[gr8fuladoptee]

Jody,I understand what you are saying here how being adopted miight intensify those feelings of wanting to please others and wanting their acceptance. It's just as, or more devastating when they don't approve or reject you. At least I take it more personal than others. When that happens I tend to get more needy and that just pushes people away. i hate when i get like that because I know how draining it is to have a needy person sucking the life out of you. I really don't want to be that person.
Anyway thanks for the comments and hearing me out.

[Jody M]

Thanks for sharing- just knowing the areas adoption has affected in our lives and relationships is BIG. Then we know the areas we have to work on. I have grown by leaps and bounds and feel much healing in my adoption journey and reunion with my birth family. The mystery of my adoption is solved with reunion and many questions answered and truth has replaced unknowns or misperceptions about my birth and adoption. And I can also see how my perception of my adoption impacted my self-esteen and relationships growing up and in my early adult years. Attending a local adoption triad support group in Indiana and Illinois for the past 14 years total has helped me greatly . And my faith in God and prayer has helped me see my adoption through His great plan for my life and helped me embrace my adoptee status- more than I ever did before.

Blessings and thanks for sharing! Jody M

[Barksum]

I hope no one is annoyed that I've butted in, but ... I am! I'm not an adoptee, but I am an adoptive mom. The responsibility of parenting little children who've has the loss of not being able to live with their bio family is a weighty responsibility. I do try to keep up with what adult adoptees share about their experiences and feelings. You all help me to better understand my children and how to carefully help them explore their feelings and learn to share them as well. Thank you for all that you post.

I have to (sheepishly) admit that I've run from reading the book 'The Primal Wound'. It was recommended to me by a family who had privately adopted one infant who later grew up to have some serious behavioral problems. The family believed ALL these issues stemmed solely from adoption, something that I believe to be open to debate. I avoided reading the book they used to validate their interpretation of the basis of all their family problems -- and the book that they also felt validated their belief that ALL adoptions are going to bring overwhelming family problems and we'd best just gird ourselves as the child's issues are going to cause the family unit to go into crisis at some point. (OK, Ok, I know it is juvenile to avoid a book based on this! But still...having been told that our family was doomed I wasn't eager to read the book.)

I am married to a long-term foster child (never adopted), and we have adopted 4 children with special needs. None were infants when placed with us. Obvious to me was the need for extra 'nurturing' of my Dh and our children.

My Dh does expect me to be a mind reader. He was shocked when I couldn't do it! We've worked on that...I've tried harder to recognize those more subtle cues that let me know what his needs are, and he's worked on actually looking at me and stating what he wants. He lived a childhood in chronic limbo; at any time the phone could ring and the caseworker could say that he was going to be moved to another home. This led him to be very careful of his feelings and his relationships with others.

Our children came with some heavy needs; neglect, multiple moves, drug/alcohol addiction in utero, central nervous system processing problems, etc. etc. It's been a rocky road but we're all doing well and continuing to grow together. Together we are growing UP and together we are growing CLOSER.

So, that being said, my kids have had attachment problems and grief and loss issues. Isn't that, from what I've been able to glean, what 'The Primal Wound' is all about? Helping children to recognize grief, loss and attachment for what they are and to work on them as they grow? Or is that not it at all?

As an adoptive mother I can do my utmost to reach all those hurts and help to heal them to the best of my ability, but I will never be able to fill them as they need to be filled. I do not have the ability to meet the foundational needs of their souls. Ultimately the Great Physician is the only One who can. He must heal those early wounds that all of us have. We can't depend on others or material things to fill those areas we all have that are unfufilled. Our parents can't give us all that we need, marriage can't, being parents, having best friends, having all our physical needs and wants and even our smallest whims met, withdrawing from others and maintaining total self reliance, nothing can meet what we need for our souls to be complete.

This makes me so grateful for what God has indeed done; He saves us from death (sin), for love. That is, He pulls us from sin into love. Our lives are forevermore defined by His love for us. This is what I pray for my children, and in this I have to rest. (That active kind of rest that means I do all that I can to take care of my family while resting in the knowledge that God cares for them more than I.)

[Peggysue]

Hi Everyone,

Barksum - you didn't butt in, you contributed! And reading your post it seems to me that you have got everything RIGHT. The fact that you are aware that your achildren have issues and are looking to God to heal them is tremendous. I think some of us adoptees are working through issues now because we didn't have that opportunity when we were younger. You have a lot of needy people around you and seem so sensitive to their problems; I'm sure bringing each issue to God and asking Him to guide you is the best path. And I pray that God blesses you as you bless others. I felt for your husband when you wrote about him being moved around as a child. That must have had a profound effect on him. I'm glad he is beginning to be able to state what his needs are. One of the problems I have had as an adoptee is others not understanding why I react the way I do. The fact that you understand that your husband's background has had a significant influence on him is a BIG step in the right direction.

Gr8fuladoptee - I identified with the neediness you mentioned, and also what it is like to have a needy person draining you. I have felt the same on both counts. I'm trying to remember what changed, because I don't think I am like that now. I think it was identifying the neediness with my baby-state (have you read about the frozen baby we mentioned on other threads?) rather than the adult me. By seeing it as a residual problem from the past and taking ownership of it, I think it reduced the pressure on others. Instead of me looking to them to be the answer, we together approached God for the healing of my pain.

The Primal Wound, which I mentioned in the original post and some of you have wondered about reading, puts forward the premise that separating a baby from its birth mother causes an emotional wound. I had never really thought about the nine months I spent in my bmother's body, and how the separation from the one in whom I was formed affected me emotionally. The book validated some of my feelings and helped me see that breaking the relationship after birth (a time when we are utterly helpless) could be the root of my problems. The author Nancy Newton Verrier is the mother of both an adopted and a biological daughter (as well as being a clinical psychologist) and she writes partly from this experience. I did not identify with everything in it, but if she is on the right lines it alters the way in which adoption is viewed, especially compared to closed adoptions.

I just want to add that my amother was the most important person in my life. The problems I had came from a time before I met her. I never felt she wasn't my mother, but I had fears and sadness which surfaced when she was absent, and particularly after she died. It was these I wanted to be freed from. If, in those days, there had been the sympathy and understanding which there is now, and which you seem to be showing Barksum, I think the path would have been a lot easier for all concerned.

Jody - your witness to what God has done in your adoption journey is a great encouragement. Thank you.

Blessings

Peggysue