Lost Daughters: Strong, brave essays written from the heart

Lorraine

Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption from a Place of Empowerment and Peace, is a tough book for mothers who relinquished because whatever we may have told ourselves about the “good” reasons to let our children be adopted, these poignant and sad essays belie that with the sheer force of a body blow. I found myself with tears in my eyes as soon as I started reading, and they didn't totally dry up until long after the last page.

Taken in one gulp these writers remind us that being adopted is the singular aspect of their lives out of which everything else flows—just as it is the opposite side of the coin is for first mothers like myself: birthdays, family trees, motherhood, familiar traits, loss. 

The Declassified Adoptee Tells All

Amanda Transue-Woolston

Adoption, to the adopted, is rife with hard questions: Aren’t you glad you were adopted? How do your adoptive parents feel about you searching for your other family? What do you want from them? What if you find out your father raped your mother? What if you search and she doesn’t want to know you? Aren’t your [adoptive] parents enough? You never said anything about adoption, so I figured it didn’t mean much to you…? What do you say when someone says their friend’s sister is adopted and she “loves it?” And the biggest question of all, that most people never asks: “Why is it that lying in adoption isn’t seen as wrong?”