Abandoned at Birth by Janet Sherlund
“I’ve always been grateful that Grandma treated you kids like you were real grandchildren.”
Those words, while meant as a compliment, go a long way in understanding the lens through which adopted children must see the world and manage their emotions.
They were uttered by the mother of a young Janet Sherlund, author of Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me (Forefront Books), a memoir in which she traces her upbringing and search for her biological mother.
“I had no idea why our grandparents might not see us as regular grandchildren,” Sherlund writes. “Despite my own feelings of disconnection, which I felt but didn’t understand, it never occurred to me that others might feel that way toward us.”
“I watched Mom. I was not her real child. I didn’t belong, and she was surprised when anyone treated me as if I did.”
In the book, Sherlund describes in great detail the detachment and longing of an adopted child and the search to find her biological mother. It’s a raw and real examination of the grief and trauma caused by this primal separation and the determination it takes to find a way out of it or make sense of it.
A Desperate Attempt to Find Answers
It’s for reasons like her mother’s words above that make it such a struggle, Sherlund says, for adoptees to feel comfortable and trusting with their new families. There is a lack of wholeness hovering over her identity.
Sherlund traces her life through her early childhood, college days, early relationships, marriage and her own motherhood, and her eventual search for her biological mother.
In that search, some disturbing truths initially come forth. While some discretion by adoption agencies would seem in order given the situation and the need to keep some information confidential, Sherlund wasn’t going to get a full story. But what was she going to get?
The agency told Sherlund that her parents were from a distant state and they both had respectable careers. She was given a rough description of their heritages and physical traits and appearances — enough to finally put some definition on and provide some comfort in who she was.
The only trouble: It was all a lie.
A Convoluted System
As it turns out, the agency was a deceptive spin doctor, tailoring stories to keep all parties content and give the illusion, if necessary, that all was well with the process.
“I was reminded that I only had the right to the information they chose to tell me. There was a self-congratulatory tone as if to say ‘We took care of everything. You should be happy where you are… You don’t need anything more.’ ”
Sherlund notes that maintaining secrets about an adoption doesn’t serve anyone’s interests in the adoption triangle.
It might be hard for someone outside the world of adoption to understand, but Sherlund breaks it down to the basics: “I desperately wanted to see someone who looked like me, spoke like me, had mannerisms like me, and maybe even laughed like me.”
“I felt like I was standing in front of an immense vault, a tower of black steel thick with rivets, bolts and dials — and nothing but hope to break into it.”
It is years later, not until Sherlund is in her fifties, that she undertakes the search once again — this time with much better results.
In fact, the agency rep is very helpful and manages to locate both biological parents fairly quickly. What Sherlund finds, however, are entirely different reactions from her biological mother and father.
A Gripping, Gut-Wrenching Story
Abandoned at Birth by Janet Sherlund is a book of great value. Not only is it a well-told memoir shedding light, through engaging writing and storytelling, on the loneliness, anxieties and insecurities of adoptees in general, but it is a work that should keep the conversations going to help adoptees cope and dig out of the so-called Black Hole they find themselves in for no reason of their own.
Sherlund’s journey provides the author with many answers and provides the readers perhaps with more questions — about the system, the process and the effects and emotions of a situation difficult to comprehend if you haven’t lived it.
Was it all worth it? My guess is the author would say yes, but with a touch of the bittersweet.
“I was not, nor ever would be, truly part of any of these families. Not my mother’s. Not my father’s. Not my adopted family.”
It’s a gripping, gut-wrenching story that we highly recommend.
About Janet Sherlund:
Janet Sherlund raised her family and served on nonprofit boards in education, health and the cultural arts before writing her memoir, Abandoned at Birth. Her single most significant life event was being given up for adoption at birth. Being adopted undermined her sense of trust and personal value and impacted every decision she made. It also led to a lifelong quest to find her biological mother, with the hope of finally feeling a tether to this world, a sense of belonging and, ultimately, herself. Her memoir fulfills a lifelong dream of raising awareness about loss and grief in adoption, and why it takes more than love to survive that trauma. A graduate of Colgate University, Sherlund lives on the island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts. Visit www.abandonedatbirthbook.com.
