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Un-Adoptically Me – My voice: Winning Beyond the Primal Trauma of Adoption is a raw memoir told through 88 “snapshots” tracing your journey navigating the complex and lifelong ripples of trauma surrounding adoption, love wrapped in loss, gratitude clouded by grief, and identity tangled in silence. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing Un-Adoptically Me wasn’t just important. It was inevitable.
It came from a place deeper than memory—where silence had calcified into shame, and my voice had gone missing inside the myth of being “lucky”.
It was terrifying, sacred, and necessary. Every page demanded I unearth the unspeakable, stand inside it, and speak anyway. This wasn’t about blame or bitterness—it was about belonging. About breaking open. About burning down the false self to finally meet the real one.
I didn’t write this to tell my story.
I wrote it to free it.
And in doing that—I freed me.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
I wanted to say the things we’re not supposed to say.
That adoption can feel like a blessing and a betrayal. That “gratitude” can be a cage. That finding your voice often begins with breaking your own heart.
I wanted to make room for the full truth: the mess, the miracles, the paradoxes that don’t fit neatly on a Hallmark card.
Most of all, I wanted to hold space—for the reader who’s never felt seen. For the silence that lives inside so many of us. To say: your pain is valid, your story matters, and you’re not broken—you’re becoming.
This book is a love letter to the truth.
And an invitation to come home to yourself.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
The hardest part?
Telling the truth in a world that prefers the fairytale.
Writing this book was like opening a locked room in my soul and walking barefoot through the wreckage. Every sentence cost me something. Every memory asked, Are you ready to feel this now?
But the reward?
Everything.
The release. The reclamation. The raw, holy exhale of saying, Here I am. All of me.
I didn’t just write a book.
I shed a skin.
And what remained was something I never thought I’d find—peace, on my own terms.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
That you’re not crazy. Or too much. Or alone.
That your feelings are real, your story is sacred, and your truth is worth telling—even if your voice shakes.
If one person closes my book and finally feels understood—not fixed, not explained, just seen—then I’ve done what I came here to do.
We heal in the presence of truth.
And if my truth helps you hear your own, then every shadow I faced was worth it.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
In the first moments of life, a baby’s cry echoes through the universe. Her tiny hands grasp for the welcoming warmth of her mother’s touch, but what happens when that touch never comes?
Torn from the sacred womb – the only home she’s ever known – she’s helplessly thrust into a world of well-meaning strangers. Her heart branded with the haunting refrain that refuses to die: Mommy, I’m scared. Why did you leave me behind?
The unspoken contract of closed adoption shackles her with a cruel bargain: We will gift you a loving home, but you must relinquish your legacy, your birthright, and your true identity.
To survive her trauma, she silences her understanding of love, loss, and belonging. She builds her identity on a fractured foundation of fear, shame, and disconnection. She shrouds her life in secrecy, and seals her fate by compliance and surrender.
She spends a lifetime struggling to understand her place in the world. Don’t speak, don’t feel, don’t remember – just be grateful that you were chosen. But what happens when the façade cracks and the truth comes spilling out? Sometimes, the greatest truth is the one that’s been buried within.
Through 88 intimate snapshots, this moving memoir chronicles the author’s transformative journey, mystically fueled by inner wisdom and guidance. With raw honesty, she unshackles the chains of family betrayals and abusive relationships, and emerges into a life of authenticity, freedom, and empowerment. Her soul-baring story will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever felt trapped, silenced, or dismissed.
As you step into her world, she invites you to walk alongside her in finding your own voice and speaking your own truth. She offers a powerful reminder that you, too, can reclaim your life and live with purpose and passion.
Join her quest and get your copy now.
The Author’s Promise
Un-Apologetic. Un-Afraid. Un-Silenced.
Un-Adoptically Me — My story. My truth. My voice.
Elmarie Arnold’s Un-Adoptically Me is a raw and personal memoir told through 88 vivid “snapshots” that trace her journey as an adoptee navigating the complex and lifelong ripples of primal trauma. It dives into the bittersweet paradoxes of adoption, love wrapped in loss, gratitude clouded by grief, and identity tangled in silence. Through poetic, bold, and often gut-wrenching storytelling, Elmarie lays bare her emotional landscape, from her childhood innocence to adult reckoning, through motherhood, heartbreak, and healing. It’s not a straight line. It’s layered, messy, and brave.
There’s a section in “A Life Reborn” that just clung to my heart—Elmarie writes about holding her newborn son for the first time in the same hospital where she was born and later adopted. That moment wrecked me. She’s breastfeeding him, watching this new little life cling to her, and all she can think about is how she’ll never abandon him like she feels she was abandoned. I’ve had my arms around my own kids and thought those same fierce, protective things. Her writing is like that, so personal it feels like it echoes something unspoken in you. It’s poetic without trying too hard. Honest without being self-indulgent.
What stood out most to me, though, was her unfiltered rage and heartbreak when she finally receives that cold, clinical letter from the adoption agency. Just nine sentences about her birth mother. Not even a name. No warmth, no story. As a mother, that shattered me. The way she talks about the absence—not just of facts, but of acknowledgment—makes you see how trauma isn’t always what’s done to you but what’s never given. It made me want to hold my own daughter tighter. Elmarie doesn’t ask you to agree with her or pity her. She just wants you to witness her truth.
Her writing about motherhood is probably what resonated with me the most. “The Shadows We Keep” is a letter she wrote to her son after learning he had been molested for years under her roof while she was lost in trying to “find herself.” The pain in her words is unbearable. Grief, guilt, shame. She admits everything. Doesn’t hide behind excuses. I found that passage almost too painful to read, but also too important to skip. It’s a brutal, beautiful reckoning. And what’s wild is, despite all this trauma, Elmarie keeps showing up. For her kids, for herself. She breaks apart and pieces herself back together again, and then somehow, she writes it all down for the rest of us to read.
This book is for anyone who’s lived through loss or felt alone in a room full of people. It’s for mothers, daughters, and anyone who’s struggled to feel like they belonged. If you’ve ever tried to heal something that didn’t leave visible scars, you’ll see yourself in these pages. I cried, I got angry, and I paused more than once to just breathe. And in the end, I closed the book and felt like I’d made a friend.
Pages: 386 | ASIN : B0DV11GJ2N
LITERARY TITAN 