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The cultural narrative surrounding adoption is that everyone lives happily ever after. In reality, adoptees can face depression, behavioral issues, anxiety and PTSD. Adoptee Janet Sherlund explores the complex issues and lifelong trauma that often accompany adoption in her candid memoir, Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms That Once Held Me.
Poignant Memoir Paints Vivid Picture of Adoptee’s Search for Biological Roots
You can see a interview here:
https://www.wtvm.com/video/2024/10/14/janet-sherlund-talks-about-challenges-adoptees-face
WESTPORT, Conn., January 27, 2025 — The practice of adoption, long considered the solution to protecting vulnerable children, may actually harm them. While childhood development experts differ on whether adoption itself is a psychological trauma, the National Institutes of Health confirm that adopted children are twice as likely as non-adoptees to have disruptive behavior disorders and are more susceptible to mental health issues.
Adoptee Janet Sherlund takes readers inside the lived reality of adoption in her elegant and heart-wrenching memoir, Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms That Once Held Me. Sherlund paints a vivid portrait of the detachment and longing of an adopted child and the lifelong quest to find her biological mother. It’s an unflinching examination of the grief and trauma caused by this primal separation and the dogged determination it takes to face the forces of opposition—both internal and external—to finally achieve answers.
Abandoned at Birth illuminates the darker side of adoption, and what it takes to heal. “I hope it starts conversations about the rights of those given away, loss and grief in adoption, the biology of belonging and identity, and why love is not always enough to extinguish the pain,” Sherlund says.
Like many adoptees of her generation, Sherlund was the offspring of teenaged parents. Her mother was forced to have her baby in secrecy. Sherlund would come to learn that her mother was unusual for her time. She did not tell the father she was pregnant, and she wanted nothing to do with her baby and never even looked at her newborn.
All Sherlund had to go on when she began her search was a false narrative written about her biological parents by the adoption agency. The twists and turns, setbacks and disappointments, and surprising familial connections finally achieved makes Abandoned at Birth a page turner of a memoir.
Abandoned at Birth Publisher: Forefront Books ISBN-13: 9781637632758
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
REVIEWS
“Eloquent, intimate, detailed, exceptional…”
– Midwest Book Review
“Abandoned at Birth is a truly remarkable depiction of the journey of an adopted child.”
— Ed Hajim, author of Island of the Four Ps and the memoir, On the Road Less Traveled
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
