This is the third revised edition of the open adoption classic recommended by the Child Welfare League of America. Gently provocative, warm and convincing, this open adoption guide includes actual letters between adoptive parents and birthparents, and between the latter and the children they have

About the Author
Kathleen Silber was born and reared in Stockton, California, graduated from the University of California at Davis and received her Master's degree in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley. She is nationally known for her pioneering work in open adoption. Kathleen and her husband and two children live in California, where she is Associate Executive Director of the Independent Adoption Center in Pleasant Hill.

Phylis Speedlin, a native of Steubenville, Ohio, attended the Presbyterian School of Nursing in Pittsburgh and received her nursing degree from Incarnate Word College in San Antonio. After four years as a U.S. Army nurse, she took a law degree and practices now in San Antonio. She has two daughters who entered her life through adoption.

Open adoption -- so many opportunities, September 20, 2003

This book allowed my husband and I to understand the evolution of open adoption -- what we now believe to be natural adoption. More importantly, "Dear Birthmother" described adoption from the perspective of birthmothers, which was a critical viewpoint for us hear while we were trying to also understand the concept of openness in adoption. When we were first considering adoption, we thought we'd want a "safe" experience where we'd only meet the birthmom and then she'd disappear. This book helped us see the range of openness that might be possible, as well as how closed adoption might feel instead. After reading this book and sharing many conversations about the idea of openness, our child was born and we began to experience the growth of our amazing, loving extended family that included our child's birthparents and birthgrandparents. How lucky we ALL began to feel. Now, during the wait for our second adoption, this book reminds me of how sure we are of open adoption and the abiding respect we have for the birthmother of our first child born to us through adoption.