Adoption’s ‘primal wound’ goes from an ache to a throb at Christmas

Birth parent Sue cringes in pain any time she hears a baby cry at her work in a Sydney shop. She chose her child’s family in an open adoption at nine months. It didn’t have the secrets of closed adoptions, but it has been the “most traumatic experience of her life”.

As the Christmas trees go up, the heartache spikes for anyone affected by adoption, even those raised in the happiest of adoptive families, say counsellors from the Benevolent Society.

Whether those adopted as children are now 71, like Ken Doyle of Orange, or 22 years old like Claudia from Gymea in Sydney, big family celebrations make them wonder about what could have been.

They also feel guilty for having these thoughts because of how much they love their adoptive families - and don’t want to hurt their feelings.

“Especially coming up to Christmas, big events, birthdays, you do tend to think about it more, wondering what life may have been like if I hadn’t been adopted, but then I feel guilty because I am so fortunate to have such loving family,” said Claudia, who asked for her surname to be withheld.

Mr Doyle and Claudia are among the 600 people who seek professional advice each year from the Benevolent Society’s counselling service, the Post Adoption Resource Centre (PARC).

The NSW government funds counselling for children who are adopted, their siblings and family, but PARC counsellors would like more support for birth parents like Sue, a pseudonym, who wanted to keep her child.

“All the support is for the child and the adopted family, and the trauma of open adoption is underestimated,” said Sue.

The family who adopted her child are very loving, and she can visit her child. But Sue said the visits elicit deep feelings of guilt. “I don’t feel I have the right to call myself, mum,” she said.

Sue hopes to raise awareness of the issues around open adoptions, and lift awareness of the availability of guardianship, which are temporary, instead of adoptions, which are permanent.

From November 2020, adopted children were issued two birth certificates, one with the name of their adopted family, and an integrated birth certificate that has the names of both the birth and adopted families.

“Being adopted made me kinder. I’d be travelling on a train, and used to think ‘are you related to me?’”

Ken Doyle

This year PARC is celebrating its 30th anniversary since its establishment after adoption records were opened in 1991, ending an era of secrecy.

The secrets may be gone, but the trauma hasn’t ended, says PARC’s manager Fiona Cameron.

When people who were adopted seek counselling elsewhere, they told Ms Cameron that their experience with adoption was minimised.

“Yes, there are children who can’t be raised within their families, but adoptions raise all sorts of other issues about permanency, and it has its own unique issues,” she said. “For most people, adoption is lifelong, and it has to be reprocessed. Someone who is happy at 22, may have a different response when they have their first child,” she said.

Adoption had an impact on identity, trust, and relationships: “The first attachment was broken, and we are naive to assume that does not have an impact,” said Ms Cameron.

“They might end up in a family that works for them, they feel love, but there is the loss, and it affects their relationships, it affects their ability to trust, and sense of mastery and control.”

When PARC asked 80 of its clients for feedback on the soon-to-be released documentary, Reckoning with the Primal Wound, based on the landmark book by Nancy Verrier, the feedback was relief that they weren’t the only ones to feel that way.

Verrier says a child’s experience of being separated and handed over to strangers leaves a life-long wound, whether the child was days or years old at the time.

Mr Doyle’s adoption was a secret until he applied for a British passport when he was 23. The passport office replied to his parents, born in England, to say he wasn’t eligible because of adoption.

The letter urged his adoptive parents to tell Ken about his adoption. After his mother told Ken, he went on to four half-siblings.

The secrecy made him hate lies, and dishonesty, said Mr Doyle. Before he contacted his birth family, he often felt like “a square peg in a round hole”. But when he met them, he learned they had all been teachers like him, with similar interests to his own.

A photo of his birth father, who he never met, revealed they look similar.

Claudia, whose birth parents are Indonesian and Chinese, looked different from her adopted family, including a sister who was also adopted. Around Christmas, when she is doing things with family, people will often comment, “Oh you don’t look like them.”

Mr Doyle says the experience of being adopted has made him a kinder person because he came to treat everyone as a potential family member: “I’d be travelling on a train, and used to think ‘are you related to me?’”

As much as he loves his adopted family, he felt there was a part missing, “I love my family, and they are wonderful to me, but I get depressed on Christmas, Father’s Day and Easter,” he said.

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