Memories or Familiarities?
Having been adopted at four years old, I’ve always been asked by people if I have any memories prior to being adopted. I’m certainly fine with being asked this, but answering that question is difficult for me, as much as I want to give an answer. I struggle to identify if certain thoughts I have are truly a memory or just a fantasy based on what I’ve been told and stereotypes about orphanages. My first memories were not clear until I received love and attention from my adoptive family. I’ve come to realize that, while I may not have explicit memories of life prior to being adopted, I do have pre-verbal memories.
These are incoherent implicit memories that are stored as motor patterns and sensations prior to having language for it and understanding of it. This reflects cognitive representations of a person’s earliest relationships that is foundational to a person’s sense of self and felt safety. This is a psychosomatic experience that involves mind-body connection. Preverbal memories can contain traumatic experiences in childhood. Sensory processing disorders can be a display of such somatic experiences that have resulted from trauma. Language inhibits explicit memory so where there are developmental delays, the forming of such memories is blocked. Early childhood trauma can often delay fundamental development because the first three years of life is when the quickest development of the limbic system occurs, which involve behavioral and emotional responses (aka survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). Later experiences in life that become cognitively associated with past trauma can potentially become a blocked memory. Somatic Therapy and EMDR can help in experiences that involve Complex-PTSD. Considering that preverbal traumatic memories are fragmented, placing interpretations on these memories calls for delicacy and caution in doing so and ultimately help a person to develop new self-regulatory practices.
As a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling, I’ve come to develop a personal belief that traditional therapies alone (i.e. cognitive behavioral therapy) may not be sufficient interventions for individuals who’ve experienced trauma, but can be better supplemented with a trauma-informed approach to therapy. Every adoptee has experienced some form of trauma, regardless of their age at adoption. However, people’s trauma experiences are different. Displays of trauma and coping are not necessarily linear. Genetics may play a role and environment which is unique to each individual and their families.
All of this is to set the stage for my explanation of personal memories prior to adoption as familiarities. A more complete picture of my experiences prior to adoption has been acquired in recent years since reuniting with my birth family. My experiences prenatally involved drug and alcohol exposure and my birth mother’s experiences of systematic beatings, prostitution, and wanting an abortion that never went through. I was born two months premature to a nearly dead mother and remained in a hospital for nine months. Then, I was sent to a regional orphanage where I stayed for about another four years. I needed surgery in my mouth, but didn’t receive it until I was three years old. I weighed only 19 lbs. at four years old with a lazy eye and could barely perform motor tasks. We were given boy cuts due to the spread of lice. We were rarely allowed outside and wore tights and a t-shirt unless being seen for prospective adoption. Then we would perform for prospective adopters. When my parents were the prospective adopters, they noticed a child took away my teddy bear from me that was a gift from them. At one point, I told an orphanage worker in Russian that, “My mama and papa are coming for me”. After the adoption, I had many fears to overcome. This is all what I’ve been told, but none of it is my explicit memory. What I actually remember comes in the form of familiarities…
From the earliest I can remember, goodbyes and leaving felt like the death of a person to me. After visits to see family friends who lived nearly seven hours away, I cried uncontrollably for about half of the car ride home, fearing I would never get to see them again because “what if they die?”. As if the world was ending. Every time. The same occurred after family gatherings, sleepovers, the end of the school year, etc. I’ve learned some self-regulation, but the fear of secondary abandonment is real. Loss is very familiar to me.
As a child, I needed routine, but I also really struggled being in any “institutionalized” setting such as in school or kids camps. It’s taken me years to realize that, though it wasn’t an orphanage, the dynamic of institutionalization was very familiar to me and I never liked it.
Rocking myself to sleep at night is a familiar feeling of comfort and a need to self-sooth, just like I had to do in the orphanage.
The smells of cigaret smoke have always taken me back to a familiar feeling.
The sounds of the Russian language, I can spot from miles away. It’s the familiarity of my mother tongue, even though I’ve lost the language. Even hearing Russian songs takes me back to a familiar feeling.
For some reason, the sound of banging has always alarmed me and haunted me in my dreams all my life. I cannot connect that to any explicit memory, but it takes me back to a very fearful state. I know banging can scare anyone, but I would anticipate it in fear.
These are just a few examples that immediately come to mind and is my answer to the familiar question, “Do you have any memories prior to being adopted?”.
