Adoption
is
a social problem ,
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!
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.
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.
|
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.
|
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.
Informative,
insightful
and
compassionate,
October 28, 2003
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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