Testimonials
Reading your wonderful book was a great pleasure. It is very well documented, touching, honest, authentic, profound. I appreciated "the baby's story" at the beginning. It reveals attachment ruptured. Congratulations for the book and for your life. |
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Carol's book is a much-needed resource concerning the often missing perspective of birth fathers. I believe it will be a genuine contribution to our adoption literature base. The voice of birth fathers is often not heard - hopefully the new edition of Carol's book will close that gap!
-- Linda Corsini, Private Adoption Practitioner
A long-awaited and welcome contribution to the adoption literature. Carol is to be congratulated for this well-written and highly important resource for people who have been touched by adoption, including adoption professionals and social work practitioners. Love, Loss, and Longing: Stories of Adoption will change perceptions and understanding regarding adoption. This book, informed by Carol’s experiences as an adoptive daughter, adoptive mother, and an adoption practitioner is deeply personal and driven by passion and expertise!!
-- Colleen Lundy, Professor, School of Social Work, Carleton University
A courageous, honest, deeply moving journey inside the circle of adoption, honoring all the points of rupture, of reconnection and healing. Beautifully and simply written, with trenchant commentary, wry humor, and intimate stories that linger long in the heart.
-- Heather Menzies, award-winning and bestselling author
For all adoptees, birth and adoptive parents, and indeed all those impacted by adoption - reading Carol Bowyer Shipley’s very personal account is an important and powerful gift to give yourself. Carol brings to light experiences that are startling, seldom discussed, and yet fundamental for those of us in the adoption triangle - moments that flash both the luminous and darker aspects of human experience. I emotionally echoed with so many of these moments. Moreover, I felt relief from the wisdom and compassion of Carol’s writing which helped me to better understand myself as an adoptee as well as to re-situate the adoption experience from some ‘un-discussed margins’ to a poignant centre stage. Thank you, Carol, for this moving and inspiring book.
-- J. M. Thompson, M.Sc., Adoptee, international development advisor.
Carol’s honesty in this remarkable book provides insight into the deep complexities of adoption. Love, Loss, and Longing is a book the adoption community has been waiting for, and an essential book for all those interested in children, women, families, and relationships.
-- Kathryn Brackenbury, birth mother, special education teacher
We first met Carol when, as adoptive parents and volunteers in the Open Door Society, we organized a panel of people in the adoption triangle and she was our moderator. We were immediately struck by her authenticity, her humility, and her passion for her calling as an adoption practitioner. Since then, we have participated in the Birth Mother services with her as the compassionate lead.
Love, Loss, and Longing is a deeply personal, searingly honest book that reflects so many of Carol’s personal qualities and provides a valuable and insightful journey into the world of adoption. We found ourselves laughing, crying, and connecting with the people in her stories. Not just a personal account, this book will also be relevant to those wanting to broaden their perspectives on the myriad of positive family possibilities that adoption presents.
-- Yasminka Kresic & Joe Stelliga, adoptive parents, co-founders of a leadership consulting firm
Love, Loss, and Longing is a remarkably comprehensive memoir about healing the hurt of adoption. Adopted at four months of age, Carol brilliantly recounts feeling mildly depressed all her life and how her reunion with her birth mother and other members of her birth family lifted her feeling of melancholy.... Carol leaves nothing out. Blending together careful reflections of her own personal healing, her adoption work with others her native daughter’s adoption journey, and insights from various adoption studies and literature, her book is a welcomed addition to adoption literature.
Carol helps us understand the complexity of adoption as a camera would capture a series of events without censorship. The accounts of her personal experiences, integrated with the essentials of good adoption practices, are honest, highly informative, and moving. Her story and the story of others inside the adoption circle touch your heart. It also lends support for better adoption practices and adoption legislation in the future.
Carol’s entry into story telling makes the reader aware of a different culture—the culture of adoption. She engagingly initiates us into the thinking of an adoptee. Her book guides us. We learn how adoption reunions generate complex issue and how the loss of a birth mother and birth family can have a lifetime effect on one’s identity, self worth, mental health, and heritage.
With profound respect for her courage to share such intimate details of her life and her willingness to expose her vulnerabilities, I highly recommend Love, Loss, and Longing to all members of the adoption triad and professionals working in the field of adoption.
-- Jennie E. Painter, adoption licensee, open adoption specialist
Carol’s personal story covers adoption from the point of view of the adoptee, the birth mother, and the adoptive parents as well as of the social worker trying to facilitate this process to the benefit of all.! She drives home the importance of openness. The huge potential healing in reuniting the child, longing to know her past, and the birth mother, always anxious about what happened to her child, is vividly portrayed. As someone who knew very little about the history and the different models of adoption in Canada, I learned a lot about the essential work that is being done to reform what was once a traumatic process cloaked in shame, secrecy, and silence.
-- Elaine Marlin, community activist
Your book is so powerful. I was so moved by the stories and your way of weaving together memory, story, and analysis. I hadn't been aware of the 'open adoption' movement and it was wonderful to read. Hopefully more humane ways of looking after children will continue to increase.
--Sue Godt, international development worker, Nairobi, Kenya