May The Circle Be Unbroken

Lynn C Franklin

• 30 januari 2005
• 9780595340958

Samenvatting:

"May The Circle Be Unbroken" is more than the moving story of one woman's experience of being reunited with the child she gave up for adoption; it is also many stories from many people taken together for a complete picture of the complex and often fulfilling triangle that is adoption.


When Lynn Franklin was a sophomore in college, she became pregnant and gave her son up for adoption. She was lucky to have parents who stood by her, her doctor emphasized, all the while meaning that he hoped she had learned her lesson, and would go home and sin no more. That was the standard counsel of the just as the surrender of one's child was standard punishment. It never occurred to Lynn to protest, just as it never occurred to her that she might see her son again -- or that she had any right to expect such a mercy.


Much of the literature on adoption has focused somewhat narrowly on its traumatic consequences for the adoptee or to a lesser extent, on the sense of loss and grief suffered by birthparents. Using her own story as a point of departure, Franklin explores the complex terrain that begins with an unintended conception but carries with it neither a shortage of love nor a desire to do harm. She presents many children of adoption, of varying ages and backgrounds, and they discuss the struggle to come to terms with their feelings of loss and abandonment and about the difficulty of forging an identity from borrowed sources. She gives equal time to those who became parents through an abundance of human affection rather than by biology, by audition rather than chance. Using information from adoption agencies, she reviews the historic shift in perspective and shows how an adoption agency operatesin today's climate.


Lynn Franklin hopes to demystify adoption for a general audience and offer essential comfort to those who have yet to make sense of their own histories. Though her own powerful story anchors the book, it is her voice as a birthmother that will distinguish this book from others on the subject, taking on the most controversial issues in the adoption debate as she moves toward a clearer understanding of her own experience as a birthmother.