I would like to invite adoptive and prospective adoptive parents to read this article with an open mind and heart as you reflect on the meaning of your own adopted child's prenatal experience. What do you really know of your child's birth mother's medical care or state of mind? There may be some medical information available to you, but what about the mother's emotional world? What were her emotions about giving her baby up for adoption? How did this impact her baby's world in the womb? How do you imagine your child's world has been effected by the loss of the person it was bonding with for those nine months? How do you believe this experience has set the frame for your child's relationship with you, with themselves and with their world?
These are difficult questions I know, but essential ones I believe in order to not only begin your own bonding process with your child, but also to help your child come to know and understand this loss and its impact on them. While it is a deeply sad situation for a child to lose it's birth mother, in adoption that is a reality -- and one that is better to be acknowledged, grieved and emotionally made sense of than denied and misunderstood.
Adoption Initiative Conference 2022
2 years ago
5 comments:
I feel I should note that saying "I'm sorry you hurt BUT..." or "I'm sorry you lost your mother BUT..." is just as invalidating as pretending there is no grief in adoption, simply because it's backed up by a defensive maneuver and prevents any true expression in the child's voice.
What I mean is, it's true that parents don't want to watch their kids suffer. And I'm sure that's not what the BUT is about at all.
But (haha) having the BUT in there IS dismissing their voice because it is insinuating that despite the grief, there was some good, so the child may perceive there is a "limitation" on how much s/he can grief, or when it is "appropriate" to grieve, and really, feeling like you have to be permitted to grieve isn't a way of grieving at all because you're so conscious of not making other people uncomfortable.
Thanks for posting this link, hopefully it will start other adopters thinking, at last, about these issues.Before we know it the Primal Wound will be accepted!
Good wishes...posted this link as it is a useful one, thanks.
I don't doubt that many (most) adoptees suffer and grieve on their own levels, each situation as it should be.
I'd like to add that I was a basket case when I was pregnant with my son Guess what? He was born calm, even and relaxed - and still has that demeanor. Lucky guy takes after his Dad.
Let's not forget that The Primal Wound is someone's opinion, not research backed. The reason I say this is that each individual adoptee deserves his / her OWN story without a book or theory adding to their potential emotional rollercoaster.
"Let's not forget that The Primal Wound is someone's opinion, not research backed."
I do agree that if I recall correctly, the Primal Wound is based on anecdotal evidence.
However, I also happen to believe that the body remembers trauma, even if the mind does not necessarily consciously have any "real" memories.
Besides... who would want their children to have a "Primal Wound" anyway? No one.
"The reason I say this is that each individual adoptee deserves his / her OWN story without a book or theory adding to their potential emotional rollercoaster."
Well, all I can say is when people bring God into the discussion or say "Your mother loved you so much she gave you up", that's not allowing the adoptee to have their own story, either.
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