In November of 2021, Lorraine Dusky pulled her 2015 self-published book, "Hole in My Heart: Love and Loss in the Fault Lines of Adoption," from the Amazon marketplace, intending to revise and update it for a second edition. After all, the number of U.S. states that were opening up access to birth records for adopted adults was on the rise -- thanks in part, in New York and other places, to Ms. Dusky's own advocacy efforts -- and she found that she still had a lot more to say on the subject.
"My aim is to change the way people think about adoption, not just to tell my story," said Ms. Dusky, who lives in Sag Harbor, and whose 1979 memoir "Birthmark" was the first to look deeply into the topic of adoption from the point of view of a mother relinquishing a child. In a recent interview at her home, she warned, "This is not a book that encourages adoption."
Revising "Hole in My Heart" took about a year. "This came out of me pretty quickly, quickly, quickly," she recalled. But just when she was about to re-release it, Ms. Dusky got an intriguing phone call.
She would soon learn she shared some common experiences with the woman on the other end of the line. They were both birth mothers -- women who had carried a baby to full term, gave birth, and gave the baby up for adoption, and who were forever changed by that decision. They were both writers, too.
The caller, Marylee MacDonald, also happened to be the founder and editor of Grand Canyon Press, an indie publishing company based in Arizona. She was calling because she had been looking for "Hole in My Heart" and couldn't find a copy. Before long, Ms. Dusky had signed with Grand Canyon Press for the re-release of the book, which officially took place in March this year.
Fast forward to Saturday, when, at a talk hosted by Canio's Books, Ms. Dusky got a bit teary-eyed while reading an excerpt -- perhaps one of the most pivotal excerpts. It was the story of her reunion with Jane, the daughter she gave up for adoption in 1966. She'd only read it aloud to an audience one other time without crying.
"I had read that section once before, I don't remember where," she said the next day. "I found I could get through it without crying, but there are parts of this that I can't read" to an audience.
Even now, at 80 years old, Ms. Dusky says giving up Jane is still "a searing incident that reverberated throughout my life."
She shares freely her opinion that open adoptions are better than closed adoptions, but that is because adoption has "too many complications" in general, "I think the kids who need to be adopted are in foster care."
"Jane had too many problems for me to say, 'Oh, yeah, that worked out fine,' " Ms. Dusky said.
She is careful about the language she uses, both in conversation and in print. Just as talk can be charged where racism, justice, religion, and politics are concerned, discussion of adoption can be controversial. "Hole in My Heart" opens with an examination of the word "birth mother" and alternatives such as "first mother" or "natural mother." (Her blog, which she started in 2009, was originally called First Mother Forum, with the later addition of "Birth Mother" to the title.)
In her home office, Ms. Dusky has a copy of the landmark New York State legislation, signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in October 2019, that allowed adoptees to access their original birth certificates. The bill hangs in a frame on the wall -- complete with the pen Mr. Cuomo used to sign it. She had helped pass it with hours of testimony for government committees and elected officials.
And in her sunlit living room, surrounded by shelves and shelves of books, she keeps a well-worn copy of the original edition of "Hole in My Heart."
"To me, this feels like the first draft of the story of my life."
In the new edition, which is some 30,000 words longer, Ms. Dusky accomplishes at least three things.
First, she is expanding the character development -- that of herself and her family. That had been criticized as lacking in the first edition, so she wanted "to make the book more intimate and personal and directing it so you can get inside my mind about what was going on," she said.
Second, she is advocating, not for the rights of birth mothers, but rather for the rights of adoptees to access their birth records to learn who they truly are.
Lastly, she is reporting, as journalists do, on the much wider context. While she was rewriting the book, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which simultaneously overturned the nationally guaranteed right, in Roe v. Wade, to an abortion, and encouraged the hypothesis that because abortions would now be harder to access in many states, more babies will be given up for adoption. "A woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion in the Dobbs decision.
But in her experience, and in the findings of scientific researchers, the truth is that adoptions don't guarantee happy outcomes for the babies. Jane struggled with epilepsy and ultimately took her own life in 2007 because of it. Studies Ms. Dusky cites have shown that adoptees often struggle more with their mental health and have higher suicide rates than peers who were not adopted.
"While Jane's seizures had a biological base, the data shows that adoptees are prone to psychological traumas that the rest of us are not," Ms. Dusky writes in her book. "Yet the adoption industry generally ignores adoptee trauma and the public is largely unaware of it -- or chooses to ignore it."
She said it's likely that she won't write any more nonfiction books about adoption.
"If I do anything after this," Ms. Dusky said, "I'll use whatever abilities I have for a novel."
But she'll always be an advocate, aiming to do her part to ensure that more states take up the work of changing their laws. Currently, 14 allow adoptees unfettered access to their birth records, dubbed "full sovereignty of self-knowledge." At least 20 states allow some access but still have restrictions in place. About a dozen others plus Washington, D.C., "have not touched their sealed-records statutes" since closing them, Ms. Dusky writes.
"I want every record in the country to be open to adoptees. No one should tell an adopted person, 'You can't have your birth certificate,' " she said. "You can get married, go to war, drive a car, drink alcohol, but you can't know who you are? It's wrong on every possible level. I want to change people's hearts and minds, so I'm writing in a way that reaches across the adoption community to other people, too."
This story has been updated since it was first published to clarify references to "Birthmark" and the availability of the original edition of "Hole in My Heart."
