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On this page you will find comments from readers whose lives have been touched by Joe's book.

An adoptive mother from the U.K:

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 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 of knowing the inner pain their child is suffering," and can neither see nor understand it, let alone help in the recovery process, which many of us 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 proselytising 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 POSITVE, BRINGING A WEALTH OF HEALING POSSIBILITES INTO THE RANGE OF ALL.