Washed by the Light”: The Primal Wound – Part 1.

 

 

 

There has been a light slowly seeping into my soul.  It has peeked through a few ties in my life, but, because of Covid-19 and in in-house restrictions, I have had time on my hands, and sleep avoids me, so I have been binging on adoption stories. 

As some of you know, I was an abandoned baby and I was given to the mot perfect parents for me when I was seven and a half months old, by the Head of Social Services who brought down me and another baby for relatives.  I had been labeled “unadoptable” and I was a very sick baby with rickets and I was malnourished and failing to thrive.  Mother had lost her late-in-life baby girl because she was a ‘blue blood’ baby and blood transfusions had not been developed yet.  I was her healing baby, a replacement for an angel baby. 

I have known I had the Primal Wound:  A severed connection between infant and biological mother, as in abandonment, fostering or adoption, manifests throughout some lives as a deep sense of loss (and is often projected as depression), anxiousness (mistrust), behavioral differences, emotional sensitivities, relationship difficulties, self-esteem issues, self-worth issues and typically clustered.  Not all feel all and some may be in denial or misunderstand their issues, but most do. 

Some side issues, or interconnected issues show up in their lives.  Some can be that a person with Primal Wound will typically be a perfectionist, sometimes aggressively so.  There is a layered anger (expressed the many ways anger can be expressed, both actual and passively.  Healing only comes through active work on knowing that one is angry and that one expresses it uniquely, and then working to heal that part of the primal wound.  Acknowledgment is healing in that one has, then, the choice to change the reactive behavior. 

A person with PW (Primal Wound) is a peacemaker yet often the trigger for drama and chaos then quickly wants the peace back without putting out too much energy to heal what they have started.  Learning to set goals for change and following through step by step, day by day, can lead towards active changes, however, bit by bit for there are layers and layers of residual childhood experiences that have built up and are triggers. 

 PW can show up in one’s life in an extraordinary need to collect and master knowledge from others and other spaces and places.  Perhaps the need to know what is not known is all related to the desire to know birth mother and so knowledge of other things substitutes for a time.  It is as if one takes energy from other people, things, places, to try to fill a void one cannot quite master.

There are so many other projections and it is that these things cluster rather than one here and one there.  There is commonality of these things and core issues and are all truly linked to profound loss/grief.  Our pain has long been left unacknowledged and our behaviors misunderstood or misread.  It begins with us to understand ourselves.  There is validation in acknowledging that we do, indeed, have some PW issues, then the healing can begin. 

 

Part 2 to be continued with “The False Self”

©Carol Desjarlais 20.12.20

 

This painting in my art journal is not pretty, but it speaks to the Primal Wound that happens as soon as we are taken away/given away and how that wound stays with us like a cocoon.  I used Puzzle Saver to highlight the dripping PW. 

Puzzle Saver is a laminate and preserver for jigsaw puzzles.  It gives a raised spotlight to areas used in a painting.  It is easy to spread because it has its own spreader.  It takes one hour to dry.  I use it for animal eyes, and to highlight some objects and areas in a painting.  You can get this at a Dollar Store.  It is made by Craft Medley.