Tuesday, February 9, 2010

"Three Little Words - A Memoir" by Ashley Rhodes-Courter


Have you read this yet? I just picked it up at the library last week and I couldn't put it down. It's a fairly quick read, but not always an easy one.

Ashley started her life in foster care at the age of 3, and by 6th grade she had the following people involved in her life:
73 child welfare administrators
44 child welfare caseworkers
19 foster parents
23 attorneys
17 psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists
5 guardian ad litem staff
4 judges
4 court personnel
3 abuse registry workers
2 primary case workers
1 guardian ad litem

She notes that out of the 195 people listed above, only two of them were UNPAID volunteers - yet they were the two people who made the greatest difference in her life.

Her story is an amazing one; it touches on attachment, abuse, trauma, grief and loss, openness, birth family, advocacy, siblings, institutionalization,difficult information, multiple caregivers and many other issues that affect us as adoptive parents, and our children as adoptees.

And the "Three Little Words" are not the three little words you are probably thinking of.

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