Why does wisdom often begin with sorrow? Why is it that knowing the truth is a requirement for those seeking solace for their grief? Like the parents at Sandy Hook Elementary or the students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, Lorraine Dusky has learned the hard way. When you lose a loved one, nothing ever erases the pain. The only consolation is in knowing you have fought for change and made a difference.
In this memoir, a courageous woman who moved heaven and earth to find the daughter she couldn’t raise examines questions that lie at the heart of surrendering a child. What are the long-term effects of adoption? What questions do adoptees have about their origins? What are the roadblocks to reunion, both legal and emotional? Why do adoptees need and deserve to know the details of their heritage?
Intimate and revelatory, this is the life journey of a trailblazer in the adoption reform movement. Dusky is a journalist who has covered rock concerts, space launches, and the changing role of women in the workplace. Now, in this wry and engaging memoir, she uses her investigative skills to examine the personal costs and social history of adoption.
Grand Canyon Press is proud to introduce this page-turning memoir to a new generation of readers. In it you will meet her hardworking Polish family, read of the economic challenges faced by her beloved father, and learn about her determination to become a reporter.
Even more than that, readers will learn that there is a high cost to family separation, a cost that is borne not just by mothers who lose their babies to adoption, but by the grandparents and cousins and, most especially, by the children themselves. Eventually, these children grow up. Many urgently need health histories and face legal roadblocks when they seek information about their origins. Some undertake DNA searches in order to find their long-lost relatives.
But even happy reunions have a shadow side. Amid the joy, there is unfamiliarity and pain.
Read Lorraine Dusky’s Hole in My Heart: Love and Loss in the Fault Lines of Adoption. Preview the book and buy it in the bookstore of your choice.
This book is excellent. I read the first book and this updated version seems more like the book the author always wanted to write.
It’s scholarly without being pedantic. I was so impressed with the amount of research that went into it–a lifetime’s worth of experience with adoption in all of its manifestations. Heartbreaking, but thorough.