Adoption & early separation
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I work with adults that have experienced separation and adoption.
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Some lives begin with a separation
that comes before language.
Not always consciously known,
and yet often present
as a tone, a quiet background,
something that accompanies rather than calls attention to itself.
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In many adopted biographies,
this early experience can remain like a quiet undercurrent
not always visible,
but shaping how closeness, identity and belonging are sensed.
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Questions of belonging often run quietly through it.
Not always as something explicit,
but as a felt sense of where one stands,
where one belongs,
or does not.
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For some, this is clear and nameable.
For others, it is more diffuse
a feeling without a clear origin.
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This way of understanding is informed by long-standing clinical and research perspectives on early separation, development and implicit experience,
as well as by close attention to lived experience over time.
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I come to this work both professionally and from my own lived experience within adoption.
We begin with what is present.
With what is asking for attention now,
in your life, your relationships, your current situation.
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In our work, there is no assumption about what your adoption experience means for you.
At the same time, the work is informed by a depth of experience and understanding
of how early separation can shape development over time -
often becoming more perceptible in periods of transition,
when familiar structures shift and new orientations have not yet formed.
In these moments, earlier layers can come closer to the surface.
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There are different ways of understanding adoption and its impact.
Adoption can involve profound and overwhelming experiences.
For many, finding language for this can be an important step.
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At the same time, how these experiences are lived, felt and integrated is always individual.
In my work, it is important that this complexity is not reduced or simplified.
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It can be helpful to differentiate between separation itself
and the specific experience of adoption.
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Being placed into a family of strangers may include an overwhelming experience,
which can affect how safety, closeness and orientation are felt.
This is not assumed,
but can be explored where it becomes relevant.
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We stay close to what is actually present:
sensations, images, fragments, inner movements.
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At times, this includes working with different inner parts;
aspects of the self that have developed in response
to what was, or was not, available early in life.​
These parts are not seen as problems,
but as meaningful expressions of adaptation.
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Rather than focusing on explanation,
the work creates conditions in which experience can become perceivable.
Some things can be spoken.
Others may first appear as shifts in the body,
in attention,
or in the way inner and outer space are organised.
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My work is informed by attachment and developmental trauma,
as well as relational and body-based approaches.
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It is also shaped by an artistic perspective:
an interest in how experience can take form beyond language.
This may include finding personal ways of expression:
through images, drawing or painting, voice, movement, gesture,
or other forms that allow something to become perceivable
before it can be fully understood or named.
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These forms are not used as techniques,
but as ways of approaching what may otherwise remain diffuse or out of reach.
Some experiences need to be seen, sensed, or formed
before they can be spoken.
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The pace is guided by what can be held.
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Nothing is forced,
nothing is interpreted too quickly.
What has been early, wordless, or diffuse
can be approached gradually, titrated,
without needing to be reduced to a concept.
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As an adoptee myself
I am familiar with how early separation can reverberate
across different phases of life.
This informs my work,
without defining it.
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If something in this speaks to you,
you are welcome to reach out.
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