My Root?

Yesterday during a conversation with my Mom (birthmother) about that "perfect child" in me she asked if I thought that maybe my being adopted had created that part of me. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with emotion.

Back in 2010 she told me about my first 5 days in this world. After she gave birth to me I spent 5 days in the nursery before going home with my adoptive parents. I wrote about it in this piece:

Monday, October 18, 2010

5 Days

One afternoon in December of 1969 my biological mother gave birth to me. She was young, un-wed and it was 1969. Because of these facts and a few others, it had already been decided that I was to be given up for adoption. So when I was born, my mother was only able to hold me just long enough to count all of my fingers and toes. I was then swept away to the nursery to be cleaned up, poked and prodded then left swaddled in one of those plastic bassinets on wheels.

This would be my ‘home’ for my first 5 days in this world, only to be picked up or touched when I needed to be fed or changed.  I was the only baby in the nursery for those 5 days.  My Mother spent all of her time at the nursery window trying to keep me company.

I came out of the warmth, love and safety of my Mother’s womb only to spend the first 5 days of my life alone in a sterile, cold, and unloving nursery. No hugs, no cuddles, no connection.

After doing a bit of reading on this subject, I am willing to bet that those 5 days alone in that nursery did more emotional and psychological damage to my then tiny brain than any of the other abuses I experienced in my life.

I feel like I’ve spent the last 40 years doing everything I could to get people to love me, to touch me, to hold me, to stay with me. Yet, I struggle to actually form an attachment because there is this knowing in me that tells me they’re not going to stay. I’m not good enough.

Later in my life, my adoptive Mother told me that I never cried as a baby. The doctor told her once that she needed to let me cry so my tear ducts would form properly. She told him that I was a quiet baby that never cried. There didn’t seem to be any explanation for it.

I had become the perfect, pleasing child. The one who wanted to make everyone happy. The one who wanted to make everything ok. Because, if I did, they would stay. Right? They would love me. Right?

Forty years later things are becoming much more clear to me. This was the beginning of my journey through this life. The first 5 days.


(c) Wendi Kali July 29, 2010


Was this where the "perfect child" was born?  I think so. 

Now comes the question, how do I heal her? 

The beginning of the path is clear.