| previous page | Displaying 931-960 of 1579 | next page |
Look What God Painted, Inspired by a Child is a book like you have never experienced. When others choose to give up during difficulty, Mandy Lee shows through her unprecedented true story, that it is possible to overcome, thrive, and move to positively impact others. This book offers specific examples to help you achieve success when you face life and death situations and to go beyond survival to actually Foster Nutrition for your family and loved ones. |
From the Back Cover:
What do Natalie, Jacob, Matthew, Nathan, Lubna, Neelam, Saima, Jasmine, Lisa, Claudia and Rebecca have in common? They are all children of Asian, African and Caribbean descent who have been adopted by Asian, African and Caribbean families. But many do not move on to adoption as these children did. It is a widely known fact that black and mixed heritage children in the care system wait longer than any others for a permanent family, and some never find one. Why is this? Is there a genuine “shortage” of prospective adopters coming forwards, i.e. a recruitment issue? And if so, are there reasons for this? Or is it something else? This inspiring collection looks at the experiences of nine adoptive families and their children. It explores their motivation to adopt, what their social workers had to offer (or not), the roles of their friends and family, and what adoption has meant to them. Told in the first person, these absorbing stories offer pointers to what can make for a successful adoption and, equally, the things to avoid. Essential reading for anyone considering adopting a child, especially those from minority ethnic communities, and for social services professionals concerned to recruit and retain black adopters. About the Author: Hope Massiah is a writer and adoptive mother. Her stories and poems have been published in a number of anthologies including IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (Penguin, 2000), Bittersweet (Women’s Press, 2000) and Playing Sidney Poitier (Saks Media, 1999). Hope has also worked as a secondary school teacher, voluntary sector manager, freelance trainer and management consultant. Hope now writes mainly for the theatre and was Theatre Royal Stratford East’s Writer in Residence for 2004. |
From the Dust Jacket:
Beyond the headlines, Losing Jessica is Robby DeBoer’s personal and very moving account of the battle to keep her baby daughter. On August 2, 1993, Robby and Jan DeBoer were forced to give up the little girl that they had raised, since infancy, for two and a half years. In a decision that shocked the entire country, the courts ruled that Jessi DeBoer was to be taken from the only parents and the only home she had ever known and given back to the biological parents who were virtual strangers to her. How do you say goodbye to your daughter? Losing Jessica is more than the story of a court battle. This is Robby’s own story—of the hopes and dreams with which she and Jan began their marriage, and of the tremendous struggles that followed. Robby eloquently describes what it was like to meet her daughter for the first time, after years of trying to adopt. We feel her elation at the moment when she and Jan are awarded custody of the baby at the termination hearing, and we feel her pain and distress when she learns that the man who had signed the adoption papers might not be Jessi’s biological father after all. Robby’s story highlights the complications and inequities of a legal system that places the biological rights of birth parents above those of the adoptive parents—and makes decisions without regard to the best interests of the child. Above all, Losing Jessica is the story of a mother’s unequivocal love for her child, the strongest, most compelling, and most unbreakable human bond of all. About the Author: Robby DeBoer is a spokesperson for the DeBoer Committee for Children’s Rights, a nonprofit, nationwide organization with headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Its aim is to encourage legislative and judicial reform with regard to the protection of children and to find effective ways to channel the energies of interested citizens and mobilize them for action on behalf of children’s rights. Robby lives with her husband, Jan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. |
This book recounts the story of Eva and László, two children adopted by the author following their liberation from the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. About the Author: Dr. Robert Collis is one of Europe’s leading paediatricians. He is Director of Paediatrics to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, Physician to the National Children’s Hospital and a faculty member of Dublin University. During the war he was on a committee in London considering the problems of civilian medical help which would arise after the invasion of Europe. This led him to Europe with a group of his Irish doctor friends and, eventually, to Belsen where he met Eva and László. In addition to forty-odd medical papers, Dr. Collis has published an autobiography, The Silver Fleece, and a number of plays. One of these, Marrowbone Lane, moved audiences to such an extent that they formed a foundation to support Dr. Collis’ social work. This fund provided meals for some 500,000 poor sick children during the war and helped to build Fairy Hill Hospital, one of the most perfect of its kind. Dr. Collis and his wife have two sons of their own in addition to Eva and László, who are now health adolescents of 12 and 15. |
This is the story of 18-year-old Kartya Wunderle, one of 64 babies flown out of Taiwan in the early ’80s. Babies stolen from their mothers or sold by their families and adopted out to unsuspecting overseas parents. At 15, Kartya began to use heroin in an attempt to take away the pain of not knowing who she was and where she came from. Her distraught parents watched their beautiful daughter slowly slip away from them, spiraling towards a tragic and almost inevitable conclusion. Out of desperation and fired by an unconditional love for her daughter, Nola Wunderle resolved to find Kartya’s birth mother and change the ending to Kartya’s story. An amazing search for one woman in a country of 22 million began. The result was nothing short of miraculous, and made Kartya a national hero in her homeland. Lost Daughter is a moving testament to the power of love and the strength of the human spirit, one that will humble and inspire all who read it. |
From the Dust Jacket:
In October 1997, journalist Karin Evans walked into an orphanage in southern China and met her new daughter, a beautiful one-year-old baby girl. In that fateful moment of matchmaking, she became part of a profound, increasingly common human drama that links abandoned girls in the East with parents in the West. Each year, thousands of foreigners travel to China to bring home a child, who is, for the adoptive family, a blessing beyond measure. But the exchange has a dark side: almost all the children filling the orphanages of the world’s most populous nation are girls, found tucked in doorways or bundled on park benches. For every daughter placed in waiting arms, countless others are left behind to unknown fates. In The Lost Daughters of China, Evans explores the emotional and political complexities of an international phenomenon that creates families across the boundaries of culture and geography. She describes the trying but often comic intercontinental journey in which she and her husband—guided by an adoption coordinator known fondly as “Saint Max,” and armed with high hopes and powdered formula—trekked with seventeen other families from Hong Kong to the Pearl River Delta to meet their daughters. At once a compelling personal narrative and an evocative portrait of contemporary China, this book investigates the country’s legacy of lost daughters. Evans casts light on an important untold story, delving into the underpinnings of an age-old cultural preference for boys, the machinations of the one-child policy, and the growing pains of modern China. In a sensitive and moving look at the unprecedented mixing of two cultures, she deftly weaves together the tales of the children themselves with the mystery of their anonymous Chinese families who remain in the shadows. Illuminating the real-life stories behind the statistics, The Lost Daughters of China is an unforgettable account of the red thread that winds from China’s orphanages to hearts around the globe. About the Author: Karin Evans has been an editor for numerous publications, including Outside, Rocky Mountain Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner’s Sunday magazine, Health, and Hippocrates, and spent two years as a stringer for Newsweek’s Hong Kong bureau. Evans lives with her husband and their daughter in San Francisco. |
Love and Fried Chicken is a collection of the first 104 newspaper columns written by Travis A. Naughton (author of the internationally acclaimed book Naked Snow Angels) for the Boone County Journal in Ashland, Missouri. Travis Naughton is an author, columnist, substitute school teacher, ordained minister, press box announcer, jug band musician, and stand-up comedian who lives in scenic Southern Boone County Missouri. He and his wife Bethany are the proud parents of three wonderful children, two of whom were adopted in China. Alex, Tiana, and Truman are the subjects of many of Naughton’s best columns—and the reason he drinks. |
From the Publisher:
In her compelling memoir Love and Loss: A Story About Life, Death and Rebirth, Jane Bay gives us a glimpse of the invisible web of connectedness between us and its power to help heal even the deepest of wounds. In sharing the loss of her Tibetan foster daughter, Namgyal Youdon, Bay offers a rare opportunity to travel through the agonizing process of grieving and experience the power and healing of unconditional love. The story is played out in the rich fabric of the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism inside Tibet, India and America. Written as an “e-mail diary,” Love and Loss is based on e-mails Bay sent out immediately after Namgyal died, replies she received from her dearest friends, e-mails from Namgyal’s brothers (one in Tibet and one in India, before and after Namgyal’s death) and e-mails that she and Namgyal exchanged during the last two years of Namgyal’s life. Brief narratives interwoven throughout the e-mails complete the story. About the Author: Jane Bay has worked at Lucasfilm Ltd. in Marin County, California, for twenty-nine years. She is currently working on two other books: Growing Up Southern: Stories from the Attic of Childhood Memories and an anthology of short stories entitled The Magic of New Mexico. |
From the Back Cover:
Many people say being a parent is the toughest job there is. John DeGarmo, foster and adoptive parent, tells us just how tough it can be, having parented over 40 children. At times he and his wife, Kelly, have cared for up to nine children at a time, many with severe trauma and learning difficulties. Love and Mayhem is an honest and open account of the struggles, sadness and joy that comes with the job of being a parent to a traumatised child. From the sleepless nights with babies withdrawing from drug-addiction, to the heartbreak when a child moves on to another home, and the loving chaos times that come with a large and blended family, John DeGarmo fights for the many children who have come through his home. About the Author: John DeGarmo is a proud foster and adoptive parent who has fostered over 40 children. He regularly speaks on his experiences at conferences and training sessions, and is dedicated to improving and promoting successful foster and adoptive care systems. He is the author of The Foster Parenting Manual: A Practical Guide to Creating a Loving, Safe and Stable Home, Keeping Foster Children Safe Online: Positive Strategies to Prevent Cyberbullying, Inappropriate Contact and Other Digital Dangers and of A Different Home: A New Foster Child’s Story with Kelly DeGarmo, all published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, as well as his first memoir, Fostering Love: One Foster Parent’s Journey. John lives with their foster and adoptive children in Georgia, USA. |
We all live lives of dependence in one way or another. Joree Harbeck was born thirteen weeks premature. She suffered severe seizures hours after birth that caused cerebral palsy and significant damage to her brain. Her prognosis was pessimistic. Love goes both ways when we are willing to admit there is nothing we can do to determine the outcome of our lives, and we surrender to the truth that we are all dependent on others to assist us in traveling this road of life. Joy comes when we allow others to love and care for us deeply and when we do the same in return. |
With the collapse of the Iron Curtain in the last decade, one of the most enduring images has been the children left in dark, medieval orphanages to fend for themselves. Malnourished and unloved babies with sad eyes and no futures. Hundreds of New Zealand couples saw those images from Romania and other countries, and tried to adopt these children. Love Has No Borders is the story of the difficulties they encountered. It is a story of tragedy, and of triumphs. |
From the Back Cover:
A mother and a daughter tell their story. They share their struggle; the mother to connect with a distant and cocaine-addicted daughter and the daughter to believe she deserves the love offered. You will gain insight into the pain of a traumatic childhood, Attention Deficit Disorder and the world of drugs and street life. You will learn some creative solutions for connecting in difficult relationships. Sound guidance in the form of fourteen lessons is provided for changing relationship dynamics. For those entering the “real world” after jail or recovery, transitional information and direction are offered. Most of all you will be shown how to turn hope into loving action. We can all grow and learn from relationships. About the Author: Patricia Morgan began life in rural Ontario where she met and married her teen sweetheart, Les Morgan. After careers as an Early Childhood Educator and parent Education Facilitator, Patricia returned to school in 1984 to completed a masters degree in Humanistic and Clinical Psychology. She has worked as a family therapist, career counsellor and consultant to parents of acting out teenagers. In 1999 she became a Certified Integrative Body Psychotherapist and has a counselling practice in Calgary, Alberta. Patricia has created and delivered dozens of courses and workshops dealing with parent education, family dynamics, women’s issues, self esteem and the value of a light hearted lifestyle. She is increasingly being invited to conferences as a keynote or seminar speaker. As an accidental writer she is grateful for the gifts that have come from revealing the story of her relationship with her daughter, Kelly. Patricia is also mother to Benjamin and Katie and grandmother to Kelly’s two children, James and Danielle. Patricia is vibrantly alive and happily connected to her loved ones ... most days. Kelly Morgan has been in addiction recovery for over five years participating in a number of programs. Since her Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis she has become informed and better skilled at managing it. She now works at balancing being a student at the University of Windsor with being a single parent mom to her two children, James and Danielle. She has also become a supportive source to others who are entering the recovery process or who are beginning to make healthy changes in their lives. While there are some days she still struggles with life challenges, Kelly most often celebrates her new accomplishments and blessings. By the Same Author: Adoption and the Care of Children: The British and American Experience (1998, Institute of Economic Affairs) and Adoption: The Continuing Debate (1999, Institute of Economic Affairs). |
From the Dust Jacket:
Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She’d been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor’s orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them. Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the post-genocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever—they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm—that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children. Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family. As if their situation wasn’t tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non gratae. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife’s safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter. Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo’s story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love—and dogged determination—can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages. About the Author: Neely Tucker, a reporter for the Washington Post, was born in Lexington, Mississippi. He has reported from more than fifty countries or territories in Africa, Europe, the Mideast, and the nations that compose the former Soviet Union, frequently covering war and violent conflict. He, Vita, and Chipo live in Washington, D.C. |
Love is a Start is an emotionally compelling true story about parenting children with neurological differences. Anyone who is raising or working with children with challenges will gather from this book valuable and timely information about the significance of the in-utero environment, the importance of sensory input for brain development, and the power of the parent-child relationship. About the Author: Donna Shilts is an occupational therapist and treatment specialist, currently working with children and families in the Pacific Northwest. She graduated from the school of Occupational Therapy at Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR, in 1987. In 1990 she adopted two little boys, ages four and five at the time. When she began keeping a journal documenting the children’s more difficult behaviors and filed away their drawings and school papers, she never imagined she would then present these materials in such a way that would of value to others. |
From the Back Cover:
Marcelle Clements • Laura Shaine Cunningham • Christina Frank Representing a broad spectrum of life and featuring twenty leading writers, all of whom are adoptive parents, A Love Like No Other reflects the diversity of American families that have come together through adoption. From the personal experiences of single parents and same-sex couples to those who have participated in domestic as well as international adoptions, these stories offer vivid and beautifully rendered snapshots of the parenting experience. By turns humorous, sobering, provocative, joyous and all refreshingly honest A Love Like No Other introduces the reader to a complex, emotional, candid, and wholly recognizable look at the new American family. About the Author: Pamela Kruger is a contributing editor at Child magazine, a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Fast Company, Redbook, and other publications. She lives with her husband and their two children in New Jersey. Jill Smolowe is the author of the adoption memoir An Empty Lap: One Couple’s Journey to Parenthood. An award-winning journalist, she is currently on staff at People. She lives with her husband and their daughter in New Jersey. |
Love Me, Feed Me is a relationship-building, practical guide to help fostering and adoptive families enjoy family meals and raise children who eat a variety of foods and grow to have the body that is right for them. Grounded in science, but made real with the often heart-breaking and inspiring words of parents who have been there, Dr. Katja Rowell helps readers understand and address feeding challenges, from simple picky eating to entrenched food obsession, oral motor and developmental delays, “feeding clinic failures,” and more. Though written primarily for the adoptive and fostering audience, Rowell, aka, the “Feeding Doctor,” shares that her clients are more alike than different. “This book is a distillation of the advice and support I provide all my families as they transform a troubled feeding relationship into a healthy one, and bring peace and joy back to the family table.” |
Managing a household of eight children takes a lot of love and patience—and amazing parents. When six of your children are adopted from overseas, learning to adapt to any situation becomes a survival skill. Having created a riotously happy family, Julia and Barry Rollings thought they could handle anything life threw at them. That was until they received the devastating news that two of their children had not been willingly adopted out by both their parents in India. Much worse, Akil and Sabi had been stolen away from their mother while she slept, and sold by their father. What’s the right thing to do in such unthinkable circumstances? Do you accept the advice that “You adopt the child, not the family,” and let it go? Perhaps not tell the children until they are older—or perhaps never at all? But Julia Rollings is not one to take the easy road. With her family’s support, she takes a courageous leap of faith in deciding to reunite Akil and Sabi, then aged 13 and 12, with their birth mother Sunama. Heading into such an emotional landmine, the outcome could have been disastrous. Instead, it led to a moving journey of discovery to India that has expanded and enriched their family today in more ways than one. |
This has been the most important story that I could ever write, but the most draining to me mentally. As Robbie’s adoptive mom, it has been a tearing away of myself to see my real motives and feelings for him. His life has taught me much, but it has come at a personal cost to me. I am a nurturer by nature, like the many women in my family who came before me. Reactive Attachment Disordered children cannot handle nurturing on any level as they get to the teen years. This placed my natural desires at odds with my own child. This is quite a concept that many do not understand. Many people have said that all Robbie needs is love, as if my husband and I have never tried this option. What they do not understand is love is what is driving him away from us, his parents. But in our own way we are still trying, because we too believe that love is what he truly needs. This is why we cannot just give him back to the adoption agency. He needs us. This is why the title of this book is called, Love this Child. As a Quaker sitting in a unprogrammed service (no pastor just quiet), I would pray for God’s intervention on behalf of Robbie’s escalating concerns and the Holy Spirit would encourage me to love this child. Then I would say, “How do I love this child when he...?” The message never changed as I would pray for guidance from God each week. What I did not understand at the time and know now is that it takes love to raise these children. You have to be truly committed to them and their needs to get through the day-to-day living with them. I just wanted something more, I guess, as I prayed and then listened for the Holy Spirit’s leading. |
From the Back Cover:
The obstacles, surprises, and moments of grace that Jennifer Grant experienced, working through the adoption process to bring home her daughter from Guatemala, forever changed her life. Love You More tells Grant’s deeply personal story of adopting her daughter, Mia. The process confronted her notions about what family means, pushed her into uncomfortable places, and—despite the waiting, adjustments, and challenges of a blended family—brought abiding joy. Written for all parents but especially those interested in adoption, Love You More includes discussion questions, tips for prospective adoptive parents, and suggestions for readers on how to reach out in love and support for the world’s most vulnerable people, including orphans. About the Author: Jennifer Grant is a journalist whose columns, feature stories, and blog posts have been published in Sun-Times Media newspapers, Christiantiy Today, her.meneutics (Christianity Today’s blog for women), and adoption.com. Jennifer writes a column for the Chicago Tribune. She is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and is a founding member of Redbud Writers Guild. Jennifer lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four children and has expertise in throwing parties, traveling light, and daydreaming. |
This is a true story. Twelve-year-old Karen knew when she locked eyes with Rob, that she had met her soul mate. Four years later, the passionate young couple are torn apart by Karen’s family move to Kentucky. Separated for twenty-seven years, enduring abuse, addiction, cancer, and near death experiences, the soul mates are once again reunited by chance. This is an unforgettable true story of young love that conquers all to reunite decades later. This book demonstrates the power and passion of love at any age. |
From the Dust Jacket: This is a heartwarming story of a couple who adopted eleven children. After being told that it would take a miracle for them to conceive, they chose to adopt again and again. They adopted babies, older children, and their siblings too. They proved that a stable, loving home filled with caring, sharing, and a sense of humor was what their children needed. It taught them to love their sisters and brothers. As a family, they enjoyed many trips, vacations, and sports activities with each other and their many friends. There were often difficult times of alcohol and drug abuse, runaways, and legal problems. But with many prayers and a bedrock belief in God to give them strength, they were able to see all their children become adults. Also, miracles happened when there were serious illnesses and terrible accidents. Thank Heavens for all the prayers! Today, as then, there are many children who need loving homes. All they are looking for is someone to unconditionally love them forever. This couple shows with enduring love how they managed during fifty years of marriage and a house-full of children. Those considering adoption need not be wealthy, only to have large hearts. Strange as it may seem, adopting a child or children more often brings as much joy and happiness and rewards to those adopting as it does to those who are adopted. About the Author: Marilyn Diskerud has always loved children and felt blessed that God chose her to be an adoptive mother. She was born in 1929 and married Phil in 1949. They adopted their first child in 1954 when he was three months old and adopted their last set of two older brothers in 1982. She retired after 12 years from her drapery business, “Marilyn’s Draperies,” in Minnesota. Her husband retired from FMC in Minneapolis after working for 35 years. In 1984 they moved to Florida with five of their children still at home. Marilyn Diskerud wants everyone to know that “if my book encourages even one family to adopt a child or two, especially those who are older children, then all my efforts in writing this book will have been rewarded. Everyone needs a loving family.” |
From the Back Cover:
Whether it’s the joy-filled decision to welcome a child into your home or the difficult decision to place your child in another’s arms—adoption is making the choice to love unselfishly and unconditionally. Loved by Choice offers a clear and uplifting look at adoption through true stories told from virtually every perspective. Birth parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, adopted children, families enhanced by special needs, interracial, and foreign adoptions are among those who share their joys and difficulties. The collection is a tender celebration of adoption, led by those who understand it best. About the Author: Susan Horner compiled, edited, and wrote many of the stories for Loved by Choice. She has written for Focus on the Family Club House Jr., Club House, Breakaway, and the Focus on the Family magazine. Kelly Fordyce Martindale is a freelance writer and a publisher of a monthly consumer paper. She has written for Woman’s Day, Today’s Christian Woman, and many other women’s magazines and newspapers. She has contributed stories to other compilations and is working on a parenting book. She lives in Frederick, Colorado, with her husband and two of her four children. |
From the Dust Jacket:
What would a liberal, white, civil rights law professor have to learn about race? When Sharon Rush adopted an African American girl, she quickly discovered the need to throw out old assumptions and start learning all over again. This is the moving, heartfelt memoir of a mother and daughter’s loving relationship that opened the author’s eyes to the harsh realities of the American racial divide. Only by living with her daughter through day-to-day encounters and life passages did Rush learn that racism is far more devastating to Blacks than most Whites can ever imagine. Some of the stories are funny, others are sad, a few are almost unbelievable. But they are all poignant because they illustrate how insightful a little Black girl of three can be about race and justice. The stories also recount the author’s struggle, as her daughter has matured, to come to grips with her own growing awareness of racism in America. With love and spirituality, Rush and her daughter live a deeply joyous life, and have become increasingly active in working publicly and privately against racism. Readers who journey across the color line with the author and her daughter will witness a real-life encounter with racism and come away with a deeper understanding of its persistence. About the Author: Sharon E. Rush is a civil rights lawyer and the Irving Cypen Professor of Law at the University of Florida. She has been studying race for over fifteen years and currently lives with her daughter in Gainesville. |
From the Publisher:
This is the story of a group of nine adoptive parents who came together for mutual support to look at the effects on themselves of living with traumatised children. They based their task on a form of research known as co-operative inquiry. The group describes their journey from setting up the inquiry through the process of exploring the effects of their children’s trauma on themselves and their families, to their development into a cohesive support group and the sense of empowerment this has brought to their lives. The book includes: a brief survey of attachment and trauma in relation to adoption; highly personal accounts of what it is like living with a traumatised child; a description of the inquiry process and step-by-step guidance on how others can set up their own “co-operative inquiry” group; and insights into the impact the inquiry has had on participants and their families two years on. Written with courage, honesty and humour, this book should inspire and encourage any adoptive parents who are struggling to take control of their situation. It should also closely inform new developments in adoption support. And as the first piece of research carried out with rather than on adopters, it provides a model for research in this field that brings real hope of reaching some difficult and empowering truths about adoption. About the Author: For reasons of confidentiality, all participants in the co-operative inquiry wish to remain anonymous and Megan Hirst is a collective pseudonym chosen by the group. |
Loving and Raising Asia gives an intimate look into the lives of a courageous young black southern couple who possessed enough love to see through the complicated entanglements of race in America to offer their love to a white infant even before she exited the womb. This is a true story of a woman who becomes unable to conceive a natural child because of multiple pregnancy complications. And, indeed, it may well have been that this situation heightened her inherent urge for motherhood—an impulse that led her to adoption as a practical option. But she finds that even in adoption there was an unexpected surprise when her adopted bi-racial baby turns out to be Caucasian. She learns that the young white birth mother used the classic culprit by claiming her pregnancy was he result of her being raped by a black man. |
From the Back Cover:
Considering adoption? Loving Journeys Guide to Adoption can give you the answers you need to make decisions that are right for you. Part One is a thorough introduction to the world of adoption, explaining general requirements and procedures. Part Two is a directory containing detailed listings of hundreds of adoption resources: private adoption agencies, adoption attorneys, American adoption programs, international adoption programs (including maps and country profiles), adoptive parents support groups, and more. With this preparation, the adoption process can be a loving journey. |
From the Back Cover:
A book for stepparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, foster parents, godparents—and anyone else who loves a child born to someone else. If you’ve picked up this book, you are probably facing one of the greatest challenges of your life... Help has arrived. |
From the Dust Jacket:
“What a lucky girl!” Everybody who has adopted a daughter from China has heard that one. And every parent has said, or thought, in reply: “No, we’re the lucky ones.” This anthology sets out to explain why people who have adopted children from China feel as though they’ve won the lottery. Since the late 1980s, as many as 7,000 Chinese-born girls (and a few boys!) have been adopted annually and now live in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. They are officially orphans, victims of a rigorous birth control policy limiting most families to one child. The story of these children is compelling as a narrative of hope and optimism but it may also become a story of dislocation and crisis of identity. These baby immigrants add unusual texture to the lives of the families they join—they come here not by choice but by someone else’s design. The memoirs collected in The Lucky Ones deal with infertility, moving to acceptance of a multiracial family, anticipating the adoption, reflecting during the trip to China and, at last, grappling with an odd destiny—turning terrible beginnings into happy endings. About the Author: Ann Rauhala is a former columnist and foreign editor of The Globe and Mail, now director of newspapers at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. With contributions from Jasmine Akbarali, Jasmine Bent, Cindy Boates, Lia Calderone, Julie Chan, Denise Davy, Sarah Giddens, Havard Gould, Heidi Hatch, Patricia Hluchy, Douglas Hood, Tess Kalinowski, Margaret Lawson, Glen McGregor, Lilian Nattel, Susan Olding, Shelley Page, Sonja Smits, Evan Solomon, and Steve Whan. |
Willebrandt is best remembered as the Assistant Attorney General under Warren Harding. Following her divorce, she adopted her daughter, Dorothy Rae, then two years old, as an unmarried woman in 1925. Although she never remarried, she managed to pursue her career and raise her daughter with the help of friends and her parents. Willebrandt also had two sisters whom her parents had adopted, one of whom Mabel herself, as a young teenager, had brought into their home and insisted the family adopt in order to rescue her from a troubled home. |
From the Back Cover (paperback edition):
ALEX SMITH AND HIS EIGHT PERSONALITIES WERE TRAPPED IN A WORLD OF UNFATHOMABLE EVIL... When Carole Smith and her husband decided to take on a foster child that no one else would have they knew ten-year-old Alex would be difficult. But nothing had prepared them for the unruly, self-destructive boy who stormed into their lives. Alone with Alex during the day, Carole was baffled by his infantile tantrums and violent, self-hating behaviors. Exasperated, she tried relating to him as the two-year-old he appeared to be, and finally, a door to Alex’s mind began to open. UNTIL HE ENTERED THE “MAGIC CASTLE” AND FOUND THE KEY TO HIS FREEDOM With the help of psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kingsbury, Alex’s tormented mind revealed a host of personalities, each born in a horrifying episode of Alex’s past—each carrying a memory too powerful for his conscious mind to handle. As the personalities came forth in the safety of Alex’s inner, secret castle, they unleashed stories of abandonment, brainwashing, and sexual abuse by those Alex trusted the most. In the spellbinding tradition of Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, here is a fascinating true story of the human mind; of innocence shattered by inhuman cruelty; and ultimately of love’s power to transform fragments into wholeness—tragedy into triumph. About the Author: Carole Smith is a former schoolteacher who lives with her family in Massachusetts. |
| previous page | Displaying 931-960 of 1579 | next page |
