Customer Reviews

Birthmark

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought and read "Birthmark" after seeing an op ed from the author in support of current legislative efforts to open original birth certificates to adult adoptees. As an adult adoptee myself, I was impressed with Ms. Dusky's raw look inside herself and her life story, including most notably finding herself in the position to make the heart-wrenching decision to permit someone else to raise her child.

Any adoptee who has the emotional wherewithal to want to see how the mother who gave them life may have felt about it should read this book.

Released in 1979, Dusky broke new ground with Birthmark, as the very first book by someone known as a "birthmother" to tell her story.

"The call me `biological mother.' I hate those words. They make me sound like a baby machine, a conduit, without emotions. They tell me to forget and go out and make a new life. BUT I AM A MOTHER."

Sadly, every bit as relevant today as it was when it was written nearly thirty years ago - Birthmark poignantly spans her life from the time of her relationship that led to her pregnancy, through the birth of her daughter, and her inability to forget and get on with her life and despite having the career she thought giving up "the child" would allow. It will be most relevant for those who thought they could give away a child and pick up the pieces of their educations and careers...and for all those who told us we could or should.

"The child was everywhere. True, I stopped thinking about her every hour, and maybe sometimes several days would manage to slip by...But then something...commercials for gentle Ivory Snow, safe for baby...
"I would always be a woman who gave away a child."

Sprinkled with touching and revealing flashbacks to her youth in Michigan, her hopes, her dreams - fishing with her father...Birthmark is not just the first, it remains to this day far superior to other memoirs written by mothers who have lost children to adoption.

"I may look normal, but there's something a bit off. I cry much too easily, for starters.
"I am a mother without a child."

Dusky, a freelance writer who has written for many magazines and the New York Times, is bold, brazen and holds nothing back. With an astonishing depth of honesty she describes her her adultery and attempts to abort are exposed in raw truth - bare naked - for all to see. No more secrets; no more lies. Allowing the truth to set her - and us all - free at last. She shares her secrets as with a close and dear friend, allowing the reader to feel compassion for the young woman trying to find her way in a world that is unkind and judgmental to women.

She chides herself as she checks out her flattened post-delivery stomach:

"I wonder how much I weigh.
"Selfish slut, all you care about is yourself"

She opens her heart, soul and lets us traverse into her deepest inner thoughts, revealing her all too human frailties and self doubts, making the reader a confidant. We are privy to it all: The self-doubt, the self-loathing; the pain - the pain that never subsides - even as she gets strong enough to fight back. The irony of her loss for the sake of secret-keeping leading to her becoming an activist is profound. It is an intensely personal and intimate tale, and yet universal. Not in the details of the experiences, but in the aftermath of never forgetting.

It also makes a very strong and powerful political statement as she describes the scene in a courtroom where experts - who have never spoken to a mother who had relinquished testify as experts as to what is best for mothers and their adopted children.

I hope that Dusky reprints this out of print book. Until then, look for used copies. It's a book you can't put down until you've finished and then wish it hadn't ended. This will be true for those who have never thought about adoption every but as much as for those who live it every day....and share her pain, anguish, frustration, dread and anger.

Mirah Riben, author The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry

I could not put down this book! It touched my heart & soul in a very deep way, as I am a "birthmother" too. I do not feel so alone anymore. Many thanks for sharing your story-I'm sure it will help many like me. I look forward to your next book! Kathleen Indianapolis, IN

"Birthmark" is a must read for those who want to know how giving up their children affects women. It is the earliest birthmother memoir -- written when most were still well into the closet.

Dusky tell her story honestly. She explodes the myth that women give up their children and get on with their lives. She is an outspoken advocate for allowing adoptees to have their records. Natural mothers want to re-connect with their children, not hide from them.

"Birthmark" is well written and memorable.

Jane Edwards
Portland, OR

This book is, truly, outstanding in its honesty and courage ... Lorraine Dusky has told the truth about adoption loss, about the world of 1966, about women and options and how she fought to be who she is .... a writer ... a mother searching for her daughter. It's all there ... her tenacity as a reporter, her powerful quotes, her overwhelming need to find her child, to tell the truth ... and her utter sadness at not finding her. I have underlined many passages and I have. literally, gasped in horror at the scene in which the adoptive father she interviewed said he wouldn't tell his adopted daughter that her natural parents want to meet her .... God, the inhumanity just astounds me ...:-(
This book is one of the best I have ever read about this subject that touches so many lives. It is beautifully written, painfully honest. A "must read" for anyone who wants to understand life then ... and now. I totally support opening records for adoptees ... we must have our original birth certificates. I have mine, only because I'm old ... records hadn't closed, yet. Now, we must open them for this generation of adoptees. We must. Thanks, Lorraine Dusky, for your hard work on behalf of open records and original birth certificates. And, especially, thank you for this book, Birthmark. Outstanding.

Lorraine Dusky is a pioneer, an architect of landmark legislation that changed the lives of adopted adults. With the publication of Birthmark, she became a woman both applauded and jeered. A career journalist, Dusky remains a crusader to give adopted people their birth right, their original birth certificates. Although out of print, this birth mother memoir is "a must read." As someone who understands the legislative process, what Dusky did took more than courage, it took endless hours, patience, and dedication. In taking on the challenge, she opened the door to deeply moving memories and captured them in Birthmark. Eloquently straight forward, Birthmark is a moving story -- easy to understand, hard to forget.

When Lorraine Dusky's brave book came out in 1979, no one knew what "birth mother" meant. But she opened the door to the secrecy that cloaked aloption in this country for decades. While she was hailed by adoption reformers, others condemned her, even on live television where bringing up open adoption records was deemed scandalous and outrageous.
"Birthmark" so clearly shows how the trauma of giving up a child for adoption forever changes the woman, no matter what happens in her life afterwards. Dusky does not spare her feelings, whether petty or grand, in this finely written memoir by an award-winning journalist.
This wrenching story presents the best case yet for unlocking all sealed adoption records once and forever. Numerous memoirs covering the same subject would come after, but "Birthmark" stands in a class by itself, truly a landmark book. Heartfelt and Brilliant. Kiana Davenport, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Every woman that has given up a child for adoption should read Birthmark.
Lorraine Dusky decribed the emotional torment a birth mother goes through.
Deeply moving and impossible to forget.