Welcome to Mind Your Own Karma, The Adoption Chronicles.
I'm your host, Melissa Brunetti. In this second season of Mind
Your Own Karma, we're tackling the subject of adoption.
Yes, adoption, most of the time is a wonderful experience.
You have the generous birth parents, the excited adoptive
parents, and this lucky little baby.
Everyone lives happily ever after, right?
But what I want you to know is there's so much more to these
stories. I'm an adoptee myself, and I
want to bring all sides of the adoption journey to you in hopes
to educate you and to bring understanding to this subject.
We're about to get real and raw here, so let's dive right in.
Hey Karma crew, As you know, we're talking about adoption
this season on Mind Your Own Karma the Adoption Chronicles.
And last couple weeks I've been telling you a little bit about
my story. I hope you were able to go on my
Instagram and Facebook pages and take a look at the pictures of
my biological parents and me. I always thought I looked
exactly like my birth mother. But when I put those pictures
together and saw everything side by side, I was like, Oh my gosh,
I look a lot like my dad at that same age.
So very interesting to see that because there's always been kind
of a question about that. You know, there's no DNA test
back then and he's passed now, although I do know my sisters,
but neither one of them have done DNA tests.
So I really haven't been able to connect any DNA to his side.
And there was always a question, you know, in his mind or at
least he said so back then at the time that he wasn't sure if,
you know, he was my father and that's why he didn't marry,
ended marrying my biological mother and the whole deal that
you learned last week that happened in the story.
So just kind of interesting to make that realization that, oh,
I do kind of look like him. That's very interesting.
Never saw that before. So if you haven't seen it, go
back and check that out. I might post a couple of other
family, biological, family photos as well.
I have some of like my grandmother and things like
that. So anyway, go check those out
this week on the podcast. We are going to dig into the
book The Primal Wound. If you are an adoptee or a birth
mother or a adoptive parent. This book is pretty heavy.
This is the one that I previously told you that my
birth mother had given me when soon after she met me and I read
it and I threw it in the trash because I was.
So it's kind of a depressing book in a way, and I don't think
at age. I think I was 2324 when I read
it, I was really ready to absorb it.
You really have to be ready, and I don't think at that age you're
really ready to hear. Hear what Nancy Verrier has to
say about adoptees and how the whole process can affect you and
your entire life. Really.
Now I can look at it and be objective because I really, I'm
always, you know, a work in progress and I want to work on
me. And so, you know, I'm able to
look at this and take what I need and leave what I don't, so
I can look at it more objectively now.
And now it's pretty interesting. But you like I said, you really,
if you decide to read it, you really have to be ready to hear
some hard things and look at yourself in the mirror and you
know, maybe own some things or or correlate like oh you know,
I've always had a problem connecting with people on a on a
deeper level. And you know, that could be why
just kind of, you know, look at it and if the shoe fits, wear it
kind of thing. So the first thing to realize
when you read this book or to understand is this was written
in 1993 and I don't think it's been revised.
So they talk about the adoptee as a him throughout the book.
That's one thing to note when you're reading the book.
It is kind of difficult to navigate when you're reading it
like that. Everything's him.
So I even though this book was written in 1993, the psychology
and the correlations that she makes still make sense.
They're still true today and I think they're always going to be
true. And I'm sure there's been a lot
more work since this book came out that just the psychology of
adoption. But the basically the definition
that she puts in the book and the the preface, she says, What
I discovered is what I call the primal wound.
A wound which is physical, emotional, psychological and
spiritual. A wound which causes pain so
profound as to have been described as cellular by those
adoptees who allowed themselves to go that deeply into their
pain. I began to understand this wound
as having been caused by the separation of the child from his
biological mother, the connection to whom seems
mystical, mysterious, spiritual, and everlasting.
She goes on to say. I anticipate a great deal of
resistance to the ideas set forth in this book.
The only people who can really judge this work, however, are
those about whom it is written. The adoptees themselves.
Only they, as they note their responses to what is written
here, will really know in their deepest cell the validity of
this work, the existence or non existence of the primal wound,
which is kind of what I was saying about you know, take what
you need and leave what you don't own, what you, you know,
think you need to own. Nancy Barrier, the author of the
book, she is an adoptive parent. And when she adopted her
daughter, and I think her daughter was, you know, newborn,
I don't think her daughter ever went to foster care like I did
in between, you know, the relinquishment.
But she noticed right away that her daughter was in pain and she
couldn't figure out why. Another part in the book where
she talks about kind of just being naive about it, that, you
know, we're going to give her a loving home, we're going to give
her all the love that she needs, and everything's going to be
fine. And it's just, it's just not
that easy. It I wish it was, but it's not,
She also says. Some of the lessons I have had
to learn on the way have been very painful for me.
I have had to face the fact that I can never take the place of
her birth mother. And she says it's not that she
didn't bond with her daughter, but it was through a lot of, you
know, crying and sacrifice and work that that bonding had to
happen and some understanding of why her daughter was acting out
the way she was and the defense mechanisms that she was acting
out with because of the primal wound.
You know, those people that I'm going to hurt you before you
hurt me kind of thing. I'm going to reject you before
you reject me. And as and for an adoptee, if
you think about it, for us, a mother that gives her child a
for adoption, no matter what the circumstances are, that's still
a rejection because you're like, how can a mother give her child
away no matter what the circumstance?
You still gave that child up. How can you do that?
Like that is the most unbelievable abandonment that a
mother could do that no matter what the circumstance.
It could be the most noble of circumstances, and it just
doesn't matter to the adoptee. You still gave me up, you know,
You gave me up. And maybe you kept other
children after me. So where does that leave you?
I wasn't good enough. You didn't want to try hard
enough to keep me. Even if you've had the greatest
life as an adoptee, which I did, I have the greatest family.
I would never, ever, ever give it up.
But you were still rejected by your mother no matter what, and
that rejection reverberates. It's like dropping a Pebble in a
pond. And it just ripple.
The ripple effect just goes out from there and affects all your
relationships that really can. And that's another thing that,
you know, I think when you know I've been to therapy, I think
pretty much everybody's been to therapy at some time or another.
I was never asked if I was adopted.
I was never asked that. I don't, I don't think they
probably even teach that. That could be a factor in
whatever is going on. You know, why you're why you're
in counseling that that could be a root cause.
I was never asked. I don't think physicians, you
know, your doctor, they don't ask.
They don't. And they just, it just doesn't.
It doesn't come to mind for them that it could be a factor in any
mental, physical, emotional health.
And it really needs to be. It's a major question to ask.
It needs to be start. It needs to start being asked.
So I'm going to read a little bit from Part 1.
The Wound is the name of the chapter.
It says. Too often in our approach to the
newborn, we deal with him as if he is exactly that brand new.
We neglect the fact that the neonate is really the
culmination of an amazing experience that has lasted 40
weeks. By looking at the neonate as if
he had sprung full blown from the brain of Zeus, we're missing
the opportunities that the newborn's history as a fetus can
provide. And she talks a little bit more
about the definition of the primal wound.
It says that history to which Breselton refers includes the
bonding and utero of the mother and child.
Many doctors and psychologists now understand that bonding
doesn't begin at birth, but is a continuum of psychological,
physiological and spiritual events that begin in utero and
continue throughout the postnatal bonding period.
When this natural evolution is interrupted by a post Natal
separation from the biological mother, the result experience of
abandonment and loss is an indelibly imprinted upon the
unconscious minds of these children, causing that which I
call the primal wound. And it's just so profound
because it's so true. Like we just think the baby pops
out and they're just brand new and they, they haven't had a
brain to think before, you know, in utero.
They weren't thinking, they weren't.
And just when they come out is when they start thinking and you
know, having an an experience. But no, they've already had an
emotional and physical experience in the womb.
They've already connected to that birth mother that carried
them for nine months. And how could we think any
different? I mean we see the bond that you
know, mothers can feel and see the bond with their children and
that has to that has to have an A lasting effect being taken
from that, no matter how early because they've already been,
they've already been connected all this time.
It doesn't just begin when you're born, but because there's
really no, no way to prove scientifically what that looks
like it. It's something that we just
don't think about. So not only do you have, you
know, what happened psychologically to the baby, but
then a lot of times the adoptive parents have gone through their
own things. How did they get to the point
where they wanted to adopt? You know, a lot of times it's
infertility issues, things like that.
And so they're bringing those emotional issues along with them
to their parenting of this child that's not biologically theirs.
And how does that play into the whole relationship as well?
That's the other thing. I think there needs to be a lot
of counseling before and after. I mean, the birth mother alone,
How much counseling does that woman need to be able to deal
with the whole situation of carrying this baby, giving it up
and then wondering if you did the right thing throughout their
entire life? You know, you don't know.
You just hope and pray that they got a good family and it had a
good life. But I there's not.
There's none of that. That is not a requirement for
adopting. And maybe some agencies, private
agencies maybe now are are realizing this now.
But back in 1968, when I was born, there was nothing, you
know, nothing for my birth mother, and I know she struggled
with it. And then my adoptive parents,
nobody told them. You know, your baby may have
trouble bonding and, you know, these things may come up.
And if you notice this, that and the other no, they were just
handed a baby and like, here you go.
Take her home. Good luck.
You know, if you don't like her or she's effective in any way,
bring your receipt back and you can, you know, we'll, we'll
exchange her for another baby. It's just like so ridiculous.
I just don't understand how it's just turned into this huge
fantasy story where it's just all roses and happiness and ohh,
it's so beautiful that this mother decided that she just
couldn't care for her baby and put a gift and blah blah blah.
And you know, everybody lives happily ever after and it's just
it's just not that way. And I think it's time that we
look at these hard things. Nobody wants to hear the part of
the story where this baby had to cope and had, you know, the baby
didn't have any counseling, the baby didn't have any rights.
The baby didn't have any say in anything.
And then here we are, We grow up and, you know, 50-4 years old
and I still have no rights. And I have no rights to my
original birth certificate. I have no rights for the agency
to tell me where I even came from, what my genetic history
is. Do you know?
I think this is another thing that people don't think about.
But when, you know, when I started dating, I would always
wonder her like this person I'm dating could be my relative.
I don't know. I don't know, you know, and
people don't think about those things.
But I did. And it's kind of funny because
when I started dating Greg, my, a friend of mine was like, you
guys look a lot alike. Saying that to an adoptee is
terrifying. I mean, it's terrifying.
It's like, wait, what? Oh, I never really noticed.
Oh well, crap. Are we related somehow?
I don't know. You know, it's horrible.
It's a horrible feeling. But something that, you know, a
harmless comment that somebody was like, oh, you guys are so
cute together. You guys look like it's like,
terrifying for me. And no, I'm not related to Greg.
But, you know, it's just things like that that people don't
think about. And we're not, we're not Privy
to any of that. I didn't choose to be adopted.
I didn't get to choose anything. And I still don't get to choose.
I have no rights. Everybody else had rights.
You know, my birth mother could have, you know, decided that she
wanted to hide forever. And that was her, right.
You know, my adoptive parents could have lied to me and said
that I was there, you know, genetic child, and that was
their right. But I don't have any rights.
And that's what just makes me so angry when it comes to adoptees
because we have questions. It's just not fair that we can't
get those answered. Anyway, I get off my soapbox
about that for now. I can't guarantee because it
will probably come up again because it just burns my ass.
To be honest. I just get so pissed off about
it. All right, so let's get back to
the book here. So yes, I think counseling is
so, so important before and after to all parties involved.
Of course you can't counsel the baby, but at least the adoptive
parents can be aware. And you know, if they do see
some red flags come up, just that they could be more kind and
understanding towards them instead of and try not to.
I know it's super hard for probably adoptive parent to
realize that they can't fill that void no matter what they
do. They could do everything right,
everything right. My parents did everything right,
but there was nothing they could do to fix what happened to me
before they got me. There's nothing.
So just knowing that and knowing as we go through this book,
they're going to mention some things that a lot of adoptees,
the problems that they have connecting and this kind of
thing with relationships and such.
So just kind of to be aware of those things and give a little
grace and don't take it personal, Don't take it
personal. That's number one, you're doing
your best and these are things that there's there's not a
bandaid for. You just have to be kind,
gracious, loving and just be there and understand and be able
to have those conversations with your child about how they're
feeling and not take it personally is huge.
It's a big deal. And those adoptive parents that
decide to adopt because of infertility problems or for
whatever reason, they can't have their own biological child.
That's something that they're going to need counseling for
too, because that is a loss. You know that's a loss.
And you need to grieve that and warn that and not and work
through that and not bring another child in to try and
alleviate the pain of that. That's something that needs to
be worked through before you bring that child into the the
fold of the family, in my opinion, because that's all
going to act out in the whole dynamic of the relationship
that's already going to have that primal wound.
So Nancy Barrier goes on to quote this Doctor Chamberlain,
He wrote a book called Babies Remember Birth.
And she says he goes on to say babies know more than they are
supposed to know. Minutes after birth, a baby can
pick out his mother's face, which he has never seen, from a
gallery of photos. The newly discovered truth is
that newborn babies have all their senses and make use of
them just as the rest of us do. Their cries of pain are
authentic. Babies are not unfeeling.
It is we who are unfeeling. And the Nancy says if babies
remember birth, then they also remember what happened right
after birth, which is that their mother the person to whom they
were connected. And whom they expected to
welcome them into, the world was suddenly missing.
How does this experience impact the emotions and senses of a
newborn baby? And even just reading that, it's
just super heartbreaking to me because that baby has to cope
all by its little self with all of that.
They can't talk. They can't.
All they can do is probably cry out their emotions.
And you know, we don't have the brain capacity to remember when
we're a little baby at that point.
So that has to go cellular. You know, if you've gone through
a trauma and you something triggers that trauma, it's
almost like a visceral reaction, a visceral feeling that you
actually feel in your body and emotionally as well.
And so even though I don't remember being born, that is in
me, but it's still in me. It's buried in my cells, my
cells. Remember that visceral reaction,
the feelings to being taken. We really underestimate babies
and physically, emotionally, what they can do.
We really underestimate it. And we just, this is not a fun
subject to talk about and nobody really wants to discuss it.
And I remember, you know, bringing up adoption to certain
people and what do they always say?
You can tell they're they get very uncomfortable and and they
just like, don't want to talk about it and they're like, well,
but you have great parents, you know, like that just covers
everything that fixes it. Like, it's like, the only way I
can describe how it might relate, A relatable way to think
about it. Say you're a mother and you had
your baby and you take your baby home and, you know, five years,
10 years down the line, you find out that your baby got switched
with somebody else's baby and the baby that you brought home
is not your biological child. Would that matter to you?
Would you want to go find your biological child?
Of course you would. Would it negate the fact that
you've raised this other child as your child for 10 years?
Does that change the love that you have for that child?
That you still feel like that is your child?
Whether or not you just found out that this child's not
biological doesn't matter. You've already bonded with that
that child. But you have a biological child
out there somewhere. Would you not want to go find
them and look for them? It's the same thing.
It's the same thing for S adoptees.
Yes, I have a mother and father and I don't want to, I don't
want to replace them, but I have biological family that I want to
know. I want to know them, you know.
And so it doesn't negate anything that anybody has done
in my family or it doesn't cancel them out in any way.
It doesn't change the love, the relationships, nothing.
It doesn't. But there is a need to find out
and know and see where you came from.
But if your baby got switched at birth, you wouldn't just be
like, oh, well, I have, I have my this daughter.
And that takes the place of this other biological daughter.
It doesn't. It doesn't.
So if you can kind of think of it that way and just be a little
more understanding to adoptees that want to have these
conversations. But we get shut down so much and
it and it those conversations make us feel like why are you?
Why are you searching for your birth mother?
You have a mother and it makes you feel less than.
It makes you feel terrible that you want or you have this need
to do that because people just don't understand that it's a
it's a primal need. It's a primal need to know where
you came from. I'm not sure why the subject
when we talk about adoption, why it makes people so
uncomfortable, because the only thing that makes me
uncomfortable is the judgment I feel from the person that I'm
talking to. I want to talk about it.
It doesn't hurt. I think it's a very interesting
story, but what makes me uncomfortable is how I feel.
The person is reacting and I could probably feel their
uncomfortable uncomfortableness in the whole thing.
So that's what makes me uncomfortable and it makes me
feel like I don't want to talk about it.
So have the conversations I I really that's what I'm going to
be doing on this podcast. I already have a few guests that
are going to be interviewed soon, so I'm going to be
bringing some of their interesting stories.
It's time we have the hard conversations and talk about it.
It's just not fair. It's not fair to the adoptees
that we feel that we can't talk about those things because we
don't want to hurt everybody else around us.
And it's just not fair because we do most of I don't want to
say I don't want to put everybody in the box, but most
of us want to have these conversations and not feel bad
or make somebody else feel bad about having them.
Another interesting thing she brings up in the book is that as
the number of caregivers increase, the ability to attach
diminishes and the numbing of feelings becomes more and more
evident. And I was kind of reflecting on
that this morning thinking about that because that would go for
children that were in incubators and things too.
Taking the feeling of taking from your mother, you know, and
having all these caregivers, nurses and this and that.
Also, I, you know, I grew up when I had my kids.
You got six weeks off and then you went back to work.
So my babies were, I think my son was six weeks when I went
back to work. He's still a teeny little baby.
So does that affect them at six weeks, you know, handing them
over to a stranger for 910 hours a day, you know, who loved him
dearly and took great care of him.
But does he, did he have that primal wound like at six weeks?
I would think that that's a possibility.
It's just it's not just adoptees.
I think it could, you know, affect a lot of people, just in
different ways in different scenarios.
And then Nancy goes on to talk about adoption issues, and she
says it has been noted by some clinicians in working with
adoptees that they all have essentially the same issues,
whether they were adopted at birth or as teenagers.
These issues center around separation and loss, trust,
rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, loyalty and
mastery or power and control, and will be dealt with later in
this book, which should be a very interesting chapter.
But it's just interesting. And you know a lot of people
have, you don't have to be adopted to have a lot of these
issues, but it's just kind of a reoccurring theme with adoptees
it seems like. And I don't you know, I could
take some of these and own them and and others know, but but I
can see how it can. These adoption issues can come
about because of the loss of the 1st true security blanket that
the baby had. And I want to read this part of
the book to you guys because it just just really rang true to me
and it says all of this rhetoric ignores 1 simple but critical
fact. The adoptee was there.
The child actually experienced being left alone by the
biological mother and being handed over to strangers.
That he may have been only a few days or a few minutes old makes
no difference. He shared a 40 week experience
with a person with whom he probably bonded in utero, a
person to whom he is biologically, genetically,
historically, and perhaps even more importantly,
psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually connected.
And some people would like him to believe that it is the
telling of the experience of the severing of that bond which
makes him feel so bad. And So what do we do?
We shut down the adoptee from telling because it makes
everyone uncomfortable and feel bad, but it doesn't make the
adoptee uncomfortable or feel bad.
So have the conversation. Let them have a voice finally,
and be okay with telling it without judgment or criticism.
Or why are you doing that? Why are you stirring the pot?
Why are you bringing this up? It doesn't feel good.
It has nothing to do with anybody except for the adoptee
and the birth mother and the birth family.
I mean, it really doesn't. It doesn't affect the
relationships, the other relationships that you've
already formed. The only time I personally have
seen that is when the child was not told and they were lied to,
and then it comes out somehow. And then I can see how those
relationships could be broken. The trust is gone and there you
go, there's another, another broken trust issue bond there
with the family that you had thought was yours.
I can't imagine that. I just, I can't even.
I think almost that that would almost be worse than the primal
wound is learning that your family lied to you and that they
thought that was OKI. Just I just that really makes me
mad. I think people think that if we
don't tell them, then they're going to feel more part of the
family and they want to spin it so that it's better for the
adoptee, better for the child, that they you don't want to tell
them that they weren't wanted in some way.
That's just not true. And for what I've been reading
in this book, a lot of people that weren't told and found out
later in life still felt there was something off, something
missing that they didn't quite have.
They felt like they didn't have the connection.
And I think that cellular level, they know, they know that, but
you can't really put your finger on exactly what it is.
But you know, you might not remember, but you feel it now.
I never had the feeling personally of not fitting in
because I knew, but I think it's in the times that the children
are not told that they have that feeling of not fitting in but
not quite exactly knowing why, one man in the book it said.
Although shocked at age 33 when finding a paper which told of
his adoption, he did not feel shocked by the fact itself but
by the betrayal of its have been kept from him all those years,
even though the betrayal did not fully manifest until adulthood.
It had been an unconscious barrier between him and his
parents throughout his childhood.
There was a secret. There was something that he was
not being told and he knew it. He knew it.
So there goes the trust right out the window between the child
and his parents, and there comes, you know, the dishonesty
and that affects the entire relationship.
That's so huge. You know people that don't tell
their kids, they say it's for the adopted child, but really
it's a selfish choice to make that man.
To just lie to your kid like that, that is selfish.
You want to be. You want to feel like you are
the parent. You don't want to have to deal
with what comes along with the child knowing that they're
adopted. You don't want to deal with it.
And that's just not fair because the child knows they feel, but
there is something, there's something that you're hiding
from them. The other thing she brings up,
which I kind of brought up last week, that I feel like I just
got brought by the stork, you know, it's some adoptees say
they feel as if they came from outer space or a file drawer,
you know. And I kind of felt like my
parents went to the store to Target and took me off the shelf
and brought me home. And I was never born.
If you feel like you were never born.
And my mom will be coming on in the next week or two and telling
her part of the story. But there's one part that she'll
be telling that always makes me feel like they went and bought
me at Target and took me off the shelf and brought me home.
And they were offered to bring me back if my parents didn't
want me. And I don't want to give too
much of the story away, but it feels like, Do you still have
your receipt for that child? Because you can bring her back
and exchange her for another child if you'd like.
And it's like, what the hell? What the hell?
Anyway, my mom will tell the story and you'll probably know
what part I'm talking about, but I don't want to give too much
away because she's going to tell the story.
But yeah, that's how it feels, kind of as an adoptee.
Oh, you could bring her back if you're not happy with her.
Is this one OK? Is she defective at all?
Because she could bring her back.
Oh, God, this is a child we're talking about.
This isn't a commodity. It's not a box of cereal.
You just bought it at the store. Like, you can't just.
Well, I mean, you could. You could have just brought me
back. You could have done it.
But that's just crazy. Like, I don't.
It makes no sense. There's just, there's no regard
for the adoptee at all because we're babies and we can't
express that this isn't right, that we have feelings about
everything and we don't know what else.
There's no way to. There's no outlet for that.
So what needs to happen is the adults just need to be more
aware. And that's why this book is so,
so important. Like I said, it's hard to read.
It really is, but it gives an understanding about so much that
you might be experiencing with your adoptive child.
The author quotes a doctor from one of his books and it says we
now know that they are cognitive, they being the baby.
They are cognitive beings with a wide range of abilities, such as
recognizing their own mother's face, smell and energy, feeling
a wide range of emotions, remembering, learning and using
all 5 senses to experience their new life outside the womb.
You know, we think of babies as like a little blank canvas,
which we kind of are, but they've already lived some life
even in from the womb, you know, or the first hours or days after
birth. They've lived those hours and
they do have, you know, these their senses and their feelings
and their emotions. And it's just easy to sweep all
of that under the rug because they can't remember it growing
up and they can't verbalize it in the moment.
So we just kind of sweep all that under the rug and pretend
like it doesn't. It's not happening, but it's
going to come out. It's going to come out later in
life if we don't address it or not address it.
But at least we're cognitive of the fact that this happened and
that there can be some things that are going to come up that
are stemming from it. And then Nancy uncovered this
horrible fact. I don't even want to think about
this, but, she said. I learned and talking to social
workers who worked in adoption agencies that one of the ways in
which these grieving babies were kept quiet was by administering
phenobarbital. Being left with no one who cares
is devastating, and babies scream their outrage at this
denial of the basic human need to be held or to be touched.
I just can't. I can't.
I can't even think about that. That just kills me that you are
drugging these babies in their distress, in their trauma.
It just that just makes me so sick.
How was that OK? How was that OK?
Another thing she addresses in chapter one, which I kind of
thought was interesting, is her daughter hated birthday parties.
She did not want to celebrate her birthday, and her mom really
didn't understand it. And I kind of I don't like
parties that are centered around me.
I never really have. I'm.
I'm getting over it now. I'm a lot better about it.
But I never even like having a baby shower or a wedding shower.
I don't like to be. I didn't like to be the center
of attention. And I think maybe it's because I
didn't want to feel rejected. Or, you know, if like 10 people
showed up and we invited 50, then there's another rejection.
So I didn't even want to go there.
I didn't want to. I didn't want to feel that
horrible rejection again. So yeah, especially as a child,
I remember that. Just an uncomfortable feeling,
having a birthday party, you know, supposed to be exciting.
It's like, why am I not wanting to do this?
And they never ever, ever related it to my adoption.
But it makes sense. You know, some people don't even
want to celebrate that when that month comes up, it's just like
it's that month again that I was born and rejected that.
I think subconsciously that's a thing for some people.
That's like anybody that had a trauma, you kind of remember
that day or you know that somebody died.
You remember the day they died. And you know that just that
doesn't go away almost cellular that you can feel it, you know,
coming, just the sadness or whatever.
So it's kind of, I think I kind of related to that in a way.
In fact, the author says that clinicians and parents of that
told her that adoptees often act out a great deal before or
during their birthday parties. These poor parents are trying to
throw their kid a birthday party, and they're acting out,
and they have no idea why. They're being ungrateful little
brats, you know, but they're hurting is what it is.
They're hurting and you just don't know because you weren't
told. You didn't get a manual on, you
know, how to raise an adoptee baby and what to expect, you
know, with that, you were just handed a baby and you took it
home. That was it in a story.
And the most heartbreaking part about the whole birthday party
thing is the kid doesn't even know why they're doing it.
You ask them why they're acting out.
They probably don't know. That's just so sad.
Anyway, I just want to wind up the last, the last of this first
chapter by reading this summary, because this really, really is
good. It's his adoption, considered by
many to be merely a concept, is in fact a traumatic experience
for the adoptee. It begins with the separation
from his biological mother and ends with his living with
strangers most of his life. He may have denied or impressed
his feelings about this experience, having had no sense
that they would be acknowledged or validated.
He may instead have been made to feel as if he should be grateful
for this monumental manipulation of his destiny somewhere within
him. However, he does have feelings
about this traumatic experience, and having these feelings does
not mean that he is abnormal, sick, or crazy.
It means that he is wounded as a result of having suffered A
devastating loss, and that his feelings about this are
legitimate and need to be acknowledged rather than ignored
or challenged. Yes, yes, it's exactly what I've
been trying to say, that we need to talk about this without
feeling ignored or challenged, or that it makes people feel
uncomfortable. And I understand that for some
listening to this, these things are very uncomfortable to think
about or to bring up. But it's all about the
education, so that we can approach these adoptees in a
little better way to help them cope with this stuff.
I don't. I'm one that I don't like to be
a victim of anything in my life. But I would be naive to not look
at some of this and draw some correlations in my own life.
And, you know, that gives me a chance to acknowledge it and
kind of find the root cause of it so that I can be a better
person and that I can realize it and be like, okay, That makes
sense now. Maybe I can let that go now that
I've realized, you know, where it came from.
So that sums up chapter one of The Primal Wound by Nancy
Verrier. And I'm going to post on my
Facebook and Instagram pages this week.
I have a list of this looks like something that the foster
parents probably wrote up for my parents.
And it's kind of like what I ate, what medication was I on,
what formula, you know, what even soap that you know, I they
were using on me. And it's like basically a
schedule of when to feed me, when to do this one to do that.
The one thing that I just find super interesting and this goes
back to where I say I felt like, you know, my parents went and
picked me up off the shelf at the shelf at Target under
medications it says Neosporin and in parentheses it says
included, you know, like when you look on the box or something
like a toy or whatever it was like included is the batteries
and is that well included in my box was the Neosporin.
I just it just kind of solidifies that feeling for me
that I, you know that I was, I just came out of nowhere.
I was never born. I was just there, included with
the news porn. But anyway, so I'm going to take
a picture of that and I'm going to post it just so you can kind
of see what my parents got for instruction.
This was the instruction manual. It's one page.
That's what they got. Here's a baby.
Here's this one page manual. Good luck.
So anyway, coming up on the podcast, like I said, my mom
will be coming on soon. I also have a social worker
that's going to talk about her experiences and what she has
observed. And then I have some adoptees
and adoptive parents that are going to be guests on the show
as well. I will keep talking about the
primal wound, also weaving that in there, here and there.
And I'm kind of still going through that book.
I'm still reading it little by little.
I'm digesting. It's a lot like I said.
So if you do decide to pick up the book, just be prepared.
Just take a deep breath and take it for what it is and try not to
read into it too much. And the book is a suggestion on,
you know, things that could come about from having the primal
moon. And it doesn't mean that every
adoptee has every symptom or emotional response to everything
the same way. So, you know, just read it and
be kind to yourself while you're reading it.
It can bring up a lot of emotions and things like that.
So. And it might bring up things
that you just never even thought about.
It could bring those things up again, too.
So as you're listening to the podcast or reading the book, you
know, counseling is a big deal. I bet you now that they are
counselors out there that specialize in people who are
adopted or foster kids and and can help with that if you need
it. So please don't hesitate to go
look for a counselor, somebody to talk to.
All right, well, I will see you next week.
But in the meantime, take what you need and leave it you don't.
And always remember to mind your own karma.
We'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening
to this episode of the Mind Your Own Karma podcast.
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