G-d just wants us to Admit

I have discovered that G-d is not looking for us to sacrifice ourselves more than we can handle, He is not a vengeful G-d. He only wants us to come to Him in our broken spirits, with trust that He'll help us and not have confidence that we'll manage on our own. This brings Him the most happiness; when He sees us be true to who we are and desire to be close to Him through all the hardships we go through. It shows that we still trust in Him, and it brings us unlimited happiness in ourselves when we can still have hope in Him despite what we go through. This is the true sacrifice. But once again, we needn't make the test harder for ourselves by thinking we are not good enough to ask for His help now, and think we need to be better by carrying more hard loads. When we admit that we are in pain, G-d is there to help unload it, when we are ready to turn to Him in humility that we are broken and have only Him to help us. If we are too prideful in ourselves, and feel we should carry on by ourselves, discrediting our pain, we are just hurting ourselves and not being "sacrificial" as we think is so righteous of us. It is just hurting us and preventing G-d from being close to us.

So I realized, I have this was of self hating and blaming myself for all my mistakes and shortcomings. I saw a picture of myself at age 2, and my face looked lost and kind of worried. It hit me that I have always been this way- just thinking I was ugly. It is part of my programming and how I developed. From my birth and feeling like a bad baby because I was separated again and again from my mother and then second caregiver. And my third did not even care about my feelings to notice I was sad. She wanted to believe I was as happy as my false self that was living on autopilot, watching what worked to insure I wouldn't get rejected once again. I read in Nancy Verrier's book The Primal Wound, that adoptees always live with either a compliant or acting out personality, and use it to show their feelings of the adoption. She says adoptive mothers who are not attuned to the trauma feelings because they have not faced their own pain of infertility and want the child to be the happy self they seem, miss the signs of the child not being their true self. The child is always going to have feelings of loss and grief, but may not show it overtly due to shame and fear. This is what happened to me, and I remember always feeling self doubt and shame inside. My mother actually blamed it on myself, furthering my trauma and resolve of shame of myself. She said I was always insecure of my looks, she couldn't help me. To her, she feels that everyone must deal with their sadness by themselves, even little children who cannot understand negative emotions and need help discerning them. 

To this day, she feels my problems were my fault as a baby. When I just recently told her about the compliant adoptee persona and how I felt I had it, she just looked at me and said mhm. Without validating my pain or apologizing for how my childhood went. 

Nancy Verrier also speaks about how when in reunion with birth parents, the adoptee faces a lot of their wounds and needs help from their parents, both sets, to be compassionate and validating when they tell them about it. Meaning, they should be able to share their feelings and validation for them is vital. They get pulled back into infant stage of their lives, and parents need to understand their feelings and reactions. The worst is when a parent sinks into their own trauma, and becomes reactive back to their child when they act out. This can cause cut-offs and pain to both sides. I feel my adoptive mother is not being so good at having empathy for me in this time, when my anger and hurt is coming out. She claims to feel bad for my feelings, but is not very open or encouraging and seems to expect me to deal with it alone. It hurts, and reiterates my early traumas of feeling alone and doing everything by myself.

My birth father is pretty good at hearing my side, as he keeps telling me that he feels for me and that I went through a lot and managed well for my plight. 

It's interesting that Nancy says that reunions start off with infatuation typical to feelings for a newborn, because everyone regresses back to that moment it happened, and then if all goes well, slowly pans out to feelings of warmth. With the normal things that happen in relationships- the anger, love, hurt, annoyance etc. 

My adoptive mother told me she wasn't threatened by my reunion because she understood that it would be good for me, but then confessed that she knew that since my birth mom is mentally ill she can't be a true mother to me, so she had nothing to worry about her taking over her role. I don't understand it. It hurts me that my birth mother is ill and can't have a relationship with me. All I can do is be nice to her, but I still have the same feelings that she is my mother despite her mental incapacity. So there, adoptive mother. 

I am still trying to find peace in my self for my adoption, and reconcile having been given up in my most vulnerable state. Sometimes, I feel great that I have overcome so much, and other times I feel like I did nothing and am worthless because I should be doing more. It is the trauma vortex. I need to give more credit to myself, to the baby heart inside me that still longs for a home and feeling complete. Because as Verrier says, an infant feels something missing when their mother leaves them and despite what people believe, a substitute mother cannot take away that feeling that something is missing. So I need to listen to the hurt in me and not be too harsh with myself. It is NOT what G-d wants, He just wants us to be honest and admit that we are incapable alone and need His help. And boy do I need it. In this hard, cold, misunderstanding world.