A Life Let Go: A Memoir and Five Birth Mother Stories of Closed Adoption - Softcover

Florin, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996582355 ISBN 13: 9780996582353

Publisher: Long Journey Home Press, 2015

Synopsis

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. 1972: Patricia is not yet 16 when her parents learn she is pregnant. They decide she will stay hidden in the house and give the baby up for adoption.1983: Nancy, lost and wandering in her early twenties, is anxious to to do the “right thing” when she becomes pregnant.1964: Evelyn, married only a short time, becomes pregnant. When her husband says he is not ready, she believes she must choose between him and her baby and she gives the child up for adoption. Two months later, she is pregnant again.1959: Marti, married mother of two, is already struggling to keep from having a nervous breakdown when she learns she is pregnant with her third child.1969: Dena, a rebellious teen, is pregnant and marries the abusive birth father. After a brutal beating, her family sends her halfway across the country to live with her aunt and physician uncle. Dena loses her fight to keep her child. 1969: Kate, a young unmarried woman from a loving family, is ready to raise her baby and her family will support her decision, but a social worker talks her into placing the baby for adoption.

About this title

About the Author:

After being found by the daughter she gave up for adoption, Patricia helped develop and run a support group for birth families, adoptees, and adoptive parents for eleven years. She now lives with her husband on their organic farm in Williams, Oregon. In addition to freelance editing and occasional farmwork, she devotes most of her time to writing fiction, memoir, and poetry. You can find out more at: www.PatriciaFlorin.info.

Review:

As an adoptive parent of the 1960s, reading A Life Let Go by Patricia Florin was painful and illuminating. Florin explores her own and other birth mothers' experiences from the time of conception through delivery and "giving the child up" for adoption... This is must reading for adoptive parents, important reading for adoptees, and an occasion for appreciating and celebrating the shared experiences of its author, Patricia Florin. - Herbert Long, Th.D.; Diplomate, Process Oriented Psych.; Former Dean of Students and Peabody Lecturer, Harvard Div. School; Adjunct Faculty, Marylhurst Univ.

A Life Let Go invites us into the amazing transformation possible when the trauma of giving up a baby is healed through love, honesty and courage in this heart rending, inspiring true story of a pregnant teen hiding in the house, frozen and blind to all possibility beyond invisibility, as a baby grew in the dark and a mother weds herself to shame.... I highly recommend these stories of women who have given up their babies due to social mores, family pressure, or emotional and financial limitations....This intimate confessional inspires compassion and deep healing. - Becky Hale, Psychotherapist

A collection of compelling stories told with great insight and compassion, each so different, yet all reveal the devastating impact of closed adoption and the tragedy of living in a rigid, judgmental society. It is impossible not to feel deeply for each of the mothers, so much so that other mothers will find comfort and support for their own stories, adoptees will gain greater understanding of why they were never forgotten, and adoptive parents will feel empathy rather than fear for their child's original mother. Highly recommended. - Carol Schaefer, author of The Other Mother and Searching...

About this edition

• Publisher: Long Journey Home Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0996582355
• ISBN 13: 9780996582353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308