Healing for Adults Who Grew Up in Adoption or Foster Care

— written by Renee Wolfs (adoptive parent), in 2015

— Review written by Heather Gonzales, Book read in 2023, Review updated 2025

Full Review & Considerations: 

  • This is written by an adoptive parent with a master's in communication, not counseling or psychology.

  • This was read about 1/2 through with a group of adult adoptees, and the attendees decided they did not want to finish it

  • In short, this book comes across as quick and rushed, disorganized, inadequate to discuss issues of this level of complexity, and to a degree, dishonoring of adopted and fostered people.

  • The title is somewhat misleading, in that this book is written primarily on grief and loss rather than a broader book on “healing” overall. It essentially skims the surface on the topic of grief, and in its 140 pages, misses much of the nuance and complexity needed to both honor the heavy experiences of our grief and/or to gain a deeper understanding of it. Although some of the content on grief is accurate, few portions of the author’s written content tie concepts of grief and loss to the unique experience of the adopted or fostered person in a real or thorough way. The author uses “rephrased” (p.13) words from adopted and fostered people to validate her points, but too often the refrased quotes don’t seem to fit with the author’s content.

  • The best parts of this book are the “rephrased quotes” by anonymous adopted and fostered people, which make up roughly about 1/3 of the book. Because she has “rephrased” these, it can be hard not to wonder how much was altered. Either way, this high content from others mixed with a low degree of real connections made by the author gives the book the feeling of using adopted and fostered people’s voices to support and fill up an otherwise very thin book. It is, in large part, an adoptee quote anthology with an adoptive parent’s ideas and commentary intermixed. She acknowledges those who responded to her Twitter and Facebook appeals (p. 13), but says it’s beyond the scope to acknowledge those who wrote nearly 1/3 of her book, and this comes across in an off-putting and dishonoring manner. In addition, as mentioned before, multiple times, the words of the adoptee/fostered person are not a good fit for the point the author is trying to make, causing these segments to feel disjointed and confusing, if not forced.

  • The use of the wording “Foster Child, Former Foster Child, and Adopted Child” when describing an adult, which is used repetitively in the book, contributes to the “perpetual child” way of seeing adult adopted and fostered people and is not helpful or healing to our community as a whole.

  • The first chapter gives incomplete and unthorough content, including a list of the losses involved in foster care and adoption, a list of types of grief, and a list of themes in mourning. The writing in this chapter is supported by comments from almost all Non-adopted or Non-fostered people, even though it is supposedly written for our population.

  • Because so much of this book is other people’s experiences, it can sometimes be hard to follow what the author is saying without looking back and refreshing your memory. Some of the content is close to right but not completely, misses necessary elements, lacks the complexity required for such a complex topic, and uses dismissive language or other wording that is not preferable. This book feels rushed, like the author tried to glean a little bit of knowledge about a number of topics and then tried to write a book about it.

Please Note:

List and comments reflect the individual opinions of Heather Gonzales and are written from the perspective of an adoptee, for those looking for resources for adoptees or adoptive families specifically. Lists are not necessarily a reflection of all staff or Encompass Adoptees as a whole. At Encompass, we recommend that, whatever you read, no matter who recommends it or writes it, readers use critical thinking and that the content is reviewed in a thoughtful, contemplative, and reflective manner.

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