"COMING HOME TO SELF"

 

Tuesday 27th June was a day to remember for Adoption Support, as the "Coming Home to Self" Conference by Nancy Verrier celebrated the charity's 10th anniversary in style. Over a hundred delegates were present, feedback was very positive and all those who attended took a great deal from the event.

Sandy Row, an adoptive mother and author of 'Surviving the Special Educational Needs System: How to be a Velvet Bulldozer' was particularly touched by the content of Nancy's speech and has kindly written the following review of the day for Adoption Support.

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In retrospect, I am very pleased that a massive ‘paper-slip’ forced me to tidy my desk after weeks of prevaricating. It turned up a flyer from Adoption Support, advertising the above event. On reading it again I realised that it was scheduled for the next day and I’d long-since missed the deadline for booking. God bless Mark Ellis from Adoption Support as he managed to squeeze me in to what was clearly a fully subscribed conference.

I am so glad he did. This was a truly inspirational day and Adoption Support is to be congratulated for managing to attract a speaker of this magnitude. Nancy talks such sense, with such clarity and passion because she speaks from experience. She is the mother of two daughters, one adopted and one a natural daughter. Her adopted daughter's issues and pain have caused Nancy to switch careers as she tried to unravel the reasons for the difficulties she encountered, something I can relate to. 

The work she has now done on ‘separation trauma’ is very important and she likens it to ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’. Interestingly, I had said years ago that I felt our children were suffering from this but it was just a gut feeling and I didn’t really know where to go to get help for them. I feel now, 16 years after the adoption, that someone has at last handed me an ‘emotions map’ for our children and maybe now the healing of the early traumatic years can really begin.

Nancy talked about fear causing oppositional behaviour but stressed that we mustn’t take this personally. Her belief is that babies and children feel impotent, abandoned, helpless, hopeless, alone even if taken from their mothers as young babies. Ours were six, five, three and two when they finally came to us (after many foster placements) so one can only imagine how these feelings would be totally ingrained or ‘hard wired’ into the brain by then. Nancy stated that adoptees have a lot of adrenalin and cortisol in their bodies which causes problems – I can relate to that too. This has caused many problems for our daughter particularly, who had such a short fuse as she was clearly always on ‘red alert’ waiting for the next rejection.

The event was held at the conveniently placed Brittania Hotel in the centre of Birmingham. I live in the middle of nowhere but it was well worth the 5.30am start! The conference was very well planned and broken down into manageable chunks with breaks for refreshments. I think that many people who attended (adoptees and adopters alike) were very affected by what they heard. I went to ask a question at coffee break on an unrelated subject, opened my mouth then surprisingly and embarrassingly, simply broke down. My thanks to the Adoption Support staff who, without a fuss, mopped me up and gave me a coffee and more than that they made me feel well, ‘supported’. I’m sure I’m not the only adoptive mum to say that this doesn’t happen very often. I shall become a ‘friend’ of Adoption Support shortly.

The topic was just so close to home. We have four adopted children, all siblings. Our youngest son has just turned 18 and has lots of issues surrounding his adoption, in spite of the fact that we have a good and loving relationship with him. We desperately needed to know why he was behaving as he was and why certain areas of his life are so difficult for him. We also need to know how to handle the scary prospect of helping him to make contact with his birth mother – something that looks likely to happen soon. It is a real can of worms but he seems ‘driven’, even whilst telling us he doesn’t want to hurt us, to find the answer to questions he’s had all his life. What can we do under these circumstances? We have to help don’t we?

This was my only query of the day. Nancy covered a lot of ground to do with reunions with birth mothers where the mothers have been forced for socio-economic reasons to hand their children over for adoption. In our case and in many others I know of, the circumstances are very different. Our children had been very neglected, not by a bad mother, but a young woman with special needs of her own (all ours it transpired are on the Autistic Spectrum plus other related difficulties). This will add further complications when the re-union takes place. I asked Nancy about this and there seemed to be agreement from other parts of the room. She agreed that this does need to be handled carefully and sensitively.

Whilst, if I’m honest, I’m still anxious about how it will all go and how our youngest son, and eventually his siblings, will handle this situation I feel much better equipped because I now understand a lot of the reasons why our children, and other adopted children, feel and act as they do – sometimes very bizarrely. We’re praying that this will be a healing and positive experience for our son and feel more prepared for the pitfalls having heard Nancy speak.

Nancy covers the issues surrounding reunions in her first book, ‘The Primal Wound’. I hadn’t read it when I went to the talk. Now I have, and it is excellent. If you have been adopted yourself or are an adopted parent do read this book. I’d also highly recommend you try to catch Nancy next time she is in the UK. I’m just waiting for delivery of my copy of “Coming home to Self” and very much hope, and trust, that this will continue to fill in the cracks in our knowledge so we can be the very best support to our son during the reunion and throughout his life.

Well done Adoption Support and thank you Nancy. This was a life-changing event and I am so thankful I made it.

 

Sandy

 

 

 

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