The Branches We Cherish
An Open Adoption Memoir
RPLA Unpublished Nonfiction Education GOLD Winner
RPLA Unpublished Book of the Year Second Runner-Up
In 1992, Linda and David long to have a child. They decide to adopt a baby and learn they can only do so under an open arrangement. Open adoption means the biological parents and the adoptive family know each other’s identities and choose to remain in contact after the adoption process is finalized…possibly visitation for the child's entire life!
There are no ready answers to their many questions: What happens in the first year? Twenty years later? What does visitation between birth and adoptive families look like? Will it be awkward to raise a child with the birth parents in the picture? How do adopted children feel about this open arrangement? In the early 90’s there is little guidance for long-term relationships between adoptive and birth families and they will have to learn as they go.
Diving in with open hearts and open minds, they build relationships based on mutual trust, respect, deep gratitude for one another and most importantly, unconditional love for a child. They learn just how important having the children’s birth parents and families in their lives is for everyone’s emotional health—including their own.
A powerful and honest account based on three decades of true-life experience, award-winning The Branches We Cherish, weaves together thought-provoking, joyous and poignant reflections of four birth parents, birth grandmothers, adoptive parents and two adopted children. Discover the challenges of open adoption and the extraordinary gratification available to all members of the adoption constellation when they are willing and able to cultivate and maintain these lifetime relationships.
What is The Branches We Cherish?
THE BRANCHES WE CHERISH: AN OPEN ADOPTION MEMOIR educates readers on how birth and adoptive parents relate to each other months before the birth, during the birth and for decades after placement. It comprehensively provides unique insights along a three decade journey not only from adoptive parents, but also from two birth mothers, two birth fathers, three birth grandmothers and the adopted children.
BOOK REVIEWS
"Linda Sexton does an incredible, informative, earnest job of walking the reader through the nuanced, intricate world of open adoption. THE BRANCHES WE CHERISH is a searingly honest journey accounted from all sides of the adoption triangle. Told with a kind of grit and strength that leaves you feeling grateful to know there is steadfast promise to open adoption, a true alternative for children, birth parents and adoptive parents alike, for lasting, loving family dynamic."
Liz Pryor
Speaker, Life Advice Expert
ABC’s Good Morning America Advice Guru
Author of LOOK AT YOU NOW (Random House)
WHAT DID I DO WRONG? (Simon & Schuster)
Nominated for Books for a Better Life Award
