Description: Positive and practical, this guide is designed to offer a route to recovery from grief and loss after adoption or long-term foster care.
Brief description: Renée Wolfs lives near Utrecht, the Netherlands. She specializes in communication, counselling and grief. She is the author of Adoption Conversations and More Adoption Conversations (BAAF) which are popular among many families of adopted and foster children. She has worked as a copywriter, information officer, counsellor and group coach. She writes columns and articles in adoption magazines and is an adoptive mother of three teenagers.
Review Quotes: Often when I am working with children and young people who are fostered or adopted around their life stories and processing their multiple experiences of loss I find they are not yet able to complete the journey towards integration. I have often wondered where these children will access support in adulthood to complete this process, agreeing as I do with Wolfs that the memory of these children's losses will be remembered in their bodies into adulthood, imprinted on their senses. I love that Wolfs locates the body at the centre of her seven element 'Circle of Connecting' developed specifically for adoptees and foster children to support coping with loss. In her book I hope motivated adult adoptees and foster children will discover a flexible framework to apply to their core losses, in which 7 elements are central: the body, mind, heart, environment, past, present and future. The reader is in control of the elements he wants to connect with in that moment in order to connect with himself and the past and develop new perspectives, feelings and thoughts about events past, the present and future. This is supported by case examples, practical suggestions and tools and an easy to read theoretical perspective on loss.--Katie Wrench, Team Manager at the Therapeutic Social Work Team, Art Psychotherapist, Foster Carer and Co-Author of Life Story Work with Children Who are Fostered or Adopted