A comprehensive list of adoption resources including podcasts, search angels, organizations, and events.
EVENTS
Grief A Comedy
In “Grief A Comedy,” Alison recounts how, after decades spent with Mr. Wrongs and/or Mr. Right Nows, she happened upon THE love of her life — an Indian expat named Bhima. She shares how she found Bhima and sadly how she lost him — too soon, waaaay too soon — and she explains how she managed to carry on after her fiance’s tragic and unexpected passing, and how he returned to her in spirit to help her write their love story and urge her to find love again.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.
Tell No One
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church.
Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties, he started searching for his birth parents and eventually discovered the identity of his birth mother: he was told she was a Catholic nun. And she wanted nothing to do with him.
For the next thirty years Brendan had no clues as to the identity of his birth father. In 2018, a DNA test provided the answer: he was the son of a priest. His father had studied in a Trappist monastery in Ireland, returned to Australia and become a celebrated outback missionary. After decades of searching and obstruction from the Catholic church, the whole truth was finally exposed. Brendan Watkins’ birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun.
Tell No One reveals the moving story of that incredible discovery, and explores the questions, anxieties and reflections arising from his hidden past.
Lucky Bastard
When he was ten years old, the author was told he’d been adopted. It was a seismic event that turned his world upside down. Nobody was who he thought they were. His mother wasn’t his mother; his father wasn’t his father; his sister wasn’t his sister; his grandparents weren’t his grandparents; he wasn’t related to any of his relatives; he didn’t know where he came from or who he was. This was at a time when adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame. Birth mothers and adoptive parents signed non-disclosure agreements. Adoption records were sealed. In Lucky Bastard Anthony Akerman takes the reader on his quest to find out where he came from.
Anthony Akerman’s memoir is a significant achievement. It is moving, funny, light to the touch, insightful, wry, self-reflective and witty. It is also poignant. Richly illustrated with photographs, and vividly written, it is a profoundly informative reflection, not just on adoption, his own adoption, and the perilous paths all those who adopt and are adopted are obliged to trudge, but on the tender anguishes and idiocies of being human. Justice Edwin Cameron.
Follow this riveting odyssey of an adopted man in this compelling memoir. He defied the odds, crafting plays and words and conquering the world with resilience and passion. Herman Lategan, author of Hoerkind / Son of a Whore.
Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States (American Crossroads) (Volume 74)
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents—a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures—in contrast to others that are not—and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.
Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her identity and comes home to her true self. Each chapter is followed by psychiatrist Alysa Zalma’s commentary, which extracts the essence of what is happening psychologically and spiritually. Pulled by the Root is an awakening not only to the experience of being adopted but also to the experience of being human.
The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories
Adoption has always been a woman’s issue. With eloquence and conviction, more than 30 diverse birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees tell their adoption stories and explore what is a deeply emotional, sometimes controversial, and always compelling experience that affects millions of families and individuals.
The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption and Forced Surrender
An expose of unethical and coercive adoption industry practices during a short period in American history known as the Baby Scoop Era (Post WWII – 1972). By sharing the actual printed words of social caseworkers, maternity home personnel, lawyers, judges, medical and mental health practitioners, the methods used to ensure that “unwed” mothers would surrender their babies to mostly infertile strangers will be revealed. These crimes against nature resulted in more than 1.5 million vulnerable new mothers being permanently separated from newborns that they might have parented had they been informed of their civil, legal, human and Constitutional rights.
Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative
Adopting Privilege is Dr. Hasberry’s attempt at not only reckoning with her past, but offering unfiltered guidance to other transracial adoptees, and the larger adoption community, navigating what it means to exist in a familial limbo while also discovering what it means to simply exist.
Abigail Hasberry is no stranger to adoption. As both a Black adoptee to a white family, and a birth mother, her intimate understanding of this experience has shaped her career as both a therapist and transracial adoption scholar. However, the intricacies of transracial adoption narratives leave much to be discovered, and with stories often shared from the perspective of the adoptive family, the most affected group—the adoptees—are often left to fend for themselves in their own self discoveries.
A Life Let Go: A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption
Closed adoption, heralded as the answer to the problem of unplanned pregnancy, shows its other side in A Life Let Go, A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption. These women tell how they experienced unplanned pregnancy in the restrictiveness of the last decades of the twentieth century. All gave up a child in closed adoption–the only option–understanding they would never see them again, a dark contract made under great duress.
Adoption and Suicidality
Beth Syverson and Joseph Syverson, an adoptive mother and adoptee, collaborate to address adoption’s hidden mental health crisis. Drawing from groundbreaking research, they combine personal stories with practical resources to support families and professionals.
Adoption Unfiltered
This book reveals the candid thoughts and feelings of those most directly involved in adoption. The authors interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies, all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption.
If you know of an event you would like added to this list, email me at [email protected].
PODCASTS
Adoptees at Work Podcast: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
A conversation with Peggie Ardvison on Adoptees at Work Podcast about how being adopted impacts my work life and has influenced career choices and direction.
Adoption Uncovered: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
A conversation with Charlyn Speiring about my adoption story and (at 20 min in) the healing power of writing to heal adoption wounds.
The Secret Son Podcast: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
UPCOMING – Adopted when he was 3 months old, host Mike Trupiano was forever changed by his search for his birth family. Mike is the creator of Secret Son, an adoptee podcast about searching, identity, and secrets. I really enjoy his interview style and was thrilled to be asked to be a guest on the show. Our conversation is scheduled to release mid-September.
Claiming Your Voice: Patricia Knight Meyer Part 2
She was a black market baby who was given to a Texas couple through the workings of an attorney. In part two she talks about reuniting with her birth father.
Claiming Your Voice: Patricia Knight Meyer Part 1
Guest Patricia Knight Meyer is an author, journalist, and content creator. She was relinquished for adoption by her birth mother. In her adult life Patricia was in reunion with both her birth mother and father. Her website is myadoptedlife.com where you can learn more about her adoption story.
Adoptees On
This is not the usual adoption talk. You will find real, raw, and deep feelings addressed in these interviews. No sugar-coating here! Come and laugh, cry, learn and heal with us. I promise you’ll have a “me too” moment. Adult adoptees share stories of search, reunion, and secondary rejection. Adoptees On also curates recommended resources to encourage and educate the adoption community about adoptee issues.
Adoptees at Work Podcast: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
A conversation with Peggie Ardvison on Adoptees at Work Podcast about how being adopted impacts my work life and has influenced career choices and direction.
Adoption Uncovered: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
A conversation with Charlyn Speiring about my adoption story and (at 20 min in) the healing power of writing to heal adoption wounds.
The Secret Son Podcast: Guest Patricia Knight Meyer
UPCOMING – Adopted when he was 3 months old, host Mike Trupiano was forever changed by his search for his birth family. Mike is the creator of Secret Son, an adoptee podcast about searching, identity, and secrets. I really enjoy his interview style and was thrilled to be asked to be a guest on the show. Our conversation is scheduled to release mid-September.
Claiming Your Voice: Patricia Knight Meyer Part 2
She was a black market baby who was given to a Texas couple through the workings of an attorney. In part two she talks about reuniting with her birth father.
Claiming Your Voice: Patricia Knight Meyer Part 1
Guest Patricia Knight Meyer is an author, journalist, and content creator. She was relinquished for adoption by her birth mother. In her adult life Patricia was in reunion with both her birth mother and father. Her website is myadoptedlife.com where you can learn more about her adoption story.
Adoptees On
This is not the usual adoption talk. You will find real, raw, and deep feelings addressed in these interviews. No sugar-coating here! Come and laugh, cry, learn and heal with us. I promise you’ll have a “me too” moment. Adult adoptees share stories of search, reunion, and secondary rejection. Adoptees On also curates recommended resources to encourage and educate the adoption community about adoptee issues.
Adoptees Dish
Adoptee centered podcast elevating experiences and the lived experience of those impacted by the complexities of adoption. Amy & Marcela are both international & transracial adoptees as well as licensed clinical social workers. Their insights are both personal and share a clinical lens.
Adoptees Crossing Lines
In this podcast we deconstruct the romanticism holding up the adoption industry and expose the lies, abuse, and pain that gets silenced. We’re here to unwrap the shiny bow around adoption and speak our truths as adoptees.
If you know of a podcast you would like added to this list, email me at [email protected].
BOOKS
Grief A Comedy
In “Grief A Comedy,” Alison recounts how, after decades spent with Mr. Wrongs and/or Mr. Right Nows, she happened upon THE love of her life — an Indian expat named Bhima. She shares how she found Bhima and sadly how she lost him — too soon, waaaay too soon — and she explains how she managed to carry on after her fiance’s tragic and unexpected passing, and how he returned to her in spirit to help her write their love story and urge her to find love again.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.
Tell No One
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church.
Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties, he started searching for his birth parents and eventually discovered the identity of his birth mother: he was told she was a Catholic nun. And she wanted nothing to do with him.
For the next thirty years Brendan had no clues as to the identity of his birth father. In 2018, a DNA test provided the answer: he was the son of a priest. His father had studied in a Trappist monastery in Ireland, returned to Australia and become a celebrated outback missionary. After decades of searching and obstruction from the Catholic church, the whole truth was finally exposed. Brendan Watkins’ birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun.
Tell No One reveals the moving story of that incredible discovery, and explores the questions, anxieties and reflections arising from his hidden past.
Lucky Bastard
When he was ten years old, the author was told he’d been adopted. It was a seismic event that turned his world upside down. Nobody was who he thought they were. His mother wasn’t his mother; his father wasn’t his father; his sister wasn’t his sister; his grandparents weren’t his grandparents; he wasn’t related to any of his relatives; he didn’t know where he came from or who he was. This was at a time when adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame. Birth mothers and adoptive parents signed non-disclosure agreements. Adoption records were sealed. In Lucky Bastard Anthony Akerman takes the reader on his quest to find out where he came from.
Anthony Akerman’s memoir is a significant achievement. It is moving, funny, light to the touch, insightful, wry, self-reflective and witty. It is also poignant. Richly illustrated with photographs, and vividly written, it is a profoundly informative reflection, not just on adoption, his own adoption, and the perilous paths all those who adopt and are adopted are obliged to trudge, but on the tender anguishes and idiocies of being human. Justice Edwin Cameron.
Follow this riveting odyssey of an adopted man in this compelling memoir. He defied the odds, crafting plays and words and conquering the world with resilience and passion. Herman Lategan, author of Hoerkind / Son of a Whore.
Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States (American Crossroads) (Volume 74)
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents—a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures—in contrast to others that are not—and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.
Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her identity and comes home to her true self. Each chapter is followed by psychiatrist Alysa Zalma’s commentary, which extracts the essence of what is happening psychologically and spiritually. Pulled by the Root is an awakening not only to the experience of being adopted but also to the experience of being human.
Grief A Comedy
In “Grief A Comedy,” Alison recounts how, after decades spent with Mr. Wrongs and/or Mr. Right Nows, she happened upon THE love of her life — an Indian expat named Bhima. She shares how she found Bhima and sadly how she lost him — too soon, waaaay too soon — and she explains how she managed to carry on after her fiance’s tragic and unexpected passing, and how he returned to her in spirit to help her write their love story and urge her to find love again.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.
Tell No One
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church.
Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties, he started searching for his birth parents and eventually discovered the identity of his birth mother: he was told she was a Catholic nun. And she wanted nothing to do with him.
For the next thirty years Brendan had no clues as to the identity of his birth father. In 2018, a DNA test provided the answer: he was the son of a priest. His father had studied in a Trappist monastery in Ireland, returned to Australia and become a celebrated outback missionary. After decades of searching and obstruction from the Catholic church, the whole truth was finally exposed. Brendan Watkins’ birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun.
Tell No One reveals the moving story of that incredible discovery, and explores the questions, anxieties and reflections arising from his hidden past.
Lucky Bastard
When he was ten years old, the author was told he’d been adopted. It was a seismic event that turned his world upside down. Nobody was who he thought they were. His mother wasn’t his mother; his father wasn’t his father; his sister wasn’t his sister; his grandparents weren’t his grandparents; he wasn’t related to any of his relatives; he didn’t know where he came from or who he was. This was at a time when adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame. Birth mothers and adoptive parents signed non-disclosure agreements. Adoption records were sealed. In Lucky Bastard Anthony Akerman takes the reader on his quest to find out where he came from.
Anthony Akerman’s memoir is a significant achievement. It is moving, funny, light to the touch, insightful, wry, self-reflective and witty. It is also poignant. Richly illustrated with photographs, and vividly written, it is a profoundly informative reflection, not just on adoption, his own adoption, and the perilous paths all those who adopt and are adopted are obliged to trudge, but on the tender anguishes and idiocies of being human. Justice Edwin Cameron.
Follow this riveting odyssey of an adopted man in this compelling memoir. He defied the odds, crafting plays and words and conquering the world with resilience and passion. Herman Lategan, author of Hoerkind / Son of a Whore.
Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States (American Crossroads) (Volume 74)
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents—a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures—in contrast to others that are not—and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.
Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her identity and comes home to her true self. Each chapter is followed by psychiatrist Alysa Zalma’s commentary, which extracts the essence of what is happening psychologically and spiritually. Pulled by the Root is an awakening not only to the experience of being adopted but also to the experience of being human.
The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories
Adoption has always been a woman’s issue. With eloquence and conviction, more than 30 diverse birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees tell their adoption stories and explore what is a deeply emotional, sometimes controversial, and always compelling experience that affects millions of families and individuals.
The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption and Forced Surrender
An expose of unethical and coercive adoption industry practices during a short period in American history known as the Baby Scoop Era (Post WWII – 1972). By sharing the actual printed words of social caseworkers, maternity home personnel, lawyers, judges, medical and mental health practitioners, the methods used to ensure that “unwed” mothers would surrender their babies to mostly infertile strangers will be revealed. These crimes against nature resulted in more than 1.5 million vulnerable new mothers being permanently separated from newborns that they might have parented had they been informed of their civil, legal, human and Constitutional rights.
Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative
Adopting Privilege is Dr. Hasberry’s attempt at not only reckoning with her past, but offering unfiltered guidance to other transracial adoptees, and the larger adoption community, navigating what it means to exist in a familial limbo while also discovering what it means to simply exist.
Abigail Hasberry is no stranger to adoption. As both a Black adoptee to a white family, and a birth mother, her intimate understanding of this experience has shaped her career as both a therapist and transracial adoption scholar. However, the intricacies of transracial adoption narratives leave much to be discovered, and with stories often shared from the perspective of the adoptive family, the most affected group—the adoptees—are often left to fend for themselves in their own self discoveries.
A Life Let Go: A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption
Closed adoption, heralded as the answer to the problem of unplanned pregnancy, shows its other side in A Life Let Go, A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption. These women tell how they experienced unplanned pregnancy in the restrictiveness of the last decades of the twentieth century. All gave up a child in closed adoption–the only option–understanding they would never see them again, a dark contract made under great duress.
Adoption and Suicidality
Beth Syverson and Joseph Syverson, an adoptive mother and adoptee, collaborate to address adoption’s hidden mental health crisis. Drawing from groundbreaking research, they combine personal stories with practical resources to support families and professionals.
Adoption Unfiltered
This book reveals the candid thoughts and feelings of those most directly involved in adoption. The authors interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies, all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption.
Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her identity and comes home to her true self. Each chapter is followed by psychiatrist Alysa Zalma’s commentary, which extracts the essence of what is happening psychologically and spiritually. Pulled by the Root is an awakening not only to the experience of being adopted but also to the experience of being human.
Blue Plastic Cow: One Woman’s Search for Her Birth Mother
This is the true story of Barbara’s adoption by a family who lived in a town on the banks of the River Mersey. They were a loving family but Barbara always felt different. Her mother, Florrie, never wanted her to know the truth. At age 12, after Barbara accidentally discovered that she was adopted, Florrie lied to her about her birth mother, Carole, and the facts surrounding her birth.
As a teenager, unable to deal with the shock of what she’d learned, she rebelled against her parents, finding solace in the exciting 1960s’ Liverpool music scene. Against her parents’ wishes, she got a job in Liverpool as a secretary. She went to lunch time sessions at the Cavern where she saw The Beatles, and often stayed out late in Liverpool drinking.
Decades later, Barbara discovered tear stained letters from her birth mother, containing heart-breaking words that would send her on a challenging 26-year quest to find Carole and discover the secret of the blue plastic cow.
Unraveling Your Adoption Journey: Journal Prompts for the Adoptee’s Journey
Ready to dive deep into your adoption journey? My journal, Unraveling Your Adoption Journey, was created with adoptees in mind—those of us navigating identity, trust, and belonging. It’s more than just a journal; it’s a space to process your emotions, dig into your story, and explore who you really are, all while feeling seen and understood.
With each prompt, you’ll have the chance to reflect, get creative, and truly explore the layers of your own narrative. Whether you’re wrestling with issues of identity, trust, abandonment, or just trying to make sense of the complex emotions around adoption, this journal helps you make space for those feelings and encourages you to dive deeper into what makes you, you.
Inside, you’ll find a blend of thoughtful exercises and prompts that not only encourage self-reflection but also help you express yourself in ways that feel right for you. It’s a way to unravel your story piece by piece and make peace with it, reconnecting with your true self along the way.
Whether you’re just starting to explore your adoption journey or looking for a new perspective, this journal offers guidance, comfort, and a reminder that you’re not alone in your experience. Unraveling Your Adoption Journey empowers you to reclaim your narrative, embrace your story, and find a sense of belonging that feels authentic to you.
Open it up, and let this be the start of your healing, your self-discovery, and your journey toward acceptance and understanding.
20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make, Second Edition
As an adoptee, do you have mixed feelings about your adoption? Sherrie Eldridge is an adoptee and adoption expert, and in this book she draws on her personal experiences and feelings relating to adoption as well as interviews with over 70 adoptees. Sherrie reveals how you can discover your own unique life purpose and worth, and sets out 20 life-transforming choices which you have the power to make. The choices will help you discover answers about issues such as: Why do I feel guilty when I think about my birth parents? Why can’t I talk about the painful aspects of adoption? Where can I gain an unshakable sense of self-esteem? Sherrie also addresses the problem of depression among adoptees and common dilemmas such as if, when and how to contact a birth mother or father. This fully updated second edition includes new material on finding support online, contacting family through social media, and features three new chapters, including Sherrie’s story of reuniting with her birth brother, Jon, in adulthood.
Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude
Linda Hoye was in her early twenties when she found herself parentless for the second time. Adopted at five months of age, her heritage, medical history, and access to information about who she was or where she came from was sealed. It was as if she had never existed before being adopted.When she was barely in her twenties her adoptive parents died and a pattern of loss was put into motion that would continue for years as, one by one, those she called family were torn from her life.Two Hearts charts a course through a complex series of relationships stemming from the author’s adoptive family, her maternal and paternal birth families, and an abusive marriage as the author seeks the one thing she so desperately wants: family.She knows she must come to terms with the bitterness she harbors toward her birth mother when she becomes a grandmother and, soon after, faces the loss of the last remaining members of her adoptive family. She makes one final attempt to find something that will give her the sense of rightness that eluded her for so long.This is the story of a woman’s journey through unfathomable grief, of what it takes to go into the abyss of deep-seated wounding, to feel the pain, and to come out the other side. Whole, healed, and thankful.
Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found
The voice on the other end of the line was soft, yet forthright: “Sarah, my name is Hannah Morgan. I think I’m your birth mother.”
The phone call, wholly unexpected, instantly turned Sarah Saffian’s world upside-down, threatening her sense of family, identity, self. Adopted as an infant twenty-three years before, living happily in New York, Sarah had been “”found”” by her biological parents despite her reluctance to embrace them.
In this searing, lyrical memoir, Sarah chronicles her painful journey from confusion and anger to acceptance and, finally, reunion–but not until three soul-searching years had passed. In spare, luminous prose, Sarah Saffian crafts a powerful story of self-discovery and belonging–a deeply personal memoir told with grace, eloquence, and compassion. At once heartbreaking and profoundly uplifting, Ithaka is sure to touch anyone who has grappled with who they are.
Unraveling Your Adoption Journey: Journal Prompts for the Adoptee’s Journey
Ready to dive deep into your adoption journey? My journal, Unraveling Your Adoption Journey, was created with adoptees in mind—those of us navigating identity, trust, and belonging. It’s more than just a journal; it’s a space to process your emotions, dig into your story, and explore who you really are, all while feeling seen and understood.
With each prompt, you’ll have the chance to reflect, get creative, and truly explore the layers of your own narrative. Whether you’re wrestling with issues of identity, trust, abandonment, or just trying to make sense of the complex emotions around adoption, this journal helps you make space for those feelings and encourages you to dive deeper into what makes you, you.
Inside, you’ll find a blend of thoughtful exercises and prompts that not only encourage self-reflection but also help you express yourself in ways that feel right for you. It’s a way to unravel your story piece by piece and make peace with it, reconnecting with your true self along the way.
Whether you’re just starting to explore your adoption journey or looking for a new perspective, this journal offers guidance, comfort, and a reminder that you’re not alone in your experience. Unraveling Your Adoption Journey empowers you to reclaim your narrative, embrace your story, and find a sense of belonging that feels authentic to you.
Open it up, and let this be the start of your healing, your self-discovery, and your journey toward acceptance and understanding.
Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss
A road map for the journey of writing honestly about grief and loss. Useful to the memoirist just starting out, as well as those already in the throes of coming to terms with complicated emotions and the challenges of shaping a compelling, coherent true story.
Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness
Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal shares the framework and method of using writing as a practice for adult adoptees, therapists, teachers, and researchers interested in learning how to migrate and heal embodied trauma. It analyzes lived experience and the author’s own writing to develop a methodology for moving toward wholeness by writing and speaking the truth of internal adoptee experiences.
The Story You Need to Tell
A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal.
The Adoption Paradox: Putting Adoption in Perspective
An ambitious book by Jean Kelly Widner, an adult adoptee, who explores the current and historical culture of American adoptions. Widner examines the unaddressed pain and systemic flaws in the system, and calls for a more transparent and compassionate approach to adoption.
Adoption and Suicidality
Beth Syverson and Joseph Syverson, an adoptive mother and adoptee, collaborate to address adoption’s hidden mental health crisis. Drawing from groundbreaking research, they combine personal stories with practical resources to support families and professionals.
Adoption Songs
Lori weaves together fifteen adoption stories, sparked by a chance encounter that led to an epiphany about the need to share these narratives. Drawing from her own experience as an adoptee who kept her adoption secret for years, she explores the universal theme of belonging that runs through the adoption community.
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, By Gretchen Sisson
Based on a decade-long study, Sisson examines the complex interplay between adoption, privilege, and the ideals of American motherhood, shedding light on the broader cultural and systemic factors that shape the adoption landscape.
The Story You Need to Tell
A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal.
No Bad Parts
Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind – and healing the many parts that make you who you are.
If you know of a book you would like added to this list, email me at [email protected].
SEARCH & SUPPORT
Search Angels & Organizations
- Angel Search Network: A dedicated team of search angels offering adoption search support and assistance. They have a wide network of resources and volunteers ready to help individuals in their search for birth parents, adoptees, and other relatives.
- Search Angels Worldwide: A global community of search angels providing support and guidance to those involved in adoption searches. They offer various services, including document research, DNA analysis, and emotional support throughout the search process.
- Adoption Reunion Registry Search Angels: This organization specializes in reuniting birth families and adoptees through their search angel network. They provide personalized assistance, access to databases, and expert guidance to navigate the complexities of adoption searches.
- DNA Detectives: A group of experienced genetic genealogists who offer their expertise in using DNA testing and analysis to uncover family connections. They specialize in adoption-related searches and can help individuals interpret DNA results and navigate genetic genealogy databases.
- Search Squad: Composed of volunteer search angels, Search Squad assists individuals in finding their birth families through research, public records, and social media platforms. They have a dedicated online community where individuals can seek guidance and support throughout their search journey.
- Find My Family Adoption Search Angels: A team of passionate search angels dedicated to helping adoptees, birth parents, and siblings find each other. They provide personalized search plans, access to databases, and emotional support during the search process.
- Adoption Search Consultants: A group of professional search consultants who specialize in adoption searches. They offer comprehensive search services, including record retrieval, genetic genealogy research, and expert advice on navigating adoption laws and regulations.
- Birth Parent Finder: A network of search angels with expertise in locating birth parents and facilitating reunions. They offer personalized search strategies, document retrieval, and emotional support for both adoptees and birth parents throughout the search process.
- Search Angels of Adoption: A nonprofit organization comprised of dedicated search angels who volunteer their time and expertise to assist individuals in finding their biological families. They provide guidance, research assistance, and emotional support to individuals searching for their roots.
- The Seeker’s Heart: A group of search angels committed to helping adoptees and birth families find each other. They offer a range of services, including record searches, DNA analysis, and personalized support throughout the search and reunion process.
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
ORGANIZATIONS
Grief A Comedy
In “Grief A Comedy,” Alison recounts how, after decades spent with Mr. Wrongs and/or Mr. Right Nows, she happened upon THE love of her life — an Indian expat named Bhima. She shares how she found Bhima and sadly how she lost him — too soon, waaaay too soon — and she explains how she managed to carry on after her fiance’s tragic and unexpected passing, and how he returned to her in spirit to help her write their love story and urge her to find love again.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
A remarkable window into the volatile, constantly changing China of the last half century and the long-reaching legacy of the country’s most infamous law, Daughters of the Bamboo Grove is also the moving story of two sisters torn apart by the forces of history and brought together again by their families’ determination and one reporter’s dogged work.
Tell No One
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church.
Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties, he started searching for his birth parents and eventually discovered the identity of his birth mother: he was told she was a Catholic nun. And she wanted nothing to do with him.
For the next thirty years Brendan had no clues as to the identity of his birth father. In 2018, a DNA test provided the answer: he was the son of a priest. His father had studied in a Trappist monastery in Ireland, returned to Australia and become a celebrated outback missionary. After decades of searching and obstruction from the Catholic church, the whole truth was finally exposed. Brendan Watkins’ birth parents were a Catholic priest and a nun.
Tell No One reveals the moving story of that incredible discovery, and explores the questions, anxieties and reflections arising from his hidden past.
Lucky Bastard
When he was ten years old, the author was told he’d been adopted. It was a seismic event that turned his world upside down. Nobody was who he thought they were. His mother wasn’t his mother; his father wasn’t his father; his sister wasn’t his sister; his grandparents weren’t his grandparents; he wasn’t related to any of his relatives; he didn’t know where he came from or who he was. This was at a time when adoption was shrouded in secrecy and shame. Birth mothers and adoptive parents signed non-disclosure agreements. Adoption records were sealed. In Lucky Bastard Anthony Akerman takes the reader on his quest to find out where he came from.
Anthony Akerman’s memoir is a significant achievement. It is moving, funny, light to the touch, insightful, wry, self-reflective and witty. It is also poignant. Richly illustrated with photographs, and vividly written, it is a profoundly informative reflection, not just on adoption, his own adoption, and the perilous paths all those who adopt and are adopted are obliged to trudge, but on the tender anguishes and idiocies of being human. Justice Edwin Cameron.
Follow this riveting odyssey of an adopted man in this compelling memoir. He defied the odds, crafting plays and words and conquering the world with resilience and passion. Herman Lategan, author of Hoerkind / Son of a Whore.
Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States (American Crossroads) (Volume 74)
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents—a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures—in contrast to others that are not—and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.
Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her identity and comes home to her true self. Each chapter is followed by psychiatrist Alysa Zalma’s commentary, which extracts the essence of what is happening psychologically and spiritually. Pulled by the Root is an awakening not only to the experience of being adopted but also to the experience of being human.
The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories
Adoption has always been a woman’s issue. With eloquence and conviction, more than 30 diverse birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees tell their adoption stories and explore what is a deeply emotional, sometimes controversial, and always compelling experience that affects millions of families and individuals.
The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption and Forced Surrender
An expose of unethical and coercive adoption industry practices during a short period in American history known as the Baby Scoop Era (Post WWII – 1972). By sharing the actual printed words of social caseworkers, maternity home personnel, lawyers, judges, medical and mental health practitioners, the methods used to ensure that “unwed” mothers would surrender their babies to mostly infertile strangers will be revealed. These crimes against nature resulted in more than 1.5 million vulnerable new mothers being permanently separated from newborns that they might have parented had they been informed of their civil, legal, human and Constitutional rights.
Adopting Privilege: A Memoir of Reinventing My Adoptee Narrative
Adopting Privilege is Dr. Hasberry’s attempt at not only reckoning with her past, but offering unfiltered guidance to other transracial adoptees, and the larger adoption community, navigating what it means to exist in a familial limbo while also discovering what it means to simply exist.
Abigail Hasberry is no stranger to adoption. As both a Black adoptee to a white family, and a birth mother, her intimate understanding of this experience has shaped her career as both a therapist and transracial adoption scholar. However, the intricacies of transracial adoption narratives leave much to be discovered, and with stories often shared from the perspective of the adoptive family, the most affected group—the adoptees—are often left to fend for themselves in their own self discoveries.
A Life Let Go: A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption
Closed adoption, heralded as the answer to the problem of unplanned pregnancy, shows its other side in A Life Let Go, A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption. These women tell how they experienced unplanned pregnancy in the restrictiveness of the last decades of the twentieth century. All gave up a child in closed adoption–the only option–understanding they would never see them again, a dark contract made under great duress.
Adoption and Suicidality
Beth Syverson and Joseph Syverson, an adoptive mother and adoptee, collaborate to address adoption’s hidden mental health crisis. Drawing from groundbreaking research, they combine personal stories with practical resources to support families and professionals.
Adoption Unfiltered
This book reveals the candid thoughts and feelings of those most directly involved in adoption. The authors interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies, all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption.
The Adoption Paradox: Putting Adoption in Perspective
An ambitious book by Jean Kelly Widner, an adult adoptee, who explores the current and historical culture of American adoptions. Widner examines the unaddressed pain and systemic flaws in the system, and calls for a more transparent and compassionate approach to adoption.
Adoption and Suicidality
Beth Syverson and Joseph Syverson, an adoptive mother and adoptee, collaborate to address adoption’s hidden mental health crisis. Drawing from groundbreaking research, they combine personal stories with practical resources to support families and professionals.
Adoption Songs
Lori weaves together fifteen adoption stories, sparked by a chance encounter that led to an epiphany about the need to share these narratives. Drawing from her own experience as an adoptee who kept her adoption secret for years, she explores the universal theme of belonging that runs through the adoption community.
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, By Gretchen Sisson
Based on a decade-long study, Sisson examines the complex interplay between adoption, privilege, and the ideals of American motherhood, shedding light on the broader cultural and systemic factors that shape the adoption landscape.
The Story You Need to Tell
A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal.
No Bad Parts
Discover an empowering new way of understanding your multifaceted mind – and healing the many parts that make you who you are.
If you know of an organization you would like added to this list, email me at [email protected].
