Do you know what it’s like growing up with an aura of secrecy
surrounding your origins? To have every question left unanswered? The
Sound of Hope is a highly personal memoir providing a window through
which readers can view the world of an adoptee.
Much of my childhood was spent wondering about my other mother. I
wanted to know why she couldn't keep me and desperately wanted to
know what she looked like. Whenever I asked my parents about this
woman, I ran up against a wall of silence.
The yearning for my other mother was all the more intense because of my
troubled adoptive family—a hot-tempered father obsessed with
cleanliness, who used to wake us kids up in the middle of the night to mop
the floor, and an emotionally distant mother who worked nights and spent
her days sleeping. What saved me was the presence of my free spirited
Irish Grandmother who had a contagious zest for life as she seasoned my
childhood with her quick wit and old sayings.
It wasn't until adulthood when I began searching for my birth mother
against dogged opposition from my adoptive parents, fiancé, and future in-
laws. Equipped with nothing more than a last name and a place of birth, I
combed through phone books and contacted various agencies and private
households until I discovered that she once worked as a dance instructor
and within a week we were reunited. My adoptive mother was deeply
upset by the reunion and her anguish affected my father and my brothers,
who united in opposition against me. In their eyes, my birth mother was
the woman who'd abandoned me—she was a fallen woman. But I stuck to
my guns, confident I did the right thing by pursuing the truth.
With tentative steps, my birth mother and I forged a close relationship to
the dismay of my family and my birth mother's family. Neither side could
understand our need to continue to see each other. I was expected to
simply meet her and then get on with my life.
The Sound of Hope is a fresh look at the adoption experience from the
rarely told perspective of the child. It vividly portrays the hidden side of
adoption, what really happens post reunion, the side nobody feels
comfortable talking about. This memoir sheds new light on the current
attitudes toward adoption and will inspire society to place the emphasis
on the welfare of the adoptee—who after all, is at the heart of every
adoption.
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