Adoption Healing... A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption

by Joe Soll

Adoption Healing... A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to
Adoption is a unique book. The reader is provided with a description of the immaculate deception imposed on pregnant women and the ensuing tragedy of the loss of their babies to adoption and the profound effects on their lives. This is followed by different methods of healing the mother's wounds, including inner child work, visualizations, healing affirmations, and anger management. Every chapter includes a Myths and Realities of adoption section, a summary of the chapter and exercises to do on one's own.

About the Authors:

Joe Soll, the author of the original Adoption Healing... A Path to
Recovery for adoptees is a diplomate psychotherapist and lecturer internationally recognized as an expert in adoption related issues and a former adjunct professor of social work at Fordham University Graduate School. He is director and co-founder of Adoption Crossroads in New York City, a non-profit organization that helps reunite and gives support to adoptees, original parents and those who have adopted.

Adoption Crossroads is affiliated with more than 450 mental health institutions and adoption search and support groups in eight countries, representing more than 500,000 individuals whose lives have been affected by adoption. Adoption Crossroads is also dedicated to educating the public about adoption issues, preserving families and reforming current adoption practices.

The director and founder of the Adoption Counseling Center in New York City, Mr. Soll is also co-organizer and co-chair of the New York State Adoption Agency Task Force; a member of Matilda Cuomo's 1993 Advisory Council on the "Adoption Option"; conference chair and board member of the American Adoption Congress, a trustee of the International Soundex Reunion Registry. He's a fellow of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, the American Association of Grief Counselors, and a member of the Council on Social Work Education, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Since 1989, Mr. Soll has organized and coordinated seven international mental health
conferences on adoption attended by mental health professionals. He has been an expert witness in court about adoption related issues and has lectured widely at adoption agencies, social work schools, mental health facilities and mental health conferences in the U.S. and Canada.

Mr. Soll has appeared on radio and television more than 300 times, given more than 130
lectures on adoption related issues and has been featured or quoted in more than three dozen newspapers, books and magazines. In 1994 he was portrayed as a therapist in the NBC made-for-TV movie about adoption, The Other Mother. He recently played himself in the HBO original movie Reno Finds Her Mom. He was featured in the 2001 Telly Award winning Global Japan documentary, "Adoption Therapist: Joe Soll".


His own story as an adoptee has been presented more than thirty times on Unsolved Mysteries. He has walked the 250 miles from New York City to Washington, D.C. six times to create public awareness of the need for adoption reform. He resides in Congers, NY and maintains an office in New York City.

Karen Wilson Buterbaugh is one of seven exiled mothers whose personal experience of surrender during the "baby scoop era" of the 1960s was audio taped for Everlasting," a multimedia sound and video installation by artist Ann Fessler. The stories collected for this exhibition, which showcased the voices of mothers of loss from the 1950s and 1960's, will become part of the women's oral history collection at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library.

In 1966, Karen was first interred in two "wage homes" with strangers, ironically without wages, before being deposited as an "inmate" at the Florence Crittenton maternity facility in Washington D.C. She completed her senior year at the facility before giving birth to her daughter, Michelle Renee, at George Washington Hospital, Washington, D.C., in July 1966. Both were returned to the maternity facility and then separated on August 1, 1966, after she and her baby
had spent ten days together in the facility's post-partum wing. Thirty years later, she hired an investigative agency to locate her daughter, now named Maria. Their in person reunion took place in February 1998.

Ms Buterbaugh has been writing about adoption since 1997 and is the author of two articles, "Setting the Record Straight," published by Moxie Magazine (April 2001), and "Not By Choice," published by Eclectica Magazine (January 2002). Her personal story of adoption surrender, "Relative Strangers: A Mother's Experience of Adoption Loss" is scheduled for publication in
2004.

Karen is co-founder of Mothers for Open Records Everywhere co-founder of OriginsUSA and a founding member of Mothers Exploited By Adoption. She is married and lives in Virginia. She has three grown daughters. Her oldest, Michelle Renee, was the baby she lost to adoption.

218 pages, Paperback

Published November 21, 2003

Reviews

[Paula Dwyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read if you are ready to work through hidden truths

I am a mother and recently met my relinquished son after 30 years. After an initial honeymoon period, some hard feelings have surfaced. I found your advice on reunions helpful. I have always resorted to being my own counselor because I never found one who understands. Discovering the realities has been painful too. This book puts it into perspective, and I would recommend for those ready to come out of denial and secrecy.

[Meaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book . Some off information can help birth mother ..

From a birth mother

[Lisa Laba]

interesting book

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and thoughtful, but not my style of therapy. I don't care for workbook format.

[Mary Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For mothers (of adoption loss) this is the best book to read before you go into reunion. It is tragic and raw but it can help you to have better focus and validation about what you went through. Thanks to Karen, it is very close to what I personally went through... about 97% of it cover to cover. I can't recommend it enough but it is important to process it for awhile before you progress to other books on the subject such as Primal Wound, etc.