Bonds and Motherhood

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I keep needing to learn about the permanence of bonds. Like I am linked to others in the world. It is easy to say, but hard to feel for me. I think I made a friend one day, and the minute I lose interest in conversing with them I feel like they disappeared. It is leftover emotions from my primal age and being relinquished, twice as a mere newborn. And never being validated, and used as a pawn for my mother's self-esteem. She put her pain onto me and inflicted emotional incest on me when she ignored my pain and abused me verbally and physically. I will never forget. I can't afford to.

Anyway, I was thinking of how Zara Phillips said that she loved having her own children because she felt that primal feeling of oneness with them as newborns, and I enjoy the same with my baby daughter. I feel totally connected with her at times, because she needed and needs me so. But it is scary to disconnect, and as Zara said, we adoptees have a hard time knowing the difference between our and their emotions. For example, when she gets hurt I become very pained because I project my own lack of love in childhood onto her, and I overcompensate by reacting too lovingly. Or when she looks away from me because she may be tired or hurt from a minor event that happened earlier, I become completely devastated and feel hopeless. So I distract myself because the pain is too great, and she ends up feeling more ignored. But it is NOT AS BAD AS I FEEL IT MUST BE. I am too caught up in my own devastation and rejection from my mother that I can't cope. It is hard to let her go, because she must be confused by my behavior and I keep feeling scared she doesn't feel our connection... Lord.

Zara said something interesting that I related to. She was scared of having a daughter when she was pregnant, because she was unsure about being able to have a bond with her based on how she fought with her adoptive mother and never felt it. I feel the same and am glad she brought it up in her book.

But anyway, the more I trust bonds between myself and others, the more I feel I am alive in this world. That I have a right to be here. I got to keep trying to feel real. That is, to see my true feelings.

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