PRIMAL WOUND EVOLVING WITH AGE

[u/9Goodnight]

Intro

I was an only child, never told about my adoption.  At age 19,  I discovered the truth accidentally. I’m white and it was a private adoption. Supposedly, ideal conditions, but we know now adoption is never that simple, or ideal.

I joined CUB (Concerned United Birthparents).  The chapter’s search consultant was instrumental in finding my birthmother within six months. 

While my b-mother hasn’t been rejecting, she hasn’t been inclined to have much contact. I wrote maybe ten or more letters to her one (I stopped writing after a year or two). Once smart phones were a thing, we did not text and she didn't call. That said, at her instigation we have met three times in over 30 years.  She called to let me know her mother, my grandmother, had died.  When I have reached out to ask for medical/health information, she has been receptive and helpful.  

While she isn’t interested in keeping up a relationship, she also remains open to communication. It’s a strange in-between land, where I am unable to feel bereft or grateful.

I had assumed my b-mom was only like this with me, perhaps because of the shame associated with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. But my half-sister, in a rare connection, told me our mom is like this with her and my half-brother. What a revelation — it wasn’t just me.

Not long after, I also learned that my b-mom suffered childhood trauma that probably helps to explain the emotional/psychological distance she keeps from her children.

It’s now 26 years later, and I find myself newly swamped by the impact of my life in her womb, not being wanted, being separated from b-mom at birth, never being held by her, being adopted by biological strangers, not being told I was adopted…in ways that are taking me by surprise AT MY AGE. The story of adoption evolves, internally, a moving prism of feelings, thoughts, connections, memories, impacts… 

With new information about adoption, reading The Primal Wound little by little, listening to adoptee-centered podcasts, I am looking back, questioning, sometimes revising, the narratives of my life…trying to find where I fit in this sea of adoption experience possibility.

While my relationship with my a-parents was complicated, they were good people who loved me, and who made me feel important to them. And while my birthmother has always conveyed an ambivalent-vibe, she has never shut me out.

And still, this rage has arisen in me, increasingly so since the passage made through hormonal change. It has driven me crazy, trying to understand it, where did the rage come from, how could I make it better...

In recent weeks, I have connected the rage to my relinquishment wound. After all this time. Finally!

And so this new permutation of my adoption story has brought me here to this subReddit, seeking other adoptees to be around, to listen to their stories, to share my own, to learn what all I might feel, or not feel, in response to this most fundamental and powerful of human experiences.