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| Picture from http://www.lakecountrybooks.com/ |
I Wish for you a Beautiful Life - Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children
I found it heartbreaking, but also enlightening and so very touching...
I keep thinking about the birth family of my Cinnamon Baby. I know I can't even begin to understand what they are (or will be) going through...
This book contains letters that birth mothers have written as part of the grieving process after their child was placed for adoption. Some are raw emotion, others explain a bit of the context these decisions are made in. All express intense pain, grief and guilt. Putting your child up for adoption is never an easy, lighthearted decision. It seems to be something that stays with you every single day of your life until you die.
In Sri Lanka, as in Korea, unwed mothers are stigmatized and rejected. Children who are raised by single mothers are looked down to.
A lot of the birth mothers in this book are young women who were abandonned by their boyfriends after they became pregnant. Their families reject the pregnancy and they have to go into hiding to give birth. They really have a limited choice.
I think a book like this is a marvellous resource for waiting parents who are wondering how they will address their kid's questions. It also helps putting in perspective the discomforts of the adoption process...
Be warned, though, it's not a book for kids. The letters are written in very painful and distressed moments and some talk about suicide and abortion.
"Everything else remains the same; only your mother changes. At the place where you should be there is emptiness, and this empty spot in my heart is too big for anyone to fill." - p.89
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