A powerful and honest account based on three decades of true-life experience, the award-winning book The Branches We Cherish weaves together thought-provoking, joyous, and poignant reflections of four birth parents, birth grandmothers, adoptive parents, and two adopted children. 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 where the biological parents and the adoptive family know each other’s identities and choose to remain in contact after the adoption is finalized… possibly for 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 90s there was little guidance for long-term relationships between adoptive and birth families, so Linda and David 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. 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.
Liz Pryor, ABC’s Good Morning America advice guru and author of “Look At You Now” and “What Did I Do Wrong?” says, “Linda Sexton does an incredible, informative, earnest job of walking the reader through the nuanced, intricate world of open adoption.” The Branches We Cherish was a Gold Medal recipient in the Florida Writers Association’s prestigious Royal Palms Literary Awards.
Linda R. Sexton is an open adoption pioneer and a former executive at a Fortune 100 company. Her greatest accomplishment and joy in life remains the adoption of two children in 1994 and 1998. With little guidance available, she was a pioneer in defining a path to a lifelong relationship with her children’s birth parents.
The Branches We Cherish, by Linda Sexton, 190 pp., ISBN 978-1-59211-381-1, is available at HistriaBooks.com and from all major book retailers. The book is also available in eBook. Titles published under the various imprints of Histria Books are distributed worldwide by the Independent Publishers Group (IPG). For information on publishing with Histria Books, please visit HistriaBooks.com or contact us at info@histriabooks.com
