Customer Reviews

Adoption Healing... A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption

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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.

WOW! WOW! WOW!This remarkable and explicate healing book spoke to the teenager that never got heard when she was being coerced into losing her baby girl.What an opportunity to finally be validated for what was done to her by others that would not support the scared young woman that needed her family and or just a friend. The scars are deep for the abuse done and this book is brave enough to show the way to healing, Many in the adoption industry must be trying to do damage control since this remarkable and explicate healing book spoke to the teenager that never got heard when she was being coerced into losing her baby girl. This book gives us Moms permission to come out and be free to become the strong women we were always meant to be and to give back the shame that was thrown at us to those that it belongs to. May we never forget so that others will never be in need of healing from adoption trauma. To my sisters I say get this book because you deserve to be set free from what was done to you.We will go in truth and love,Linda Webber

"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.

This book deals with the most basic trauma that a mother endures when she loses a child to adoption and it also focuses on healing of the wounds of this trauma. This trauma and the lifetime of loss and pain it brings has not been recognized by society as a whole. The life of this mother is forever altered by this experience and it affects her in a negative way the rest of her life.

Joe Soll and Karen W. Buterbaugh expose the myths accepted by society about mothers who end up being separated by adoption from their children. The authors then replace these myths with the truths about these mothers, which shed light on the lies that were put forth to justify the removal of their children from them. As these myths are exposed and the truths are revealed about the trauma of losing a child to adoption, the mother is encouraged to retrace her path as the young woman who is losing her child. The method of Inner Child Work is used to take the mother down the path to healing. Each memory of the experience is dealt with on the emotional level of the mother at the age of losing her child. Once these memories and emotions are exposed and faced, then healing for this trauma and pain begins.

Reading this book and going through the exercises suggested caused many thoughts, feelings, and emotions to surface that had not been addressed in my life as a mother who lost a child to adoption. I also realized that I had become fractured during the trauma of losing my child as a result of the grief and pain of losing my child. Not only did I gain an understanding of the young woman I was when I lost my child to adoption, but I learned how become a more whole person (not fractured) through healing of the pain of that young woman and first mother that I was. The insights in this book have helped me face the fear and terror of the memories and trauma of my experience, along with the lifelong struggles I have faced, in such a way that has finally caused a healing process to begin.

Thank you Joe and Karen :)

How I wish I'd had this book three years ago when my daughter found me!!! Instead I had to struggle alone through all the feelings that surfaced after we were reunited, thinking that I was going mad as I experienced emotions that had been deeply buried ever since I relinquished my daughter in 1968. If I'd had this book then, I would have known that what I was going through was perfectly normal in the circumstances.

This book is a breakthrough - with honesty, understanding and great compassion, it tells the truth about how we mothers who lost our children to adoption suffered (and suffer still). The book also firmly explodes the many myths that surround our experiences - all those things that relinquishing mothers the world over seem to have been told ("you'll get over it", "it's for the best", "your baby will have a better life", etc., etc.) - and it acknowledges our pain. Yet at the same time, it gives us hope that we can again be whole, giving us visualisation exercises and affirmations to help us work through the healing process.

Every mother who has lost a child to adoption will gain something from reading this book - not least a better understanding of the trauma that we have suffered and which has for so long been denied by others and often by ourselves. Anyone else with a connection to adoption could learn much from this book too - our partners, our children (whether adopted or kept), our wider families and friends, adoptive parents, social workers, adoption professionals, therapists, etc., etc.

Read it and be enlightened - and if you're a mum who lost a child or children to adoption, read it and cry for joy that finally, we are compassionately understood and offered a way to heal from our many years of suffering!!

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.

For all young, unwed mothers who lost babies to adoption, particularly during the 50's, 60's, and 70's, and then entered adult life carrying forever this secret rarely shared with anyone, this book may be their first ever knowledge and guidance of what happened -- why it happened -- how it happened -- the know-how needed to now rip through the dense fog they've had to live in as a means of survival ever since -- and finally, how to begin to heal from a loss of such magnitude. As a mother of loss to adoption, I know for certain that mother and child separation is hugely destructive to both parties. Mr. Soll and Ms. Buterbaugh validate these feelings, surround the reader with love and understanding, teach us how to return to a normalcy lost to adoption, and encourage, through proper preparation, the ultimate healing: reuniting of mother and her child. This is a book you will want to refer back to often and read many, many times and which belongs on every library shelf (therapists' included)!

Finally, a book that honestly deals with the trauma of adoption for both mother and baby. After 24 years of thinking I was the only one who had suffered at the hands of those who "knew best" I realized I wasn't the only young mother lied to and coerced out of my baby. I read and re-read this book, going back to certain paragraphs that help me to understand that adoption is powered by greedy needy people who think they are entitled to someone elses baby. Don't cruise through this book, read it. Thank you for writing this book. It is evident that Mr. Soll and Ms. Butterbaugh have done their homework.

There are very few books about this very sensitive topic. Millions of women in this country have been forced by society to surrender their babies to adoption because they committed the sin of becoming pregnant as single women. It is a travesty and very difficult, if even possible, to recover from this cruel punishment to both mother and child.

Joe Soll and Karen Buterbaugh do a great job of not only defining the experience, but provide tools to help Mothers begin the long journey to healing.

This book should be mandatory reading for every natural mother who has suffered because of the loss of her child and every adopted person who wants to really understand what happened and why.

This should be required/recommended reading for every single mother to be and every mother that has already gone through an incomparable loss through adoption-

Let this book be a shocking but eye opening educational instrument for mothers contemplating adoption for their infants or children before contracting with an adoption facilitator, agency or attorney.

There is no other book on the market that will wake you up to reality but also gives you tools to help survive-the tools that were withheld and most often won't receive today from traditional counseling.

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I bought this book not long after it came out and then loaned it to our adoption support groups inter-loan library.
Where adoptees also are reading this eye-opening account of the experiences of the mother's they lost through the adoption process. This book prepares and equips mothers and those lost through adoption for a healthy reunion experience based on the well researched truths.