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
|
