Adopted
The books on being adopted prescribed here offer insight, solace and comfort for the losses we have faced and the new relationships that we have formed.
The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child (Non-fiction) by Nancy Verrier
Nicknamed 'The Adoptees' Bible' , The Primal Wound provides beautiful insight into the foster parent-adoptee relationship and the profound impact a child's separation from their birth mother can have on these relationships. The adopted child yearns for their birth mother on a psychological, physical and physiological level. A traumatic experience, this primal wound is often misunderstood or overlooked. This book is revolutionary in that it truly acknowledges and validates the adoptee's pain and feelings of loss. It also provides rationale for their behaviour to the parents who are adopting them and how to support and guide them through this loss and promote healing. Lastly it also discusses the loss a birth mother feels, helping them find solace.
The Language of Blood (Fiction) by Jane Jeong Trenka
A book that explores the universal question of identity, family and home and will resonate with most of us on many, different levels.
Beautifully narrated the memoir's central characters, Jane Jeong Trenka and her sister Carol (both Korean) are adopted by a white couple Frederik and Margaret Bauer in Harlow, Minnesota. They were raised as American children with American values, however the absence of a past continued to haunt them and eventually they connected with their mother and 4 other siblings in Korea. The differences in skin colour to their adopted parents, to the unspoken truths about adoption, Jane vividly and bravely articulates the the transracial adoptee's experience, the questions about identity, the painful loss of one's own birth mother, their siblings, the loss of an identity and culture. This book is a must-read for any adoptee or anyone considering adoption.
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More book prescriptions can be found at Book Therapy.
A big hello and thank you for reading! Passionate about literature, psychology, and life I launched Book Therapy as an alternative form of therapy using the power of literature. I train mental health professionals, librarians, teachers as well as readers on using bibliotherapy in their own work through our online Bibliotherapy, Literature and Mental Health course. We also curate reading lists/personalised book prescriptions for clients based on their individual needs. This is our signature personalised reading service.
You can also check out Book Therapy’s other free reading lists and A- Z of book prescriptions (covering both fiction and non-fiction). These suggest books based on your existing life situation (e.g. anxiety, job change, relationship heartache) as well as interests (e.g memoir, historical fiction, non-fiction, crime etc). There’s also a Children’s A — Z of Book Prescriptions. Feel free to check out the blog for more literary gems. There’s also a post on my personal story of how I entered the world of bibliotherapy and book curation.
In this role, I have had the opportunity to publish a book called The Happiness Mindset, and write various literary essays and pieces for newspapers and magazines. I have undertaken bibliotherapy workshops for The United Nations, various libraries in New York and corporate organisations in the UK and US. My book recommendations have featured in the Guardian, Marie Claire, NBC News, Asian Voice, New York Observer, Sydney Telegraph and various other publications. If you are a parent you might enjoy a podcast I’ve recorded with speech and language therapist Sunita Shah on Raising A Reader & Storyteller. And if you’d like to connect, email me at bijal@booktherapy.io or www.booktherapy.io.
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