Stories of Loss, Love, and Healing Told by Adoptees, Parents, and Birth Parents
Within the sub-culture of adoption, few theories are as celebrated and simultaneously controversial as “The Primal Wound”. The book with the same name, written by Nancy Verrier in 1993, calls out the idea that separating an infant from its mother is...
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of “The Adoption Paradox” on the History of Adoption. The tales of the atrocities of the U.S. government against Native Americans are lengthy and well-known. There are two key aspects to note when one...
From deep inside the womb, I know both love and sadness. They ripple through my blood, my bones, and intertwine to create the essence of me. This invisible truth sits inside, certain, a spark that will not die. Like the campfire that no matter...
This is a guest post, written by Dirk Uphoff Back in the Summer of 1968, my family and I went on vacation to visit my Aunt, Uncle and Cousins. This was not our typical Summer vacation of fishing up North. This particular summer vacation, we drove...
The mother who raised me was an addict. She and my father adopted me, but I’m not sure why. In 1962 when you got married, you started a family. Those were the rules. Never mind that my mother had already begun her dark slide into depression and...
(Shared with permission from Dr. Joe Soll, Psychotherapist, Author and founder of the Adoption Counseling Center in New York, NY) If one wants to learn how to fly a plane, one takes flying lessons. Ground school first, then flying with an...
I’m married to Matt, and I’m a petite little thing, and I don’t cycle properly. We married later in life. I was 28. We started looking at adoption immediately because it took us a year and a half to get pregnant with our first son...
My story is the age-old tale of black and white, my mother being white, my father black. It goes back to the story of an older man with a younger woman. She was a teenager, got pregnant, and had me. She tried to keep me for a while, but for whatever...
My Mother Didn’t Want Me. My Mother Couldn’t Keep Me. Sit with those two sentences. Feel the differences implied by their words. In one, you are rejected and abandoned. Discarded. Given away, never to be thought of again. The other gives a different...
My father was black. My biological mother was white. My adoptive family is all white. So, it wasn’t like they could pretend I had been born from them. My earliest memories of being adopted are my parents talking about it and explaining that...
