Reaching Out

Reaching Out

Author: Nelson Handel

Publisher: Easternedge Press

Published: 2002-08

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9780971619821

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Based on extensive interviews with social workers, adoption attorneys, agency personnel, and birthparents, REACHING OUT helps potential adoptive parents pursuing open adoption to craft and original, authentic, and effective Dear Birthmother Letter, aka Family Profile. "A wonderful resource for prospective Adoptive parents...I would recommend it to everyone who is having difficulty writing that important letter of introduction"-Kathleen Silber, author, 'Dear Birthmother" "REACHING OUT accomplishes all it sets out to do, and a good measure more. It should quickly find its way into the established canon of domestic adoption literature."-ASRM Mental Health Professional Group newsletter. "REACHING OUT takes much of the mystery out of writing a powerful and effective letter in a positive and enjoyable fashion. I will be recommending this book to my clients."-Douglas Donnelly, Attorney-at-Law, former president , Academy of California Adoption Lawyers


Dear Birthmother

Dear Birthmother

Author: Kathleen Silber

Publisher:

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780931722196

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This book explores some of the myths in adoption and advocates birth parents and adopting parents writing and meeting each other.


Dear Linda

Dear Linda

Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 1552129365

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Ten years ago I became the adoptive father of a beautiful baby girl. The joy of nurturing my daughter to the brink of her teenage years has been the most fulfilling time of my life. She also has given me the noblest title of all. I am a father. Often during the past decade my thoughts have returned to the memory of a meeting with a young pregnant girl. A young girl whose ultimate, loving decision changed the course of my life. I wonder if her thoughts reach across the distance to reflect about her birth child and me. Is she emotionally troubled? Is she at ease with her decision? Does she need to be comforted by the knowledge that her birth child is being raised in a loving and stimulated environment? "Dear Linda," is an open letter to the birthmother of my child. But it is more. It is an open letter to all birthmothers from the perspective of an adoptive father. Not only does it express profound thanks for a mature and heart wrenching decision, it expresses love. "Dear Linda," details the events of the past eleven years. Many times emotional and oftentimes humorous, the reader is taken from the tribulations of a couple's infertility to the rigors of the adoption process. Later, the life of a special girl is chronicled. This revealing glimpse of my daughter's life will erase any lingering doubts that the birthmother may harbor about her decision. One learns that a selfless, loving act has positively impacted not only a child and a couple but also an extended family. The birthmother will learn that she touched the lives of several people in ways that she initially couldn't have imagined.


God and Jetfire

God and Jetfire

Author: Amy Seek

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0374713820

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A searching, eloquent memoir about the joys and hardships of open adoption God and Jetfire is a mother's account of her decision to surrender her son in an open adoption and of their relationship over the twelve years that follow. Facing an unplanned pregnancy at twenty-two, Amy Seek and her ex-boyfriend begin an exhaustive search for a family to raise their child. They sift through hundreds of "Dear Birth Mother" letters, craft an extensive questionnaire, and interview numerous potential couples. Despite the immutability of the surrender, it does little to diminish Seek's newfound feelings of motherhood. Once an ambitious architecture student, she struggles to reconcile her sadness with the hope that she's done the best for her son, a struggle complicated by her continued, active presence in his life. For decades, closed adoptions were commonplace. Now, new laws are guaranteeing adoptees' access to birth records, and open adoption is on the rise. God and Jetfire is the rare memoir that explores the intricate dynamics and exceptional commitment of an open-adoption relationship from the perspective of a birth mother searching for her place within it. Written with literary poise and distinction, God and Jetfire is a story of a life divided between grief and gratitude, regret and joy. It is an elegy for a lost motherhood, a celebration of a family gained, and an apology to a beloved son.


Sunlight on My Shadow

Sunlight on My Shadow

Author: Judy Liautaud

Publisher:

Published: 2012-10-19

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781883841171

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In 1966 when Judy became pregnant at the age of 16, her family kept her plight a secret and was compelled to give up her daughter. Judy felt the grief and shame as a tangible lumpwithin her body and fought to keep it contained within the shadows of silence. But as an adult, she felt compelled to address the loss by searching for her birth daughter and bringing her story to light--From back cover.


Labor of the Heart

Labor of the Heart

Author: Kathleen Whitten

Publisher: M. Evans

Published: 2008-02-28

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1461663075

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Adoptive parents often experience the double trial of emotional responses to infertility and to the process of adoption itself, called "excruciating labor with no end in sight," by one adoptive mother. Would-be adoptive parents cycle through grief, anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, and guilt-and back again. All of these emotions cloud decision-making, at exactly the time that adoptive parents are making life-altering, irrevocable decisions: whether to adopt at all, to adopt an older child or an infant, or to parent a child with developmental delays, as well as other pressing questions. New empirical research by Kathleen Whitten, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and adoptive mother, and other experts in the field contradicts many of the outdated myths presented to parents and written about in widely-used adoption guides. Whitten separates fact from fiction and leads parents by the hand through the many emotional impacts the process involves. Written in a reassuring, conversational tone, the author tells parents when they should listen to their heart-and when practical considerations are too important to ignore. Each chapter features workbook section with constructive exercises and stimulating questions. Adoptive parents do not need yet another book promising a "fast track" to a child or explaining how to collect documents. Instead, they need Labor of the Heart to help them through the difficult emotions and decisions about adoption.


The Restoration of Celia Fairchild

The Restoration of Celia Fairchild

Author: Marie Bostwick

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0062997297

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“The Restoration of Celia Fairchild is wise, witty, and utterly compelling.” —Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Friends We Keep Evvie Drake Starts Over meets The Friday Night Knitting Club in this wise and witty novel about a fired advice columnist who discovers lost and found family members in Charleston, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Second Sister. Celia Fairchild, known as advice columnist ‘Dear Calpurnia’, has insight into everybody’s problems – except her own. Still bruised by the end of a marriage she thought was her last chance to create a family, Celia receives an unexpected answer to a “Dear Birthmother” letter. Celia throws herself into proving she’s a perfect adoptive mother material – with a stable home and income – only to lose her job. Her one option: sell the Charleston house left to her by her recently departed, estranged Aunt Calpurnia. Arriving in Charleston, Celia learns that Calpurnia had become a hoarder, the house is a wreck, and selling it will require a drastic, rapid makeover. The task of renovation seems overwhelming and risky. But with the help of new neighbors, old friends, and an unlikely sisterhood of strong, creative women who need her as much as she needs them, Celia knits together the truth about her estranged family — and about herself. The Restoration of Celia Fairchild is an unforgettable novel of secrets revealed, laughter released, creativity rediscovered, and waves of wisdom by a writer Robyn Carr calls "my go-to author for feel-good novels.”


Dear Barbara, Dear Lynne

Dear Barbara, Dear Lynne

Author: Barbara Shulgold

Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13:

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"Dear Barbara, Dear Lynne is a heartbreakingly tender story of the desire for parenthood and the deepening friendship between two women who have known each other only on paper." "Barbara Shulgold and Lynne Sipiora met through the mail when one of them responded to a desperate letter the other had written to Resolve, a newsletter for infertile couples. These two brave women, complete strangers, bound by their common struggle to have a baby, began a correspondence that fortified them through three years of infertility traumas and adoption struggles - relying on each other for the support and understanding only another woman could bring. At first tentative, later deeply loving, the letters are an astounding document of friendship and the journey to motherhood. Dear Barbara, Dear Lynne is a testimony to the human spirit, the power of shared travail, and the joy of finally holding one's face against the soft, sweet skin of a day-old infant."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved