Coming Home to Self: Healing the Primal Wound

Over the years, thousands have read Nancy Verrier's The Primal Wound and found in it profound insights on what being adopted means to adopted people. In this widely regarded classic, Verrier explored the primal wound that results when a child is separated from his or her mother and examined the life-long consequences this can have. Now, in Coming Home to Self, Verrier follows up on these themes and looks at ways of healing the primal wound.

Broadly, the book has two main objectives. The first is to help adopted people find their authentic Self, a self which has been distorted by living without genetic markers and mirroring (being reflected back) through growing up in non-biological families. The other is to enable adopted people to achieve their own power and sense of responsibility.

Although today there is more insight into the difficulties inherent in adoption, there remains little understanding of how to deal with the hurt that many adopted children have experienced. For adopted people, fear of rejection (abandonment) affects intimacy, with some adopted people employing various distancing techniques to avoid the vulnerability of intimate relationships. These techniques can bewilder parents, spouses and partners - they can even bewilder the adoptees themselves. For too long, adoptees have been puzzled by their attitudes, feelings and behaviours.

This book provides some of the answers. The opening chapters examine the effects of separation trauma on brain development and offer an insight into the barriers that hinder the path out of victimhood into an authentic, mature, satisfying adulthood. They lay the foundation for further explorations of the most troubling emotions, and how to regulate them and achieve meaningful relationships and personal power.

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