What if Adoptees Are More Tangled Than Wounded?
The thing about being told I have a primal wound is that I don’t know where exactly it is. My brain? My heart? My intestines? My entire body? Who or what, exactly, wounded me? My birth mother herself? The act of her giving me up? The act of other people calling themselves my parents? Society for giving me a fake birth certificate? How, exactly, am I supposed to “heal” if I can’t put my finger on the wound? How can I go to the hospital and ask them to stitch up a wound if I can’t show them where it is?
If I am wounded and uncertain, I am more likely to stay in a childlike state of confusion. It’s harder to become a functional, thriving adult when part of your brain is trying to figure out where the damage is. It’s like trying to figure skate while out of nowhere holes appear in the ice.
If a car hits me, it is the driver of the other car who is responsible for the “wound” on my car. That makes sense, right? That driver was the one texting while driving, so now they face the consequences of creating a “wound”. When a mother is for whatever reason separated from her child and other people take that child as their own, the great news for almost all involved is that the “wound” isn’t visible, and therefore doesn’t exist in the eyes of most people. That means, if I jump back to my example, the “wounded” car gets to take care of itself.
This means someone like me (The Wound) shoulders enormous expense years later when I am an adult and financially responsible for my own medical/psychological care, and “awake” enough to realize being adopted really messed with my head, body, life, and soul. (One MDMA session involves not just the day itself—you also generally meet with the therapist before and after as well as having your own therapist at home to help you integrate the experience into your life—and it often costs about $3,000) to deal with this wound that looks like it may well by your entire self. Who even knows because there is no photo of the Primal Wound anywhere?
Like Mary Oliver in her poem When Death Comes, I don’t want to die saying I just visited the world.
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
It was hugely reassuring to read The Primal Wound when I was in my twenties and aware something was very wrong but having no language to name it. It has been over thirty years since I read that book, and I’m ready for a new story. So I am changing my narrative. I don’t want to be wounded.
I want a story about my body. I want a story about me and why I am the way I am after losing my mother that I can touch.
My new story is going to be about the tangle of tension I have in my body, in my fascia, my muscles, and my organs. I want my new story to be about the great unwinding I can do by being aware of the tension, by breathing deeply, by not taking on more than feels good on a day-to-day basis to my nervous system. It means recognizing I have one body, this one, and that even though someone did in fact pay for me, bought me, I am mine.
It means, for example, finding the most amazing body workers, such as Ann Ellis in Brewster, Massachusetts, who knows fascia and who can dive right into my bodystory with me and help me unwind it.
Here are some lines from my new story: This body is not your body. This body is claiming itself. This body is going to grow roots and plant them in soil that feels good to this body, not because someone else wants them planted in a certain spot. This body is taking a hell of a lot of naps, because paying attention to body tension is work! It’s like when I went to yoga for the first time and thought, Holy shit. I figured I was going to get to lie around and breathe and relax, and instead I’m being told to let go, and that hurts like hell! I ache! Letting go is a fucking nightmare! It’s also super, super hot, like an all body softening into orgasm if I really go for it and stop being reactive to the pain. The body wants to be relaxed more than it wants to be a freak show of Look at Me—I’m Tight as Wood! Come on, Anne, you can do it! Unwind into the softness of a baby entering the world, expecting to be held, loved, kept.
So many people have to have a glass of wine or a pill of something to relax.
Isn’t that funny how hard it is just to be soft and enjoy sitting in place?
Hahahahahahaha.
What if what I have to do now is pay attention to where there is tension in my body and give it my attention, my breath, again and again if necessary, until my body trusts me enough to let go?
What then?
