book: the girls who went away

I recently finished reading The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. I was put onto it through a passing anecdote in a podcast; I can’t remember which podcast and I can’t even search it because I don’t think it was the main topic of the podcast episode, but I was intrigued so I pick it up. I guess I didn’t know what to expect. Fessler records (voice interviews) and documents the experiences of mothers who were forced (or coerced in some way) to surrender their children to adoption.

The stories and memories recorded in the book are so moving. I think I’d easily place it among the personally affective books I’ve read in the last few years. Throughout my time with the book, but especially when I started, I found myself needing to take breaks in between the recorded accounts because the stories were so heartbreaking. The social and familial pressures. The shame that these women carried for so many years. The patterns of self-loathing that remained when they were told that they would eventually forget and move on. All these false promises and assurances from doctors, social workers, clergy, family members. These were the stories that were not told, but need to be heard.

These mothers were powerless and made to feel small. Disconnected from one another, they languished in their shame. I’m sure that if the Internet existed back then, a #metoo movement of sorts would have surfaced — people finding strength and solidarity in their common experience. They may have found one another to affirm their instincts that what was done to them was not right. To imagine all that was lost due to this silencing of people and the persistence of shame.

personal reflections

While I am not a member of any adoption triad (birth parent, adoptee, or adoptive parent), it was not hard for me to be drawn into these stories. I’m glad that there is some progress since the 1940s-1970s, but some of the same shame culture persists today. I know in my own faith community experience, churches continue to struggle untangling purity culture and the idolization of nuclear families. I confess that in many ways, I propagated such perspectives because that’s what I was taught and believed to be right. Reading these accounts has really stretched my heart toward compassion for those that I was once taught to distance myself from. I hope I can grow a heart to show care to those who’ve been denied so much. As a society, we’ve progressed, but I also fear we are regressing.

I live at a time when many are trying to go back to the old period when things were “great,” without realizing that it wasn’t really that great for many many others. Will society be able to show compassion when laws are essentially restrictive? This book was written about the period prior to Roe vs. Wade and was published before the recent repeal of Roe vs. Wade. I wonder what the next chapter of this book will be as we live it out in real time. For those in faith communities that celebrated its overturn, how will compassion be expressed? For those who lament the overturn, how will we care and support where support has not always been offered?

In a recent coffee meet with a friend, I was asked for a book recommendation and, though I was only half-way through, recommended this one. Now that I’m done, I stand by that recommendation, but it’s not a light read, especially if there are similar stories in your family. But I hope it helps others grow in compassion and understanding of what happened and continues to happen in our society.