"This book is a 'must
read'
for everyone touched
by
adoption."
Reviews
"Joe Soll has probably worked with adoptees and first
parents more than anyone else on the planet. His
approach has always involved empathy, intuition and
introspection, without which dialogue runs dry. Few
know the depth of the adoptee and first parent
experience as well as Joe Soll, especially the dark
side, where loss and loneliness reside.
Combining his
experience, or perhaps we should say wisdom, with
current therapeutic approaches, Joe creates an
environment where growth can occur. Read his work,
try it out, see how it works for you." -
Robert Andersen, M.D., psychiatrist,
author of Second
Choice: Growing Up Adopted and A Bridge Less Travelled:
Twice Visited
Review
by Jane Jeong Trenka, April 29, 2010
(Journal of Korean Adoption Studies)
Some books are so good that
you can even forgive your friend for “borrowing” your
copy and never giving it back. Adoption Healing … a
path to recovery by Joe Soll is one such book.
Adoption Healing, a self-help book, has been passed
around among the adult internationally adopted Koreans
who have returned to South Korea, and who indeed rely
on self-help while living in a country where gaining
access to services in their own languages is
difficult.
This book is the gift that “lifers”, Korean adoptees
who have returned to Korea, give to one another after
the initial fun of Seoul wears off and we are left
with the hangover of too many late nights in Seoul’s
student and foreigner districts, too many ruined
intimate relationships or none at all, limited
employment opportunities, and the mix of hope and
despair that comes from living in a country where we
are no longer recognizable to Koreans as Korean.
Our foreign mannerisms, shattered tongues, and
imagined histories have been known to elicit pity and
shame from South Koreans. How we are portrayed and
perceived, and how we want to be portrayed and
perceived, therefore, becomes a heated topic of
conversation. How must we appear in order to get what
we need — whether recognition from the South Korean
government, acceptance in society, or more personally
fulfilling reunions? Should we try to appear
“successful” and “well-adjusted” or even “angry and
ungrateful”?
These kinds of one-sided false selves have their roots
in the adoptee’s understandable fear of abandonment,
Soll tells us as he gently guides us into living more
“authentic” lives. He explains that adoptees’ inner
worlds are shaped by mixed messages that force them
“to choose between the socially unacceptable reality
they experience and a distorted, but socially
sanctioned, interpretation of their reality as
determined by others.” “This book,” he writes, “is
about the realities of adoption and the realities of
the inner world of the adopted person.”
Hope for Individual Change
Soll — a licensed social worker, psychotherapist, and
American domestic adoptee — simply and concretely
describes the adoptee’s inner world in 26 concise
chapters. In each chapter, he gives examples of
“Myths” and “Facts” about adoption, a summary of the
information in the chapter, an exercise to write or do
mentally, and a grounding “Experience of the Moment”
designed to be read after the exercise. Always with
the whole “triad” of adoptee, natural parents, and
adoptive parents in mind, Soll ends the book with
appendices that include lists of “What Adoptees Do Not
Wish to Hear” and “What Natural Parents Do Not Wish to
Hear,” and “What Adoptive Parents Do Not Wish to
Hear.”
Readers of Nancy Newton Verrier’s The Primal Wound:
Understanding the Adopted Child will be familiar with
some of Soll’s fundamental beliefs about adoption,
beginning with, “The mother-child relationship is
sacred and the separation of the mother and child is a
tragedy for both.” Soll considers thus “primal wound”
to be the first trauma. He considers the second trauma
to be the verbal acknowledgment to the adoptee that
she is adopted. (It’s likely that many transracially
and internationally placed adoptees, older adoptees,
and children adopted into families where there were
older siblings present, did not need to be told by
their adoptive parents that they were adopted.) He
considers “fracturing” to be the third trauma.
Fracturing is an acronym for the simultaneous feelings
that the adopted child is surrounded by: Frustration,
Rage, Anxiety, Confusion, Terror, Unrest, Regret,
Inhuman, Neglected, Grief.
Fracturing occurs at the “age of cognition,” usually
around six to eight years old. At that time, adoptees
are able to start thinking about their own adoptions.
They do so in the face of conflicting messages, for
instance, “Happy birthday! / This is the day you were
surrendered.” Faced with unresolvable messages that
cannot be integrated into her reality, the adopted
child will resort to her own logic about her
abandonment. If not validated, the child represses
horribly painful emotions, after which she is actually
unaware of such emotions and suffers a “psychological
death.”
“It is much healthier to deal with truth,” writes
Soll, and indeed he puts every painful card out on the
table: “It’s normal for adoptees to be in crisis
during adolescence.” Adoptees, because of not knowing
their origins, finds it difficult to imagine
themselves getting older. They have more difficulty
maintaining healthy intimate relationships. They have
a harder time than non-adopted people finding careers
that suit them. “Many people who appear happy are just
(unconsciously) hiding pain.” He likens the material
in his book to an emotional root canal – painful, but
necessary.
“I am not happy about what I have written here, but it
needed to be written” writes Soll, but, “it needs to
be recognized as knowledge that can help heal those
already hurt and help prevent some of the hurt for
those who may become involved in or impacted by
adoption.”
As a self-help book, Soll’s description of adoptees’
inner worlds, while not exactly feel-good material,
gives adoptees and the people who care about them a
lot to consider and reflect upon. I was personally
surprised by the power of Soll’s simple affirmations
and visualization exercises. Like another reader, I
found them to be a little weird at first, but I soon
realized that they are very worthwhile. One exercise I
particularly liked is this:
Light a candle and then let the
flame represent the burning desire to have something
that doesn’t exist anymore, like wanting to go back
and this time be raised by your natural mother. When
you are ready to stop wanting something that is
impossible to happen, blow out the flame that holds
you back from living your life, that burns you with a
desire for the impossible.
Hope for Systemic Change
The book offers help like this on an individual level,
and also suggests systemic changes in the practice of
adoption. To start with, all members of the “triad”
suffer huge losses — whether infertility, the loss of
a child, or the loss of the mother — and these losses
should be truthfully addressed instead of whitewashed
with either platitudes (“You were chosen.”) or
completely denied (“Get over it.”). As far as specific
recommendations on policy, Soll includes the
following:
1. Every effort should be made to keep children with
their birth families, followed by the extended family.
2. All adoptions should be “open,” meaning regular
visits should be held with the natural mother
throughout childhood and adolescence, even if the
visits have to be supervised.
3. Children should keep their names and heritage.
4. Adoptees should have periodic psychological
development “checkups.”
In short, Soll is a big fan of speaking the truth and
dealing with reality. He is completely in the camp of
open records. “A reunion should preferably take place
before puberty,” writes Soll, saying that a reunion
between the ages of six and eight can help prevent the
“fracture” and even bring adopted children closer to
their adoptive parents. He sees closed records as a
symptom of the lack of respect for adoptees, natural
parents, and adoptive parents.
Implications for International Adoption
Soll’s work seems to be mainly addressed to American
domestic adoptees, but it also has huge implications
for the system of international adoption, considering
that many adoptive parents choose international
adoption over domestic adoption for the very reason
that they do not want to have contact with a natural
mother. Natural mothers of international adoptees are
at the time of this writing almost hopelessly
separated from their children by geographic distance
and hidden paperwork. If adoption agencies took Soll’s
advice to heart — keeping adoption records open and
reuniting adoptees with their natural mothers for
regular visits in childhood, for the benefit of the
child — would there be so many international
adoptions?
What Soll proposes to be necessary for a healthy
adoption culture would make international adoption
even more dreadfully expensive and inconvenient for
adoptive parents. If all members of the triad were
guaranteed contact, agencies would be forced to give
accurate social histories of children. Honesty would
be enforced. Perpetrators would be caught. Governments
would have to freely give out visas to non-white
people, often impoverished, from non-Western countries
or countries of the global south. People would
have to see natural mothers as real people — not
whores or saintly human gift-givers. Natural parents
might get to speak, and the literature on
international adoption would have to include their
voices. Adoption agencies would have to find a way to
help bridge differences of language and culture in
ways that are personally meaningful, instead of
encouraging adoptees to relate to their cultures of
origin as tourists and consumers.
The financial cost for international adoption agencies
to heed Soll’s advice is incredibly high and may even
be destructive to the system of mass international
adoption itself. But the human cost of not heeding his
advice is even higher. It is simply the reality of
today, reflected in the high rates of suicide,
incarceration, and mental illness amongst adoptees, as
well as “disrupted” adoptions.
Additional Challenges for International and
Transracial Adoptees
Soll, however, does not specifically address the
additional challenges that internationally and
transracially adopted people face, including
racialized violence in their adoptive countries and
the language barrier if they are reunited. Many
internationally adopted people, who as of now have
little hope of reunion with their natural families,
may be reunited instead with their original countries
and culture. (The “mother country” is routinely
proffered to adopted Koreans as a substitute for the
actual mother.)
Yet we also need a way to cope with feelings of
abandonment by entire countries, governments, and
cultures. Extending Soll’s ideas about individual
reunions between mother and child to social groups,
it’s possible to guess that what is behind the drive
by some adoptee groups to represent themselves as
purely “Successful!” to the Korean public is actually
the fear of a second abandonment — not by a mother —
but a country. If they could see who we really are, in
all our complexity, would they still love us?
In the midst of so many internationally and
transracially adopted people of color checking the
“white” box on U.S. demographic forms — lying to
themselves and creating a false self for the world to
see — adoption agencies should seriously consider
whether they are helping adoptees lead “authentic
lives.” When the adoptee is denied the opportunity to
lead an authentic life because of enforced secrecy and
lies, it impoverishes not only the adoptee, but also
the natural mother and the adoptive parents.
Reality and Recovery
In The Will to Change, bell hooks summed up why people
impacted by adoption need to heed Joe Soll’s advice
— no matter how uncomfortable, inconvenient, or
expensive: “Anyone who has a false self must be
dishonest. People who learn to lie to themselves and
others cannot love because they are crippled in their
capacity to tell the truth and therefore unable to
trust.”
Adoptees’ lives, emotional health, and even our
ability to love our parents are entangled with the
very policies and conditions that created us. What
have those conditions been? Overwhelmingly, those
conditions have been filled with lies – our own lies,
family lies, agency lies, government lies.
For those adoptees working to make positive changes in
these very adoption policies that shaped our lives, it
is essential to tell the truth, both personally and
politically, to ourselves and to our loved ones.
For all adoptees, it is important to acknowledge our
complex realities so we can live in a joyful way, so
that we can make conscious decisions and, as Soll
says, fully experience the world, not just exist in
it. Joe Soll offers us paths that we may explore on
our journey toward healing, health, recovery, and
love.
This is an important book for adoptees, adoptees’
partners and close friends, natural parents, and
adoptive parents. Soll’s straightforward approach and
clear organization makes it possible to do the
emotional work without being burdened by a text that
is too long or laden with jargon. Parts not of
interest can be easily skipped over and returned to
later. An added bonus of this book is that the writing
is simple enough to be understood by people whose
speak English as a foreign language.
Although it has been nine years since it was first
published, Adoption Healing deserves continued and
widespread recognition. After all, as librarians say,
“Every book is a new book until you have read it.” May
you enjoy your copy, and pass it on.
"Adoption
Healing" presents a clear, comprehensive,
and theoretically consistent approach to
address the issue of healing in
adoption... this book should be required
reading by anyone serious about attempting
to resolve emotional conflicts in
adoption.
- Robert Andersen, M.D. and
Rhonda Tucker, authors of "The Bridge
Less Traveled."
This comprehensive and
thoughtful book, offers a positive
approach to help members of the adoption
triad heal lifelong wounds. It is a
welcome addition to the growing library
written by experienced individuals who
occupy both personal and professional
roles in this world.
- Annette Baran, LCSW,
co-author of "The Adoption Triangle and
Lethal Secrets."
As an author, teacher, and
therapist, Joe Soll has brought the
essence of adoption, its inherent pain
to pen. His words offer counsel for the
tragic separation that has occurred in
the sacred union of mother and child.
- Jane Guttman, DC, author
of "The Gift Wrapped in Sorrow."
In his gentle way, and with
the expertise from years of leading
support groups, Joe Soll teaches us how
to face our deepest and most painful
feelings - and survive... Joe's caring
heart is with us every step of the way.
- Carol Schaefer, author of
"The Other Mother."
"This is the
best adoption book I have read in a
long time, and I can recommend it
wholeheartedly to all readers of this
Journal. I can do this because the
author himself ~ gives every hurting
reader who might find it too much at
any point, most caring and sensible
advice as to how, when and whether to
proceed with it. Yes, it is a book
that confronts, but it also greatly
encourages. It is a book about dark
tunnels and demons that haunt, but it
is also about coming out on the other
side having faced the worst that
fantasies and fears can do, and
replacing them with realities.
It
is written by a social
worker/therapist who was himself
adopted, and he writes to all parts of
the 'adoption triad' (particularly
relinquishing birth mothers) as well
as to the professionals. He has 'been
there', both himself and in all he has
heard over many years from his child
and adult clients, and from the
support groups and searching agencies
he works with.
His
basic thesis is that losing your birth
mother by being placed for adoption
means pain, pain and more pain,
not just for the child but for both
their families too. There is then a
corresponding need for validation,
validation and more validation
of this pain and its effects, by the
adults to the child. Linked to both of
those needs (and this is where the
healing in the title comes in), is openness,
honesty and reality, rather than
any sort of continuing denial of
feelings or facts around adoption. He
also advocates as much real-life
contact as possible between child and
both his families throughout
childhood, as in divorce situations.
I
found it refreshingly real to have it
again affirmed that adoption of itself
is not the solution to anyone's pain,
least of all the child's, and is only
potentially the beginning of the
healing process. Nancy Verrier speaks
loud and clear through much of what
Joe Soll has to say, which to my mind
further validates both books. I could
imagine that for those who haven't yet
braved "The Primal Wound” itself, this
book might be a less harrowing and
easier to assimilate introduction to
the realities of loss and pain in
adoption.
Reunions,
too, cause both pain and dynamic
regression. "This is a good thing ",
says Soll, "not a bad one. Reunion
brings the adoptee back to the initial
trauma, and revisiting the trauma is
the only way to heal. " Soll strongly
makes the point throughout, that
however unpleasant or difficult
reality turns out to be, it is
enormously to be preferred than an
aching void of unknowingness. It is,
he claims, easier to live at peace
with reality eventually, than with
conflicting and confusing fantasies
that only fragment and torment one in
their grip. Yes, knowing two mothers
can be confusing, "but not half as
much as knowing one and fantasizing
about the other ". Soll emphasizes
that searching for birth parents is
unlikely to be any reflection on what
was offered by adopters, but a
necessary part of the adoptee
completing the whole and working
towards the formation of the
'authentic self and identity.
The
author writes simply but persuasively,
in short sentences with frequent
repeats of key points. Some key points
and quotes are in display boxes,
making it much easier to take in what
each chapter is about. The book is
broadly chronological, and each
chapter lists the frequently found
myths and then the realities commonly
encountered at each life stage of the
adopted person. The developmental
tasks of @Y childhood are particularly
well covered, with no room for doubt
as to the massive additional work-load
carried by the adopted child in
relating, in both fantasy and reality,
to two sets of parents. I was struck
by the suggestion that 'ghost parents'
can give rise, in an adopted child
without the reality of birth parent
contact, to the same sort of disabling
'phantom pain' experienced after
amputation of a limb.
This
is a book brim-full of practical
suggestions to the hurting person,
child or adult, such as
journal-keeping and pillow-punching,
and dialoguing with one's 'inner
child', if not with one's therapist or
support group as well, while reading
it and experiencing each new wave of
emotion. He clearly regards both
therapist and support group as
essential outside supports, which may
not initially strike all readers on
this side of the Atlantic positively.
And anyway, we might say, chance would
be a fine thing over here. His answer
would doubtless be earlier access to
specialist professionals, long before
adolescence might be seen as masking
the real issues. And there are many
helpful comments on why he feels that
the ages of six to eight offer the
best 'window of opportunity' for
therapeutic intervention for adopted
children. This is the 'age of
cognition', after which there is
(without help) greater risk of the ”fracture
of the personality ...and descent
into belief in one's unlovability",
There are also many helpful comments
about healing through anger management
and channeling (recycling toxic
waste), through finding the right
vocabulary for pre-verbal experiences,
and through grief and mourning. He
also has helpful comments on panic
attacks, the inner child and
visualization techniques, affirmations
and the giving of respect (by society
and by one's self).
This
book is particularly good on the
schooling, employment, and
relationship difficulties adopted
children and young people so often
face. Until there has been some degree
of healing, Soll maintains, none of
these areas can go forward smoothly or
positively, as so many of us know only
too well. But the difference with this
book, is the emphasis he then puts on
to what can actually be done about it.
I
think that just about everyone with
any interest in adoption could not
fail to have their eyes wider opened
by this book, apart from any who might
still be determined to view adoption
itself in a 'happy-ever-after' golden
glow that wipes away any tears in an
instant. I was struck by the value
this book could have for several
groups:-
a)
Some of our older and more articulate
teenagers, already grappling with so
many of the issues raised, and perhaps
facing parenthood themselves.
b)
It could be a very helpful starting
point for many trying to think through
the pros and cons of searching and
tracing their birth mother, and
whether this is best done sooner
rather than later, alone or with
support, and with or without adoptive
parents' knowledge (his preference
would be for sooner, slowly and with
support, and with adoptive parents).
c)
It could also be of great practical
help to many professionals and
therapists without much specific
experience of adoption and
pre-adoption issues, and who could
therefore be mis-led by apparent
denials of pain or difficulties.
d)
Teachers and learning support staff,
who do not always appreciate the
massive 'hidden agenda the adopted
child has to work through before he is
emotionally available to learn.
e)
Adoptive families going through
challenging phases with children they
feel do not accept their parenting.
f)
Health and Social Services managers
and policy makers who hold the purse
strings for post-adoption support and
therapy.
There
is a particular issue around 'telling'
a child he was adopted, that Joe Soll
emphasises. He stresses that this
should be in no way an isolated
instance, something too terrible ever
to mention again. He urges adoptive
parents to create a climate of free
speech, both verbal and non-verbal,
that enables the child to keep raising
issues and hurts and fears around his
pre-adoption life and the people that
were in it, throughout his childhood
and on into adulthood. Ongoing talking
about adoption and why it was ever
necessary are, he maintains,
enormously more important than the
initial one-off disclosure, and is in
itself a crucial part of the healing
process. Old hat, you might think, but
Soll makes the point that where for
whatever reason there is not that open
communication within the family, there
is by definition the need for
professional help from outside it
There
is a final comment I might make, about
his references to adoptive parents. I
do feel there are one or two rather
sweeping statements in this book about
us in general, that do not quite fit
with the idea of equal partnership
between all parties in adoption, and
make one wonder what era he is talking
about. For instance, there is quite a
bit about our own assumed 'unresolved
infertility issues' clouding our
abilities to focus on our children' s
needs. And, more worryingly, there is
even the suggestion that adoptive
parents have "no way ofknowing the
inner pain their child i.'}
suffering", and can neither see nor
understand it, let alone help in the
recovery process, which many ofus
would take issue with. Nor does he
specifically mention any other of the
traumas that most of today's adopted
children have experienced on top of
that 'primal wound', but in talking of
all adoptees as 'survivors' he is
presumably applying the same
principles to their healing and
recovery from these other traumas too.
But
even after those niggles, this book
leaves you in up-beat and
prose\ytising mode. Having faced in
these chapters the depths and
disasters he describes, I am left with
an urge to tell others of it and of
the benefits it could have for so many
of us and our children, and their'
other mothers' .It is at the same time
profoundly deep and real, and also
reassuringly pragmatic and positive,
bringing a wealth of healing
possibilities into the range of all."