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"This book is a 'must read' for                   
 every mother who lost her
                        precious infant to adoption."

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  Adoption is a social problem5 out of 5 stars, November 18, 2003

Reviewer: Joy Miller from New Mexico, USA

   "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!

 

5 out of 5 stars The doors unlocked & the memories came flooding out,
 October 28, 2003

Reviewer: cynthia kerr from Nashville, Tennessee

   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.

5 out of 5 stars the shameful aftermath of adoption separation,
November 24, 2003

Reviewer:Dian Wellfare Adoption Researcher, Counsellor and Founder Origins Inc.Supporting people Separated by Adoption in Sydney, Australia.

   Waves of relief washed over me as I turned the pages of Adoption Healing to see that the myths surrounding mothers forced to surrender their babies to adoption was at last being publicly exposed. Buterbaugh and Soll have cut through the comforting theories and societal brainwashing by adoption promotors to lay bare the shameful truth of the adoption industry's predatorial collective mindset that remains indifferent towards the deep psychological and emotional harm it has invoked through its promotion of adoption to unsuspecting young women. That a book about healing from adoption ever needed to be written at all is a sad indictment of adoption as a community service which tolerates such cruelty towards young mothers while sympathising with the plight of infertility and using adoption as its cure. This book will be both confronting and simultaneously comforting to any mother who reads it and recognises that Adoption Healing has finally given all mothers who have been silenced by the trauma of adoption loss, a voice.

 

5 out of 5 stars Great For ALL who Lost Children to Adoption, November 2, 2003


Reviewer: lafrisch1 from Marion, Iowa United States
   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.

5 out of 5 stars Healing Words,
 October 28, 2003


Reviewer: A reader from USA

    "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.

 

5 out of 5 starsInformative, insightful and compassionate,
October 28, 2003

Reviewer: Lina Eve (see more about me) from Australia

   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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