Day 259: Readjustment Trauma

They call it “readjustment trauma.” Or at least they do now. 

When I was adopted in 1985, I doubt the experts called it anything. 

Readjustment trauma is the trauma adoptees experience when separated at birth from their biological mothers, whose voice and heartbeat and daily rhythms they have come to know so intimately in utero. It is the shock of being born into a world where that person no longer exists. 

Of course, I can’t remember experiencing this readjustment trauma, though I now know that I did. 

I also experienced the trauma of being separated from my foster family at six months old. Six months is old enough to start gripping and sitting up and rolling over, to smile and babble and recognize a native language. It is long enough to have multiple growth spurts and wonder weeks, and certainly long enough to have a history, a personality, and to form attachments, trust in caregivers that would be shattered if those people disappeared.

And they did. But I don’t remember that either. 

When I lost my birth family, I also lost my birth story and any memories from my gestation. When my foster family disappeared, so did my recollections of my first six months of life.

A first smile, first time sleeping through the night, first solid food, first tooth: firsts like this have become stories I tell over and over again to my own birth children. My ambivalence toward adoption meant it was never an option for building my own family and compelled me to have children very young or not at all. 

I can, and scrupulously do, tell my children stories of their personalities in utero: one was so still I got worried something  had happened to her and drank a jug of orange juice to get her moving; she was fine. One turned cartwheels all day, everyday, distracting me so much I couldn’t work. I once sent my husband an email every time the baby kicked me for an hour–the thread was 27 messages long. 

These stories–of their gestations, their births, their personalities, actions, struggles and triumphs as very, very small people–form a body of lore children love to hear: “Tell me the story, Mommy, of when I was born.” These stories form a collective narrative children need to hear repeatedly so they feel secure and grounded, so they know where they came from, so they know who they are. 

But for me, none of these stories exist. No one can tell my story back to me.

In fact, the only story my adoptive family told me from my first year was how I arrived in the States and proceeded to cry nonstop for about three weeks. 

As an adult, I try to piece the story together myself, but gaping holes remain. 

After suffering from readjustment trauma at birth and finally forming attachments to a foster family, I was flown halfway around the world to an entirely foreign place. New sights, new smells, new tastes assaulted my senses, even new clothes felt strange on my baby-soft skin. And, unlike many immigrants crossing borders of land, language and culture, I had no family. No one to comfort me, recall my history to me, remind me of my personality or craft a narrative about why we had come.

Everyone who spoke the language I had learned to recognize was gone. I  knew and understood no one, and had no way to express feelings or ask questions. I can only imagine how terrifying, difficult and dislocating that must have felt. 

Of course I cried. Inconsolably. For weeks. What else could I do? 

As a mom, I know if either of my children had ever cried nonstop for three weeks, I would have been verklempt. I would have rushed them to the ER daily trying to figure out what was wrong. But no one rushed me to the hospital or really even expected me to stop crying. 

They knew exactly what was ailing me: A broken heart. 

And, given my adoptive father’s physical limitations (he was quadriplegic) and my adoptive mother’s emotional ones, I imagine their ability to respond to my incessant crying was, let’s say, somewhat limited. 

Perhaps they tried nurturing at first: holding, cuddling, rocking, meeting my physical needs, for sure. Perhaps nothing they did or didn’t do would have made a bit of difference. 

But, I can imagine this part of the story: I imagine my adoptive parents approached my overwhelming needs, my extreme pain and heartache, my disorientation, confusion and inability to understand what was happening—my utter grief—mostly with boundaries, which are the only thing my adoptive mother has ever consistently been able to offer me. 

I can almost hear it now.

“It’s okay.” (It was not.) 

“Everything is fine.” (It was not) 

“Stop crying.” (I could not.) 

And progressively more stern variations on the same theme. 

“Don’t go in there until she stops crying,” or “Don’t reinforce the behavior by picking her up. You’re just giving her what she wants,” and even, “Don’t bother, she won’t stop crying anyway.” 

You see, for my adoptive family, my readjustment trauma proved quite the inconvenience. 

And eventually, my tiny baby self—physical needs met, heart shattered, world irrevocably torn apart—stopped crying. 

Because I was so young, I have no conscious memories of this trauma. But I do have sense memories: of grief, of broken attachments. I harbor a basic level of insecurity about how the entire fucking world can change in an instant with no warning and no proper understanding. 

Maybe that’s why I feel compelled to stockpile things, like money, toilet paper, and unmatched Tupperware containers, as security against the earth-shattering shocks of life. 

And I have body memories: the known unknowns and nascent questions I carry like a phantom limb. Who am I really? Why was I born instead of aborted? Why was I given up?   

Maybe that’s why I feel the subconscious need to maintain a certain weight, nothing unhealthy, mind you, but a certain weight below which I fear I will be too small, too insignificant, where I might altogether disappear and the world will finally have its way with me. 

Instead of “readjustment trauma,” my adoptive mother called this my period of mourning. For her, this was a normal part of adopting. It was expected, nothing to worry about, just a difficult period of time to endure. As soon as I stopped crying, she considered it over and felt relieved to move on with her life.

My adoptive mom could easily get over my readjustment trauma. For her, my period of mourning had a beginning and an end. 

For me, this readjustment trauma continues.

 As a child, I never went to counseling to talk about my past, my grief, my adoption, or to process any of these aspects of my life. And it never occurred to me–from the day I stopped crying until this very day–to cry for the baby that I was. For the very small, scared, confused, pissed off, wholly bereaved baby I was–and for all the things that I lost. 

You see, my period of mourning, for the life I was born to but did not have, never ends. 

It just changes, as I grow and ask new questions, and maybe one day, feel brave enough to seek–or even write–my own answers.