Thoughts on 15 Significant Steps Toward Adoptee Healing
My friend Pamela Karanova wrote about 15 steps toward healing and it got me thinking about my own journey. Pam has so much insight into healing from the ground up, coming from a birth family and an adoptive family that did not provide her the love and care that she deserved. In my mind, what makes Pam such a leader in the adoption community is her ability to move toward healing herself without having extended family support on her journey. Now that is truly an accomplishment! We all know adoptees who had fantastic adoptive parents who did the best they could given the limitations of closed records and a lack of post-adoption services in many communities. However, it is now becoming a well-known fact that most adopted people suffer from developmental trauma – this is pre-verbal trauma that happens in utero or during the first 1000 days of life. In other words, even with the best adoptive parents, that is no guarantee that adoptees won’t h...