- A Question of Trust
- Intro: The Birth of a Blog
- You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance: Part I
- Bad Romance, Part II: The Couch
- Bastard Package #1
- Hallelujah
- Born This Way
- Baby Girl X
- Another Victim of Love
- True Life
- The Girls Who Went Away
- Love and Other Drugs
- 11 Things Adoptees Love to Hear
- Uh, Never Mind
- Adoptee Kid Lit
- Bastard Princess and the Search for the Holy Grail
- MYOFB
- Awkwardness
- Baby Steps
- Faith, Hope, and Catholic Charities
- Special Delivery
- Green-eyed Monster
- !@#$
- Pandora
- Fantasyland
- Adoptees You May Have Heard Of
- Big MAC Attack
- Material Girl
- VISA and Mastercard Accepted
- Don't Hold Your Breath
- Our Love is Like a Constipated Cat
- A Question of Trust
- Adoption, Hollywood Style
- All in the Family
Hallelujah
Once Mark had alerted me to the existence and gravity of my repressed emotions, I had to know more. When I get curious about something, I tend to devour everything I can find on the subject. This was no exception, so I checked our local library for adoption-related titles but found very little written specifically for adoptees (almost everything there is for prospective parents, a common finding that would soon frustrate me to no end). After reading many user reviews on Amazon.com, I ended up winging it and finally settled on Adoption Healing…a Path to Recovery by Joe Soll and Coming Home to Self by Nancy Newton Verrier. I dove into Soll’s book first, as it was the less dense of the two.
Soll himself is an adoptee, as well as a licensed clinical social worker, so he obviously gets it. He speaks from the priceless perspective of someone who’s experienced his subject firsthand. He discusses, among other topics:
· The “Primal Wound”—The permanent physical and psychological damage suffered by all babies surrendered by their mothers at birth
· “Fracturing,” an acronym for simultaneous feelings the adoptee is surrounded by (Frustration, Rage, Anxiety, Confusion, Terror, Unrest, Regret, Inhuman, Neglected, Grief)
· How adoptees suppress their true personalities, feelings, and needs when forced into a new identity
· Residual effects of adoption into adulthood
· Building an authentic identity
· How the adoptive family can best understand, validate, and help adoptive children heal and learn to trust
· Finding the right therapist to guide you through the healing process
The book was a fairly breezy read, and as I started really digging into it, something shocking and amazing happened: I felt truly understood for the first time in my life. The big take-home message: Traumatic events from my past that I was never even consciously aware of still affect me profoundly. And it’s OK to have ugly feelings about being adopted. This thrilling new experience—validation—delivers a pure, exhilarating, soul-level high I’ve never felt before. It’s a near-religious experience that someone who hasn’t lived with adoptedness or its associated issues just can’t comprehend. No matter how I try to explain my happiness and relief about this to Jeremy, as hard as he tries, he’ll never really get it because he’s never lived it.
So many odd aspects of my personality suddenly make perfect sense… my lifelong sense of never fitting in anywhere, my lack of deep bonding with my adoptive family, difficulty in reaching out to other people and making friends, and my extreme reaction to rejection and abandonment of any kind. I only wish I’d opened my eyes to it sooner.
Soll himself is an adoptee, as well as a licensed clinical social worker, so he obviously gets it. He speaks from the priceless perspective of someone who’s experienced his subject firsthand. He discusses, among other topics:
· The “Primal Wound”—The permanent physical and psychological damage suffered by all babies surrendered by their mothers at birth
· “Fracturing,” an acronym for simultaneous feelings the adoptee is surrounded by (Frustration, Rage, Anxiety, Confusion, Terror, Unrest, Regret, Inhuman, Neglected, Grief)
· How adoptees suppress their true personalities, feelings, and needs when forced into a new identity
· Residual effects of adoption into adulthood
· Building an authentic identity
· How the adoptive family can best understand, validate, and help adoptive children heal and learn to trust
· Finding the right therapist to guide you through the healing process
The book was a fairly breezy read, and as I started really digging into it, something shocking and amazing happened: I felt truly understood for the first time in my life. The big take-home message: Traumatic events from my past that I was never even consciously aware of still affect me profoundly. And it’s OK to have ugly feelings about being adopted. This thrilling new experience—validation—delivers a pure, exhilarating, soul-level high I’ve never felt before. It’s a near-religious experience that someone who hasn’t lived with adoptedness or its associated issues just can’t comprehend. No matter how I try to explain my happiness and relief about this to Jeremy, as hard as he tries, he’ll never really get it because he’s never lived it.
So many odd aspects of my personality suddenly make perfect sense… my lifelong sense of never fitting in anywhere, my lack of deep bonding with my adoptive family, difficulty in reaching out to other people and making friends, and my extreme reaction to rejection and abandonment of any kind. I only wish I’d opened my eyes to it sooner.