her wound was deep, her defenses strong, and her need for understanding great.

I identify with this, particularly a very, very deep need for feeling understood. Not feeling understood feels like rejection to me. It feels like I am being rejected for being flawed.

"The fantasy or reunion with the biologic parents appears to be an effort to deal with the depression that grows out of fantasies around abandonment." It should be noted that, although we may call the fear of being abandoned by the adoptive parents a fantasy, there is precedent for that fear in the original separation experience, which may be felt only unconsciously. What the adoptee is fearing isn't a fantasy, it is a memory trace which at any time can be repeated. Stone pointed out that the question, whether spoken or unspoken, "Why did my own mother not keep me?" is almost always followed by the unexpressed but equally anxious thought, "If she could do that, what about you?" Is it any wonder that adoptees go through life feeling as if at any time the other shoe could drop? To what extent does this fear of abandonment affect their development?

Interesting question at the end. Interesting concept about the memory trace.

Thanks for reading. I'm just trying to explore some of this stuff.

Froz ~ mind if I butt in?


This is what I think you are doing to Patriot also. This is your pattern. Self-fulfilling prophecy my dear. This is what I have been trying to get you to see.

Of course, I never mind if you butt in. I could use as much input as possible.



Maybe Patriot could just stop arguing with me!

I'm just kidding...mostly.

I hate the phrase "self-fulfilling" prophecy.

Besides, he promised he wouldn't do that.

Hmm...I said, "Do you see what you are doing?" and your reply was "Yes but he is making me!"

You don't need him or your parents to change what they are doing ~ sure it would be nice ~ but you don't have control over them. The answer is not outside of yourself.

I was kidding, really.

Except the part about self-fulfilling prophecy. I really do hate that term.

Also, to answer your question...of course I see the relevancy. That's why it stood out to me.

Froz

I am so glad you got the book ... and have begun this exploration !

It's difficult ... it was for me.

I suspect our kids benifited from NOT living with any bio children of ours ... they are 1/2 siblings ... so in our home, adoption can NOT be used as a comparrison issue between sibs. (they make up ~other~ reasons to argue and feel put out ... after all ... that is what kids do LOL)

I suggest you use this book to put some things to bed ... because in the end ... what is past is past ... and your ONLY purpose right now is to live a more fulfilling life and to love with fewer past-history-imposed restrictions.

PS ... I cannot find my copy ... I may have lent mine out ...???? I can't remember <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

It's more difficult than I ever could have imagined. I cry when I just read it, much less think about it, because so much of it is exactly the way I feel and have felt my whole life.

They have a web site.

The Primal Wound

well being validated is very good ... being told your secret feelings are not only understood and shared by others .... but also, there is a light leading the way toward a less adoption-victim way of living

guess what?

you had zero choice about being adopted

but today you can chose to not live in that shadow
<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

when you are ready ... you do have a choice to step away

but you are still grieving ... but if I thought my kids were going to turn their grieving into a life-style ... I'd smack them upside the head (not literally ... but you know what I mean)

suggestion: become a foster parent someday in the future ... put your experience to work in a positive way

Smacked them upside the head? Hmmm...yes, I do believe I know EXACTLY what you mean!

How long did they grieve?

How do you step away?



I don't know what you mean. I don't have any experience.

Why did you decide to adopt?

My parents decided to adopt because they thought they couldn't have any more children, but they did. Isn't it possible that secretly they could have wished they wouldn't have - particularly given that I was such a mean, rotten teenager - and wouldn't way to say it because it sounds way too horrible?

OT: I am not seven days today, at least not physically, because I just whipped Patriot's bum in a wrestling match and held him down with a new move. Just felt like sharing <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

dummy ... you HAVE life experience

and are acquiring more every minute

you have empathy you can share with lost kids ... foster kids who would give their eye teeth for an adoptive family

and .... you could teach them self defense LOL

Oldest (19) still grieves ... Youngest (16) has hardly an unhappy moment her entire life ! She's just a naturally sunny disposition. She "moved on" years ago.

Our children had more than adoption to grieve. They were born to an addict. So, there were some physical/health issues needing to be emotionally processed.

Froz thinks ~~~> "How could my birth mother not love me enough to keep me?"

Pep's kids think ~~~> "Our birth mom liked heroin more than she cared for us. Am I as big a loser as she?"

Son has refered to his birth mom as "a crack who*e" .... ouch ... that one caught me in the gut .... coz after reading Primal Scream I understood how he was really touching his own wound and giving himself NO anaesthetic.

I haven't overcome anything, I meant.

As far as self-defense, I only have this one move down. I'm sure I'll pay for it later. That's not true...I have two moves. I forgot about the one where he holds me down, arms and legs pinned, and he leaves me no defense but to raspberry him in the face. That one only works because he is laughing so hard he has to let me go.

How do you stop grieving?

I did not marry until I was 31. I was working as an RN in NICU .... so I had seen too many bad pregnancy outcomes ... and I knew my bio-clock was ticking. When H and I first married, we decided to have "one of our own" first, then adopt a second child. (I did not want to be a near 40 primipara because of my NICU experiences)

but.... we never got preggars....

then one day I was on jury duty downtown Los Angeles ... spending hours in the jury room, making friends and doing jigsaw puzzles and reading Stephen King .... and the TV ran a PBS announcing a new adoption program of "fast track" adoptions for latino families .... well, I am about as white as anyone can get, but mr Pep ... he's brown with a Spanish last name ... so we applied as a latino family and got fast tracked for a county adoption .... and then .... when we had our son (he was 3 when we got him ... more on this later) for about half a year, our social worker called us and asked if we'd like "his sister" who was about 6 months old.

So ... there we are ... suddenly with 2 special needs adoptive kids after living a life of high-income-free-spending for several years.

I am 40 years older than our youngest. Menopause meets puberty ~~~> see it in a theater near you soon !

LOL <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

giving of yourself

yes you have

Froz ... don't you think I had some grieving to do about our infertility?

... and what do you think helped?

... getting these 2 little souls under my wing .... and them smacking them upside the head when they need it <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I am sorry Froz ... I really have to laugh at you sometimes ... I have a LOT to say about this in particular

" Isn't it possible that secretly they could have wished they wouldn't have "

I shall return and share with you WHY I find this soooooo amusing <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

please remember ... my humor is my way of coping sometimes !

Oh great. Laughing when I wasn't trying to be funny can't be good.

Also, why'd ya have to go and quote me with a typo??? Now I can't fix it! I can't stand that.

well, it is good! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> .... I am a great laffer


me too!

sorry .....

Ok next the "story"