Within Me: Processing Adoption-Related Trauma
This post will explore my traumatic repressed memory and my experience with adoption-related trauma. Traumatic repressed memories are a controversial topic within the mental health professional community. While there is a debate about how trustworthy these memories can be, some research suggests that they can be experienced during flashbacks, nightmares, or other sensory-related events.
A recent and renewed focus on the concept of adoption-related trauma and the number of children who display PTSD symptoms asks us to think more deeply about the impact of removing infants and children from their family of origin, and how best to support children in processing these traumatic transitions.
On the third and final day of professional development training, I recovered a traumatic repressed memory of my birth mom, for the first time.This heart-wrenching feeling occurred as Ms. Joyce, an African American goddess, walked out the door and said goodbye to our group.
I had been hanging back, unusually silent as she said her goodbyes. I normally soak in all the sunshine that is Ms. Joyce’s personality, but something felt wrong. I wanted to wish her well and to thank her for her wisdom and insights, but something was nagging at me.
“I wanted to call out to her as she left. Stop her. Beg her to stay with me.”
I think she felt it too because she offered me her personal email, which I sensed is not something that she normally does. I could barely utter the words “thank you” as I closed my fingers over the piece of paper. I wanted to call out to her as she left. Stop her. Beg her to stay with me.
This was incredibly disorienting because I knew logically that she had to catch a plane and return home. My chest felt tight and my stomach burned. I had to leave the group after she left. I tried to shut down and disengage with others to get centered, but I was physically shaking as tears dripped down my face.
One of my teammates came over to check on me. I struggled to explain what I was feeling over a sudden lump in my throat. I was breathless. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. When did I become this attached to Ms.Joyce? I’ve felt a kinship with her since the moment we met, but I have never cried like a baby over someone I have only known professionally and on three occasions. Talk about #leavingthemwantingmore.
I found it utterly confusing that I did not feel comfortable opening up to my team member whom I’d known longer, but I couldn’t get a hold of myself about Ms. Joyce leaving me. As I regained the ability to speak, my foster care and adoption story (I was adopted by my biological aunt) surprisingly came tumbling out of my mouth.
“I keep a Grand Canyon-sized distance between my vulnerable emotions and other people…”
I keep a Grand Canyon-sized distance between my vulnerable emotions and other people, especially the ones I would like as a mentor and/or mother figure. I keep myself well insulated and I do not trust the support and connection that other people have offered me, even though my inner child is crying out for someone to nurture me.
A few days later after this mortifying “undoing”, I stepped into my shower before work and recovered a traumatic repressed memory about my birth mother. In this memory, “I was in my former foster home or a hospital. It was daytime. The room was bright with sunlight pouring in on bare white walls and a few other pieces of furniture in the room. I can’t see my birth mother’s face but I can feel her warmth on me. I can’t name her scent, but I smell her. I feel that she is very upset and not responding the way I need her to. I am confused. I can’t get to her. I think she is walking out the door or gone but I feel so much pain.”
“As the past merges with the present, I reconnect with the truth. She never came back for me.”
I am standing there stunned. A dull ache spreads over my entire body as the past merges with the present and I reconnect with the truth. She never came back for me. I feel the panic freeze me in real-time in the shower. I won’t see her again. I can’t get to her. I am alone. I want my mother. I then feel blurry connections to other moments I must have spent longing for my mother and reworking myself through this painful realization.
I have always desperately wanted to remember anything about my birth mother. Now that I’d found her in my heart, I had to bitterly reconcile the trauma of our separation. The thrill of actually knowing my birth mother in memory, feeling her pain and love for me for the first time, but then immediately being forced to accept the fact that we will never recover this bond again. These realizations pummel me. They knock the wind out of me. What lies in my lap now is a fresh perspective on my memories from foster care.
“My earliest memories in foster care and what they represented were too much for me to hold onto.”
My new understanding of my earliest memories in foster care and what they represented were too much for me to hold onto. These revelations were too vivid and painful to accept all at once. I remember refusing to eat for days at a time. I remember my fingers secured each night so I wouldn’t continue picking at my raw skin. l remember the bald patches in my hair from obsessively coiling it around my fingers until there was no hair left. I can now connect these actions to grieving my birth mother.
A birth mother whom I loved, and who loved me. A birth mother who was somewhere mourning me too. I was never given permission or the support to grieve the loss of my birth mother. I was an infant, so everyone assumed I would not remember her. This has manifested into a young adult life full of unexplained sorrow and loneliness that eventually turned into self-loathing and self-hatred. I lost memory of her and replaced it with this hatred of myself and fear of emotionally relying on others.
I am angry that my adopted mother continued to traumatize me with the horrific details of the circumstances we were taken from, but she failed to acknowledge the domestic abuse, physical health, and mental illness my birth mother endured all her life. All this while she manipulated me and programmed me into believing that my birth mother was fully capable of caring for us but simply decided to give up her rights one day. These lies festered within me over time and put even more distance between my birth mother and me.
“It takes me less than 10 seconds to decide to send a rage written message..on Facebook.”
All these feelings and emotions bubble up inside me and spillover. I feel a pull and ache to know my birth mother whom I haven’t felt since I was a little girl. I hadn’t seen her since I was 16 years old at this point. I’m mad at my family, mad at my foster family, mad at showers, mad at the world.
It takes me less than 10 seconds to decide to send a rage written message to every single adult relative whom I have friended on Facebook. In the beginning, I was writing to process my feelings privately, the next thing I knew, I’d pasted it into Messenger and hit send. I do not recommend this method for dealing with family trauma. Seriously, I wish I could take it back.
It was angry, accusatory, and what I eventually came to understand, was 100% inaccurate! Thankfully, some of my aunts read that message and saw through my colorfully accusatory language, and reached out to me. They later sat down with me and my birth mom and told me the truth.
It was yet another world-shifting experience, but sitting there with my aunts and my birth mom was everything to me. Having her look deep into my eyes and say “I wanted you and I fought for you”, was a soothing balm on my heart. My birth mom loved me, she wanted me. Until this day, I had believed that I was born broken and defective. Why else had I suffered so much in life if there was not something wrong with me from the start?
“Ms. Joyce’s laugh had reached down into my spirit and freed my birth mother’s love for me.”
During this meeting, I also solved the Ms. Joyce phenomena. She and my birth mother share the same laugh and twinkling lights in their eyes. Something eternally youthful and defiantly joyful reflects in their eyes. Ms. Joyce’s laugh had reached down into my spirit and freed my birth mother’s love for me. We were reconnected, but my past sat capsized in my heart, consuming my thoughts as I now had to rethink everything.
Understanding that we were taken (rightfully so), by the state and that my mother fought to get us back dramatically changed my story, but I learned this too late. I had spent my entire life with a lie and no memory to contradict it until now.
“What makes her continue to smile and her eyes shine so bright?”
More than anything, I feel a sadness and loss for my birth mother, who currently lives in a care facility due to her numerous disabilities. What kept her going? How did she make it through her abusive and neglectful home life, epileptic seizures and multiple sclerosis, abusive relationships, and the loss of her children? What makes her continue to smile and her eyes shine so bright?
Over the years, most of my aunts and uncles continued to support my birth mother and my adopted mother, at what sometimes felt like the exclusion of my sister and me. My adopted mother/biological aunt always kept us polished and propped up, front and center, to proclaim her sainthood. It makes more sense to me now, almost.
As a child, I often wondered why none of my family stepped in or acknowledged that the abuse we were suffering from our adopted mom was wrong. Honestly, any adult telling me that I was worthy of love would have been helpful; however, that’s not how generational trauma works. We don’t talk about it and we don’t acknowledge it, often in the name of loyalty to our family ties. So it just keeps happening.
“There wasn’t room for us.”
My aunts and uncles survived an abusive, alcoholic, and chaotic home life with my grandmother; they survived it together. They loved each other and supported each other, with an understanding of what they have survived and the toll it took on some of them. There wasn’t room for us. For some of our family, my sister and I were also painful reminders.
It hurts, but I get it. My sister and I have this same bond. We survived an unimaginable home life with a person who was not mentally capable of parenting and protecting herself or us, only to be thrust into an overcrowded and neglectful foster home, then spat out into another abusive, alcoholic and chaotic home life.
I cannot imagine the never-ending worry and fear that my aunts and uncles must have felt for my birth mother, who suffered a host of mental and physical health concerns since birth and then somehow became a mother. What did they feel when she gave birth to her first child at 17 years old? How did they handle her being in multiple abusive relationships and at times missing for weeks or months? It must have been agony to watch while the world chewed her up and spit her out with three helpless children.
My freshly gained perspective on this comes from enduring my own struggles while supporting my oldest son through his battle with mental health and the generational trauma I have handed down to him. Since preschool, my handsome, charismatic and eccentric child has struggled with his mental health and his purpose in life.
Among the many sleepless nights, heartache, and days when I wanted to pull my hair out, I think of how helpless and hopeless we have felt about protecting and supporting him in this world, especially when he moved out to attend college. In a bittersweet revelation, after years of misdiagnoses, IEP’s, community programs, and therapy sessions, everything came sharply into focus for our family after he moved to college and schizoaffective disorder finally revealed itself.
In a few short months, we nearly lost him to a psychotic episode. Unlike my birth mother, he had no children. No intimate partners abusing him. He lived three minutes away. We had the privilege of knowing most of the people he interacted with on campus because we worked there. Yet, this was one of the most terrifying and helpless moments of my life. So again, how did my aunts and uncles endure this worry for my birth mother in addition to their own complicated lives?
I get it! After everything my sister has endured for our survival, I will always have her back, no matter what, and she will always have mine. However, this is not in direct opposition to supporting my incredible nieces and nephews. Understanding each other’s pitfalls and life choices does not free us from the necessity of bringing each other’s children into the fold of family, love, acceptance, and understanding.
“It’s important to tell the truth about what we have endured in our families so that those cycles can end with us.”
I know it’s weird to say, but if either of my children goes to my sister with pain and unresolved issues from their life with me, I am comforted in knowing that she would hear them out and love and support them through it. It’s important to tell the truth about what we have endured in our families so that those cycles can end with us.
Note: Managing your mental and physical health is a serious and important issue that should be pursued with trusted and competent healthcare professionals. I am not a healthcare professional. I am not a licensed or trained expert. I share my specific experiences and what has worked for me, in celebration of my growth and with the hope that you will find out what works for you.
