Showing results for "Biography" in Adoption

When Deb Moerke and her husband decided to become foster parents, they never imagined how their lives would change. And never did they imagine their worst nightmare coming true: Their five-year-old foster daughter, Hannah, murdered at the hands of her birth mom, Karen. The Moerkes were overwhelmed with horror and grief. And just when they didn’t think they could bear any more, Deb received a phone call from Karen in prison. Facing a life sentence for Hannah’s murder, she was pregnant. And Karen had an incredible request: Would Deb take her unborn baby and love it as her own?

The moment Diane Burke, an author and mother of two grown sons, received an unexpected certified letter in the mail, she had no idea her life would be shaken to its core. Memories of a past she had buried more than forty years ago suddenly resurfaced and she wasn't prepared to deal with them. Steve Orlandi, happily married, father of two and step-father of three, was living the typical middle class American life. But since the age of eight, when he discovered he was adopted, he had led that life dealing with inner questions about his self-identity and genetic history.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

Adoption is often painted as a happy, inspirational act—a baby finds a family and lives happily ever after. But the truth is that adopted children experience displacement and rupture from their mother and that trauma can impact an individual for a lifetime. Adoption can lead to feelings of loss and grief not just for the adoptee, but for the biological and adoptive parents as well. This startling fact comes vividly to life in Janet Sherlund’s heartbreaking memoir, Abandoned at Birth.

Dan Savage's nationally syndicated sex advice column, "Savage Love," enrages and excites more than four million people each week. In The Kid, Savage tells a no-holds-barred, high-energy story of an ordinary American couple who wants to have a baby. Except that in this case the couple happens to...

Best-selling author Mitch Albom returns to nonfiction for the first time in more than a decade in this poignant memoir that celebrates Chika, a young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Performed by Mitch Albom with Chika’s voice featured throughout. Chika Jeune was...

When newborn baby Felix is found abandoned at a train station, the police launch a desperate search for his mum. It doesn't take long for their inquiries to lead them to Emily. While baby Felix is placed in Maggie's care, the police and Social Services try and work out why Emily, a single mum, who has gone through fertility treatment to get pregnant, has suddenly resorted to abandoning her much longed-for child. But it's only when Maggie wins her trust that Emily reveals the extent of her secret. Can Maggie help a desperate mother and her baby reunite?

'Is It My Fault Mummy?': seven-year-old Paris is trapped in a prison of guilt. Devastated after the death of her baby brother, Joel, Maggie faces one of her most heartbreaking cases yet as she tries to break down the wall of guilt surrounding this damaged little girl. 'A Desperate Cry for Help': 12-year-old Meg arrives at Maggie's after a fire destroys the children's home she's been living in. Traumatised by the fire and angry and vulnerable, having been put into care by her mother, Meg is lashing out at everyone around her.

In the days before Roe v. Wade, an ambitious young journalist, abandoned by her beau, leaves Michigan for a dream job on the city desk of a Rochester, NY newspaper. Burned once, she's eager for love, but as the only "girl" in the newsroom, she's more concerned about finding allies and making friends. When a new leading man appears, she recognizes a kindred spirit. Soon her bylined stories claim front-page space. However, when she becomes pregnant, she must switch her attention from deadlines to decisions.

Although Jodie is only eight years old, she is violent, aggressive, and has already been through numerous foster families. Her last hope is Cathy Glass. At the Social Services office, Cathy (an experienced foster carer) is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months. Despite her reservations, Cathy decides to take on Jodie to protect her from being placed in an institution.

ONE REMARKABLE WOMAN OVER 30 YEARS OF FOSTERING CARER TO MORE THAN 150 CHILDREN Tayo arrives at Cathy’s with only the clothes he stands up in. He has been brought to her by the police, but he is calm, polite, and very well-spoken, and not at all like the children she normally fosters. The...

Slavná kniha ze zlatého fondu světové literatury. Poprvé vyšla v roce 1972, stala se bestsellerem i předlohou animovaného filmu, seriálu a několika počítačových her. „Sem tam některý panáčkoval na vrcholku mraveniště, s nastraženýma ušima se rozhlížel kolem a větřil. Ale nerušený zpěv kosa na pokraji lesa zvěstoval, že odtamtud nebezpečí nehrozí.“ Nebezpečí však přichází s člověkem a jeho plány postavit domy na území obývaném sandlefordskou králičí kolonií.

Patti Eddington always knew she was adopted, and her beloved parents seemed amenable enough to questions—but she never wanted to hurt them by expressing curiosity, so she didn't. The story of her mother cutting off and dying her hair when she was a toddler? She thought it was eccentric and funny, nothing more. When she discovered at fifteen that her birthday wasn't actually her birthday? She believed it when her mother said she'd changed it to protect her from the "nosy old biddies" who might try to discover her identity.

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth. Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me?

Foster children are society's throwaway kids, the children no one wants—until someone finally does. Saving Michael provides an inside look at Keri Vellis's struggle to secure the best possible services for two severely abused and traumatized siblings. Listeners get a glimpse of Keri and her family's day-to-day life as she went from mother of three to adoptive mother of three more children and then the temporary caregiver of another seventeen.

What We Wished For: An Adoption Story shares a woman’s quest to build a loving family. It is a tale of courage, perseverance, and what remains when things don’t go as imagined. This memoir speaks to anyone who has ever struggled with a life-altering decision, one from which there is no turning back.

Lessons in Gratitude tells the story of Aaron Dworkin, a MacArthur Fellow, social entrepreneur, and spoken word artist who has dedicated his life’s work to changing the face of classical arts in the world. The themes of persistence, passion, and loyalty shine through stories of an unhappy childhood, a lifelong search for identity, and the obstacles of race, culture, and class. Listeners will learn how the author greets these challenges and how they drove him to make a difference for people who are shut out of opportunity.

A deeply personal and heart-breaking memoir that explores the troubled relationship between Mary Garden and her younger sister, Anna, who died in 2023 after a short illness. Mary unpacks her life of growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and ’60s, before making Australia home. She reveals complex layers of intergenerational trauma, including the baggage of her eccentric, deeply flawed father and the secret her mother kept from all of them, revealed only after her death. Mary deals movingly with her sister’s long battle with mental illness and how she once saved Anna’s life.

Orphaned at birth in South Korea, challenged with medical and developmental complications, and unadopted by age three, Min Soo’s hope of finding a home seems lost. But God chooses a family on the other side of the world who opens their home to this whirlwind of a child. Although Min Soo is dearly loved, his constant challenges tax his adoptive parents to the core. When he’s old enough to understand, Min Soo wonders if God has a purpose for “a child in a man’s body.” He comes to grips with the multiple obstacles he faces—except one.

Het bijzondere en aangrijpende verhaal over de zoektocht van Mischa Blok naar haar biologische moeder in Zuid-Korea, dat de lezer diep zal raken. Een kindje wordt te vondeling gelegd op een pleintje in Zuid-Korea, met op haar kleding een briefje waar haar naam en haar geboortedatum op staan. Ze wordt gevonden, naar het kindertehuis gebracht en geadopteerd door Nederlandse ouders. Een prachtig verhaal, strik eromheen, klaar. Maar zevenendertig jaar later blijkt dit verhaal niet te kloppen.