I Love My Parents

It amazes me that when I tell people I am searching for my biology, the number one concern people have is about my love for my adoptive parents. They actually question whether or not I love my parents. Well, let me set the record straight. Yes, I love the people who wanted me enough to adopt me when I was five days old and raised me into the woman I am today. However, that does not preclude me from wanting to pursue the search for the woman who actually gave me life.

I'm excited there are more open adoptions now than ever before. Every child has the right to know about their birth family. People don't understand that the bonding process begins in utero. When a newborn baby is handed over to a "stranger" that bond is broken. It sometimes takes years for a connection to occur between the adoptive parent(s) and the adoptee and on occasion it may never happen. The book that explained this phenomena to me is The Primal Wound written by Nancy Verrier. Mrs. Verrier is a psychotherapist and an adoptive parent.

The primal wound is described as follows "The core premise of the "primal wound" theory is that a child separated from its mother at the beginning of life, when still in the primal relationship to her, experiences what she calls the primal wound. This wound, occurring before the child has begun to separate his own identity from that of the mother, is experienced not only as a loss of the mother, but as a loss of the Self, that core-being of oneself which is the center of goodness and wholeness. The child may be left with a sense that part of oneself has disappeared, a feeling of incompleteness, a lack of wholeness. In addition to the genealogical sense of being cut off from one's roots, this incompleteness is often experienced in a physical sense of bodily incompleteness, a hurt from something missing." (Wikipedia) I often think adoptees suffer from more health issues and emotional issues than people who have been raised with their biological families, quite simply it is a primal wound and should be treated as such.

So when I tell you that I am continuing the search for myself, don't question my love for my parents. Just know that I love me enough to want to know everything about me.