In Pete Walker’s book, where I first read the term “recoveree,” he describes the following on page 81 of “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving,” part of his progression of recovering section:
“The survivor who follows the introspective ‘road less travelled’ becomes increasingly free of compulsive and unconscious allegiance to unhelpful familial, religious and societal values that were instilled at an impressionable age.
“The recoveree now gets to choose her own values and reject those that are not in her own best interest. She develops a deeper more grounded self-respect that is not contingent upon going with the herd and shifting center with every new popular trend. In psychological parlance, she becomes free and brave enough to individuate and develop more of her full potential.
“In Joseph Campbell’s words, the survivor learns to ‘follows his own bliss’. He is freer to pursue activities and interests that naturally appeal to him. He evolves into his own sense of style. He may even feel emboldened to coif and dress himself without adherence to the standards of fashion. He may extend this freedom into his home décore. In this vein, I have seen many survivors discover their own aesthetic as well as an increased appreciation of beauty in general.”
Walker’s book Complex PTSD is a valuable book for all adoptees to have at hand. While it is not explicitly about the adoptee journey–Betty Jean Lifton’s books cover that ground quite well–it is a tool I relied on to find my own strategies for navigating my own PTSD disability. Speaking of Betty Jean Lifton, she is the single most influential author in terms of my path of coming out of the various fogs of adoption. Here is a passage from her invaluable work, Journey of the Adopted Self, which I recommend reading first:
“In the course of interviewing adoptees, however, I realized that it is not just secrecy that affects their sense of self but rather a series of traumas. This ‘cumulative adoption trauma’ begins when they are separated from the mother at birth; builds when they learn that they were not born to the people they call mother and father; and is further compounded when they are denied knowledge of the mother and father to whom they were born… Natural children, who have parents, siblings, and other blood-related relatives, are grounded in a reality from which they can spin their images. But adoptees do not feel grounded or connected by any such reality. Much of their imagery is not centered on the adoptive family in which they live as if they belong, but rather in fantasy and imagination. They have a sense that their very perceptions are deceiving them. They have lost the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is supposed to be real… I recognize the psychiatrist and minister as keepers of the establishment’s perceived truths—one representing mental health, the other moral certitude. They were accomplices in keeping the adoptee aborted from the consciousness of his clan. They saw him not as the returned lost baby but as the returned dead, who seek vengeance.”
The two books listed above provide the keys to survival. I’m increasingly concerned with the books necessary to understand, to contextualize, and to empower adoptees like myself within the world in which we find ourselves embedded.