I woke up today and started yelling
Not to anyone I’m related to, mind you — it was a phone call. Now I’m feeling just a tad guilty about it. But if people will make me crazy than crazy they will get from me!
I just dropped Madison off at preschool (tears in the potty and in the hallway on our way in).
That leads me to today’s adoption-related entry! If I were better about blog entry titles I’d call it something like The Cultural Construct of the Primal Wound and then I’d apply for a grant.
The infamous day immortalized in this oft-linked entry primal wound at our house is the only time I’ve expressly put words to Madison’s adoption grief. I haven’t since then. Why? Because that day the leap was warranted but most days it isn’t. Heather said it best in her comment:
That’s why Pavao’s idea of the normative crisis was so helpful for me. Because it made sense to me that my son will go through all the normal developmental stages but will have some extra emotional work to do at each stage due to his adoption experience. … So when faced with situations like this we don’t have to ask whether it’s “normal†or “adoptionâ€â€“because for our kids they’re kind of the same thing. The adoption is woven into the normal.
(Pavao is an adult adoptee and a therapist who works with adoptive/first families and who wrote the excellent book, The Family of Adoption.)
I’ve said here before that I don’t parent “adopted Madison” — I parent Madison who is adopted. And so while I see some adoption issues in her out-sized (for her) response to preschool, I haven’t told her that I see adoption in that issue because I don’t think it would serve her. What she needs from me is the same thing my (bio) son needs when he feels scared or insecure; she needs to know that I believe she can do it. But I write about the rest of it here because (I say again) this is a blog that has ended up being about adoption, this is a place where I write about my feelings about adoption. There is way more adoption here than there is in our real life where adoption is just one facet of our lives. (I don’t write as much about other stuff because I find it less interesting so right now a bigger everyday deal is that our house seems to be falling apart around our ears but I don’t get much out of blogging it.)
Ok, so back to my Primal Wound Cultural Construct, blah blah blah.
I think babies are built to be resilient and so I think that back when we all lived in tribes and were mostly concerned with getting food that there wasn’t really a primal wound. (I’m not basing this idea on any research, mind you, I’m just making it up as I go along.) Back then we lived with kin and we all kinda smelled alike and sounded alike and certainly women died an awful lot in childbirth so I’m sure that babies bounced from lost mother to new mother pretty easily. And likely from what I’ve read, in many tribes there were many mothers and so part of many tribal cultures is/was motherhood on a grand scale that probably did a pretty good job of serving babies, orphaned or not. But then life in post-industrial cultures is complicated. And with complications comes a different kind of stress. And as we get more complicated we get to have the luxury of thinking about things higher up on the Maslow scale of needs; we’ve begun to experience stresses that probably didn’t even exist before. And one of those things, I think, is adoption loss.
Because now adoption often means making kinship with strangers and so babies primed to bond with the person who carried them have an extra leap learning to bond with people who often aren’t anything like the people who carried them. So that’s stressful. And then we ask more of our babies than our ancestors did — we sign at them, and wave colorful toys at them, and they go out into the world and meet all sorts of people who come and go and come again or disappear. Life makes a little less sense because music can come from boxes and spheres instead of identifiable drums and shakers. Babies are put into plastic upholstered carriers and whisked off to places that smell and sound totally different than the place they were just ten minutes before. Not only did adoption get harder and demand more of babies but life got harder.
Now I’m no Waldorf-follower and I like my hectic, modern life so I’m not saying that these things are bad for babies or that we all ought to go back to living in tribes and foraging for food. No way. But I do think that the bar has been raised and while we (as a species) are up for it, life certainly asks more of us.
I think it’s pretty unlikely that kids were ever dropped off with strangers at three when we lived in tribes. So even preschool (an institution that I, homeschooler that I am, adore) is by that definition “unnatural” and can be pretty stressful. We know that in crisis we have to revisit the events that shape us. Like Integritysinger said in her comment on LJ, “[J]ust as I rework through the loss of my father with every new stage in my adult life (he died when I was 12), my kids will work through their adoptions, one stage at a time.” I think starting preschool is a crisis but a good crisis and one worth working through. (Your mileage may vary — some homeschoolers are pretty anti-preschool but I do love a good early childhood education program!)
I operate under the working belief that adoption creates a developmental challenge but I’m still figuring out how to help Madison integrate that. As I said, except for that one day, I haven’t made unsolicited explicit reference to this (her adoption) to her when she’s struggling because that’s the only time I saw a direct connect to her adoption story. That day it seemed appropriate because, well, my gut told me it was. And her instant relaxation convinced me at the time and her changed relationship with Jessica continues to convince me that it was the right thing to do. (Her relationship with Jessica became much more casually intimate and playful after that day.) But I haven’t seen it come up so clearly for her since. That day was purely about her adoption and it’s the only time that I said to her, “This is about your adoption.”
When she brings up not wanting brown skin like Jessica and wanting pink skin like me, I can say, “Yup, adoption” because she’s saying it. And so I can address that worry that adoption is somehow not as strong a tie as Noah’s growing in my uterus seems to be. So usually Madison is able to tell me when to bring it up by bringing it up herself.
But Madison is no longer than nearly-baby that she was and as the Real World (and preschool) enter her life more and more, her concerns have become more solid and immediate. Now her adoption concerns seem to be focused entirely on matching, which makes sense because this is the age when kids think in categories. She’s less interested in uteruses than she was this time last year and far more interested making sure Daddy doesn’t sit on the hotel bed she was sharing with me because “it’s the girls’ bed!” She is seeking more ways to be like me and the ways in which she is not like me bother her and this brings her to her adoption, which she can say herself sometimes bothers her.
From what I’ve seen in my meager 3.5 years of adoptive parenting, adoption is an issue that comes and goes. Rarely does it need specific action focused entirely on adoption and more it needs regular old parenting seen through a lens of understanding adoption. Honestly, I don’t parent her much different than I did Noah — their personalities demand much more difference than her adoption does. But it does color her experiences and so it does color our responses.
Now it seems like whenever I type an entry like this some adoptive parent comes and accuses me of foisting adoption on my daughter and as proof of this they’ll tell me that their own adopted child has never ever brought up the issue. To which I say: Sounds like we have different experiences. Sometimes the person will say something like, “Are you saying I’m missing something with my kids?” in a very defensive way and to that I say, “I’m not saying anything about your kids at all.” See this is my blog about my life and my parenting and it has nothing to do with you or what I think you ought to do because most of the people who get defensive don’t know me and I don’t know them and we can have opinions for days but when it comes right down to it, we’ve really got no idea what other people need to be doing with their lives. In short — if my entries about seeing adoption loss in my daughter make you feel defensive, please do not visit that defensiveness on me. It just frustrates me. Now, in the immortal words of Garrison Keillor, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
You know, I’ve appreciated your blog for a long time, before I even had a kid. But in more recent years, I’ve appreciated how the way you talk about adoption has given me language/categories to think/talk about raising my deaf child. Even though he born to me biologically, by being born deaf, he was born into a different culture than my own hearing culture. And it’s been a struggle and definitely an interesting journey, to navigate our way down this path for our family. (A path fraught with its own controversies.) Over and over I see a lot of parallels between your adoption posts and my deaf posts/thoughts. Interesting.
I love this. That last paragraph was such a perfect summary of why I like reading your blog - you are such a thoughtful, caring parent AND a strong writer with a real understanding of your art form!
Reading your blog today, I had a parenting epiphany. It was the part where you said, “she needs to know that I believe she can do it. ” The last two days have been really difficult for Sol at preschool. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but he’s been having behavior issues there. Two nights ago, I was the one who talked with him about his rough day, since I tend to be the more compassionate parent. Unfortunately, I am also the parent more prone to worrying. So, as he relayed his concerns (the girl who said she didn’t want to be his friend, the group of kids who wouldn’t let him play in his favorite part of the playground, his dislike of having to lay still for 2 WHOLE HOURS at naptime, etc.), the part of me that wanted to fix his problems and make them go away got increasingly more anxious, which I’m sure was relayed to him. So, yesterday - even worse behavior. Last night I had to work late, so my husband talked with him. Less compassion but zero anxiety and more of a “You’ll have a good day tomorrow” rather than a “oh dear, how can we fix this?” attitude. This morning - no complaints about going to school, just a happy, cooperative boy. The dropoff at school was freakishly smooth. Of course, there’s still the end-of-the-day report, but I suspect today will have been a good day. Perhaps all Sol needed was to know that we’re confident in his ability to navigate the social landscape of preschool with his heart and soul intact.
Dawn, very provocative and thoughtful post. Of course I couldn’t help reflecting on my own situation. When I was Madison’s age I barely even knew what adoption was. I had no inkling what a birthmother was, much less had a relationship with one. So I went off to preschool at 3 with nary a blink. I went off to sleepaway summer camp for a month when I was 7. I did not have separation issues to the least degree. But I was also completely unaware of really what adoption was or what it meant. I actually thought EVERYONE was adopted (and was “gotten” not born) and did not really understand the facts of life until I was around 9. (aghhhh….) So it hit me very differently. Around 10 I started developing huge birthmother Fantasies and thought about searching actively when I was around 11.
So I wonder how much of this PW stuff has to do with conscious awareness of stuff and how much of it is innate. Y’know?
I do think a lot has to do w/awareness of stuff, too. For one, I think some primal wound issues are cultural because we are such a pro-biology culture. Like if a kid was growing up in the kind of society where kinship ties are based on relationships and not biology those losses wouldn’t feel the same and they wouldn’t register the same. I’ve always thought the primal wound has a physical component (the pre-birth/in-utero part, which is controversial and I think pretty murky) and a stronger cultural component where we have pretty rigid ideas about motherhood and family and belonging.
I love you, Dawn
As I wait through the long stages of adopting here, reading your blog gives me impetus after impetus, food for thought. I just made my adoption course buddy aware of your blog …
With respect to Madison worrying about not having grown in your uterus like Noah did and seeking ways to be like you, it strikes me that the Judaism could play a helpful role here. Since you, she, and Noah all came to Judaism through conversion, it is a level playing ground, that is, it connects the three of you in the same way. Perhaps get more involved at the shul and check out activities at the JCC, introduce more toys and books with a Jewish presence, and weave it into daily life more. Another idea would be to pick an activity that none of you actually do now or have done, a skill that none of you yet have, and begin to learn and do it together in some formal way. If you all choose, for instance, pottery, Madison would be able to say, “We are all potters!” She wouldn’t have begun to learn how to be a potter in order to be like you or in order to share in something you and Noah already share, because this would be something new for all of you.
Tatjana, I’m blushing (seriously — my face is hot!) and thanks.
I will cop to being a little defensive when I first read your post about how Madison’s crying at pre-school might be about adoption. So, I kept reading, and I was glad that you kept writing. At some point, the little light bulb went off for me about the importance of the “may” in that sentence.
So, if I follow you, this is the take home: I want to be a good parent. I want to understand my child. One aspect of my child’s life is that he was adopted. His having been adopted may color how he interacts with the world. I might be able to help him understand what he’s experiencing better if I am open to the possibility that his being adopted is in the mix of how he understands the workings of the world. I might respond better to his behavior — be a better parent — if I include this as a possible source of his behavior.
Shana, honestly that’s *my* take home — that reminder that sometimes make me go, “Oh yeah, I guess this isn’t so out of character for her after all.”
I LOVE what you have articulated here, and I totally sympathize with your frustration… I also think its inevitable that people’s mothering insecurities get kicked up by this. By anything, really. We’re all vulnerable.
I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s post a lot today, and the comparison to divorce in my own life. I had- and still have- major separation anxiety that I totally relate to my parents’ divorce and being separated from my dad. And it doesn’t seem like a big triggering deal. Its just what is, and I deal with it. Its gotten much better, but it never goes away because its just part of who I am. But I think adoption related loss feels a lot scarier for folks for reasons you and others have written about before.
Thanks for helping me understand.
Cynthia, I so hear you on the divorce stuff!
I am so really still in flux and trying to understand how I feel and think about all of this primal wound stuff. I do think there’s adoption loss for adopted children; I’m not sure to what extent, and I suppose it differs for each child.
For me, I guess I have this immediate, knee-jerk kind of emotional reaction, and then I have a very grounding, trying-to-be-objective librarian-in-me thinker reaction who is trying to get at the truly scholarly information about this and see what they say, see if there’s actual empirical evidence about a primal wound to back it up so that I can then come to a reasoned conclusion of my own. You know?
It’s what we tell our students to do, after all. I have to do the same. I think I better practice what I preach.
I think the Nancy Verrier primal wound stuff is pretty controversial but from the mainstreamish adoption professionals I talked to they agree that adoption brings increased developmental challenges but they don’t say that this is because of pre-birth psychology. (I think that pre-birth part is what’s so controversial.)
I don’t personally think that every adopted child has a Verrier-described primal wound but I do think babies are primed to bond to their first parent AND I think that if that first parent isn’t there that they will do their best to bond with the next person who cares for them and if that person isn’t there they will continue on. And I think that some kids will not be able to do this and bounce back and others will be able to do it a bunch and bounce back. (Because I know there are kids who have attachment issues and other kids who experience the same early circumstances who don’t.)
Resiliency is fascinating stuff.
Then you’ve (well, I’ve) gotta ask — does openness make for more adoption issues earlier? And I’d say yes because that adoption stuff is right out there. And I’d argue transracial adoption makes for more adoption issues earlier because, again, it’s right out there. But I don’t think it’s a *bad* thing (or a *good* thing) that it comes out earlier — I think it’s all in how the families copes with it.
That makes sense.
It’s the ALL one way or ALL the other way that make me dig in my heels and say “WHOA, wait a minute. I want to see what the empirical evidence, yes, the studies and whatnot say, sorry to be such an egghead, but let’s get some stuff to back this up.” Because the ALL ADOPTED KIDS ARE THIS WAY or ALL ADOPTED KIDS ARE NOT THAT WAY stuff makes me crazy. And at least those ALL ARE/ARE NOT that I read are opinion. The stuff that I’ve been writing since I’ve had my blog up has been 98% opinion. And that’s fine to start with — I do tend to start out emotionally; it’s the way I’m wired, and that’s when I was reading the subjective stuff. And then I tend to want to calm down and look at things more objectively and lean on my background and really take a look at things and get all academic. Also the way I’m wired and my schooling. I’m a weird beast that way.
And I have started to search for the scholarly stuff and it sounds interesting — hard reads, but interesting and when I get a free moment in between these bloody 12-hour days, I’ll start to read some of them.
Speaking of which, time to go and put my nose to the grindstone or whatever the heck it is that I do.
Well as you learn stuff blog it, please, so I can learn it, too!