An adoptee explores trauma through rock-paper-scissors: your true self is the rock, solid and uncut. Trauma is paper that wraps around it, hiding who you are. Healing isn't repair. It's unwrapping the paper to reveal what was always there.
Hi everybody. So I came up with a new metaphor for, um, for us, for us adoptees, for the trauma this morning, uh, and I think you quite might like it. I, I just love it. I just love it, right? So it's based on the kids' game rock-paper-scissors. Yeah, so rock-paper-scissors, um, and in the first instance we're looking at who we, who we truly are Right? So we're identifying ourselves as the rock. Okay, we are the rock. Okay, um, what about our trauma though? So if we look at our trauma like it's, um, a pair of scissors— yeah, the scissors cannot actually cut into the rock. So if they don't cut into the rock Um, then they, they can't, they can't be a wound. They can't wound the, the primal wound. Just doesn't exist anymore because, um, because there's, there's, there's no wound. That the scissors aren't sharp enough or strong enough to make a cut into the rock, right? Uh, and if there's no wound There's no need to heal. Healing is instantaneous, right? In, in, in that moment when we see that we're not wounded. Us as the rock isn't wounded, right? I hope you're getting this. Um, but what about our trauma? What about our trauma, right? Um, because we know that there is trauma. So, um, but what I'm saying is I'm suggesting a different metaphor to the primal wound, right? So And, and here it is, right? So if we think of the adoptee trauma as, as paper, okay, then paper wraps around rock. And in the kids' game, the paper wraps rock and paper wins, right? But what if we Uh, what if we un— un— uh, unroll the piece of paper and, and that reveals who we truly are? This, this rock that has been veiled, that has been hidden, but that has been disguised, that has been, um, invisible to us because it's been covered in the trauma, right? So, uh, just, uh, a different way of, of thinking about it, that we're not wounded by the adoptee trauma. We're just— the essence of who we truly are is hidden by it. What we're doing here then is we're disidentifying, right? So this is, this is us, the essence of who we truly are. And this, this is the trauma that's hidden us. So it's a matter of unveiling, unwrapping the, the essence of who we are from the trauma that we've been. Okay, so I hope you, um, hope you like that. Uh, I, I love it. I, I just wish— it's the first time I've shared it, so Next time, hopefully I'll be, I'll be a little bit more fluid sharing it. But there you are. Thanks a lot, and we'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.
Weathering Storms With Joanne Morales, Jennifer Hartwig and Rebecca Dominguez
