A Pioneer for Adoptee Rights
With Gratitude to Lorraine Dusky
Author and journalist, Lorraine Dusky, a respected pioneer for adoptee rights recently shared her historic NY Times opinion piece on social media.
(sorry for my rather inept copy and paste!)
Hole in My Heart Lorraine Dusky Bio AUTHOR and ADOPTION-REFORM ADVOCATE A journalist and prolific book author, Lorraine Dusky discovered a community of like-minded people—adoptees searching for their birth parents and natural parents searching for their lost children. As she listened to their stories and reflected on her own, she became a voice for adoption reform. In Hole in My Heart, she recounts her personal journey and provides a comprehensive review of the research on identity, DNA, and adoption practice.
I Must Have Wandered Travel with the author on her quest for identity in her compelling collage hybrid memoir. In a wealth of creative non-fiction prose, archival letters, articles, and photos, she portrays an abandoned newborn girl adopted by an Air Force couple in post-World War II South Carolina. The author has rendered this tangle of loss and privilege in deeply personal, lyrical language. 2nd Ed features an expanded image gallery in the ebook, bibliography, and resources.
Lorraine Dusky’s editorial review of my memoir, "I Must Have Wandered...a deeply heartfelt memoir about her adoption journey ... a road map to finding your family, with or without the help of the state where you were born. Highly detailed, it is full of letters that sometimes hide the deep emotion behind them, and sometimes they spill out onto the page. It gives testament to never giving up, and even if what you find is not so pretty, it is still yours: "The euphoria of our fall reunion rose like a phoenix from years of pain and loss." -- Lorraine Dusky, Author, Hole In My Heart, Love and Loss in the Fault Lines of Adoption; Founding Member, with Florence Fisher, of Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA); Journalist and Blogger at First Mother Forum
When comparing the “rights” of those involved, a lot of why’s. Why this, why that. Who grants rights anyway and are they right in their assignments?
Strange. I was not adopted but always felt as if I were. Being the first born, I guess I didn’t have a right to motherly affection as that was needed for my siblings. Not sure they got any either.
Whether adopted, orphaned—essentially orphaned with my father’s death at age eight—or growing up in a healthy, well-adjusted……..wait. Those type of families are only myths for those living in fantasyland.