The Book
Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude
By Linda Hoye
Benson Books, 2011 ISBN: 9780615606750
Linda Hoye was in her early twenties when she found herself parentless for the second time.
Adopted at five months of age, her heritage, medical history, and access to information about who she was or where she came from was sealed. It was as if she had never existed before being adopted.
When she was barely in her twenties her adoptive parents died and a pattern of loss was put into motion that would continue for years as, one by one, those she called family were torn from her life.
Struggling to deal with the loss of her family of origin and her adoptive parents, she ultimately reunites with members of her birth family–but there is never a reunion with the woman who gave her life and she continues to feel lost, rejected, and disconnected.
Two Hearts charts a course through a complex series of relationships stemming from the author’s adoptive family, her maternal and paternal birth families, and an abusive marriage as the author seeks the one thing she so desperately wants: family.
Hoye knows she must come to terms with the bitterness she harbors toward her birth mother when she becomes a grandmother and, soon after, faces the loss of the last remaining members of her adoptive family. She makes one final attempt to find something that will give her the sense of rightness that eluded her for so long.
This is the story of a strong and courageous woman’s journey through unfathomable grief; of what it takes to go into the abyss of deep-seated wounding, to feel the pain, and to come out the other side, whole, healed, and thankful.
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“Linda Hoye has written a book about adoption that reads like a novel, yet includes the many diverse feelings adoption brings about in adoptees. Her journey into the search for her biological family after the death of her adoptive parents reminds us all of the treachery of the closed adoption system, its secrets and shame. Despite the many stumbling blocks in her path, Linda manages to find a measure of gratitude within all the loss and grief she finds along the way. It is a healing journey that all adoptees can take comfort in, perhaps especially those who find death in reunion. Her honest account of her experience will inspire others to begin this perilous, but rewarding journey.”
- Nancy Verrier, MFT, author of The Primal Wound and Coming Home to Self
