Your story of your struggles with identity and separating yourself and your adoptive mother's shame tells me again how much everyone in adoption stories is affected. I'm glad you've found therapy useful. Sadly here in Aotearoa New Zealand therapists are thin on the ground. 100,000 adoptees, birth mothers and adoptive families are subject to the rigours of closed adoption from 1950s to 1980s and mostly we are muddling through with help from people like you here online.
Underfunding by Health NZ and huge waiting lists then very few funded sessions. There are private ones - they're few and far between and prohibitively expensive for many people.
Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful, resonant piece. Your description of your teen years sounds like mine, and we are very close in age. I am so sorry you were met with the mom-centered reaction to your processing of experience, and that you lost her that way. Every adoptee story I read that resonates like this feels like a reassuring hand on my shoulder saying, "See? It wasn't just you". I understand the complexity of grieving a mom who caused pain, and that door-kicking open feeling when she passed. I'm gonna have to try EMDR, and read the Ibsen play. Thanks again.
Thank you for your kind words. As I dive deeper into this work I am struck by the similarities we all share not only in our experiences as adopted people but in the way we hid, coped, and are now healing.
Individuation is the process that describes when an infant becomes aware its a separate individual from the mothers psychology usually 6 months after birth. See Margaret Mahler
What this does show is that a mother and baby share the same mind as one person and when we are separated we literally lose a part of our self. Thats a profound loss
Thanks Robert. Im familiar with Mahler who focused on separation-individuation, which is what you describe above. In this post I am referencing Carl Jung who coined the term individuation and suggests it is a lifelong process by which a person develops into a unique, whole, and distinct individual.
Your story of your struggles with identity and separating yourself and your adoptive mother's shame tells me again how much everyone in adoption stories is affected. I'm glad you've found therapy useful. Sadly here in Aotearoa New Zealand therapists are thin on the ground. 100,000 adoptees, birth mothers and adoptive families are subject to the rigours of closed adoption from 1950s to 1980s and mostly we are muddling through with help from people like you here online.
That’s awful, Kate. What is the reason for the lack of available therapists?
Underfunding by Health NZ and huge waiting lists then very few funded sessions. There are private ones - they're few and far between and prohibitively expensive for many people.
Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful, resonant piece. Your description of your teen years sounds like mine, and we are very close in age. I am so sorry you were met with the mom-centered reaction to your processing of experience, and that you lost her that way. Every adoptee story I read that resonates like this feels like a reassuring hand on my shoulder saying, "See? It wasn't just you". I understand the complexity of grieving a mom who caused pain, and that door-kicking open feeling when she passed. I'm gonna have to try EMDR, and read the Ibsen play. Thanks again.
Thank you for your kind words. As I dive deeper into this work I am struck by the similarities we all share not only in our experiences as adopted people but in the way we hid, coped, and are now healing.
Individuation is the process that describes when an infant becomes aware its a separate individual from the mothers psychology usually 6 months after birth. See Margaret Mahler
https://learning-theories.com/separation-individuation-theory-of-child-development-mahler.html
What this does show is that a mother and baby share the same mind as one person and when we are separated we literally lose a part of our self. Thats a profound loss
Thanks Robert. Im familiar with Mahler who focused on separation-individuation, which is what you describe above. In this post I am referencing Carl Jung who coined the term individuation and suggests it is a lifelong process by which a person develops into a unique, whole, and distinct individual.
Its impossible for us unless we learn what our actual history is. I was 52 before I discovered who my birth parents were