Scared Babies - Where Am I?

Me. The day my adoptive parents picked me up. (All photos included with permission from the adoptee.)

As adopted babies we are pulled out of our natural families and environments and put into the arms of strangers. These strangers are elated to get us. They claim us as “theirs” and try to forget we belonged to someone else first. But we never forget. We always know we are in the wrong place. We are looking for our mothers - our universe - the only person we have ever known. Without her, we are lost and no one can replace her.

Look at the following baby pictures of adoptees within the first few days of being placed with their adoptive families. Look from the baby’s perspective. What do you see?

Every one of the adoptees in these photos sees themselves as terrorized, scared, questioning - who are these people and why am I with them? Our faces, stiff bodies and clenched fists reveal our true experience. But the adults and siblings around us don’t notice our trauma. They move forward with their happiness that is rooted in our loss while we slip further into The Nothing Place.

If these happy adoptive family members could take a step back, put aside their needs and insecurities and really see us and be with us in our trauma - what would they say? What would we need to hear? I imagine hearing “you must really miss your mom” would have helped me know it was OK to miss her, to feel my grief. Because the sadness and terror you see on our faces in these pictures, we carried in our bodies for the rest of our lives. It lived in us, no matter if it was acknowledged or not.

As adults, we are now feeling the pain of our baby selves so that we can finally heal. We are reaching back and taking care of our newborn baby selves the way we wish we could have been taken care of by our biological parents. We are letting the grief of losing and missing our moms wash over us, so that it can finally be released from our bodies. The work is hard, painful and liberating all at the same time.

There is hidden, preverbal trauma from relinquishment, but maybe it’s hiding in plain sight, you just have to want to see and acknowledge it.