My fear

I have been doing a little web-surfing and doing some reading on my issue of abandonment. The web is probably not the best place to look for therapy. But, anyway, I have been and I came across something very interesting. Something that had not clicked in my brain until now. Like I said yesterday, my brain doesn't fire on all cylinders!

The website that I stumbled across mentioned that many adoptees have abandonment issues. I, being adopted, read on. I assumed that they meant children that had been with their birth parent(s) for a while and then had been taken from them. But they were saying that even children given up at birth (like me) had this issue. They even said that some children that were taken away at birth (ie - health problems and had to be in an incubator, etc) had this issue.

I had never really connected those dots before. It makes sense. A baby is connected to the birth mother for 9 months. And babies in the womb can experience a lot, especially things like getting to know the mother's voice. Then, after birth, suddenly that familiar voice is gone.

When I first contacted my birth mother, I wrote her a letter introducing myself. In that letter, I tried to tell her that I had great parents that loved me deeply. But in the next breath, I told her that I thought on some basic level I had missed her my entire life.

So my brain was heading down this path - I just had not consciously made the leap from fear of abandonment to my initial abandonment at birth. Now, that sounds just awful. I know all the reasons that she gave me up were very noble reasons and I am truly thankful to her for making that decision because I am confident that I have had a much better life than she could have provided. But on some basic level, it just makes sense for these two issues to be tied together.

So, I have found a book that addresses this connection. It is called The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. So, as I read this book, I plan to write about any revelations that I might have. Hopefully, this book can at least set me on a path to think about different issues and what steps I might take to resolve this fear of abandonment.

PS - I just did my 8-mile bicycle commute to work. If I feel like and if the weather is good and if I have time, I will commute back home.

PSS - I work at home so my commute consisted of going round and round and round and round my apartment community .4-mile loop. So I'm a bit dizzy!