Pieces of Me: Who do I Want to Be

Collects poems, drawings, essays, and other items created by adoptees that offer insight into what it's like to be an adopted teenager.

Pieces of Me is edited by Robert L. Bert Ballard, PhD, an Operation Babylift adoptee from Vietnam, who wishes he had this book as a teen to know he wasn't alone and what he was feeling was normal. Bert is a Vietnamese adoptee evacuated from Vietnam in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War. His passion is the adoptee voice. He has helped co-found two adoptee organizations and has served on a variety of boards for adoption. He is a sought-after speaker for both adoptive parents and adoptees having given hundreds of presentations across the nation. He is also widely published on adoption, in magazines, popular books, and academic journals. Pieces of Me, Who Do I Want to Be? and it is a compilation he edited specifically for adopted teens. It has also been used by therapists and parents as an authentic voice of adoptees. He currently lives in Southern California where he is an associate professor at Pepperdine University. He is married with two daughters and an adopted son from Vietnam.