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Summary: Healing Words
Review: "Adoption Healing...A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption" is one of those rare books that not only addresses the history and pain of a forgotten group of women, but also offers practical suggestions for healing. The book is geared primarily to women who lost their babies to adoption during the "baby scoop" era. These women comprise a distinct cohort who lived through a unique historical era. The rise of social work as a fledgling profession ambitious for its own advancement coincided with the rigid legal, moral, psychological and societal milieu of post WWII America. The enormous pressures exerted by this confluence of factors resulted in a distinct type of personal disaster for unmarried mothers that is unprecedented in modern times. These women are eye-witnesses to the brutality of domestic adoption practice during the "baby scoop" era, and as such, their histories, reactions, and personal outcomes are a most valuable addition to any social history of the times.
"Adoption Healing" is destined to become a must-read for any serious student of women's history. The descriptions of maternity reformatories, wage homes, and punitive labor practices chill the soul. The techniques of social isolation and repetitive attacks on the self-esteem of unmarried mothers that were the mainstays of "rehabilitation for the marriage market" are enumerated in plain English. The withholding of critical information regarding legal rights as well as social work's failure to extend to these women the basic constitutional protections afforded all US citizens law, are also made crystal clear by the authors. The descriptions are accompanied by quotes from social work texts of the time that show in painful detail the philosophical underpinnings of institutionalized abuse. This book offers the reader the 'boiled essence'; an authentic sense of what it was like to have been there. It clearly separates the popularly held myths about these women and their experiences from the everyday realities. But it doesn't stop there. The authors also offer suggestions for guided imagery to help those of us who have lived for decades with the sequelae of traumatic adoptions. Having one's child brutally stripped away and placed forever into the black hole of closed adoption is not an event one easily survives without lifelong damage. In addition, the egregious practices of the times have never been openly acknowledged by the industry that perpetrated them. The adoption industry continues its decades old strategy of stonewalling about its misogynistic past. In fact, there are actually "baby scoop skinheads" whose goal in life seems to be to deny that these things ever happened. These historical revisionists may not have yet been born, but they wait in line to defend, deny, and re-interpret the institutionalized exploitation and abuse of women that domestic adoption represented. As a result, these practices are not generally understood to have been the personal catastrophe they proved to be for generations of women. They have not been addressed in therapeutic circles and schools. They have not been well researched. In fact, veterans of child loss to adoption have the psychological equivalent of an orphan disease; no one wants to acknowledge, much less address, the issues. This all means that it is difficult to find acknowledgement, much less informed treatment, for the lingering effects of traumatic adoption. This book provides some practical and helpful exercises to help those of us who struggle with the daily pain to begin to come to terms with what was probably the worst experience of our lives- arguably one of the worst experiences human existence offers. The authors are to be commended for their courage, their clear- eyed assessment of the problems, their compassion for others, and their dedication to the task of bringing truth and healing to those of us whose lives have been ravaged by adoption.
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Summary: Adoption is a social problem
Review: "Adoption Healing: A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption" is a tremendous reading experience. It takes the reader to a painfully poignant point of empathy with the ostracized, unwed mother. The book illuminates a profound paradox in life: a sanctioned pregnancy is a joy which is celebrated in every respect-- an unsanctioned pregnancy can be devastating to the pregnant woman and all touched by her plight. This is the most succinct and powerful book on the adoption experience as a social problem that I've ever seen. As an adoptee, I thank the authors for writing it!
Rating:
Summary: Healing Words
Review: An excellent, well researched book that can be read on many levels. As a resource book, it exposes adoption myths with great love and respect for women who lost their children to adoption. The book also contains exercises to assist mothers in healing the damage of not being allowed to grieve their losses, to overcome the shame and guilt heaped on them, and the pain , anger and other issues that are the legacy of losing children to adoption. Joe Soll is an adoption therapist and himself an adoptee, who has yet to find his own family of birth. He has used his journey to help other adoptees and mothers who were separated from their children by adoption. In this book he has the assistance of Karen Wilson Buterbaugh. I highly recommend this book. It deals unflinchingly with past adoption practices, which even though the book was written about the American experience, is almost identical to Australia practices. I couldn't put this book down! Lina Eve
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Summary: review for this book
Review: I am a mother in reunion with my adult son. I found this book to be informative and put its finger right on what I was feeling. It has helped me recognize and put my adoption experience in a frame that I and others can better understand this trauma.
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Summary: Tremendous
Review: I read this to complete a research project and came away amazed, informed and deeply touched.
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Summary: The doors unlocked & the memories came flooding out
Review: I'm a birthmother from the 60s who reunited with my daughter 6 years ago. ... The psychological information by Joe Soll was priceless. I related to everything Karen Buterbaugh contributed. My daughter compared it to reading "The Primal Wound," for adoptees. I especially liked the contributions from the other authors. This book is so brutally honest, but seeing what other birthmothers went through has made me see that I didn't imagine things. When it's been a secret for 31 years, your mind plays tricks on you. This book has validated "who I am." It's about time that somebody wrote a book that doesn't gloss over what the adoption market is all about. I would recommend every birthmother to read this book, and then give it to her husband and other family members. Unless you have been a birthmother who lost your baby by no choice of your own, you'll never understand the trauma and the patterns of disfunction that follow the mother until she gets emotionally healed. I am happy to say that, after 6 years, my daughter and I have a very close & loving relationship. Healing came with a lot of hard work and much forgiveness, and the persistant desire to understand each other. It has been well worth it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Rating:
Summary: The doors unlocked & the memories came flooding out
Review: I'm a birthmother from the 60s who reunited with my daughter 6 years ago. ... The psychological information by Joe Soll was priceless. I related to everything Karen Buterbaugh contributed. My daughter compared it to reading "The Primal Wound," for adoptees. I especially liked the contributions from the other authors. This book is so brutally honest, but seeing what other birthmothers went through has made me see that I didn't imagine things. When it's been a secret for 31 years, your mind plays tricks on you. This book has validated "who I am." It's about time that somebody wrote a book that doesn't gloss over what the adoption market is all about. I would recommend every birthmother to read this book, and then give it to her husband and other family members. Unless you have been a birthmother who lost your baby by no choice of your own, you'll never understand the trauma and the patterns of disfunction that follow the mother until she gets emotionally healed. I am happy to say that, after 6 years, my daughter and I have a very close & loving relationship. Healing came with a lot of hard work and much forgiveness, and the persistant desire to understand each other. It has been well worth it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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Summary: Great For ALL who Lost Children to Adoption
Review: In that the experience of loss is very similar for all mothers affected by adoption separation, the book is applicable for all, not just those of the baby scoop era. This book fills a real need because of the lack of similar books and grieving support. It provides many different ways to work through the grief of losing a child to adoption and addresses many issues such mothers face. Two things I especially liked: 1) The acknowledgement of myself as a real mother who lost her child (the loss for me is just as real and horrible as if my baby was taken by enemy soldiers). This acknowledgement makes it possible for me to grieve as a real mother and being able to grieve helps me move forward. 2) The quotes from adoptees, which help a natural mother to understand how an adoptee may feel. An important part of grieving, the exercises force a mother to face the reality of all the losses that she has been forced by society to deny, including the loss of all those special moments a mother needs to share with her child. They helped me to understand that I am OK now - I'm no longer in danger of losing my child. I can banish the nightmares, after I face the reality.
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Summary: This book will change your life!
Review: It is an amazing book ... so sincere and honest ... and incredibly truthful. We must remember the mothers!
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Summary: A must read for birthparents to heal their pain!
Review: Joe Soll is an adoptee and social worker and Karen Wilson Buterbaugh is a birth mother. If you are a birth parent who is ready to get dig deep into your adoption pain and promote lifelong healing, then read this book. In each chapter the authors dispel the myths of adoption with the facts of adoption and offer exercises at the end of each chapter to help you process what you just read. These exercises include affirmations, visualizations, inner child work, and simply processing the feelings of rage, anger, and sadness. The first section, The Missing Baby, focuses on the pain of separation of parent and child. The second section, Reclaiming the Self, encourages you to face the harsh reality that the most important and sacred relationship was severed-that between parent and child. They then offer strategies and suggestions for healing and the issues of reunion are investigated as part of the process of dealing with adoption loss. The authors bring home the fact that therapists should read this book as most mental health professionals are not equipped or qualified to adequately address adoption loss issues in a birth parent. In the third section, Getting Help, the authors encourage you seek help in the form of support groups and qualified therapists-preferably both-and how do go about finding the right therapist/group. The fourth section, The Challenge to Heal, really focuses on inner child work. The authors feel that you have to go back to the trauma, feel it once again, process it, and move on. The fifth section, Appendices, offers ideas on how to continue the healing and make a difference in your life. This book will separate the men from the boys-or the women from the girls-but as a psychologist myself, I believe the only way out of the pain is through the pain. This book is a good tool that can be accessed again and again when feelings emerge or when long buried issues resurface, as they undoubtedly will. Kasey Hamner, M.S., School Psychologist, adoptee in reunion, author of "Whose Child?" and "Adoption Forum"
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