Found Book Tour Discussion

I participated in the Found Book Tour.  I read Found by Jennifer Lauck along with other adoption bloggers and submitted several discussion questions.  I was given a list of discussion questions of which I picked three to answer here.  Others have been posting their own answers to these and other questions.  I'd love to hear what you have to say down in the comments section!

As someone who does not have living children, I felt a little dissed by the author's assertions that being a mother brings clarity that is otherwise impossible to have. Did others read this the same way? Do you agree? Disagree?

I do not have children either; however, I did not feel dissed in the least by those assertions.  I’m an adoptee who was separated from her mother immediately after birth.  My mother did not hold me.  She did not even see me.  Despite the nurses encouraging her to hold me, she refused and asked that I be taken away for fear she would change her mind about giving me up.  I know these things from her.  As an adoptee who did not know where she came from until two years ago, I can attest to feeling lost and alone.  I had a feeling like I just emerged in this world.  I was not “born” in my eyes.  I used to call myself a stork baby, someone who was just dropped on my parents’ doorstep at two months old.  I have nothing, no pictures, no stories, nothing, from the time before my life with them.  It is from this perspective that I understood that as an adoptee without children, I know nothing of that bond.  I suspect that should I have children someday, I’ll have that clarity.  I’ll understand what it is that as a baby I lost.  Do I think that having a child will change the way that I see the world?  Most defiantly.  Do I think that I can’t be a person without one?  Not at all.  Only time will tell I suppose.

Who would you suggest should read this memoir, and why?

I think that anyone connected to adoption should read this memoir.  And I don’t mean connected as in just adoptive parents, prospective adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees.  I’m talking people who have friends who are adopted.  I’m talking about people who have nieces, nephews, grandchildren, neighbors, husbands, wives, etc. who are adopted.  I think there are a lot of misconceptions about adopted people out there, and I think this memoir challenges a lot of those misconceptions.  I also think that the author speaks with a great voice, one that should be listened to.  As a society, we accept adoption as a wonderful thing.  As a society, we tend to not listen to adult adoptees.  Their voices (my own included) are often silenced because we don’t always speak what everyone wants to hear.  Things that other people take for granted we are denied and told we cannot speak about.  We are told by people who know their biology and history that biology and history don’t matter.  People will access to their original birth certificates tells us that we shouldn’t have access to ours.  I think that memoirs like this are the key to getting others to take a step back and start listening to the voices of those who are arguably the most affected by adoption.

On pp 17-18, Jennifer talks about a baby searching for her mother after being born. How did this sensory-rich passage strike you? What thoughts did it trigger about the role you play in adoption?

I’ll admit, I cried when I read these pages and had to put the book down.  I never had that with my mother.  I was completely overwhelmed reading this and had to walk away for days before I had the courage to pick up the book again.  I could see myself as a baby looking for my mother, someone I couldn’t find and was separated from.  It broke my heart that I went through that as a child.  It made me yearn for my mother all over again.  I have yet to meet her.  Reading this just makes me want to meet her even more.  As I read this, my role was more defined for me than ever.  I was the helpless baby looking for my mother.  I was the one without a choice.  As a baby, I would have chosen my mother.  Nothing else mattered to me.  I didn’t know anything else.  I just knew her.  I knew her voice, her smell, her being.  And she was gone.  I was born and that was it.  I didn’t have a say in it.  My wants weren’t taken into consideration.  My mother could have kept me.  It would have been hard.  It would have been challenging.  But she could have made it work.  She chose not to.  It was about her.  Just like my adoptive parents adopted me for them.  It wasn’t about giving a baby a home; it was about finding a baby for their home.  My adoption wasn’t about me.  It was about everyone else.  This passage made that pretty clear to me all over again.  It helped me to realize that I do need to spend more time thinking about this and working on these issues before I have my own children.

To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.