On June 1st 1990, Helen and Andrew Gardyne left New Zealand for Romania in a bid to adopt a Romanian child. Seven months earlier, Ceausescu, Romania’s Communist dictator, had been overthrown and the plight of that country’s institutionalised children revealed to the West. The Gardynes’ visit to Romania attracted the attention of the New Zealand Media, raised the ire of the nations government and caused considerable public controversy. This book tells the story of the Gardynes’ encounters and experiences, raising important questions about children and how we take responsibility for them in the process.

In 1990, reports of a collapsed Romanian dictatorship made headline news. Grim pictures of a civil revolution were in newspapers worldwide. Months later, images of Romanian orphans housed in state-run facilities were publicized. In Romanian Orphans, Adopted Daughters, Lindsay Galbraith explains how she and her husband decided to adopt two Romanian girls and the legal maze they had to go through to do it. In the second part, she talks about the challenges they faced once home in Canada. This story would be of interest to anyone interested in adopting nationally or internationally.

Already with four sons of their own, Sue and Graham Smith felt that God was calling them to adopt a Romanian child. They traveled to Romania and discovered Robert, suffering from malnutrition and unresponsive. This is the story of their bureaucratic nightmare and spiritual journey.

From the Back Cover: “We have a baby nobody wants. Will you take her?”

“Yes!” said Ann and Phil Scott, little realizing what God would have in store for them.

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About the Author: Ann Scott lives with her husband, Phil, and their adopted a children in McMinnville, Oregon, where she serves as director of PLAN (Plan Loving Adoptions Now). As a special bonus, this book includes detailed suggestions for Christian couples who wish to adopt a child.

Writer Nyla Booth lives with her husband, Edwin, in Beaverton, Oregon, where she free-lances. This is her first book.

From the Dust Jacket: This book starts with the words, “We tried an experiment in our family and, when we began, people said:

You’re crazy!

You can’t afford it!

You’re making a big mistake!

We went ahead anyway and everything turned out all right. This is a true record of the way it worked.”

The experiment was the addition of three homeless children to a family which already had three of its own. Given Anna Perrott Rose and her husband who really believed that children—any kind of children—were important, things were bound to “turn out all right.” Many people have told Mrs. Rose that they longed to take a child, but could not find a “suitable” one. This book substantiates the author’s claim that children are not very “suitable” anyhow; one had better take unsuitable ones and go on from there.

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About the Author: Anna Perrott Rose and her husband started with three youngsters of their own, and then to have “a nicely balanced family” took in three foster children. Mrs. Rose, who believes that fun and laughter are as important to children as food, wrote Room for One More after her husband’s death, as a memorial to him and all they had done together.

Born in New York, Mrs. Rose spent part of her childhood on her grandfather’s farm in Virginia, was educated in the public schools of Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated from Vassar in 1914. Before her marriage she was employed by printing and publishing firms. She started writing at the age of ten after being praised for writing a school composition and scolded for being dumb in arithmetic.

She writes in the middle of the setting of her story—on the kitchen table so that she can keep watch over the pots and pans on the stove. Describing her method of operation, she says, “I write whenever I have anything to write about, and keep at it night and day until it is finished, constantly interrupted by such household necessities as visiting with the neighbors, telephoning, taking the wash off the line, marketing and cooking.” In addition to a number of juvenile books, she has written articles for both adult and juvenile magazines.

Part of this book appeared in [the July 1949 issue of] The Ladies’ Home Journal under the title of Jimmy John.

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Compiler’s Note: The book was adapted into a 1951 stage play by William Davidson; a 1952 Hollywood film starring Cary Grant and Betsy Drake; and a short-lived television series ten years later. An excerpt from the book was also published in Family: Stories, Articles and Poems of Family Life (1961, Scholastic) under the title “Spare the Rod...”.

From the Dust Jacket: The first biography of the comic turned TV host now in “a league of her own.”

When stand-up comic and film star Rosie O’Donnell launched her own nationally syndicated TV talk show in June 1996, viewers—and reviewers—loudly applauded. For daring to program anti-trash TV, Rosie was quickly tagged by the critics as “The Queen of Nice.” Rosie’s recipe worked: The Rosie O’Donnell Show now is daily viewing for loyal millions. At 34 years old, her mix of sass, honesty, and relaxed chitchat are making her the star of the late 1990s.

Rosie is the first full-length biography to present the complete, captivating story of how a girl from Commack, Long Island, became the first-class jokester fans admire. Following Rosie’s path on the highly competitive comedy club and television circuit, this bio also looks at Rosie’s Hollywood films (A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle) and her recent stint in Broadway’s Grease.

This compelling narrative digs deeper as well, uncovering the events that led to Rosie’s much-publicized single-parent adoption of a baby boy in 1995. From the death of her mother at age ten to her troubled relationship with her Irish-born father, hers is a story of well earned success. Rosie provides behind-the-scenes accounts of the driven and one-of-a-kind comic who has won the hearts of so many just by making them laugh.

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About the Author: James Robert Parish is a former entertainment reporter and the author of numerous major biographies, including The Liza Minnelli Story and Let’s Talk: America’s Favorite Talk Show Hosts. He lives near Hollywood.

From the Publisher: Every woman who waited to have a child will understand this story. Eileen Stukane’s determination to become a mother led her to adoption. When agencies said she was “too old,” she found a country that considered her young. She would not be stopped—until a mystery in Italy almost ended everything. Confronting crisis, she learned how the edge of despair and the brink of salvation need not be two different points but one reality, conferring resilience and wisdom.

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About the Author: Eileen Stukane covers news about the health and economic well-being of New Yorkers for various community newspapers and is a regular contributor to Chelsea Now. She has coauthored four books on women’s health and is the author of The Dream Worlds of Pregnancy. She has held editorial positions at Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and Self magazines, and for eight years wrote the “Healthy Eating” column for Food & Wine. Her articles related to women’s health have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, McCall’s, Family Circle, Redbook, and numerous other national publications.

From the Back Cover: Adopting a child can be one of life’s most rewarding experiences. Unfortunately, complex policies, legal risks, and fewer available children can make adopting domestically difficult. International adoption offers a solution to parents yearning for a child of their own.

American parents are now adopting over 5,000 children a year from Russia and Eastern Europe. John Maclean’s The Russian Adoption Handbook is a comprehensive guide to adopting a child from overseas.

From pitfalls to the practical, the rewards to the risks, The Russian Adoption Handbook leads parents through the maze of:

• How the international adoption process works.

• How to start the process.

• What you need to know before traveling to Russian and Eastern Europe.

• Making the most out of your trip—the inside scoop on customs, hotels, and food.

• The children’s homes, the courts, and the questions that need to be asked.

• Medical issues, special adoption doctors, and travel requirements.

• Post-adoption procedures, and much, much more.

Practical, accurate, and written with a father’s sense of humor, The Russian Adoption Handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to adoption yet.

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About the Author: John H. Maclean is an attorney and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He and his wife have adopted two children from Russia. He is also the author of The Chinese Adoption Handbook: How to Adopt from China and Korea.

From the Dust Jacket: The Russian Word for Snow takes us through Janis Cooke Newman’s unorthodox efforts to become pregnant—Chinese herbs that taste like dirt and a uterine alignment from a New Age masseuse—to the first time she and her husband saw the vieotape of the little boy who would become their son, a tape that showed him lying naked on a metal changing table while a woman in a babushka tried to make him smile for the camera. Their journey to adopt that little boy would introduce them to the often frustrating world of international adoption, and the scarier reality of a nation in crisis as she and her husband were forced to spend a month in Moscow during the turmoil of Russia’s first democratic election.

In this memoir, Newman describes how her mother’s death from breast cancer influenced her decision to have a child. “Pregnancy seemed the antithesis of cancer; another condition that caused cells to multiply and divide, but with an entirely opposite result.” An how her son, Alex, reacted to the videotape of himself in a Moscow orphanage: “Actually, that was another baby. I was in France.”

Told with humor and grace, The Russian Word for Snow is a tribute to all the ways we choose to make a family.

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About the Author: Janis Cooke Newman is a frequent contributor to Salon,com and other magazines. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Traveler’s Tales. She lives in northern California with her husband and their son.

From the Dust Jacket: How does an adoptee find the courage to face a parent they’ve never met? What is the impact of relinquishing a child on a birth mother’s life? How can adoptive parents help their children understand what it means to be adopted?

These questions and others are explored in Sacred Connections, which features 24 stories of adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents. These are people from all over the world who share the experience of finding the sacred connections in their lives. People like:

• Jonathan McGowan, who was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of eighteen. His adoptive parents, Sandy and Bob, searched for his birth family in Korea. His birth mother, Sook, flew to the United States to donate the bone marrow that saved Jonathan’s life.

• Jennifer Huntsberry, who was thirteen years old when she became pregnant. Although she knew she wasn’t prepared to parent her child, she also knew she couldn’t relinquish her right to see him again. She searched for an agency that provided open adoption. Her story gives us a glimpse into an adoption in which the birth family becomes extended family.

• Jim Rockwell, who was sixty years old when he set out to find his birth family. He discovered he was the youngest of fourteen children and found his seven living siblings, who had waited a lifetime for his return.

All of us tell and re-tell our personal stories to make and re-make meaning of our personal experience. The families in Sacred Connections invite the reader to participate in journeys that are both unique and universal—journeys that can enrich our understanding of our own family ties.

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About the Author: Dr. Mary Ann Koenig, a clinical psychologist, is co-director of Wirth Associates, a psychological practice in Exton, Pennsylvania. Dr. Koenig, herself an adoptee, has been assisting adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents for the past twenty years. She has written and lectured on the unique developmental issues that arise in foster and adoptive families. She lives in Birchrunville, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children.

Niki Berg is an award-winning portrait photographer and lecturer. Since 1982, her work has been exhibited, published, and reviewed throughout the United States. She is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship Award and the Catalogue Project Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has been a fellow at Yaddo and The MacDowell Artist Colonies. Niki is mother of two grown daughters, Jessica and Karina, and lives in New York City with her husband, Peter.

From the Publisher: The bestselling author of Damaged tells the true story of Donna, who came into foster care aged ten, having been abused, victimised and rejected by her family.

Donna had been in foster care with her two young brothers for three weeks when she is abruptly moved to Cathy’s. When Donna arrives she is silent, withdrawn and walks with her shoulders hunched forward and her head down. Donna is clearly a very haunted child and refuses to interact with Cathy’s children Adrian and Paula.

After patience and encouragement from Cathy, Donna slowly starts to talk and tells Cathy that she blames herself for her and her brothers being placed in care. The social services were aware that Donna and her brothers had been neglected by their alcoholic mother, but no one realised the extent of the abuse they were forced to suffer. The truth of the physical torment she was put through slowly emerges, and as Donna grows to trust Cathy she tells her how her mother used to make her wash herself with wire wool so that she could get rid of her skin colour as her mother was so ashamed that Donna was mixed race.

The psychological wounds caused by the bullying she received also start to resurface when Donna starts re-enacting the ways she was treated at home by hitting and bullying Paula, so much so that Cathy can’t let Donna out of her sight.

As the pressure begins to mount on Cathy to help this child, things start to get worse and Donna begins behaving in erratic ways, trashing her bedroom and being regularly abusive towards Cathy’s children. Cathy begins to wonder if she can find a way to help this child or if Donna’s scars run too deep.

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About the Author: Cathy Glass has been a foster carer for over 25 years, during which time she has looked after more than 100 children, of all ages and backgrounds. She has three teenage children of her own; one of whom was adopted after a long-term foster placement. The name Cathy Glass is a pseudonym.

Cathy has written 16 books, including bestselling memoirs Cut, Hidden and Mummy Told Me Not To Tell.

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By the Same Author: Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child (2006); Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten: How One Boy Overcame the Odds (2007); Cut: The True Story of an Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate to be Part of a Family (2008); I Miss Mummy: The True Story of a Frightened Young Girl Who is Desperate to Go Home (2009); The Night the Angels Came (2011); A Baby’s Cry (2012); Another Forgotten Child (2012); Please Don’t Take My Baby (2013); Will You Love Me?: The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (2013); Daddy’s Little Princess (2014); and Saving Danny (2015), among many others.

From the Publisher: Parent 2 Parent outlines a mentoring program piloted in the state of Montana. This booklet is a companion guide to the Parent 2 Parent video, together they are used to help educate those entering the program. Safe Passage was written for use by both the parents and caseworkers. Acting as a post-adoptive, post-placement support service, Parent 2 Parent pairs veteran foster or adoptive parents with novice foster or adoptive parents. Its purpose is to provide support, advice and a sounding board for the new families. Its objective is to stabilize the placement, to overcome isolation, engender hope and provide a safe passage for the child and family.

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About the Author: Rick Delaney maintains private practice offices in Colorado and Montana. His many years of practical, direct treatment with emotionally disturbed children includes a respected practice in counseling attachment-disordered foster children and their adoptive families. Rick is a consultant to the Casey Family Program, Lutheran Family Services, and to various county departments of social services. He is nationally recognized as an insightful, constructive and creative presenter, trainer and clinician.

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By the Same Author: Fostering Changes: Treating Attachment-Disordered Foster Children (1991, WJ Corbett); Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster and Adopted Children (with Frank R Kustal, Ed.D.) (1993, University of Southern Maine); The Long Journey Home (1994, Journey Press); The Healing Power of the Family: An Illustrated Overview of Life with the Disturbed Foster or Adopted Child (1997); Raising Cain: Caring for Troubled Youngsters/Repairing Our Troubled System (1998); The Permutations of Permanency: Making Sensitive Placement Decisions (1998); and Small Feats: Unsung Accomplishments and Everyday Heroics of Foster and Adoptive Parents (2003).

At 35 years old, Kelly and Paul Watts sold their home and quit their jobs to sail around the world, without any sailing experience. Two days after purchasing their forty-two-foot sloop, they got caught in a forty-knot gale off the coast of Cape Fear, NC. Their sails ripped; the engine overheated; the GPS broke; they suffered hypothermia and severe seasickness. And yet they persevered on their journey, discovering the playful sea lions of the Galapagos, the seductive dance of the Polynesian girls, and the primitive beat of Tuvaluan music, all while learning how to sail and repair their boat. They narrowly avoided a shark attack in Suwarrow, fled from suspected pirates off the coast of Ecuador, and hit a submerged container—the fear of all sailors—near Midway Island. What started as a search to find meaning to “life without children,“ only strengthened their desire to have a family. After fertility attempts failed in America and New Zealand, they unexpectedly adopted a two-month-old baby in Kiribati. And so began the adventure of raising a baby on a boat in the middle of the Pacific, battling Dengue Fever and an epidemic of e coli, almost losing their lives in a 60-knot westerly gale and navigating through the maze of international adoption paperwork. Told from Kelly’s conversational point of view, Sailing to Jessica will inspire anyone who is searching for meaning in their life to get up and find it.

From the Dust Jacket: From the day he was born till the day he died, bright-eyed Sandy climbed an uphill road. He had to “prove himself” every step of the way. Brain damage had handicapped his equilibrium, but it engendered an indomitable spirit.

His great passion as a child was to play “soldier” and when the day came that he donned an authentic uniform for his country, he started counting the days till he could see action in Viet Nam. Sandy never made it to the beach of Chu Lai of the village of Qui Nhon or the jungle of An Khe. While serving in Germany, he made a mistake and paid for it with his life.

In memory of their son and in fulfillment of his dream, the beloved western stars, Dale and Roy Rogers, volunteered to perform for the USO and boarded a giant 707 headed for Viet Nam. There they put on shows for military personnel, in planes and hospitals, in flat bed trucks, in mud and pouring rain. They talked with American GI’s. with chaplains, officers and doctors, If anyone at home yet wonders what the United States is doing in Viet Nam, Dale’s diary has the answer.

This is a unique story. It salutes a boy named Sandy, but more than that, it is a tribute to all the younger generation whose bravery and idealism in the face of handicaps, danger and death are the strength and hope of our country.

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Compiler’s Note: According to newspaper reports, John David (Sandy) Rogers died on October 31, 1965, in an Army hospital in Frankfurt, West Germany, at the age of 18 from aspirating vomitus. He was alleged to have fallen ill after engaging in a drinking contest, and the autopsy confirmed the presence of alcohol in his system at the time of his death. The Rogerses had adopted the Kentucky-born boy at the age of five through Hope Cottage in Dallas, Texas.

From the Dust Jacket: Salvador’s Children tells the extraordinary story of a North American woman who adopts an eight-year-old orphaned girl from El Salvador in 1984 and, by this action, becomes a witness to the impact of the Salvadoran civil war on one child—her child.

From the moment the narrator meets Maria in a Salvadoran orphanage, she is compelled by her terrified silences, silences that seem to reflect on a private level the gaps and absences in the official writing of the decade’s larger history. Through documentary research, through imagined conversations with the child’s birth mother, and—most poignantly—through Maria’s own stories as she begins to speak, the narrator attempts to reconstruct the reality and meaning of the child’s young life. What emerges is a portrait of the everyday life of a young girl growing up in an extended family of landless Salvadoran peasants. The reader and the narrator come to know Maria’s memories—of sleeping in a hammock, the birth of a sibling, carrying her father’s lunch to the sugarcane fields—and also the terror and violence that tore apart the child’s life and the lives of more than one million children in El Salvador during the 1980s. The narrator and her adopted daughter move from a five-day initial encounter in San Salvador—from orphanages through barrios, doctors’ offices, the American Embassy, and a luxury hotel—to the insularity of middle-class life in a North American city, a cross-cultural journey that intersects the polarities of North-South, brown-white, present and past, life and death.

Combining lyrical narrative, documentary material, and poetry, Salvador’s Children explores cross-cultural relationships, identity, and responsibility. Both intensely personal and political, this powerful account will move anyone who cares about the rights and survival of today’s children.

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About the Author: Lea Marenn lives with her daughter and teaches literature.

In 2001 I was working for the state at the department of human services when I met a child that would need me as much as my family and I needed her. This story is based on my personal journey through adopting a little girl, Sarah who has a smile that lights up a room. I talk about all the hoops that I needed to jump through in order to adopt Sarah in the first place as well as the battle I have gone through in getting Sarah the mental health treatment that she needs in a state where mental health care for children is hard to find. Sarah has cerebral palsy, she was born drug affected, has fetal alcohol syndrome, failure to thrive, along with extreme behavior problems and then she was diagnosed with Mitochondrial Diabetes as well as Mitochondrial Myopathy (muscle weakness), Encephalomyopathy (Brain and central nervous system disease), lactic acidosis (buildup of a cell waste product), and Stroke-like episodes (partial vison loss, or other neurological abnormalities) or MELAS as it is also known. I am hoping that reading about the journey that I have been on with a special needs child might in some way help others on their own journey even if it is to know that they are not alone.

From the Publisher: My name is Adam. I was trained to keep silent and still. As children around me played games—I watched. As they studied and learned—I colored pictures. I never knew my parents. I was told I had siblings, but I doubt they knew I existed. The Government became my parent as I bounced among foster homes. I figured this was a normal life. I was kept busy coloring pictures with crayons.

My physical needs were met but my soul ached for nourishment. At some point the normalcy I was born with began to ebb. My future was denied. I was figuratively chained and locked away from the world just as though I had been banished to a dungeon. The “retarded” label was placed upon me until I found the key to that dungeon—or more accurately, the key found me.

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About the Author: L. Smith is the father/daughter team of Les Smith and Loni Smith Schneider. They are often mistaken for each other on paper as Leslie is more often considered a girl’s name and Loni, or Lonnie, is more often considered a boy’s.

Les, the main author, was raised in a small farming community in Southern Idaho, the second of six children. He held degrees in Communications and Law, spoke several languages and was an attorney by trade. He served a 2-year religious mission in Africa. Upon his return home, he married his high school sweetheart and they had 10 children. He was an avid reader and a scholar with a quiet demeanor, a sly smile and a quick wit. Les has since passed away.

Loni, the co-author, was raised in a small suburban town in South Jersey, the fourth of ten children. She majored in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing, but also dabbled in music, business and politics. She married her best friend and North Jersey rival and they have 4 "Mary Poppins" children together (practically perfect in every way). She is very active in her community, volunteering in her children’s schools and with the PTA and working as a substitute teacher and as the school music teacher. She is a political activist for restoring our nation’s Constitution as the Founding Fathers intended and has served as a County and State Delegate. Loni also runs several web sites in her community, which focus on Politics, Education, Community and Food Buying Groups. She lives with her family in Utah.

Saving Adam was their first and last published book together. It won the publisher’s Critic’s Choice Award and was their #1-selling book the first month of its release.

From the Back and Inside Front Covers: It was a dark, cold winter’s evening when I carried little Danny to my car. He was petrified and clung to me in desperation. I held him close. He didn’t understand why he was being sent away from his mother who could no longer cope with his behaviour, and from his father who had rejected him for being different.

While Danny’s parents have everything they could wish for in material terms, they are unable to care for their only child. On a cold, dark evening, Danny finds a place in Cathy’s home where he can be himself, away from his parents’ impatience and frustration. Often in his own little world, six-year-old Danny struggles to communicate and takes comfort in his best friend and confidante George—his adorable pet rabbit.

Danny has tantrums and is obsessively meticulous, but he loves patterns—he sees them everywhere and creates them at every opportunity, in his play and also with his food. Cathy soon realises that patience is the key to looking after Danny, as well as her tried-and-tested strategies for managing children’s behaviour. With his father rejecting him and his mother unable to cope, it becomes increasingly likely that little Danny might never return home and could stay with Cathy permanently.

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About the Author: Cathy Glass, who writes under a pseudonym, has been a foster carer for more than twenty-five years. She has three children.

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By the Same Author: Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child (2006); Hidden: Betrayed, Exploited and Forgotten: How One Boy Overcame the Odds (2007); Cut: The True Story of an Abandoned, Abused Little Girl Who Was Desperate to be Part of a Family (2008); I Miss Mummy: The True Story of a Frightened Young Girl Who is Desperate to Go Home (2009); Saddest Girl in the World: The True Story of a Neglected and Isolated Little Girl Who Just Wanted to Be Loved (2009); The Night the Angels Came (2011); A Baby’s Cry (2012); Another Forgotten Child (2012); Please Don’t Take My Baby (2013); Will You Love Me?: The Story of My Adopted Daughter Lucy (2013); and Daddy’s Little Princess (2014), among many others.

From the Back Cover: Covered with third- and fourth-degree burns over 70 percent of his body, the tiny baby boy shrieked in agony in a cold village field on the outskirts of Langfang, China. Horrified villagers gathered around him, then walked away, But one older man stayed behind, gathered the child in his arms and went for help. His compassion and courage sparked a momentous chain of events: The baby left to die would bring together people from different countries, faiths and social backgrounds in the successful battle to save his life and secure his future.

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About the Author: Lisa Misraje Bentley is the co-founder with her husband, John, of Harmony Outreach, an orphanage and outreach to orphans in China. She is also an author, speaker, and mother of six children, including two adopted children. Lisa and her family live near Beijing, China.

Sandy and Butch Longmore have taken care of more than 150 children in their 39 year marriage. They have four children of their own and have adopted six more. From the day Butch picked up little AJ in a blizzard, shepherding him to their home where he found love, safety and security, to the many poignant and funny moments with other children. Readers will find a story that is touching, amusing, frightening, and sad all at once. This is a must-read manual for those considering becoming foster parents, current foster parents and caseworkers, alike. Longmore does not mince words about what is wrong and also, what is right about the foster care system.

From the Dust Jacket: Say Goodnight, Gracie! is a nostalgic look at one of American’s favorite television shows: “The Burns & Allen Show.” Beginning with George Burns and Gracie Allen’s first meeting in 1922 backstage, after one of George’s vaudeville acts, Say Goodnight, Gracie! follows the careers of two of the best-loved comedians of all time: the beginning of their own vaudeville act together; the radio show that launched them both as stars; and the wildly popular television show that put them into the homes of millions.

This book is a comprehensive “backstage look” at the making of this historic TV show—how the writers contrived that delicious misinterpretation of Gracie’s world; the real Gracie and George vs. the characters they play; and an early look at broadcast television—kinescopes, then the coaxial cable—and loaded with George’s comedic wisdom and dialog from the series!

Tongues often speak without the brain’s permission, leaving us longing for a conversational eraser to correct our mistake. Say What?! Blurts that Hurt blends unique relationship preserving advice with a touch of humor for dealing with many of today’s most sensitive and challenging conversations. Imagine someone asking, “Who’s fault is it you can’t have kids?” to a couple struggling with infertility, or adoptive parents being asked, “Who’s the real mother?” Imagine sharing with family and friends the diagnosis of cancer, only to have one of the first things to be said, “You are one of the lucky ones. There are a lot of people much worse off than you,” Through real-life conversational examples, discussion points, practical advice, and model conversations, Say What?! proposes relationship-preserving alternatives to well-meaning but inappropriate blurts that hurt across a wide spectrum of today’s most challenging conversational situations. Chapter themes include: Pregnancy, Cancer Diagnosis, Working Mothers, Death of a Child, Infertility, Adoption, Miscarriage, Breastfeeding, Stay-at-Home Dads, and five other chapters as well as a chapter on practical advice for being supportive in times of crisis and loss. Each chapter is complimented with a themed illustration, dialogue specific reflection points, topic related discussions and helpful suggestions, and model conversational examples, all designed to help frame an understanding and path the reader can follow to more appropriately prepare for and communicate during challenging conversational situations.

In today’s world, more children are being raised outside of their biological family than ever before. The blended family, the substitute parent, and relative care are now the norm, not the exception. Among the toughest roles in the world is serving as a substitute parent—whether for a foster child, a step child, your own grandchildren, or any other child who needs you. And, it can be among the most rewarding things you will ever do. Like with any other parenting role, there is no instruction book that comes with the child. These children, often through no fault of their own, are hurting—from neglect, from abuse, from a sense of loss; the list can be complex and endless. At the stage in their lives when you step in to help, they are screaming butterflies—beautiful on the outside but hurting on the inside. This book will help you decide if you are right for this challenging role, how to handle the first days as a substitute parent, how to deal with attitude and behavior challenges, how to communicate so the child understands, how to effectively use discipline, and many other challenges you will encounter as a substitute parent.

An insightful and clearly written work on adoption. Contributors are from varied backgrounds—birth parents, adoptees, adoptive parents and social workers. They look at the key issues for today’s adoption practice:
• What access to information should there be?
• What contact?
• Why was the process so secret?
• What effect has openness had?
• What are the lessons for IVF families?
IVF raises the same issues of “where did I come from” and “what happened to my child” as adoption—and IVF programmes are run on the basis of no contact between IVF child and natural parent. Accordingly adoption “experts” anticipate the same problems with IVF children as with adoption and the last two chapters of the book deal with IVF.

Searching For Our Angel is the moving story of one couple’s inter-country adoption journey. Liz and Darryn were encouraged to keep a journal when they began the adoption process, to record their thoughts and feelings with their adopted child when he joined their family. Liz writes powerfully about the complicated and emotional process of adopting a child through the inter-country program. In the book she speaks about her desperation of wanting a child, going through IVF and egg donation by her sister, to dealing with government bureaucracy which she says is overworked, undervalued and dispassionate. She writes about the heartache and pure determination that resulted in the meeting with her new son, Samuel, in a Thai orphanage, and their life together when they came back to Australia.

From the Back Cover: Searching to Be Found is a practical, supportive book for adoptive parents, carers, teachers and other professionals who live and work with families and children whose happiness and behaviours are affected by attention difficulties and hyperactivity. The examples of real children and adults in everyday situations translate research findings into meaningful strategies for helping families, teachers and children to find more successful means of managing difficult behaviours and emotions.

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About the Author: Randy Lee Comfort graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and received a Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked for over thirty-five years in the fields of family counselling, learning disorders, and adoption and fostering. Dr. Comfort is the mother of both biological and adopted children.

After living, working, and bringing up her children in the USA, Dr. Comfort moved to Bristol, in the UK, where, in 1998, she opened Our Place: a Centre for Families who Foster and Adopt. In addition to running Our Place, she continues to lecture internationally on the topics of learning disorders and adoption/fostering, and pursues her career in writing about and counselling these children and their families.

Dr. Comfort is the author of The Unconventional Child; Teaching the Unconventional Child; The Child Care Catalog; numerous journal articles; and chapters in edited books. Since the late 1980s, she has taught teachers and social workers about attention deficit disorders, adoption/fostering issues, and social dysfunctions as a part of her teaching in special needs education classes.

From the Back Cover: In a juvenile courtroom, the judge reprimanded the caseworkers, the attorneys, and CASA for responding to a no-fault dependency case as an abuse case, “There is nobody bad here!”

There were no criminals. There was no crime. Then why were we sitting in the accused chairs?

As an infant, Daniel entered the foster care system as a result of severe neglect, which manifested in violence and aggression later in his childhood.

Desperate to get their adoptive son, Daniel, into a residential treatment center and keep their other children safe, the state of Illinois left Jim and Toni Hoy with two options. If they brought their son home from the psychiatric hospital for the 11th time in 2 years, the Department of Children and Family Services threatened to charge them with child endangerment for failure to protect their other children. Mental health professionals recommended abandoning him at the hospital after the state denied all viable sources of funding for his treatment. Making that choice would trigger a child abuse investigation and subsequent neglect charges.

Daniel re-entered the foster care system for no other reason than he was mentally ill.

A year later, Daniel’s mother discovered that his treatment was covered by a funding source that he was awarded as part of his special needs adoption. The EPSDT provision of Medicaid. How could they get the state government to understand the federal law and re-gain custody of their son?

Second Time Foster Child is the story of parents who never gave up on their son, despite being prosecuted and persecuted in exchange for his medically necessary treatment.

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About the Author: Toni Hoy, a long time foster-adoptive parent, lives in the Chicago area, and makes a career as a licensed insurance agent. In 2011, Safeco Insurance selected her as the “Community Hero” and her employer, Hill and Stone Insurance Agency, Inc. presented the monetary award to NAMI on her behalf. As a leading child mental health advocate, she has made presentations before state departments and legislators in Illinois and Nebraska. She was interviewed on Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT radio program, “Healthwriter” as well as a WBEZ radio program called “Out of the Shadows” in Chicago. As a free-lance writer, she has authored articles for the Family Defense Center newsletter and Rise Magazine. She chairs the Children’s Advocacy Committee for NAMI Barrington Area affiliate, where she also serves on the Board of Directors. In addition, she authors a regular column for the NAMI Barrington Area newsletter called “In the Trench” and facilitates a family support group for parents and children. She earned a B.A. in Communications from Thomas Edison State College, New Jersey, and was a recipient of the Arnold Fletcher Award for academic excellence. She and her husband, Jim, of 25 years have two biological children, two adoptive children, a daughter-in-law, and one foster son.

From the Dust Jacket: While books about adoption proliferate, none of them addresses the subject of open and interracial adoption like Jana Wolff’s personal and frank account does in Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother. Often irreverent, always insightful, surprisingly funny, and stunningly honest, Secret Thoughts tells it like it is: How it feels for a woman to look nothing like her child and to know the woman who does.

Organized more or less chronologically, the book takes the reader an an emotionally rewarding journey through the adoption process and answers tough questions such as:

~ What if I don’t like the kid I get?

~ How do I really feel about the mother of my child?

~ Will my child ever feel like “mine”?

~ Why am I so sad when I’m supposed to be so happy?

~ Will she want him back?

~ What if I want to return him?

~ Are people staring at us, or am I paranoid?

~ What would my biological child have been like?

~ Am I too white for a kid this black?

The process of adopting a child takes more courage than you think you have, offers more self-knowledge than you think you want, and reassembles your characteristics into someone familiar, but changed. Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother is about adopting a baby: but even more, it’s about becoming a mother, and more of a person.

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About the Author: Jana Wolff is a professional writer based in Honolulu. In 1985, Jana met and married her dearest friend, Howard Wolff. Since then, they have dealt with three moves, years of infertility treatments, two miscarriages, several near adoptions, and one successfully completed, open, transracial adoption.

From the Publisher: Secrets, large and small, are a fact of human life. This book explores the impact of keeping secrets and the power of truth.

Secrets can damage our sense of self and our relationships. Even so, Jane Isay has found, people survive learning the most disturbing facts that have been hidden from them. And secret keepers are relieved when they finally reveal themselves—even the things they are ashamed of—to the people they care about. Much depends, Isay writes, on the way of telling and the way of hearing. Jane Isay was both a secret finder and a secret keeper. After fifteen years of marriage her husband admitted he was gay, but together they decided to keep it a secret for the sake of their two sons.

Building on her personal experience, sixty intimate interviews, and extensive research into the psychology of secrets, Isay shows how the pain of secrets can be lightened by full disclosure, genuine apology, and time. Sometimes the truth sunders relationships, but often it saves them. Powered by detailed stories and Isay’s compassionate analysis, Secrets and Lies reveals how universal secrets are in families. The big ones—affairs, homosexuality, parentage, suicide, abuse, hidden siblings—can be ruinous at first, but the effects need not last forever, and Isay shows us what makes the difference. With specific guidelines for those who keep secrets and those who find them out, Isay’s book reveals the art of surviving a secret.

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About the Author: Jane Isay is the author of two previous books, Waling on Eggshells, about parents and their adult children, and Mom Still Likes You Best, about adult siblings. As an editor for more than forty years, she discovered Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, commissioned Patricia T. O’Conner’s best-selling Woe Is I and Rachel Simmons’s Odd Girl Out, and edited such nonfiction classics as Praying for Sheetrock and Friday Night Lights. She lives in New York City.

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Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, Part I, Section 1: The Birth Bombshell: When a significant secret is revealed, only the whole truth will restore trust (pp. 25-51).

Al Garrotto and his wife are veterans of two international adoptions. In this book, he outlines the complete process prospective adoptive parents must go through to achieve their goal of adopting a foreign-born child. He also shares his personal reflections on the sometimes tedious adoption process and the joys and challenges of parenting an adopted child. His story has inspired adoptive parents for over a decade.

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About the Author: Al Garrotto is a professional freelance writer. His novel, Finding Isabella, which deals with issues surrounding international adoption, will be published in late 1999 by Genesis Press’s Tango 2 imprint. As a parent volunteer, he conducted Adoption Education Sessions for the adoption agency through which he and his wife adopted their two daughters, Monica and Cristina.

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By the Same Author: Finding Isabella (2000, Genesis Press); Circles of Stone (2003, Hilliard & Harris Publishers); The Wisdom of Les Miserables: Lessons From the Heart of Jean Valjean (2008, Lulu Press); and Down a Narrow Alley (2010, Lulu Press), among others.