As a survivor of this particular trauma myself, I'm aware of how most people I've observed who've never experienced this themselves, take for granted knowing or having a relationship (albeit imperfect and sometimes messy) with their birth mother and/or birth father. My observation isn't an indictment, it's an awareness I've only had the opportunity to have because I've not had the experience of knowing from where or from whom I come from, I've often wished I had the chance to take that experience for granted though.
It's from a place of my own growing self-awareness that ushers in healing, and from the support of a safe and loving community where I can experience healing, not just study, read or hear about it.
These are my most recent reflections on this journey of where I'm at. I share it out of the hope and strong desire to help heal others who can relate to certain parts of my story. Why? -Because by authentically sharing my story, it also mysteriously helps heal me.
I'm an adult Korean adoptee, with her own children, trying to figure life out...
In living with "RAD" myself, I want to say it's better described as "PMAA" (protect myself against attachment). Please read this as I share my inner parts....perhaps you will see parts of your children in my experience, including your own inner child....
I am not for myself as much as I need me to be. My inner child needs a strong parent, a strong mother. I am the best mother for her, yet I've been trying to find her a replacement because I feel insecure and not strong enough. But nobody else will do. As long as I'm still alive, that role is for me. When I'm abandoning that role and abandoning my inner child out of fear and shame, whether it's induced by an external or internal process, I'm realizing I'm unsafe to her, and others who don't fit the bill will be also. A telltale sign of me trying to sign another woman up (or accepting another woman's signing themselves up) to be my inner child's mother is me taking everything they say and do very personally, extracting shame from their not measuring up (whether it's done out of clear or unclear motives), and digesting the shame myself. That shame is familiar to me, but it is poison to my soul.
I was first fed this shame from being relinquished by my birth mother, which was how I was introduced to this world -through abandonment and shame. That became my first experience relationally speaking, and as a newborn, my survival depended on a securely-attached relationship with my birth mother, which I never got. I had at least two other foster mothers within the first year of my life, including a hospitalization in between foster homes. My adoptive mother never visibly abandoned me, but I felt like she did, it was just invisible, but I could not connect to her as if I was her own birth child, so I felt abandoned, even though I was unaware of it. I was emotionally starving for a strong and loving mother to fight to win me over and then create a secure-attachment based on trust that was earned, that was heavily fought for. My birth mother had it easiest to create that bond with me, that safe relationship where I wouldn't need to fear for my own survival. For whatever reason, she gave me up, when there was no resistance present in needing to win me over. I would've been easily bonded to her, if she was willing and able to facilitate that with me as an infant. As a result of losing that relationship and not experiencing a safe woman as my mother, I had to survive on my own. I had to protect myself, because there was nobody else doing that for me. The only way I knew how to do that was to build walls around my heart, to never have my heart shattered again by someone I needed to love and care for me.
It's with these walls, I came to live with my adoptive parents. My birth mother had harmed me through relinquishing me, and I've spent almost all of my life blaming and shaming myself for depending on her and needing her. I'm now becoming conscious of that which I've done subconsciously for all my life. It was my need for her that I thought was dangerous and unsafe, not that she was unable, for whatever reason, to meet that need. My heart learned the lesson that needing a mother or caregiver was unsafe, and I carried this lesson and applied it to my adoptive mom. She was the one whom I needed to fight FOR me, not against me. All my behaviors set her up to fight me though, and every time she fought against me, I would be re-assured that I was doing the best thing for my survival, to see that any need to need my mom, or receive love from her was dangerous.
As an adult, I'm healing from this...one day, one struggle, one fight, one victory at a time...learning that my need to need me to be a strong and loving mother to my inner child will never die, as long as I'm alive. And that truth is something that applies to all humans, whether they can be categorized as birth children, planned children, unplanned, unwanted, biological, not biological, abandoned, relinquished, or adopted.
RAD? It's reactive alright, but its not a disorder, it's a survival skill they had to learn or they would probably be dead by now.
To all the trauma mamas (and papas):
Keep fighting the good fight, and yes, it is definitely a fight, and it's most definitely a good fight worth fighting.
