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Journeys After Adoption Understanding Lifelong Issues
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Jayne E. Schooler, Betsie L. Norris
ISBN: 0-89789-816-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-816-4
312 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 7/30/2002
List Price: $28.95 (UK Sterling Price: £19.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Paperback
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: What can we learn about the experience of adoption from those who have taken that journey? How can those touched by adoption navigate successfully through the issues of search, reunion, and aftermath? Will those answers have a positive impact on adoption today? Drawing upon the experiences of dozens of triad members—adopted persons, birth parents, and adoptive parents—the authors offer insight into the concerns, issues, joys, and pain experienced by those who lives are framed by adoption.

The book explores such questions as:
•How do I make the decision to search for my parents?
•How do I prepare emotionally?
•What are my adoptive parents feeling and thinking?
•What if I am rejected, encounter death, or reach a dead end?
•How do I develop a relationship with siblings I've never known?

The authors deal sensitively with these and many other issues. Attention is also given to the needs and concerns of adoptive parents as their children grow into adults. Practical advice helps prepare triad members to deal emotionally and psychologically with the process of search and reunion.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction
    A Look at Issues and Their Impact
    Secrecy in Adoption and the High Cost It Required
    Lifelong Psychological Presence: Can Family Members Really Be Invisible?
    Focus on the Adopted Person
    Growing Up in Closed Adoption
    A Walk into the Wilderness: Learning of Your Adoption As an Adult
    Focus on the Birthparent
    Birthmothers and Birthfathers--The Lifelong Journey Begins: Discovery, Disclosure, Decisions
    Birthmothers and Birthfathers--The Journey Continues: The Lifelong Impact of Relinquishment in Closed Adoption
    Focus on Understanding Adoptive Parents in Search and Reunion
    Communicating the Decision to Search to Your Adoptive Parents
    The Process of the Search
    Making the Decision: To Search or Not to Search
    Preparing Emotionally for and Initiating the Search
    Patchwork Siblings: Adoptees in Postreunion Relationships
    Synchronicity in Reunion
    Dealing with Special Issues within the Search
    When the Pieces Don't Fit: Finding Dead Ends Dead Ends
    Revisiting an Old Wound: Encountering Denial or Rejection
    Facing a History of Abuse or Neglect
    Searching in Midlife: What Are the Implications?
    Postreunion Relationships: Now What? New Beginnings
    Changing Times Policy, Etc.
    Appendix 1:Growing Up in Open Adoption: An Essay of Life Experience by Sara VanderHaagen
    Appendix 2: Growing Up in Transracial Adoption: An Essay of Life Experience by Ai Loan Nguyen
    Appendix 3: Search and Reunion Etiquette: The Guide Miss Manners Never Wrote by Monica Byrne
    Appendix 4: Making Contact After the Search by Curry Wolfe
    Appendix 5: Resources and Recommended Readings
    Selected Bibliography
About the Author: JAYNE E. SCHOOLER is an affiliate trainer with the Institute for Human Services in Columbus, Ohio, where she played a major role in the development of adoption training curriculum for professionals and families used nationwide. Jayne has over twenty years of experience in child welfare, first as a foster parent, then as an adoptive parent, adoption professional, and educator. She is the author of The Whole Life Adoption Book (1993), Searching for a Past (1995), and co-author of the award-winning Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child (Bergin & Garvey, 2000).

BETSIE L. NORRIS is an adoptee who searched for and reunited with her birthparents in 1986. An RN working in child psychiatry at the time, Betsie felt her reunion was the most profound experience of her life and developed a commitment that others should not have to face these issues without support. She founded Adoption Network Cleveland in 1988. She is a frequent spokesperson in the media, has assisted in over 1,400 reunions, and has worked extensively on changing Ohio's adoption laws.
LCC Class: 155
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