Customer Reviews

Synchronicity and Reunion: The Genetic Connection of Adoptees and Birthparents

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

 

 

I am neither a professional nor an intellectual. I am simply an average adoptee who searched for and found my birth family. Many of my questions were finally answered, but many more were created. I became intensely curious about what part of me was from my genetic make-up, and what part I learned from my adoptive parents. This book has been extremely helpful in answering those questions and making sense out of the many coincidences I am discovering. There are others who have done studies and have their own opinions on the genetic connection, but unless you are an adoptee or a birth parent, you can never fully understand the impact or significance of this connection. Stiffler is a birth mother who has provided facts gleaned from both others' studies, and more importantly, her own personal life situation. Because of this, I highly recommend this book to all adoptees and birth parents.

The incredible coincidences in the case studies presented in this book are handled with great objectivity by Stiffler. I have just reunited with my birthmother and sent her a copy of the book as well. After reading the book, which I gladly stayed up half the night to finish, I was able to write over one page of synchronicities in the adoption triad of which I'm a vertex. While Stiffler's dissertation, as she readily admits in the book's introduction, was hastily placed in book form and needs further assistance with writing and editing (she asks readers for assistance with suggestions for the next edition), I found the book fascinating. I'm thankful that Stiffler has tackled such intriguing subject matter and I look forward to further research into synchronicity and the adoption triangle.

I am a birthfather, in reunion for 14 years now. The pain of losing our history together is made somewhat softer by having found the many ways we were connected in the intervening years. This book shows our experience is not unusual. In addition, the anecdotes are fascinating for any reader. The psychological research is also helpful.

This is one of the most awesome books I have ever read.
Its all completely true. Must have read the book 5-10 times.

If you are not into connections such as this, or if you are looking for an adoption connection in a forced way....perhaps its not for you. For all others who are open to natural human bonds? A High Five to LaVonne Stiffler.

I was sorely disappointed with this book. The premise is really interesting and in fact, the case studies are worth reading. However, Stiffler has basically quoted the works of others without giving any real insights to these studies. This book is not really meant for the average lay person, it uses very specific language of psychology which I imagine most people have not trained in. Being an academic myself, I do not have issue with this, but as an adoptee trying to find a concise analysis of coincidences in reunion, this book was sincerely disappointing. I do hope that Stiffler will reassemble the book for future readers.

LaVonne Harper Stiffler has written one of the best books on synchronicity that I have ever seen. Synchronicities are coincidences that are often so improbable as to make them deeply meaningful to the participants in these highly unlikely interlinkings of experiences.This book details numerous amazing reports - from people who were adopted early in life and from their birth parents - relating how they were helped through highly unusual synchronicities to locate each other.Stiffler's narration is supplemented by the most extensive references

I have ever seen on synchronicity. In addition to the literature on synchronicities, she brings many relevant facts, insights and references to help explore in greater depth the meaningfulness of the birth bond and its influence on the lives of all of the family members who are related through that bond. As an example:

... adoptive parents have often lost the ability to have a biological child of their own; adoptees have lost identity and genealogy; and birth parents have lost not only an infant, but a preschooler, a teenager, an adult, and their grandchildren. It may not be until reunion that one is able to fully comprehend the deeper meaning of loss of self, finally recovering a new individuation and true self... and a wholeheartedness without pretense... (p. 17)

There are somewhere between five and eight million adoptees in the US. In 1984, a survey revealed that about half a million of these people were looking for or had located their birth families. This search is made extremely difficult by laws that lock all adoption records in all but three of the fifty states. The search from either side of the birth bond requires extreme persistence. In many of the instances documented, there were intuitive or psychic awarenesses that facilitated the ultimate reconnections. In addition, there were numerous instances of apparent chance meetings with people or other unlikely events that facilitated the reunions.

A female adoptee was... surprised to learn that both she and her mother were living less than a two-hour drive apart, having moved to Arizona from Hawaii and New England before finding each other. "Why were we both in Arizona? Neither of us especially enjoyed the climate. We both feel that in the span of Hawaii to New England, Arizona must be a mid-point. Very strange!" (p. 9).

Various chapters focus on a variety of synchronistic links, such as names that were common to the birth family and the adopting family (where the two families had no contact whatsoever); genetic links of twins that seemed to produce even more highly unusual synchronicities; and links of timing in participants' lives.

Stiffler points out that unusual synchronistic experiences often lead the participants to open into spiritual awarenesses. She gives numerous and varied examples of the wonderment of traveling life's pathways and meeting people who teach us deep lessons through these synchronistic encounters.

Stiffler's discussion of possible higher levels of causalities is innovative and erudite, demonstrating a broad knowledge of philosophy and science surrounding this subject. For instance,

Teleology, an aspect of metaphysics, is the doctrine or study of ends or final causes, especially as related to the evidences of design or purpose in nature. As part of the philosophy of vitalism (as opposed to mechanism), natural phenomena are thought to be determined not only by mechanical causes but by an overall purpose, directed toward a definite end. Synchronicity was described by Combs and Holland (1990) as a riddle to be lightheartedly enjoyed as the playful purpose of a trickster, rather than the rational Logos of classical Greece and Rome, but they concluded:

The inescapable insinuation of synchronicity, however, is that the cosmos is undergirded by teleology. Synchronicity reminds us of this order and beckons us to enter into it. Purpose in the form of synchronistic coincidences finds us even in the banalities of our daily routines...its purpose cannot in the end be grasped with the rational mind. It must be lived with one's whole being. (Combs and Holland, p. 144; Stiffler, p. 79)

Psychic and intuitive experiences are noted, but their full significance is not delved to any depth. This is my only criticism of Stiffler's book: a serious understatement and lack of in-depth discussion of psychic experiences and their meaning - in the context of the vast literature on psychic, healing and spiritual research (Benor, 2001; 2006).

Reference:
Combs, A., & Holland, M. Synchronicity: Science, myth, and the trickster. New York: Paragon House 1990.

This book was recommended to me by some members of my adoptee/birthmother support group. I could not wait to receive it. When it arrived, I opened the package and immediately started to read it, or should I say TRY to read it. The book does not flow easily, it was a real challenge NOT to put it down. Aside from the "true stories of synchronicity" in the book, all there is to read is a jumble of information mostly from other sources and not the author. It was not put together in a manner that is either interesting or easy to read. I am truly sorry that I wasted my money on this book, since I am not even going to finish reading it.

I was very disappointed with this book. Although it has good information, it is very poorly written and hard to follow.