Journeying Back to My Life Before My Own Birth

 Journeying Back To My Life Before Birth

The author in front of Ernie, who is asleep following a walk he wasn’t very enthusiastic about.

I have written on the subject of relinquishment of a baby by their mother for adoption, and the effect being relinquished had on me personally in my early life through to adulthood and beyond. Here I write about the catalyst that in an instant made me realise, at the age of 47, that I had sustained a primal loss which had affected my life, relationships and sense of self.

Up until that lightning-bolt moment, I thought that being adopted at nine days old had not really impacted me at all, and that everything in the garden was rosy. And really, everything was pretty great in my life. I had been bought up by loving parents, although both passed away whilst I was only in my 20’s, and I always mourned my lack of siblings. I married a great guy and we have five beautiful children of our own. Sure, I had trust issues, and difficulties with depression and anxiety, but I kept trying to improve my life and to feel better, and I never associate this with what had happened when I was a tiny baby…I couldn’t see the connection.

After the lightning-bolt, when I saw that damage had been done, I took the time to journal, and write, and to think about what I’d discovered. Around this time I was working as a birth doula, and I had to pause my work whilst I addressed my own wounding. I became ill with shingles, and between sleeping and listening to my neighbour’s dog bark, I read books by adoptees, and I wrote some more. I wondered how I might go about healing something so fundamental, something buried so deep, something I have no conscious memory of.

A book came into my possession.

Dr Thomas Verny and John Kelly’s book ‘The Secret Life of the Unborn Child’ was published in the US in 1981. In it Dr Verny presents the results of two decades of research in to early life in the womb. Findings showed that the unborn child experiences feelings, emotions and can learn whilst in the womb. That which the child perceives at this stage of life actually shapes his expectations for his life outside of the womb.

Chronic anxiety or a wrenching ambivalence abut motherhood can leave a deep scar on an unborn child’s personality. ~ Dr. Thomas Verny.

Thomas Verny knew that at the time of publishing in the very early 1980’s, he was offering what he describes as a ‘radically different’ description of an unborn child than was currently espoused by the popular and medical press of the time. He knew it was vital that his ideas be backed by the most stringently accurate scientific reports and studies. It is a fascinating book and I’d encourage you to read it if you’re at all interested in the subject.

The impact of this book on me was to be huge. I was languishing in my sunny garden as I read it, recovering from my illness. I was still feeling too tired to read for very long, and soon the warmth of the late summer afternoon lulled me into a dreamy state and the book rested face down on my chest as I closed my eyes for a moment.

Altered State of Consciousness for Contemplation and Enquiry

In this slightly altered state of being, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, I contemplated the fact that if I had been as aware of my in-utero life as Dr Verny described, then somewhere in my being, would be stored a memory of it, albeit not a conscious memory. My awareness and curiosity seemed to be guided very gently by my consciousness, and I realised that this was an opportunity to ask a question to the non-rational, somatic part of my self, and to be able to perceive an answer.

My question didn’t take the form of language, using words.

It feels like this is an important aspect of my experience in the garden that day. I was taking an unexpected opportunity to access the non-verbal part of myself, to ask about a time in my life that was pre-verbal. I opened my awareness up to knowledge about my experience in the womb, especially with regard to my upcoming relinquishment for adoption.

The ‘answer’ in the form of knowledge that I received, was shockingly clear, succinct, and ultimately, liberating. And the next step on my healing journey.

The ‘answer’ to my ‘question’ was that I understood very clearly whilst I was in the womb, that my mother and myself were not destined to be together much longer. Amongst the other emotions of loss and sorrow, would be a deep sense of relief. We each needed to be away from the other to complete our respective life journeys. Amongst all the ‘wrongness’ of separating mothers and babies on a physical, earthly level, and the massive effect this has had on me, there is a ‘rightness’ in the spiritual part of me, about the end of our time together.

The relief that came with knowing that things had happened exactly as they’d meant to was huge. To know that my deepest feelings that we weren’t meant to find one another again in this lifetime, were true. Ten years after this experience, I would find out just how true that was.

To know that I hadn’t found her after all my searching, and that I wasn’t ever supposed to find her, was the feeling that set me free to live my life without searching among the dust of the past to find a scrap of myself.

I would sum this experience up by saying that I believe by that being open to healing, to the grace that comes without warning, is a big step towards feeling easier and more joyful in this earthly life of ours. I had gotten myself caught up in a story, a story about how it was wrong that we’d been separated (and I fully acknowledge that it was wrong that my mother and other birth mothers didn’t and don’t have the support needed) and that a big part of my life had to be devoted to finding her, even though in my very bones I knew that she didn’t want to be found.

Dr Verny’s book is by no means the only work that has nudged me onwards in my quest to live a full and joy-filled life of meaning, and I will link more works here as I write about them. Thank you for reading this part of my story, I hope it helps others on similar journeys. Please remember, it is my own individual story, and I am no stranger to such interior journeying, which may not be for everyone.

I have No Pre-Trauma Personality

 Danger was encoded into every cell my being built over the months of my gestation.  

My embryonic being was constructed inside the physiological environment of a person facing the most desperate of survival situations.  My unborn self could not avoid the incorporation of my mother's distress into my own newly-forming structure.  Stress hormones flooded our shared system.  I heard the sound of her tears, her raised heartbeat making the supposedly safe and tranquil womb, a fragile stopover before the inevitable breaking of our bond.  

Conditions in the womb prepare the baby for life on the outside.  My little mammalian self was born, fully prepared for death by desertion. 

Woven into my fibres is the knowledge that her situation and all its attendant upset, has one root cause, which is the existence of me.  That my own existence is a wholly unwelcome threat is not just a knowing, it is an ingredient in my construction.  It is me.  

Those adopted from birth or as very young infants have no pre-trauma personality to be the gauge of how we were before.  Before that thing that shook us to our core and beyond.  Before that incident that primed the body away from joyful creativity into anxious, tense, exhausting survival and shattering grief.

Although 'me' must consist of something else, too.  Love must have had a hand in there to have enabled the construction of my self. Something external to our situation was at play, and I believe it to be a wholeness, that always existed, and always will.

Growth continues for the entirety of a life.  Cells continue to proliferate in an unbroken outpouring of life, renewal and replacement is hardwired into human life as it is to all animal and plant life on the planet.  My prayer for each and every one of my new cells is one of welcome.  I am here, a fact from which I conclude that I the Goddess, god, Universe, universal intelligence, what or whomever is at the controls, must intend for me to be here as much as the next person, who may have been welcomed, loved the way they needed to be from the beginning.  

My prayer for you, dear adoptee friend, is the same.  A prayer of welcome, a prayer of love, that you may remember that you were born and therefore have a birthright.  Your birthright is to be welcome, and loved and to love on this planet, just as much as any other human being here.

The Ghosts that walk behind me have died.

 My biological mum passed before I could find her.  And the sire.  Little sister, too.  My sister.  I had a sister.  I found out at the age of 54, in an email...the same email that told me I had a brother, living.  And another sister, in another country, lost still, in the absence of names or dates or places. (So much to process, one day I'll get around to it)

My adoptive mum and dad passed in my 20's.  There's so much beauty in my life, such an intensity of love and life.  So much to be grateful for, and so much good living to do.  So much.  I don't want to give a precious second of it to sorrow or tears, but I will lay their place at my table, the same as I do for all the other feelings.  They are all valid, they will come and go, come and go.

No-one says, "I'm sorry for your loss."  How can they understand that the ghosts who walked behind me all my childhood have died, and now I must find a way to mourn them.  Soon, I must visit their graves and make it real.  I'm so blessed to know where their graves are, so blessed.

Whilst they lay dying, I would have been working, walking, hoovering, cooking, oblivious behind my not knowing.  How could this be?  I don't know.  Thank goodness for our adoptee community where someone else will know this feeling too.  Know this dark and wild place where the winds howl and the rain drives and the sky, like the aeons is endless, silent and wide.  To walk along the ragged edge of the world alone, suspended in trust and hope and other vaporous unseen forces which are now our reality.  When our reality should be her body, her/my milk, her voice, her aura, for she is life and the rest is death. A little death, or a big one, I can't be sure that I'm not a ghost, invisible as my grief and I truly are in the fullness of our being.

We wait it out like a long night and give thanks when we come back to precious life, like the sun rising again, but our being holds so much.  So much.

My Sister, who died before I could meet her.

 So you were in Brighton one time? (Close to my hometown.  My sister.  Died a few short years before I learned of her existence.  I have a few photos of her.  This is one of them)

Emma.  Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.  Which exact railing was that?  Because I want to touch it.  I want to put my hand where your hand once was.  I want to see what you saw.

I don't dwell in the past, but sometimes my past drives up so fast it sprawls me across its bonnet.

The longing that begins in my gut in my centre and spreads outwards like a arm, a hand, reaching, imploring, yearning for you.  The physical presence of you.

I know that blue sea and the pier and the style and colour of the buildings you would have seen. I know the way the seabirds ride the onshore breeze coming over the waves from southwest and the sounds of those gulls and the traffic from the A259 in front of you, how its rushing roar envelops the laughter that floats up from the beach and Madeira Drive below you.  I know the feeling of the cold old Victorian railings under your hand, thick and rough with layers of peeling aquamarine paint.  I too have inhaled the tang of fresh ozone, exhaust fumes, cigarettes and fish and chips.

When was that taken, and where was I, at that exact moment?  Was I at work, in that very city?  Or 20 minutes up the A23 at home?  Or was I out for the day, a nice fresh walk along the seafront, the sea like a millpond but a bright little breeze in the air.  The traffic, the laughter, the gulls and the people and a beautiful young woman leaning against the railings whilst her husband takes her picture.  One to look at when we're old, I expect he was thinking (except you never got there).  Did I pass and smile and not even know? Or would I have known, how could I have known, how could I not have known? How?  How close, in actual miles, did we ever come to one another after being eggs in her ovary even as she was in our grandmother's womb?  How could I have lost you after being so close?

I don't dwell in the past, but these tiny shreds of paper pictures of the past are all I have of you.  All I have of my sister is in the past.  For you are behind a veil now.  Do you sit at my table Emma, or are you up there in the stars?  Or by a blue sea, near the pier, by that railing. (which one is it exactly?)

Forgive them, free yourself. Here's how to start.

 This is the big one, I know.  This is the one that sparks the most vehement cries of "No!  Never.  Never."

Those cries echo with pain...I know they do.  I've lived inside of that pain before.

That pain felt like the only thing that I had left of her.  The pain of loss was my identity; it WAS me.  My sometimes excruciating pain proved that I once belonged to someone else.  It proved that I once was whole until an unspeakable wrong was committed to me, a wrong which disabled my mind, my trust, and my self.

Did my birth mother commit that wrong?  Or was that unspeakable wrong done to us both?  Can I forgive the culture that disabled her ability to keep me alone, my birth father who abandoned us, but took her back when she had left me, others in my story, (for that's what it is, a story I tell myself) can I forgive them?  And the legion of people since who refuse to understand that anything is broken in that story...we all meet them now and then when we find ourselves revealing our status as an adoptee to a stranger, or sometimes to a friend.

 "Oh you're adopted?  How interesting!  Do you ever feel curious about where you came from? Lucky you for being chosen,  you know that it was so hard back then for women, you mustn't feel bad towards her, the best thing happened, you made two childless people very happy, you didn't lose out, you had a great childhood, people who loved you, gave you everything, you must be so grateful. Why don't you search for your family? Two families, lucky you, you must be so grateful, and curious. Curious, interested in your background? Or not really bothered?"

Does committing to never forgiving leave you something worth hanging on to?

Do you commit to never forgiving because they don't deserve your forgiveness?

Don't you deserve the peace that your forgiveness of them will bring?  Because that's what the action of forgiving can give you.

Does the thought of letting go of this position and forgiving them feel too much like more loss?  Loss of control, loss of the only very real, almost tangible proof you have of the past?  Will it feel like a loss of your dignity, of your self...again?

What if forgiveness was not those things?

What if it was a sense of space?  The nurturing of hurts and wounds and the ruminating on all of the wrongs takes up so much more bandwidth than I ever realised.  Even if I didn't think about the past in any depth, it still occupied space, it still demanded energy from me. 

I needed to draw a line in the sand.  To create a ritual to mark a change.  To choose new thoughts even though the old ones knocked on the doors of my mind again and again.  (I politely thanked them for their attention but told them that our time together was over.  Go Well, thoughts.) I chose to let new thoughts inhabit the space. Simple words, Good bye and Goddess Bless.  I forgive you, and I let you go.  I welcome myself, I belong here.  I am whole.  

Is the change instantaneous?  Yes and no. Forgiveness is an action, one you choose.  Sometimes multiple times a day, an hour.  Don't wait for it to wash over you like a wave, because it won't.  You have to walk into its waters, and immerse yourself, again, and again and again.  After a while, it will become where you live.  A light, spacious place, with opportunity, freedom and maybe even joy.

What if forgiveness was a sense of lightness, freedom, freedom to belong, to belong to yourself and to others, to become born, properly this time, born into your own life.  What if forgiveness is the new beginning that lights your soul, that enables you to create your life, piece by piece, and to belong fully in it, in peace, with love.

Adoptee, you had everything taken away from you at your most vulnerable.  But somehow, a part of you survived.  Let that part now call all the other wounded parts home, for now there is a home inside your heart for them, and it is warm, and safe, and welcoming to them, and that home belongs to them.  To you.  Recognise that, with all that you have lost, no one took away your ability to choose, today.  You retain the ability to choose how to proceed, from right now.

Go well today, with a lightness in your soul, for you are here.

Adoptee dysregulation

I was adopted at 9 days old into a stable and loving home, and I had a great childhood.  It wasn't without it's challenges, but things could have been a lot worse.  I am blessed with a loving partner and family, and a good life.  So when the tidal wave that is my nervous system dysregulation drowns me in it's swell, it can seem to come from nowhere, and seem to have no root cause.  

Dysregulation, also known as emotional dysregulation, refers to a physiological and emotional state in which it becomes difficult to manage responses and to keep emotional reactions within a typical acceptable range.  The sufferer can be triggered into dysregulation by a varying and personal range of seemingly innocuous situations.  The nervous system is upset, with heart rate and breathing becoming erratic, and the fight or flight response flooding the system with adrenaline that has nowhere to go.  This state can last for some hours, maybe even into the next day, although for me, a good sleep seems to even things out for my system.

Emotional dysregulation is characterised by anxiety, extreme tearfulness, outbursts of anger that include aggression towards self and others, throwing objects, destroying things and suicidal threats. It can be a feature of many psychiatric conditions, as well as disorders like ADHD. It can be the result of complex PTSD also known as childhood trauma and traumatic brain injury.  It is thought to be more common in women, due to our more intense experience of our emotions and increased lack of external validation of ourselves in society generally.

Through my life, my tendency to dysregulation has been exacerbated by PMT and PMDD.  PMDD stands for pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder, and is a very extreme form of PMT.  Thankfully my extreme symptoms rarely lasted more than 24 hours, but those hours were very similar to the hours I have spent in dysregulation.  I could predict the day when my PMDD would strike, but that foresight made no difference to my inability to prevent myself from sliding down the steep slope into the darkness.

And PMDD episodes, like periods of emotional dysregulation, can be dark. Very dark. So dark that they can be mistaken for rapid cycling depressive episode bipolar disorder.  The sadness and crying are extreme.  The pessimism, hopelessness, guilt and worthlessness are all-consuming.  They block out the light.  Even the most tender, loving care, although very much appreciated in retrospect, cannot penetrate the darkness or turn the tide. It just has to run its course.

Close relationships can be damaged beyond repair by this sucking, toxic tide. Even the most patient, compassionate support is rejected during the episode, although it is exactly that which is needed.  From somewhere behind myself, unable to control what I'm thinking, feeling or doing, I have watched as relationships drowned in the flood tide.  Some could have the life breathed back into them, but others were not receptive to resuscitation.

My own experience of dysregulation is that, unlike my migraines, it's not affected by being tired, hungry or anything I've consumed, other than alcohol.  In the days when I had a menstrual cycle, I was very susceptible the week prior to my period.  Two or three glasses of wine a night over the weekend would render me more susceptible to an episode, so now I live without the beautiful, terrible daemon that is booze.

And my own personal triggers?  They seem so ridiculous that it feels awkward to admit them, but a light needs to be shone into this dark recess to increase awareness among those who tread warily around their own minefields.  Birthdays can be really difficult somatic reminders of trauma for adopted people and probably deserve their own blog post.  Until I bought this to my conscious awareness, shared it with my loved ones, and accepted some healing around it, the day was more for dysregulation than celebration.  

A lot of my dysregulation happens between me and my partner, rather than to me in isolation, although it can happen in group situations at work as well.  Its safe to say that it is personal interaction with a person or people that opens me to the possibility of dysregulation.  If we've arranged to meet at a certain time and my partner is late (which he often is due similar challenges of his own) I find my anxiety creeping on.  If we're out and I lose sight of him the same thing happens.  It's ridiculous.  There's nowhere we go together that I couldn't go to by myself with complete ease, but something happens to me when we are together - it defies logic.  Similarly, I need to say goodbye to him properly, and then I have to watch him go until I can physically no longer see him. 

There's more, as you can probably imagine.  Stuff that has damaged our relationship and from which, to my eternal gratitude, we have recovered.  But I recently walked out on a job, for a reason I couldn't, and haven't explained to my very sweet and kind ex-boss.  Emotional dysregulation does damage. The fear of an episode being triggered has stopped me from doing things, many times. 

There is a resource for managing dysregulation that has helped me, and I want to share it with you here. It consists of a short daily practice of a very specific style of journalling, combined with meditation, and it works. It hasn't 'cured' me, but a big improvement has been made.  I think the 'brain dump' element of the process has a lot to do with it, because this style of journalling allows for the expression of everything that's going on in my brain, however trivial, negative, non-productive, shameful and private. We all have these negative internal monologues, and these stories fuel dysregulation.  Meditation allows the body to experience a calm and regulated state, which may make it easier to access this state at will.