Customer Reviews

Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Verrier takes you a quantifiable textbook-like journey of healing. She starts off by reviewing the traumatic effects of being separated from one's mother at the beginning of life and the impact of adoption on the brain. She then talks about anger, rage, guilt, shame, sorrow, joy, and many other emotions that adoptees experience and why. She then tackles head on what we adoptees can do about our pain in order to find our authentic self. She illustrates how important taking responsibility for our actions are paramount, how periodic "reality checks" are crucial to make sure that we are not reacting to our childhood trauma. Boundaries are a good thing and always being aware of our effect on others should remain in the forefront of our minds. One of my favorite chapters is A Definition of Terms. She points out how adoptees often misinterpret approval as love, observation as criticism, empathy as collusion, boundaries as rejection, different as wrong, disappointment as betrayal, and caring for intrusion. We must remember that just because somebody doesn't agree with us, it doesn't mean they weren't listening or that they don't care. She reminds us that when our friend cannot accept our invitation to dinner it is not a betrayal, but simply a disappointment. Verrier also discusses reunion issues for the birth parent, adoptive parent, and siblings/spouses of triad members which is helpful for all triad members to see how the others side(s) feel. She does not shy away from difficult topics such as Genetic Sexual Attraction, difficult relationships with birth/adoptive family members, spiritual concerns, and how to deal with the adoptee in your life. Overall, this book has the feel of a resource book that can be accessed again and again, depending on the adoption issue that is pressing at the moment.(...)

"Coming home to Self" (The adopted child grows up)

This is a book of great depth and investigation into the experience of being adopted, and is an invaluable tool to understanding and healing for adopted people, their family of origin and adoptive family.

Verrier presents accessible information of the way the brain changes when children are separated from their mothers at birth, and how they build a false self in order to survive, yet how this false self serves them not, as they become adults.

She speaks about adoptees retaining the fight or flight mode because they are unwittingly always affected by their initial separation trauma. How the false self that mantles many adoptees, also prevents them from having authentic relationships and makes intimacy difficult. The adoptee who uses the false self to prevent further pain, building impenetrable walls around their hearts, are also isolated by them.

This book is challenging, as it encourages the adopted person to recognise their choice to remain in victim mode and encourages them to take responsibility for their effect on others. Verrier points out that adoptees are often insensitive with others, yet ultra sensitive to any comments or action that they see might be derogative to themselves ...in fact, sometimes their agenda colors everything anyone says as potentially negative, and they may be always ready to rail against it. Verrier points out that this is because of the initial trauma of separation from the mother, which has kept the adoptee in a traumatised state.

Verrier encourages adoptees to reassess what is really happening in their present situation, in order for them to start healing their relationships and their lives.
This is powerful writing with clear and thoroughly researched insight.

Lina Eve http://home.austarnet.com.au/linaeve/

As a birth mother, this book was not only gut wrenching, but so enlighting. Everyone in the Adoption Triad must reconize him or herself at one point in this all too powerful book. For any member of the triad to deny the trauma a baby taken away from it's mother at birth will carry for the rest of his/her life is to live in a cave. Although Birth mothers have always known the pain of adoption, thanks to this book,and Verrier's insight as a adoptive mother herself, hopefully the adoptee will reconize his/her issues in life, such as the anger, guilt, rage, sorrow, and joy. To keep an open mind when picking up this book, is to find healing, compassion, and understanding of all members of the tiad.
Cindy Dutton/Birthmother

I have found Coming Home to Self to be the perfect follow-up to Primal Wound. Whilst Primal Wound acknowledges and unfolds the affect of adoption on the triad members: Coming Home to Self provides members of the triad with the necessary skills to move forward. It provides extensive and perceptive coverage of the issues surrounding adoption and has become my close companion. It can easily be dipped into according to the need of the moment and provides sound advice to the reader. I find Nancy's voice throughout to be at once professional and warm and often find myself smiling at the encouraging, sometimes challenging comments interspersed which second guess what the reader may be thinking, they so often catch me out! This book is the kind of book which takes brokeness, acknowledges it with great empathy and then goes the next step: it provides the guidelines for putting that brokeness back together.

There's a lot of harsh reality in this book that I recognized as true but had to take my own sweet time to come to grips with. Adoption did shape my personality, and the hard fact is that nobody is ever going to be able to change that but me (and whatever professional I trust to help me). I saw a lot of myself in this book--I am hypervigilant, sad, angry, burdened by shame, etc. Coming Home to Self is invaluable in bringing such things to light.

But "EMDR"? This therapy method has been, to my mind and via my research, thoroughly debunked. Knowing this makes me mistrust every other scientific study or psychological "fact" Verrier cites. Can I trust her to tell me about the effect of a pregnant woman's emotions on her fetus? About the limbic system? About how adoptees can heal? Verrier cites several such therapies (and they all have trendy acronyms) essentially as quick fixes. The idea that bilateral eye movements or their aural equivalent can magically "cure" me feels very much like a belittling of the pain she spends so much time telling me it's OK to feel. It also feels like a Band-Aid slapped onto what Verrier knows damned well is wrong with the adoption industry as it exists today: Your child may grow up confused and self-loathing under the closed records system, but a little hocus-pocus will make it all OK once s/he's grown.

These gripes address a very small part of a very thick book that was helpful overall. I'd still recommend adoptees read the works of Betty Jean Lifton before this.

"Coming Home to Self" is an excellent follow-up to "Primal Wound" for those who want to know, "Where to from here?" It's heavier reading, to be sure, and should be approached studiously. In doing so, however, one finishes with a wealth of information on what happened to us when we were separated from our mothers, how it has impacted our lives, and how we can stop surviving and start living.

There's so much here that it's impossible to summarize. Suffice to say I was both abandoned as a baby and then adopted children, and certainly wish I had read Verrier's books before doing the latter. It would have made the experience far easier and, hopefully, helped avoid many of the traps she writes about--and that I experienced. This, and "Primal Wound," should be read by every mental health care professional.

This book is perfect for anyone in the triad. It speaks honestly about how the birth mother and adopted child are effected by adoption. It blames no one - instead it speaks honsestly about how everyone is effected. The adoptive parents are not left out of the equation either. I learned alot about myself and how adoption continues to effect my life today. It gave practical solutions to some of the challenges I still face today. I would recommend this book highly to anyone.

If you are an adopted daughter or son, an adoptive parent, or a mother who has given a baby to be adopted: this book must be read by you!
Even though it is mainly addressed to the adult adoptee as some kind of self-help guide, it gives wonderful information to all of those touched by adoption and its consequences.

You should only read this book after having gone through "The primal wound", as many of the issues introduced there are assumed in this book.

I bought this book (and "The primal wound") after finding out from my ex wife about my adoptive son's acting out when in her house and about the danger he was exposing himself to. I was apalled to discover how this was no novelty in an adoptive child, and how the separation from his biological mother had affected him forever. I also found so many behavior examples that described my son's attitudes.

I have read Primal Wound 3 times. First before I adopted a child, then immediately after I adopted my daughter, and again 3 years later.

I will never be detached..this is a tough read. But I do have a background in neuroscience and research that made me skeptical about her persona as a scientist.

Her sample size is very small, and as far as the "effects of being adopted" she pretty much describes every tempermant and behavior known to man and gives some link to how it is shaped by adoption.

Shy? guarded because of adoption
gregarious ? seeking approval because of adoption
get homesick? lack of security because of adoption
want to leave home at 18? must be adoption
don't want to leave? must be adoption
high achieving? adoption
low achieving? yup, you guessed it..its adoption!!

I am not so naive that I think that adoption is not a trauma on some level for both adoptee and birth parent, but I cannot underscore enough how I think trauma is processed differently depending on the individual.

I think we are doing a service to adopted persons when we swing from the "grateful adoptee" paradigm to the "wounded tragedy" paradigm. With gratefulness, we failed to acknowledge the losses, and did not allow grieving. With this paradigm, I feel that adoptees are being convinced that all of their problems are rooted in their relinquishment, and only when they are walking around with a giant gaping psychic wound are they "addressing their true feelings."

Is there an option for an adopted person to feel sad or angry or uncomfortable about being seperated from their first family but at peace, and even happy to be in the family that raised them?

Can a birth mother only show her love for her child by being haunted and tormented, or is it okay for her to be sad about the need to be in the situation but at peace with doing what she thought was right?

There is a phrase in the book where she refers to a feeling and a connection to a child that only "biological mothers know." WHAT?

Before you roll your eyes, I have a biological child as well. Carrying a child is wonderful, and amazing. But I can tell you that aside from seeing my physical self in my other child, I don't feel any deeper insight into his needs and psyche than I do with my daughter, who is my child through adoption.

In a way, as adoptive parents, I feel we are often given an advantage in the parenting realm..we are often required to confront our most fundamental feelings and motivations, we take classes, read books, to try and help us best parent our children. As much as a cliche as this in the adoption world, if all parents had to do what most adoptive parents do, there would be a lot less parents in general.

This book is a wonderful resource for any birth parent or adoptee or adoptive parent trying to understand the effects the adoption process has on individuals. It is a book that needs to be in the world, and in the hands of people who hold silent tangled emotions regarding adoption (whether conscious or not). This is a thorough step-by-step understanding of the effects of loss when a child is taken from one's mother and given to another, in the name of love, and how each can heal from this traumatic separation. It is also a wonderful guide-book for adoptive parents re what to expect, as well as understanding search and reunions between birth parents and children.