[dl]

Hi Aparents. Hope you don't mind a "visit" from an an adoptee, but I feel that what I have to share with you is important and it is in "support of adoptive parents" as well as adoptees. I replied to an adoptive mother's post with much of the following on one of the "adoptee threads". As I felt many aparents may not see it there I thought I would repost it here. I have always been most comfortable with the fact that I am adopted. I was loved and cared for by wonderful parents. Have no "issues" and have never felt "the primal wound" or "attachment disorder". I just received my non identifying information last Thursday and after beginning to absorb it felt that some of what I learned could give encouragement and reassurance to many adoptive parents.

Permanent Damage from Primal Wound is NOT a foregone conclusion.
I am an adult adoptee, now 52. If anyone should have a "Primal Wound" or "Attachment Disorder" it should be me. Not only was I left at the hospital by my bparents (they were married, bmother 20 and bfather 25), after spending four days in the hospital I was transferred to a "nursery" for 18 days. I then went to my first foster home where I stayed for 5 days. I went to a second foster home for 6 days. I went to a third foster home for 5 months. I went to a 4th foster home where I remained for almost 7 months. My adoptive parents took me home when I was 13 months old after my having been "kept" in six different places since birth.

I do not know why I was transferred around so much but it could not have been because I was a difficult child. I will quote from the non id information report that I just received. These statements begin at birth and progress through the various homes to age 13 months. "You were described as "very attractive looking and appealing" "foster mother said you were a great pleasure to have" "readily cooed and smiled" "smart and alert" "good eater" "developed at a good average rate" "very appealing" "extremely responsive" "on your first visit with your adoptive parents you were very comfortable with them" "you were contentedly active and responsive to your new parents" "the file stated that you made an easy adjustment to your new home and family" "You were described as being a little restless during the first week but had settled down quickly and become a very satisfied and content child"

Certainly does not describe a child suffering from "separation trauma" or "damaged forever" to me. Many things happen in life - good & bad. I don't even remember any of these homes. To many people choose to use various events to be a "victim". I was traumatized when my husband died at the early age of 44 when I was only 36. Yes, I grieved, felt heartbroken and miss him terribly to this very day - but does that make me a helpless, hopeless victim? Does it give me an excuse for a poor choice or bad decision that I make today? Perhaps, if I CHOOSE to be a victim. I don't CHOOSE to be a victim! We all have the ability to CHOOSE how we react to any situation.

Hope this reassures aparents that it is NOT a foregone conclusion that your child will "be damaged forever". If I could become a well-adjusted, high functioning, compassionate and loving person without "permanent damage" after the first year I had, with love and honesty I think the outlook is bright for aparents and their achildren. My mother told me that she started "practicing" telling me that I was adopted before I could even understand what she was saying. Eventually it must have "sunk in" because I have no memory of ever being "told" that I was adopted. Thus, I have never felt different, weird, or anything but normal and part of a family that loved me. Perhaps it might be an approach that some of you would want to use with your children.

Bless all of you that have chosen to love a child that needs parents and a home. I loved my parents dearly - they have both passed on now and I miss them. God was watching over me when they became my true parents 13 months after I was left at the hospital.

[lucyjoy]

Thank you for sharing your story. It's so nice to hear about good adoptions.

[Rosebud]

I just loved your post I too am adopted and I have never felt any kind of "weirdness" or loss for my B family. I have been very blest to have been brought into my adoptive family. I also am an adotive mother of a 4 year old boy from Korea and working on #2 from Guatemala. We tell Arick his adoption story to him all of the time and he loves watching his vidoe tape of his home coming.And this also be done with our soon to be daughter. I too have always grown up knowing that I was adopted and I have and still am very proud of this. God Bless

[faith_amom]

Thank you for your post here and on the Adoptee board. I really needed to hear this.

- Faith

[Linny]

Thank you both for touching my heart this evening. In the time that the 'boards' seem so filled with irritation and anger at adoptive parents.....it is so pleasant to hear stories such as yours.

Thank you for taking the time to post this on the adoptive parents board too.


Most sincerely,

Linny

[Support2Adopt]

Thank you so much for posting your story. What an inspiration you are! JJ

[ellia3]

Thank you for posting as a hopeful adoptive mom it is good to hear a postive story. May God Bless You!

[JanetM]

As a Bmom who has read about this "Primal Wound" and feels piles of guilt that no decision could have been the right one, THANK YOU for this post. I'd like to believe that my dear little son, who I love more than life itself, can grow up with his Aparents without this wound. Your posting makes me feel MUCH better!



-Janet

[texasislander]

I am so happy to read your post. I visited a group at msn and have been so down since reading all the angry posts from adopted children and birthmothers painting a picture of adoptive parents as thieving monsters. My husband and I are adoptive parents to two sisters, adopted at 9 and infant. We love the girls dearly and it would grieve me to think they were suffering that much. I've had long conversations with my eldest, now 12, and she says that while she wishes her birthfamily had been able to work out a good life for she and her siblings, she is happy to have us as parents too.

[dpen]

Please, to all the potential and current aparents out there. I think many 0of us adoptees out there believe YOU are the parents. I love my aparents as any child could love any parent. I always did. I truly feel s orry for adpotees who didn't have a good experiance. But I do believe most adoptions are in the best interest of the child. Thats what everyone needs to keep at the forefront. Whether it be birthparents or aparents...or the rest of society! I went to a support group many years ago as I was searching, a bmom got up a spoke about amom in derogotory terms. I became so defensive and angry that anyone would speak about MY mom in those terms. That women was not thinking about the best interest of the child. Whatever the reasons or facts around a child being put up for adoption, once its done...its done and everyone needs to keep childs best interest at the forefront. I truly believe that the best thing that happened to me was when a social worker(mary King)decided that I needed to be adopted quickly even though my ethnicity is not the same as aparents. I trully feel she saved my life...I could have langished in the system foe years. No I do not feel any primal wound. Do I feel curosity ...yes...Need to know answers..yes.but I very thankful that the adults around me all those years ago had my best interest at heart. I also believe my aparents were thankful to get me!!
By the way, I did meet bmom and she is a very nice women, but was not ready to bring up children at the time of my birth...she feels guilt,unfortunaly, no matter how much i tell her she needn't.
I know things are different now, but my birth was 45y.o. and I was adopted at age 2.(was in 6 different foster homes before being adopted)
So to aparents bring your children up with love and security and things should be just like any other family,...teens, cars , ectHEHE

[debsdone]

Dlouis has done a wonderful thing here. While there are those who believe that dissatisfaction with adoption is necessary for change, the movement to portray it as abusive and hopeless is dangerous. I am an adult adoptee. While the details of my story are different to dlouis, I absolutely agree with her. It saddens me to think that anyone would believe the negative feelings that are expressed are the majority felings, because they truly are not. So a big thanks to dlouis! Love, Debi

[kimannef]

What a great thread, dlouis! Even though I am an adoptee, I haven't read much about the adoption issues and know nothing about the "Primal Wound." I do understand, very well, about the void, the deep yearning for answers, I felt before my search. And I know what filling that void feels like. And I, too, love my aparents very much. They are the only parents I have. They never loved me any less, and maybe even more, because I was adopted. Any emptiness ("the void") I felt was not because I wasn't loved, it was specifically because I was an only child and yearned for siblings and answers. I don't consider myself damaged goods, and whatever the primal wound is, I don't have it! I really believe that a child is bound to have some genetic traits, but how we love our children, how we believe in our children, and how we treat and raise our children is going to be ingrained in them forever.

[lemonchutney]

One of the things that annoys me about the book Primal Wound is that it minimizes the importance of the bonding my adoptive mother and I had when I was a tiny baby. She sang to me, rocked me, and played with me. I see her now with my neice and my son and I see how truly WONDERFUL she is with babies and toddlers. They trust and love her, not because they recognize her smell or heartbeat, but because of how she relates to them. She has a gift, which is not dependent on any biological ability to conceive and carry a fetus. Minimizing the importance of the love she is able to give is an affront to me, to her, and to my relationship with her. Whether or not there is such a thing as trauma registered by newborn brains resulting from separation from bio-mothers, therapists who rely on this generic explanation for adoptee psychology show a lack of flexibility and creativity, and they show a disrespect for the individuals who come to them for help and understanding.

One of my questions to people who believe in the "primal wound" is how do you define the word "primal"? Does it mean both first in time and first in importance? I think we all have wounds, and that these wounds stem from many different kinds of experiences.. Being alive is, in part, about getting wounded. What gives Nancy V, or any therapist, the superior knowledge to be able to decide what is another person's MOST important wound? In therapy, shouldn't the wound on which the therapist and patient set their focus be dictated by the needs of the patient? And shouldn't the patient define those needs at the moment of seeking therapy? I have several problems with the type of therapy proposed by primal woundists. Some of the problems are: It focuses on the unconsious mind rather than the conscious mind, it focuses on the past rather than the present, and it doesn't "test" its hunches against the client's experience and modify these ideas accordingly.

[Rita Binder]

This has been an extremely interesting thread -- I guess I never realized that so many people out there have so many problems with adoption.

I'm a 48 y/o adoptee and I've recently begun to search for my birth family. I've always known that I was adopted, but it never really bothered me. I grew up in a happy, loving home. My parents made sure I got a good education. I never went without anything that I needed. Even though I was an only child, I had tons of relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins who never treated me any differently than they treated each other. Everyone cared about each other and watched out for each other -- we still do, but not quite as much as when I was a kid. I've never felt out of place with my relatives -- they ARE my family.

We often laugh now when someone mentions the fact that I tower over Mom (she's 80 and 5'1", while I stand 6 feet tall) ... or when someone asks why I have so much more gray hair than she does! Most of the next generation of my family don't know that I'm adopted ... no one in my generation even thinks about it! I'm just one of the many cousins, no questions asked.

When my folks first began to explain adoption to me, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about ... for a while, I thought my birth mother was a bad person and just didn't want me, but I grew through that period. Mom and Dad never said a bad word about my birth mother, but then, they didn't know very much about her. As I grew older and learned more about life in general, I realized that I was pretty lucky! A young girl (17/18 at the time of my birth) had been willing to carry me for 9 months and had been loving enough to give me to complete strangers to be raised. Back in 1954, abortion wasn't an option in most cases, but I'm sure that if she had wanted to get rid of me, she could have. From the non-identifying info I recently received, I know that my birth mother was a 17/18 y/o girl, youngest of 6 children ... her mother had died when she was 11 in a car wreck ... her father had remarried ... all of her siblings were older and not living at home when I was born ... my birth father was in the military and stationed in Europe when I was born ... she tried a couple of different ways to keep me during the first 6 months, but ended up taking me to the Catholic orphanage and placing me for adoption. To me, this information presented a reasonable scenario ... I'm sure many of you can see the possibilities, too.

All I know is that I'm truly grateful to the woman who carried me for 9 months, tried to keep me (or find a way to do so) for six months, then showed her love for me by relinquishing her parental rights and offering me to an older couple who had a lot of love to share with a child. I've waited a long time to begin my search and I honestly hope that one day I'll be able to look into my birth mother's eyes and say "Thank you ......"

[Moonchild_Mom]

I have so enjoyed reading your posts on this thread and others and I hope you all will continue to speak on these boards and share your experiences.

It is so sad that the negativity on these boards of late, have prompted adoptees such as yourselves to speak up in defense of the adoptive parent and offer reassurance! None the less, your contributions our received with a heartfelt welcome from all adoptive parents who have found themselves bogged down by the negativity of the anti-extremists. It would be impossible to explain the comfort your words have brought to so many. I think most of the adoptive parents on these boards are not so naive as to not recognize that some adoptions go bad and that some adoptees have issues. But I think it is always important to keep in mind that every situation is different and that in everything there is good and bad. We've heard a lot of the "bad" lately. Thank you for reminding us of the "good".

Thank you!

Moonchild Mom