Does ’open adoption’ solve the problem of the so-called ’primal wound’?
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Openness and "primal wound"?
– March 9, 2009Posted in: Community Wisdom
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- We understand that open adoption looks like different things for different families.
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This is such a hard question to answer. First because not every researcher believes in the “primal wound” as defined by Nancy Verrier (although most adoption experts understand now that there is grief and loss in adoption). Verrier focuses on pre-birth psychology, which is still very controversial. And if you are limiting the primal wound discussion to pre-birth psychology, I’d say that likely openness can’t really solve that basic primal loss since even with regular visits, the early caregiving isn’t done by the biological mother.
Personally I believe absolutely that Madison experienced primal loss from being placed with us. I believe that this grief was and is part of her body consciousness and that it informs her life now but I also believe that babies are resilient (they had to be because mothers so often died in childbirth) and that this loss doesn’t define her or her experiences. I also don’t think openness fixes that essential loss of being cared for in-utero by Pennie and then losing Pennie at 3 days old. I believe that she missed Pennie very very very much in those first few weeks/months and that today, too, while this primal “wound” isn’t something that can be fixed, I do believe that Madison is learning to integrate her experience into her life.
I believe openness does mitigate adoptions losses but I don’t think it solves the problems of adoption. No matter how often Madison gets to see Pennie, she’s still lost the experience of Pennie mothering her (and vice versa). I don’t mean to sound all down about it because I don’t think that Madison has been doomed by her adoption. I just think that it’s an extra challenge to her growing up but I also think she can meet the challenge and that having openness is more healthy than not having openness (however a family needs to define this).
To cut to the chase — I think Madison misses Pennie, I think she will always miss Pennie. Having openness doesn’t cure this but it does help her make sense of missing her and having her maternal birth family in her life does give her that important mirroring (someone who looks like her, moves like her, has similar tastes), which seems HUGELY important to me.
(blathering on… hope it makes sense. I’m on cold medication and am extra stupid today)
thank you. It does make sense. I really wish I knew about this idea when I was pregnant.
I just finished the book and was very bothered by the fact that open adoption was not really a part of the reasoning. What you say makes total sense. I just can’t wait for the day that the children of open adoption come of age and can really tell us how they feel about it.
My hope is that open adoption will help mitigate some of the possible negative affects of the inherent loss.
Each individual’s coping mechanisms are big factor too. I don’t think it’s possible to generalize or guarantee anything, unfortunately, which I why I use the word hope.
Dawn,
I know this is an old blog, but I found it interesting. So, how did you know Madison missed her mother in the first weeks/months? Were there signs she showed of loss? We got my son at 4 days and he was a pleasant and wonderful little guy, great sleeper, even did well nursing. I don’t think he experienced any loss that I am aware of. This is why I was curious about your post.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, when Nancy Verrier wrote that, open adoption wasn’t really the thing. But there is research going on about openness and the kids in the study are in their early teens, I think? You can read about it here:
http://cehd.umn.edu/fsos/Centers/mtarp/