TOP TEN: HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE ADOPTED?

You’ll now if you’re adopted if:

• Your brothers and sisters are self-assured but you always feel a half-step behind.

• Your father is a doctor, your mother is a lawyer, but you are most comfortable under the hood of a car.

• You come from a family of neoconservatives but you are a libertarian.

• Your siblings are bookworms and you are a jock.

• When people look at your family portrait they point at you and ask, “Who’s that?”

• Your doctor looks at you and says, “What do you mean you don’t know your family medical history?”

• The teacher sends a letter home asking why, when given the old “family tree project,” your child just sat there and turned in a blank page.

• When you told your mother you were pregnant she screamed, “You’re a slut just like her!”

• You know that “bastard” is not a four letter word.

If you counted the reasons you know there are only nine reasons given. What happened to the tenth? According to author Nancy Verrier’s book, The Primal Wound, all adoptees have a primal wound as a consequence of being taken from their natural mother and placed for adoption. Her conjecture is that an adotpee’s Primal Wound is continuously oozing which explains why adoptees are both “different” and have emotional baggage that makes them see the world differently than non-adopted people.

So, what must be understood is that there really are ten “how you know you’re adopted” statements but the last one simply oozed away before I could write it down.

Yes, there are flakes and charlatans in adoption land who spin until they are dizzy and fall down. But, if you want to believe in Primal Wounds that’s fine with me. Just don’t ask me to show you mine.