It is difficult, emotionally, to imagine a tiny baby's very real feelings about the loss of his or her mother -- the terror of losing all that is familiar, all that is comfort - the unique heartbeat, scent, taste, voice, rhythms and vibrations. Babies are born needing and expecting these familiar things which only their natural mothers can provide.

Even with this knowledge which has accumulated over the past 20 years, there remain those in our society who sever the mother/child entity as casually as they would cut a common angleworm in two.

Ignored trauma is another trauma

A child's first experience in the adoptive family is usually joining in everyone else's happiness over his or her tragedy. The child's first trauma is ignored or dismissed, perhaps in the belief that enough love will make it disappear. It will not. In essence, the adoptee is expected to dance along with everyone else on his or her own mother's
virtual grave. Most experts in the fields of adoption psychology and trauma consider this dismissal to be the adoptee's second trauma.

The first and second traumas are the root causes for a number of issues and for additional traumas, which accumulate one upon another (what Betty Jean Lifton calls "Cumulative Trauma").

We may not want to imagine these things because it is uncomfortable to do so but, to act in a child's best interest including protecting his or her emotional health, we need to suffer through such discomfort.

Denial

Over 14 years ago, I began 9 years in therapy, struggling with a boatload of issues that are utterly classic in adoptees. I didn't accomplish much. The problem was that I did not connect them with my adoption experience. In all fairness, my therapist encouraged me to recognize the connection, but I was so deep in "De Nile" that I could not see it - indeed would not see it. I needed too desperately (like most of society) to believe that my adoption experience was the positive part of my life - not the source of my problems.

Denial is powerful and, in many ways, a gift. It is a state we create in order to avoid feeling the pain of seeing the truth. When a baby's world is gone, he or she does whatever it takes to survive. If the child does not get empathy and permission to grieve, he or she has no choice but to psychologically deny the trauma. And that includes smiling to hide the grief. The child begins to believe that his or her feelings are unimportant - even wrong. The child learns how not to feel.

I do not use the word "denial" in a damning or judgmental way. It is a normal and natural human survival tool. I not only acknowledge it but, knowing intimately the pain that comes with shedding that denial, I am reticent to nudge others out of it. Denial can be a trauma victim's most effective tool for survival, because revisiting the event that caused the trauma can feel literally life threatening.

The downside of denial unfortunately outweighs the upside. Denial prevents us from understanding and effectively managing all the issues that stem from the disintegration of the mother/child entity. What are the most common issues?