Already Home: Confronting the Trauma of Adoption

by Howard Frederick Ibach

Overview

In his debut memoir, Already Home, adopted son, Howard Frederick Ibach, invites readers on an inspiring journey that ultimately debunks the widespread notion that adoption is an automatic ticket to suffering and abandonment.

As the son of a physician father and a scientist mother, Howard rarely questions his status as adoptee in a family that includes both an adoptive sister and his parents' biological children. That's because growing up in early 1960s-Wisconsin, he was afforded a life of love, security, and boyhood adventures.

But in 2015 at the age of fifty-eight, his story takes an unexpected turn. Amid the turmoil of a faltering relationship, he stumbles upon research that concludes most, if not all, adoptees will experience trauma.

Two years later, Ibach decides to trace his biological lineage. Armed with his adoption records, he learns the identity of his birth mother and unravels the captivating and dramatic narrative of his biological family.

Howard's discovery reveals not just the joy of his newfound connections, but also reaffirms the love he has for the family who adopted him.

Already Home is an inspiring memoir that disputes presumptive ideas about adoption and reveals what it really means to have a family...or two.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798989292318
Publisher:	Juju Books
Publication date:	12/05/2023
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.59(d)

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2023

“Abandoned, shabandoned.” Ibach’s inspiring debut recounts his adult search for his biological family while also contesting the conviction that adoptees naturally feel a sense of abandonment and even trauma simply by having been adopted. That conviction, especially as laid out in a book by a psychologist that Ibach read, has felt like a “punch in my gut,” to Ibach, who enjoyed a happy, healthy childhood that prepared him for life. Especially galling: his feeling that “if I argued with about this interpretation, I was in denial of my suffering.” Ibach writes that he “was never haunted by not knowing” the identity of his birth parents, but in Already Home he recounts how, in 2017, in his fifties, he received a message from his sister informing him of the Wisconsin legislation that now allowed adoptees to learn about their deceased birth parents—and then he went to find them.

Ibach’s memoir is broadly divided into two themes: stories from his childhood and his journey to discover his birth family, plus his life and relationship with them. Ibach paints a moving picture of life as a “happy, pampered, privileged child” with his adoptive parents and three siblings in Milwaukee, roughhousing, exploring the ravines of Lake Michigan, and meeting Santa Claus during the holiday season. This deeply personal tale offers a window into 20th century America as Ibach reflects on the societal treatment of unwanted pregnancies before the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision, the perception of adoption and adoptees, and the experience of bisexuality in a culture that marginalized anyone not conforming to heteronormativity.

When Ibach meets his birth family in South Carolina he is welcomed into the clan with love, but this experience also reaffirms his love for his own family—the ones who “chose” him. His story touchingly challenges orthodoxies while celebrating love as it’s lived. Readers looking to cry happy tears will find solace in this emotionally charged memoir.

Takeaway: Touching story of adoption, love, and challenging orthodoxies.

Comparable Titles: Brad Livingood’s Surrounding Sparky, Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know.

Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A- Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews

2023-12-07
Ibach questions how much his adoption shaped his inner life in this debut memoir.

On a November afternoon in 1955, a drunk truck driver killed a motorist in an accident on a rural road outside Nichols, South Carolina. The dead motorist’s wife found solace in the arms of another man, and when their child was born—a little over a year after the accident—he was given up for adoption. Raised by a physician father and a scientist mother in a suburb of Milwaukee, Ibach never felt particularly out of place in his adoptive family, which included a mix of adopted children and the biological children of his parents. “I never felt abandoned, I never felt rejected, I never felt that I had to prove my worthiness to be in and among the Ibach clan,” writes the author. “These emotions never surfaced, and I am content and secure enough to say I am also convinced these emotions are not percolating beneath the surface.” It was not until the author was 58 years old and having relationship trouble with a girlfriend that he first encountered, via couples therapy, the idea that his adoption might have left deep scars on his psyche. The suggestion led Ibach to look back on his childhood for evidence of emotional distress—the occasions when, as a kid, he’d acted out, refusing to eat his mother’s cooking or riding off on his bike to be alone. The relationship with his girlfriend ended, and the author was left questioning his sense of identity. Not long after this period of uncertainty began, the state of Wisconsin opened up its adoption records, allowing adopted children to track down their birth parents for the first time. Ibach soon learned his birth mother’s name, and that she had died many years before. More emotionally confused than ever, he dove into the search for whatever information he could find about his birth parents, revealing the dramatic backstory that he never knew he had. But would he come away from the process feeling any differently about the family who had raised him?

Ibach writes with candor and curiosity, making readers feel as though they’re witnessing the author’s self-exploration in real time. “What is the correct terminology?” he wonders. “Bloodline? Ancestry? Parentage? I’m not sure. My late dad Harold and my late mother Martha were my parents. They raised me. Mom died almost ten years before I submitted my application to Wisconsin for my adoption report…” The author is sure that he isn’t missing anything fundamental—phrases from adoption therapy culture like “Primal Wound” and “Ghost Kingdom” strike him as overly dramatic—and yet his search for answers proves that there’s something to be gained from seeking to understand one’s origins. Adopted readers who, like Ibach, don’t see themselves as victims and yet still carry a sense of uncertainty inside them will benefit from accompanying him on this journey, regardless of its revelations.

An earnest and thoughtful adoption memoir.

Kirkus Reviews