Andie.ink

I know it’s hard to understand. I know it’s hard to really comprehend and to be O.K. with the primal wound as an adoptive parent. You wish your love and effort could be enough. Allowing room for the primal wound within your adoption can give you a lens in which to see your adoptee’s struggles with compassion and empathy. To meet us where we are at as we struggle to fill a void that was left bare when our Mother’s went away.
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The other day I was laying on the couch just feeling out of sorts for a handful of reasons. My pup was curled up next to me trying to provide what comfort she could. I was fading in and out of sleep trying to regulate my body as it grasped into the darkness of my uncounscoious mind into my dreams for comfort. Dreams are where my body can find peace as it weaves together scenerios and tapistries that cover my disregulation in comfort and ideals it longs for.
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My mind, in it’s dozing fog searching for regulation to calm my anxiety, had drifted way back to my first Christmas with my biological family. To the couch after opening up presents… with my head on my aunt’s lap… the aunt who had been with my mother as she gave birth and stood by her side as she let me go from her arms into someone else’s… and I lay there surrounded by biological chemistry and people who looked like me and my aunt stroked my hair as I lazily dozed in and out of sleep soaking in 18 years of missing this… …
And then suddenly I was wide awake… 20 years later back on my own couch sitting with the realization that the comfort I was seeking that day in the viceral reaction anxiety was creating in my chest and stomach was the comfort of a mother who may never be able to just sit with me and let me lay on her lap as she strokes my hair to coregulate our anxieties.
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Time bends in on itself as my 37 year old body feels the primal wound of simply longing for the tender care a newborn receives. I’m still there. I’m still 3 days old waiting for her to love me and stroke my hair and regulate me. But I’m stuck in the in-between. In the minutes and the space that passed between the hospital room and a car.
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Every night I lay with our daughter and as she rallies her last ounces of strength to fight against sleep… the place where she too will find her mind trying to make sense of her world that has been tossed about. I believe she fights so hard against sleep because she hasn’t found peace in her dreams yet. She is still working out the in-between.

We lay as I stroke her hair and let my hot summer breath regulate her… I stir slightly and her eyes flash wide open, her body goes ridged and she squeaks out in a whispered breath, “Momma no leave me…” and her eyelids slowly fall back into position as she resumes working out her dreams.
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And half in and out of sleep… we lay together.
We are still newborns…
Three and one day old…
Aching for the comfort of our mother stroking our hair and crying out as we see her fade out of our minds, “Momma no leave me.”