Under the Halo – Volume 25

The Primal Wound

I think most people know I am an ally of adoptees (as well as donor-conceived persons), and recently I had a chance to sit down with Rebecca Autumn Sansom and speak with her in advance of DNAngels Movie Night – we will be screening “The Primal Wound.” I intrinsically understand the idea of the Primal Wound. Still, I asked her to put it in words that non-adoptees can understand, and she referred me to the words the author of the book, Nancy Verrier, uses, it’s a wound that occurs when a child is taken from its biological mother. And during the film, Nancy talks about the “mystical and mysterious” bond between birth mother and child.

And I thought that maybe not only adoptees experience this primal wound, but perhaps there are others out there suffering. Maybe children who, like me, lost a mother at a tender age. I lost mine at five, and I was raised by a woman who did not care for me and for whom people say I should be grateful for her care of me. What about parents who lost their children either through adoption (forced) or children who died at birth or tender ages? Do they experience some kind of primal wound? Is there anything to be done for those that have such an affliction? Can it be healed, even in part? Can reunion with birth families help? If reunion isn’t possible, does knowing where you came from help? For those who, like me, like those mothers who lost children at birth or shortly after and cannot be reunited with a loved one whom death separates you from, what helps ease the grief and the pain? Can we even compare our wounds to the primal wound of an adoptee? Is it similar but different? Is the wound of a parent who has lost a child the reverse of the coin? Is my wound as the child of a deceased parent similar but a little tangential, still difficult to explain and heal, but not on the level of an adoptee ripped from his or her biological parent within days or even minutes of his or her birth?

I had at least five years with my mother; I knew her face, the sound of her voice, and the touch of her skin. My adoptee friends never had that, except maybe in the secret parts of their hearts. So, my pain, although deep and with me from the early stages of my development, is not there from the very beginning of my life. I can remember a time BEFORE.

I messaged an adoptee friend at 0330 this morning with some of these thoughts, I didn’t think she would be awake, but I wanted to get them out while I had them so I wouldn’t lose them to a sleep- addled brain. They may not have made much sense at the time, but thoughts were brewing, and I was trying to figure out why I seemed to understand better than some of the plight of the adoptee. Why was it so hard for people to be able to put themselves into the shoes of another? Why did I “get it”? Reading through other people’s stories today, I come across one where a young man is telling his story. His mother abandoned him at birth, and a single father raised him. He had no contact with his maternal family for over 25 years. At that point, his grandmother showed up and expected him to welcome her with open arms when it was she that poured the poison in his mother’s ear that she was (at 24) too young to have a child. She left him with his then-21-year-old father, who struggled to do the best he could to raise him. It reminded me of my younger cousin, who raised his boys as a single dad with the help of his siblings and mother. Vinny was just a small fry when I first met him at his great-grandfather, my uncle’s funeral, asking for his shirt sleeves to be rolled up, so he didn’t get them messy while eating his spaghetti and meatballs (what? It’s an Italian funeral, what do you want?) My sister and I dutifully helped him roll up three-year-old Vinny’s sleeves while we admired the manners his father had instilled in his son and clucked over how awful it was that his wife ran out and left him with two small boys. And I wondered then, as I do now, if Vinny and his brother suffered from any ill effects from their mother abandoning them. Does the young man from the story I read today? What about the baby whose case I handled last year? His dad had had full custody of him since Thanksgiving of 2020, when his mother left because narcotics were more important than her newborn. I check in with his aunt now and then; she was my client too (day job, not DNA job) to see how Dad and son are faring. It occurs to me that there is a significant amount of “nontraditional families” these days, and therefore, the likelihood of more trauma in this day and age than 50 years ago. Then again, there was probably the same amount of trauma 50 years ago, but it was covered up and not talked about openly, right?

The primal wound is real. If you can understand the other wounds I describe above, the understand this: babies taken from their mothers at birth can feel the primal wound, and it is just as real as the wound I feel losing my mother, it is just as real as the wound a mother feels losing her child. Do not discount it just because you do not understand it.

Part of healing is being able to discuss trauma openly and being able to have licensed therapists who understand trauma. So if you are an adoptee, MPE, or donor-conceived, please visit the Right to Know MPE Counseling Collective if you need help.