Tree of Strangers

by Barbara Sumner

'"I live at the end of a gravel road at the top of a valley consumed by bush. My husband is here, and my three girls. But the bush swallows them up like the road.' I wrote those words at the kitchen table in 1983. A letter to the mother I’d never met. But how do you convey your life in a few sentences when almost every memory is missing?" Barbara Sumner grew up in a family filled with secrets and lies. At twenty-three she decided she had to find her mother. Remarkable, moving, beautifully written, Tree of Strangers is a ripping account of a search for identity in a country governed by adoption laws that deny the rights of the adopted person.

Genres: Adoption, Memoir, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2020

About the author

Barbara Sumner is a writer and documentary filmmaker.

Her back catalogue of achievements includes producing three highly acclaimed feature documentaries, a career in journalism, event production, television, bringing up five daughters and being accepted into a Masters program at the tender age of 60.

Barbara lives with her husband Tom Burstyn in Hawke’s Bay with a curmudgeonly cat. She spends her time reading, writing, walking, and corrupting her grandchildren with wild ideas about life, love, and imagination.

Reviews

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful book, all about growing up as an adopted child in New Zealand. A true story full of pain and hope and always that sense of not quite fitting in and never knowing exactly who you are.

There is so much emotion laid bare on the page, and so much regret in the way events unfold. At the age of 23, and already a mother of three small girls of her own, Barbara Sumner sets out to discover her true mother. She makes contact with her real mother, Pamela, who is living in Madrid and whom she desperately wants to meet. Pamela boards a plane to fly to New Zealand to meet the grown-up version of the baby she gave away, but on a foggy December day in Madrid another plane hurtles out of the fog and Pamela is among the 90 fatalities that day. Barbara discovers that she has two step-sisters in Spain, who now also have no mother.

This is not just a non-fiction account of Barbara’s search; it is so much more. It delves deeply into the problems that surround adoption, the psychological impacts on mothers and children, the way those brought up can be affected, and the way the legal system works seemingly against the discovery of information.

There is also lots of hope in this story. Barbara has four daughters of her own and one of them provides the quote on which the book ends:

I do not know what it is like to grow up without a mother. But I know exactly what it is like to grow up with a mother who didn’t have a mother.

Here is an example of some of the heart breaking truths that this book keeps throwing at you:

But then to some degree we are all predacious. I guess that’s why class matters, old school ties, the right neighbourhood, house, clothes, car or accent. We are always assessing each other. Are you one of us?
Adopted people grow up knowing the answer. You come from nowhere. You are strange fruit of obscure origin. The lack of a bloodline marks you. Just ask a mother-in-law. I’ve had three. For years I wondered why tow of them, women from different worlds, treated me with an instinctual distrust. No matter how hard I tried to please them. Now I understand. I was without pedigree, something even a lap dog has. Deep down, they did not want grandchildren without lineage or origin.

Barbara’s first husband tries to get help for her, to overcome some of the demons she is inventing for herself. This description of Jim is why this book is so very good. The picture it conjures in your mind is so searingly realistic:

Jim arrived after lunch. I’d been expecting a doctor’s bag, a box, anything that might contain his magic. But he strode into the living room swinging his well thumbed Bible. I’d always detested him. The way he parted his hair, slick and precise. And the way he washed the dishes after our shred meals, scrubbing them in a brisk and joyless way as though they were our souls.

One of Barbara’s ways to cope with the multiple losses:

But then I found her and made a terrible mistake by writing to her. My letter had caused her death.
So instead I began to write about the life I imagined she had. I invented her lovers and friends. I described her elegant home…
Over the years the stories changed. When I had a relationship with a disingenuous writer, I processed the fallout as if it had happened to my mother. When it was all over, he sent me a file of letter he’d written, one or more a day for all the months. They began with pleasure. I was the shiny new thing in his life. I was better than his wife. I was all the mysteries rolled into one. Soon enough my contradictions were my downfall. By the end he had transformed me into his own shadow self and I became every lover who had failed him.
As I read his wounding words, I pretended he was my mother’s lover, not mine. Because this is one of the things a mother does. She absorbs the blows for her child. Not all of them, and not forever. But she is there for her child of any age. When your children are small, protecting them is your overriding obsession. As mine grew up, I understood that this natural response does not change. Their danger is always my danger. Any threat to them is a threat to me.

Now consider the contrast with Mavis, Barbara’s foster mother:

It took a long time to realise that Mavis appeared to have no such capacity. Her parenting was competent and practical. Food, water, clothing, shelter. The mysterious and strange works of the heart were missing in our relationship. Or was it inappropriate to share them with a stranger’s child?

And on top of that Barbara comes to see herself as the thing that prevented some resolution taking place in her own fractured family of mother and grandparents:

I understand I had divided them. Before me, they were an average family. I was the antapex, the point from which the solar system of their lives was always moving away. After me, Jesse died (grandmother). After me Pamela stopped speaking to her father. And now, on her way to meet me and see him, she was dead and there would be no redemption.

Barbara has also looked into the literature and science behind what is happening as part of the whole adoption process:

Mirah Riben calls it the ‘duality of adoption’. ‘You might have had a happy childhood. But every adoption begins with a tragedy of loss and separation. Adoption is a traumatic, lifelong and often unrecognised experience.’ She describes how society clings to the preconceived, romanticised notions of adoption. The problem, she says, is when adoptees do not assume their role as grateful orphans.
Writer Matthew Salesses talks about being in debt to someone’s love. “For adoptees, gratitude and luck can be trigger words. Society tells us we are lucky to be adopted. If we do not appear grateful, they tell us to know our place. We are reminded to be thankful for being taken from the mothers who bore us. We are called “angry” as a dismissal.”

Later in the book Barbara also looks at brain development:

Many adopted people have catastrophic thinking. But we are so accustomed to living on red alert we do not recognise the formless dread as a condition. We fear abandonment above all else. Many of us have a heightened sensitivity to criticism. We suffer from depression, hypervigilance and addiction to adrenaline.

And finally this:

Whether or not we are good citizens, adoption unmoors us from our history and forces us to stand alone in the world. Dr David Kirschner says we live with sealed original birth records, and a childhood of secrets, lies and frustrated searches for birth parents. He says untreated, festering adoption issues of loss, rejection, abandonment, identity, and dissociated rage are all normal reactions to adoption. No matter how well we have integrated into our new families, we remain ‘other’. We are cuckoos in the nest.

Barbara is taking us on a journey, and I have said very little about the details of her own story which is laid bare here, the relationship with foster parents, the discoveries of possible parents and the unintentional impacts that our curious searching can have. This is such a very good book on so many levels – the fascination with feeling different and not belonging and how it can impact on relationships long into the future.

[Barbara Sumner · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.ketebooks.co.nz/all-book-...

Perhaps initially conceived out of closed-adoption activism, Barbara Sumner’s Tree of Strangers is, through her sharp intellect and exquisitely cinematic writing, a book of far greater social and literary importance.

Born, then transacted to her adopting parents, in 1960, and now in her 60s, Sumner writes of her early-20s life—three young children and a loveless marriage in a house in the West Coast bush of Runanga. The dual experiences of that marriage’s end and finding out her birth mother’s name, somehow inevitably intertwined. Her mother plans to fly to New Zealand from Spain to meet Sumner, but tragedy strikes so she never arrives. Sumner cannot shake the feeling that she somehow caused this. The remainder of the book follows her struggle both to untangle who her mother and father are and access her adoption file.

But before I go on, let’s talk about the physical beauty of the book. Lifting off the matt green dust jacket reveals a bright yellow hard cover and hopeful, tangerine-coloured endpapers. The book is unusually compact and light—small enough to carry in your pocket—striking me as vade mecum of sorts; a closed-adoption field guide.

Sumner is an award-winning documentary producer. Her 2009 film This Way of Life, about a Māori family of horse breeders living in the remote Ruahine Ranges, was shortlisted for an Oscar and won 12 international awards. Thank goodness I know this, and that her beloved husband Tom is beside her making films, because I spent much of the book worrying about Sumner. Especially those Runanga years. “Run, Barbara, run,” I whispered, as her then husband and a priest held her down in an attempt to exorcise her demons. The only demon, she now knows, is the one that prevented her from accessing her original birth certificate and adoption file: the system.

At the heart of the book is admonishment for the 1955 Adoption Act, a piece of moralistic New Zealand legislation from a time when women were stigmatised for having babies out of wedlock. In a recent interview with John Campbell — who has taken up Sumner’s cause with gusto — she calls for new legislation that allows adopted people choice; to choose to know who their parents are and to have access to their original birth certificate and adoption file.

Adoption is a process handled by adults but it is the child, and subsequent generations, who bear the consequences. Perhaps it is time, Sumner suggests, to hand some of that power back to the affected child.

I kept stumbling across moments of serendipity between Sumner’s story and my own. I am not adopted but my father was. He died in 1996 at aged 50 never knowing who his birth parents were. And the Maysie referenced in the first chapter, is both the woman who helped Sumner figure out who her fashion model mother is, and the woman whose business I took over in 2000 and ran for a decade. Therefore, the impactful life of Maysie Bestall-Cohen features in not one but two memoirs this year— Sumner’s and my own.

Sumner admits early in the book she was diagnosed with generalised dissociative identity disorder, symptoms of which are fragmented memories and a feeling that the world is unreal. ‘Daydreaming on steroids,’ she calls it. In adoption circles, it’s called ‘the fog’. Her writing mirrors this surreal atmosphere and at times it felt as though I was swimming beneath the surface, buoyed by an undercurrent of the imagined or the subconscious, grasping at the tails of her silver fish memories.

Also common for adopted people is an imaginative ability to fill in the gaps. There are several scenes—her mother’s plane taking off from a Spanish airport, her mother’s husband and daughters watching from the terminal—that, in reality, she never experienced. This adds a sheen of sorcery, a touch of madness, to the writing. But after the covers were closed, I decided these are merely qualities of a gifted artist.

The dilemma of writing memoir is determining what is your story to tell and what belongs to others. If a writer chooses to ‘go there’ and write part of a story others might deem as trespassing on their lives, the writer may bear consequences of anger, estrangement or abuse. It is clear Sumner has considered this deeply—if it happened to her then it’s fair game—but still, some of it makes for uncomfortable reading. She feels as though she never quite belongs in her adopting family and it is the stripped-bare honesty of recounting this relationship that made my stomach lurch.

Mavis’s parenting was competent and practical, Sumner writes, yet, “The mysterious and strange works of the heart were missing.”. Everyone loses, Sumner writes: Mavis, because Barbara is the ‘replacement’ baby she lost due to miscarriage and Sumner because she is stripped of her authentic identity: “We do not exist at all, except as misshapen fruit grafted onto the tree of strangers.”

When Mavis and Max one day send a letter advising Sumner that they are dissociating from her, my heart broke for all three of them. From the beginning, Max and Mavis were told to treat Sumner as if she was their own. By seeking out her true identity, Sumner ceased playing the expected role of a grateful adopted person. At times I winced at Sumner’s relentless testing of the love between her and Max and Mavis. Yet it is this very determination to cast adoption in its true light that will, and I am sure of this, impact legislatorial change.

As the daughter of an adopted person this book deeply affected me. In recent years, I have come to know each branch of the biological tree from which my father came and, like Sumner, this has positively impacted my sense of identity. Having said that, this does not change the fact that even though the people who raised my father—Grandma and Grandpa—were from a tree of strangers, their grafting to Dad, his adopted sister, and therefore me, was one of the successful ones. I know for sure, though, that had Dad lived, like Sumner, he would have wanted the choice to be able to access to his authentic identity.


Reviewed by Caroline Barron

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the book, special interest to those of us adopted I suspect. Barbara Sumner’s incites into the relationships of birth parents and adopting parents to their children was was insightful and helpful. Her understanding of the social constructs that work against the adopted child and their right to their identity was new and enlightening for me.

Her personal story was often difficult and demanding but ultimately one of courage and intelligence. Her writing was powerful and engaging and she has a wonderful command of the language.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

A total gem of a memoir, that narrates the experience and effect of being separated from the mother at birth and the risks one takes in searching to fill those voids, to heal that wound.
The forces that act to keep a person from knowing their own identity and heritage, institutional and familial.

At 23 Barbara lives in the remote west coast of the South Island, she has 3 small children and a rocky marriage. 23 is a significant age for people waking up, no matter the circumstances of life, something often stirs at that age for those severed frim their origins. Adopted at 10 days old, she decides to look for her mother.

Her searches are beset with setbacks and here she shares each forward step in life, in her supporting a family singlehandedly, in work and the continued search for connection with someone related to her, to know her own origins.

Written in short, compelling chapters it is as informative on the psychological and physiological effect of separation as it is on telling her story; the two aspects are thoughtfully intertwined.

The reader becomes aware of the significant alteration to the central nervous system of a baby deprived of the physical presence of the mother that carried it and how latching it on to a stranger activates its survival response, causing lifelong hypervigilance and other effects that manifest in relationships.

In Barbara's story, there is heartbreak and hurtfulness, inevitable when the healing of one is likely to cause harm to the other. It's a no win situation on the way to becoming whole, something not done in selfishness, but for the generations to come, to know their story too, should they be interested.

Because that is a "kept" privilege, to know and not to care, having never been deprived of the knowledge of who you really are.

[Lilkiwibibliophile1220 · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is so much to be said about this book, but I will keep this as short as possible. I rated this a three for a couple reasons. Her descriptive nature and research does this a lot of justice, but she assumes to much of what others may or may not think of their adopted nature.

She refers to adoptees as "the other" or "the strangers child" assuring that most if not all adopted children feel as if they are missing something or that their adoptive parents will never be enough for the said child. I disagree a lot with this term and theory. yes, I will admit there is a lot that can back up this and there are people that feel this way. What of the people that don't. I am adopted and have parents that have loved me unconditionally and have never treated me like she was. She said how when she was being a golden child everything was fine but when she wasn't it was of "genetic defect". This is simply wrong on her parents part not of the actual part of her being an adopted child.

I wondered as a child what my past was. (It was a closed adoption) With the help of my parents I went to find my birth mother or father and when I was 18 I opened up a can of worms that I wish I did not open. I was not welcome nor was I ever to know my parents story, or so I thought. My birth mother was not fit in any way to be a mother nor was she even capable of really loving me. She drank, smoked and even starved herself (this was not circumstantial) she wanted to get rid of me flat out. So how can this author say that every child needs to or wants to know their biological parents. Sometimes things need to be left alone. Sometimes, what you are given is a blessing not a curse.

"The families of adopted people are as complex and diverse as any. Not all of us consider we have had unfavourable adoption experiences. But all of us must live our entire lives with a false identity and falsified documents. Everyone who loses their mother suffers some degree of phycological damage. No matter our individual experiences of adoption, we are all grafted onto the tree of strangers....." This is the last paragraph of the book and this is where is solidified my thoughts of this book. Yes, We all have different experiences of adoption, but would all of us have phycological damage? No. Do we all feel we have false identities and no way of finding our "true selves"? No.

I feel she is bitter, angry and wants to save others from what she went through. But not everyone needs saving from their adoptions, paperwork and pasts. For some of us this is what saved our lives. Take what she said with a grain of sand.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really interested to read this as I am adopted as well.

I found it very interesting to hear someone else's experience, however I also found that it was written as if we all have the same experience and I found that challenging to read from a personal perspective.

My experience, whilst I haven't met my biological family, has been polar opposite to Barbara's with supportive parents who encourage me to make contact with my biological family and a really easy and supportive CYFs employee quickly finding my original birth certificate and a folder of information about my biological family.

I found that the way the story is written put us all into one category rather than acknowledging the wide range of situations and experiences that come from adoption. There were a lot of sweeping statements rather than words that showed the story was specific to Barbara's experience. I do acknowledge that my experience is potentially quite different having been adopted more recently than Barbara and so this might be the same experience depending on when someone was adopted.

Despite that, it was really great to read a book that was honest and let's readers understand a topic which is often not talked about.

Thanks for sharing such an emotional and vulnerable journey with us Barbara.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Sumner's memoir is a well-written and thorough account of her experience of searching for her birth parents.

As the search unfolds I found myself becoming more and more involved by the story. As a birth mother (or "first mother" as I have learnt to name myself) I so wanted a happy and fulfilling outcome for Barbara partly because she showed considerable compassion for her own birth mother.

While she initially appears to have little sympathy for her adoptive parents with whom she eventually makes her peace Barbara writes movingly and from a position of knowledge of the incompleteness of the child adopted at birth who is never able to find the mirror of herself in her family. This is vital for normal emotional development.

Sumner cites her sources and fleshes out the social and political history of adoption in NZ which is enshrined in The Adoption Act 1955.

"Tree of Strangers" is a story also of creating family in an attempt to find belonging and of success in rising above her birth circumstances.

Now that Barbara is working to influence the proposed Adoption Act Amendment Bill any of us with a stake in this should throw our weight behind it by submitting our ideas. The law which still blocks reunion with bureaucracy certainly has to change.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time I've seen anything even a little bit similar to my life experience recorded in a New Zealand voice. The Adoption system in NZ is very much focused on adult parents not the children and this book brings out many of the stresses and unfair expectations society places on who have been adopted, particularly the narrative that adopted children should be more grateful, and the fiction that the adoption experience ends when the court order has been sealed. Fear of rejection, further abandonment and being forced to live different levels of fiction are common themes which follow into adulthood. Not everyone will have experienced the breadth of trauma as was outlined in this book but I think many will find some of their own experiences validated through this story having been told.

[Kate Corbett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest portrayal of the adoptee experience of loss and reunion. Will ring true to most adoptees.

[Heather Ashcroft · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and heart squeezing observation on being adopted. Excellent read.

[Helen Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful, well written NZ memoir about “stranger adoption “ and the life long psychological effects on the child.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I can hear you asking now, “Hey Mrs B, what’s to love about forced adoption?” We all know the answer is there’s nothing to love about that. What I loved is the way Barbara spoke her truth and explained her life in terms I could understand.

In this modern world how is it acceptable to take children away from the arms that should be holding them?

[Pat Backley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful, emotional read.
Although I was not personally adopted, I know many who are and I have no doubt this book will resonate with them.
Written in an intelligent, well informed and compelling way, I am sure I am not the only one who was delighted to learn that the author found true love and happiness at the end if her emotional journey.

[K, Nz]

Haunting and beautifully written, reading slowly and thoughtfully

[Eves.Mae · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was informative, moving, interesting and devastating. It had me absolutely enthralled.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful book.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tree of Strangers is a beautifully written account of Barbara Sumner's search for her birth parents and the psychological scars she bears to this day caused by the adoption process.

Anyone reading this book will be left in no doubt as to trauma that the process of adoption has left on Barbara and the negative effect it has had on her life. She writes eloquently and persuasively but this is a very one-sided account and I'm sure there must be other adopted people who haven't been damaged in the same way.

Barbara cites psychologists and scientists whose findings match her own experience, but she never cites any counter-findings. She seems to deliberately seek out those people with views to match and reinforce her own.

There are some eerie moments in the book where there seems to be an unexplained connection through time and space between Barbara and her unknown ancestors. Some of these I can quite believe as I know others who have experienced similar things. But there are also instances of daydreams that simply seem to be due to a vivid imagination but which Barbara invests with supernatural aspects.

Sometimes too, she can come across as very self-centred. She is very hard on her adopting parents and blames all their shortcomings on the fact that they are not her natural parents. But natural parents can be remote, disapproving and unloving as well, and much worse. Another instance of self-centredness is after writing deeply of the pain of having been taken from her mother, she moves with her children to another city and effectively removes them from their father without seeming to realise the irony of that.

However, despite all these things this is a beautifully written book and a deeply engaging story. It rivals a Shakespearean tragedy with its twists of fate and raises some very important questions about New Zealand adoption laws.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been on what seems like a lifelong quest to find the definitive book about closed adoption, written by the adopted person. That person is the only expert on this subject, in my opinion, and the only person qualified to try to explain it.

I may have finally found the book I’ve been searching for.

Barbara Sumner writes of her experience as an adoptee in a closed adoption with clarity and honesty. This is a very complex subject, and she touches on every aspect of it. The reader will learn things they never knew about adoption, and they will find it difficult to believe that what they are reading is true. The book makes the reader aware of many important things that the general public never has to deal with.

I applaud Ms Sumner for sharing her story and helping to educate the public. This could not have been an easy book to write, but I am very glad she did.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredibly, heartbreaking memoir about the ongoing impact of adoption. I found the most difficult part of this story to comprehend is the lack of rights the adopted child has in trying to put together the pieces of their birth story. I am not sure if this has changed or not now but at least at the time Barbara Sumner was trying to determine hers' the feelings of the people who adopted her and the privacy of her birth parents were protected in a way that is so out of proportion to the rights of the child seeking her birthright. As someone fascinated by my whakapapa I find it inconceivable that so many adopted children have been denied this right.

[Karen Newton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Several years ago, I contacted BS because we matched on Ancestry. She didn't know what to do next. I suggested she upload to Gedmatch, which she did. Within a few days, someone contacted her as a result and she found her family. She was very happy. I noticed that she never thanked me but didn't say anything. Had someone done the same for me I would have thanked them profusely.

I bought the book to see what she said about that. She says "On a whim" she uploaded to a different site! That was no whim! I suggested it, she did it right away. No thank you then, no thank you now. No wonder she is New Zealand's most hated woman.

[Jen McRae · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique and beautifully written memoir from the perspective of an adopted person. This is a literary memoir which lives inside a classic s tyled hardcover with a paper jacket. I read Barbara’s book in a day, just couldn’t put her words down.
A master at crafting an evocative scene I also appreciated the historical/ social policy/ patriarchal constraints and other important details that together prop up closed adoption in NZ.
To have no access to ones personal records is an egregious human rights violation. Shame on you NZ.
This is 2022, not 1950.
My fav read for 2022.
Get yourself a copy!

[virginia mcqueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profound read for adopted adults and anyone interested in diving deeper in understanding the pain and impacts on adopted people, and those in relationship with them, that are born from relinquishment trauma. This book was deeply moving and healing, to me, as an adopted adult. Highly suggest looking at Barbara Sumner’s resources and activism on adoptive rights. The journey continues for all of us there.

[Laura Valenziano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this little book up at the library and I was enchanted. Her writing carries your interest from the beginning. I was captured by her thoughts on the mother/daughter relationship and I didn't realize the memoir was about her experiences as an adopted person when I chose it. If you have any interest in adoption, are adopted yourself or know someone who is, the insights in the book will particularly intrigue you. If not, it is still a terrific book about mother/daughter relationships.

[Alexandra Lecomte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible! Her experiences are beautifully written with vivid landscapes painted by her words.
I always feel blessed to have a window into another adopted person's life and experiences. As it validates my own.
This book gives permission for all types of emotions that we may experience as someone who was adopted.
Forever grateful!
An incredible read that I highly recommend!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving, beautifully written and thought-provoking book about the writer's experiences being adopted at birth, the conditional love demonstrated by her adopting parents, and later trying to find her biological family.

[Susan Wilson]

A little book that packs a big punch. Raw, and emotional, and honest memoir. Definitely worth a read.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barbara’s writing is excellent; most adoptees would relate to her story. While it was hard to read because it was so raw and real, I highly recommend it.

[Irene Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book about the reality of adoption and the life of an adoptee. A beautiful story with great lesson to learn.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly moving, she’d so much light on an issue I wasn’t even aware of