Journey of the Adopted Self
   Betty Jean Lifton
  1994 BasicBooks, A Div of HarperCollins NY USA
   ISBN: 0465008119


A Quest for Wholeness is filled with moving life stories of adopted men & women; it examines how separation & secrecy affect adoptees' sense of identity & their relationship to their adoptive parents.

I had my arms full of books at our local library & I'd set them down to go through my choices once more before checking out when my eyes were caught by the book laying there on the counter. My hands reached out for it & all the others in my pile paled. It was Journey of the Adopted Self.

Being an adoptee, this was one of the hardest books I've ever read! Not because of Betty Jean Lifton's writing skills nor because the stories she records for us are so grim or scary. As a fifty-something being content wherein I find myself, I was surprised at the torrent of memories this unassuming tome unleashed.

For anyone curious or interested in finding out what you & other adoptees have been imagining, thinking & feeling all through their lives, read this book.


For anyone needing to explore the causes & roots of what you & other adoptees have been dreaming, fantasizing & dreading, read this book.

For anyone troubled by their sense of apart-ness, by their sense of alienation, by their sense of blunted emotions, read this book.

For anyone hurt or confused because your adopted teenager is ricocheting around your home where once this child fit in so seamlessly, read this book.

For anyone planning on any kind of a reunion with offspring or parent, read this book.

Adoptees are in grand company, remember Moses, Peter Pan & Persephone? Still, adoptees do have to look at an opaque mirror when it comes to: “where am I from?” Betty Jean Lifton's life work, because she too was adopted, has been to gift adopted people books to explain & salve so that a healing of sorts can be had.

As I read this book, memories floated to the surface of my opaque mirror & I was plunged into a whole lot of unfinished business. Wonderful stuff! Hard work, exhilarating, valid work. My sense of self, like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, clicking into place.

Very well done, Betty Jean & thanks for the memories!

Other works by Betty Jean Lifton: I'm Still Me(young adult novel) Return to Hiroshima(Photographs by Eikoh Hosoe); Children of Vietnam(with Thomas C. Fox); The King Of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak; Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter; Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience.

For Children: Tell Me a Real Adoption Story; Joji and the Dragon; Kap the Kappa; A Dog's Guide to Tokyo; The Silver Crane and many more.
(05/09/99)

Rebecca