Beads of Life ~
Letters from the Heart
Letters, no less than poems, are often like beads of that life blood which moves everything in life forward.
—Andres Rodriguez, on the letters of Keats
- Miscarriage, infertility, now contemplating adoption
- A mom making sense of her son’s difficult beginnings
Dear Dr. Axness~
I read your article “In Defense of the Primal Wound” today and I feel like I can breathe again. Thank you so much for writing that article and reminding me that hovering above the pain is a design to our lives. Experiencing a miscarriage three and a half years ago and the aftermath of infertility has felt like a very lonely path at times. Loving and well meaning people have at times tried to help by telling me everything was OK, don’t worry, don’t cry, in the end leaving me feeling misunderstood. I have wrestled off and on with the idea of adopting the past couple years as my husband and I still prefer to raise children. However, I could never go into adoption just to satisfy maternal instincts, our wants and desires at the expense of the emotional well-being of a child. I have tried to study adoption from a variety of points of views, reading some books, websites and internet bulletins/posting by adoptees, birthmoms, adoptive parents. I have found all the information very eye-opening, overwhelming and sometimes terrifying.
We are halfway through completing paperwork for adoption. As my husband and I prepare for the next part of our adoption homestudy in a couple of days, I will hold your advice for adoptive parents close to my heart. We have an application for a domestic adoption and an international adoption (for a baby girl in China) and will pursue the one that works out. I proceed still very cautiously and continue to educate myself on the issues of adoption. Deep down I feel we are on the right path and I think that your article was what I needed to read to be able to keep going ahead with things at this time.
I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your advice on preparing our hearts for our child—this has become the focus of my thoughts and prayers. I believe your e-mail has been one of the most important pieces of advice we have received with regards to adoption. Thank you also your kind words.
~ Carla
Dear Carla~
Believe me, you have what it takes to be a wonderful mother — adoptive or otherwise! Most people never even begin to consider all of those esoteric questions about the deeper meanings or implications of adoption.
Here would be my one overriding suggestion, given your current situation, hovering between a domestic and international adoption: within whatever spiritual framework is natural for you, meditate/pray with your future child in mind… inviting the child who needs you as parents… and pray for the qualities to grow in you that you need to provide a nourishing and healing home for this child. Create the space for the right child to find you. In this way becoming parents through adoption can begin to approach — on a spiritual level — becoming parents biologically: in both cases, the most profoundly powerful approach begins with the thoughts we weave about the coming being ~ the space we prepare, in our wombs but also in our hearts, our souls ~ for that being to move in and grow, in the healthiest, most supported way possible.
♥♥♥
Dear Dr. Axness~
I read your article about the primal wound. The idea of a baby being so aware in the womb was astounding to me. We correspond with our son’s birthmother and in one of her letters she wrote of the hard feelings she had towards him when she found out she was pregnant. It took Rebecca several months to come to terms with her pregnancy and she had a difficult time deciding what to do about it. She considered abortion at one point in her pregnancy, but could not do that to him. For me the thought of Daniel being terminated sorrows me to my core. She finally chose to place him for adoption and picked us through an agency. She placed him with us two days after his birth, although he had to remain hospitalized for 7 days after that. (Daniel was born with enlarged lymph glands, but the doctors couldn’t figure out where the infection was, or what kind it was. They kept him in the hospital on an antibiotic treatment for a week.)
I don’t imagine I can repair all that Daniel has gone through in his short life, I just want to help him learn to work through whatever he will have to face. I could write for about a 100 more pages, talking about how I feel to be an adoptive mom. I’ve tried to explain to others how it feels to have this child and know there will always be a separateness between us because he didn’t come from my body. When I try and explain this I get odd looks from those that hear it. So it’s just one of those things I keep inside and try and make sense of.
I’m trying to figure out my place with Daniel. What being an adoptive mom means. I know that I am not his birth mother…I guess I am his life mom but figuring out what that is exactly has me a little bewildered.
~ Christine
Dear Christine~
Getting your message has made my day. You can’t imagine how heartening it is to me when I hear from an adoptive parent who displays the kind of openness of heart and spirit that you do, who sincerely wants to learn, wants to challenge her fears, confusion, misconceptions, insecurities, etc. You are my kind of woman!!
Regarding the separateness you mention between you and your baby, which you know will always be there, but that others can’t seem to understand… The separateness you feel isn’t just because he didn’t come from your body; it also has to do with his own protectiveness regarding his first connection, his first mother. I recently had a fruitful conversation with Nancy Verrier (therapist and author of The Primal Wound) and she finds that when an adoptive mother operates from the notion that she is the mother to the child—discounting that the child ever had another mother, at least another significant one—the child resists, in a very subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) manner. It’s an invasive energy to that child, because he/she already has a mother, and you are not that mother.
But, Nancy, who is an adoptive mom who went through all this, and who herself evolved from the “myth-making” mom to who she is now, says if the adoptive parents can really make peace with the fact that they are not going to ever be the same as the child’s birth parents, something crucial changes energetically and the baby truly picks up on this, and there is a very important shift. The child is relieved, she says, of the need to protect that first, lost connection, and can begin to “let you in.”
So paradoxically, by acknowledging the separateness, you ease it, you make it okay for your son to accept what you have to give, since you give it with the spirit of “I know I can never be that other mother, I don’t smell quite right, I don’t ’heartbeat’ quite right, but I’m here for you forever.” It’s a beautiful, powerful reframing that paves the way for real intimacy.
One thing you could do now for Daniel is to find out as much as possible about his birth mother’s pregnancy with him, any pictures that she has of that time, pictures of her, of his father, of the places she was during her pregnancy, of the hospital where Daniel was born, the nursery, etc. A whole tapestry of his beginnings, even though they are not all “warm and fuzzy.” It will give him a context right off the bat through which to begin placing these feelings he surely has, of sadness, of loss, of feeling wrong, and of the painful and invasive postnatal hospital procedures. This can become a very simple, not-a-big-huge-production part of your life, a time every week or every month or every whatever (and when he gets bigger, it will be when he decides) when you sit down with the album and muse about how he began.
Dear Dr. Axness~
After reading your e-mail, I felt like a pressure valve had been released. I don’t have to try and be a replacement anything. I was chosen to be and want to be his mom. I tell him Rebecca made his quilt while he was growing inside her, and how glad I am that she chose me and Chris to be his parents. I tell him these things to help me feel easy in talking about it…not that I feel uneasy, I just want it to be so much a part of my thoughts that it comes naturally when I try and explain things to him as he gets a little older.
I think the idea of the primal wound is very freaky to people involved in adoption (including agencies). It seems a threatening subject that sets off all kinds of alarm bells for folks, and they don’t want to talk about it, or they say, “How can ’they’ know what a baby is going through?” and blow it off. A lot of time and talk seems to be spent convincing the adopting parents that they are the “real” parents and that there’s not really a connection anymore with the birthmother. Problem is, it takes so much convincing and it doesn’t seem to ring true. That’s been my experience anyway. A child carrying the separation through its life makes sense to me though, and if it’s more than a theory then it needs to be admitted and worked with. To ignore it is unwise.
One of the things Daniel’s birth mom mentioned in a letter was that when he was born he would not respond to her very well. For example, she tried to breastfeed him and he would not have it. She tried for two days to spend time with him, but he was undergoing all kinds of tests and plugged into an IV so she did not have much of an opportunity to connect with him outside her body. After this past week I’m now wondering what went on in his little head.
As his “nurturing” mama I hope I can keep an open mind, and learn to be sensitive to what he needs from me. So far, I’ve usually been able to come through for him, but sometimes I don’t (due to fatigue, or general cluelessness), a pattern that will repeat itself as long as we both interact. I often wonder what the connection he and I have is like for him. He is a marvel and a mystery to me.
~ Christine
Dear Christine~
And as far as the primal wound goes, everyone has a great investment—professional, emotional, and all the rest—in not believing in the sentience of an unborn or newborn child. Think of all the procedures, attitudes, practices, etc. that would not only have to be changed, but whose past practices would engender tremendous guilt and regret were we to embrace the primal wound theory on a large scale. But this is not about guilt, or blame, or regret…it is about awareness. Knowing what really happened to us is what makes us sane.
You’re doing wonderfully, Christine. I’m impressed by your consistent focus upon Daniel, your desire to understand his experience of all this. Your willingness to be in the “not-knowing” of it all will paradoxically help Daniel feel more secure with you! Do spend as much time home with him as you can. Not only because of his separation from his birthmother, but also due to all the procedures in the hospital, and the shut-down that is surely going on with him (what you heard from Rebecca about his non-response to her), he really needs lots of loving, predictable, unconditional contact right now, lots of empathy, saying the words out loud of what happened to him, how hard you know it’s been, having people changing on him so often, being poked and hurt, how you’re there for him, there with him in his sadness, his fear, or his anger, and that you’ll always be there.
But remember that you are human too, not super-human. All of us parents hit the wall from time to time. I’m reminded of what child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim asked of us: not to be perfect, automaton parents, but rather, good enough parents.
By the way, it’s not uncommon for a baby whose mother seriously considered abortion to totally reject that mother after birth. And that Daniel has suffered from infections and other problems is further testament to the stress under which he existed in the womb, as well as after birth. (Babies separated from their mothers at birth show measurably higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn reduces the thymus, the seat of the immune system.)
I love that you already tell Daniel that his blanket is one his birthmother made while he was growing inside her. That will be so special to him, an anchor of sorts.
Dear Dr. Axness~
I’m reading several of the resources you mentioned, and thinking a lot of things out. I’m now reading The Secret Life of the Unborn Child; as I read it I feel a great sadness for what Daniel may have experienced inside his birth mom and uncertainty (even fear) of how those experiences may continue to affect him. Along with that sadness is the realization that I had nothing to do with what went on between him and his birth mom. All I have is my influence on him today. The things I did or didn’t do with him in our brief past together can’t be changed either, but I can keep learning and resolve to do my best today. I need to remember not to try and over compensate for any of this either, that would not help Daniel at all.
It’s easy to see his eager, excited, happy feelings especially when he spies the cat, but the times when he’s somber make me wonder—and of course tap into my desire to “make it all better.” (I’ve always been a “try and make things better” person… usually doesn’t work.) I know I can’t make anything “all better” for Daniel (a hard truth) but at least I’m not covering my head hoping that if I don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t exist. However, the opposite of that is overwhelming Daniel or myself with the things I learn from reading and talking to you.
I appreciate our correspondence. Just getting the thoughts from my head into black and white helps keep them from forming a tangly mess.
~ Christine
Dear Christine~
It sounds like you are in exactly the right place as far as your relationship with Daniel goes. You’re a dream adoptive mother, in my estimation! I heartily agree that you wouldn’t be doing Daniel a favor by trying to overcompensate for whatever traumas or losses he has suffered on his way to you. The goal isn’t to make him feel like a victim, but rather to acknowledge him as someone who has suffered some profound losses and who now has a life to live, a life that is his alone, a opportunity to see what he is in this world to do. And that you are there to support him and to see him, not through a veil of denial, but in truth.
My goal is not to overwhelm you; rather, I hope that what you learn from me goes to a place that can simply help fund your empathic connection with Daniel, not fuel your natural tendency to try and fix things. Try reading In Appreciation of the Primal Wound, which discusses the whole notion of fate, the cosmic plan, etc. It might help you feel less conflicted about things… To me the most healing thing for Daniel is your consciousness of what he’s gone through, of how hard it was, what he’s lost, etc. But equally important, once you truly accomplish that first part, is to also hold strongly to the knowledge of what he has gained, what he is blessed with. Hold a consciousness of his resources as well as his losses, and encourage him—as he grows older—to do the same.