Will I love The Primal Wound?

This book is the ONE book that would have helped me the most in the early days after I brought my adopted baby home from the hospital. My beautiful, healthy three-day-old baby was unhappy, fussy, and cried all the time. Little did I know that she was missing her birth mom. I was told by the adoption counselors that this baby was a clean slate, and I would do all the loving and nurturing and could raise her as if I gave birth to her. 

Verrier explained so much about how the wound that my child still carries with her… show more.

When I finished Verrier’s work–long considered a classic in adoption literature–I felt understood in a deep and powerful way. The author affirmed the feelings of confusion, sadness, and loss that I have often experienced when considering the adoption of my twin sister and me. Because we had been raised in a loving adoptive family, I had not considered our adoption as a trauma.

But of course, any time a meaningful bond is ruptured or abruptly severed, trauma is the result. I also found validity in Verrier’s position that adoption and the subsequent loss of knowledge and contact with birth mothers… show more.

I consider this the adoptee's "bible," and it has been described like this by others for good reason. It is not an easy read, but like most well-researched non-fiction, it offers a brutal truth that somehow heals.

Reading this book was like going through therapy. The way it lays out the experience of family through the eyes of the adoption triad is not for the faint-hearted. I love this book because very few books address the trauma of adoption so directly through psychological research and offer ways of empowerment to help heal a misunderstood or unacknowledged life experience for many.

I recommend this book as it explains what to take into consideration when trying to understand the adopted child. I am adopted and did not realise that a lot of the lifelong trauma I have felt was related to adoption. It is a must-read for adopted people, adoptive families, birth parents, and adoption professionals.