I was gifted a copy of One Yes At A Time to read and review on Just to Claireify. All opinions expressed are my own.
Did you have a reading goal for this year? Mine was a rather ambitious 25 books. But I actually just finished book 25 this week! Today I’m sharing a review of one of my favorite reads of 2024: One Yes At A Time: How Open Adoption Transformed Our Family, by local author Susan Strong.
Whilst I’m usually a nonfiction reader, I don’t normally reach for autobiographies or memoirs. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I received One Yes At A Time in the mail. Adoption is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as my childhood best friend and all of her siblings are adopted. Their house was my second home growing up, especially during difficult seasons of life for my own family (my parents’ lengthy divorce process). Their family was and is an incredible testament to the beauty of building a family through adoption. However, all of their adoptions were closed—by necessity, not by choice. As such, I didn’t know much about what an open adoption looks like before reading One Yes At A Time.
What One Yes At A Time Is About
It is difficult to balance the desire to share one’s journey to and through adoption, with a birth family’s and adopted child’s right to privacy. Often, I feel that social media accounts (on Instagram or Facebook) lean too far in the direction of oversharing for clout. They often frame adoption as a purely joyful and rewarding endeavor. Of course, the process is also filled with trauma, grief, and loss. Adoption is a complex topic that is difficult to write about and share with the public. And, it’s one that I think Susan Strong has treated with the utmost care and respect for everyone involved in her family’s story.
One Yes At A Time begins at a difficult time in the author’s life: her mother is dying and her first marriage is ending. Soon after, she meets her second husband, and they begin their journey through infertility together. When IVF doesn’t work for them—this is 30 years ago, when fertility treatment was in its infancy—they start to think about adopting. Research and reflection led them to believe that open adoption—forming and maintaining a relationship with their future child’s birth family—was the best option for all involved. So that’s what they did.
The book covers how they met their two birth families, the births and adoption processes, and how the presence of the birth families enriched their lives through the years. She also discusses the challenges of adopting. Continually, she acknowledges that adoption is both beautiful and sad—a gift, a sacrifice, and a loss. She makes a convincing case that open adoption, while not always possible, is the ideal way to adopt so that children feel connected to their heritage and know their stories.
Her girls are roughly my age now. Towards the end of the book, she writes about how she continues to learn about adoption through her daughters’ experiences. How they identify and how they fit into their birth families now as adults, continues to shift and evolve. While hopeful, there is no perfect happy ending tied up in a neat package, which feels fitting.
My Review of One Yes At A Time
I so, so enjoyed this book. It far exceeded my expectations (which were largely based on how adoptive social media influencers share their own journeys and lives). At times, I couldn’t put it down! Which is saying something, as I have a 10-week-old and often drift off reading while nursing him at night 😛
Who would I recommend this book to? Really, anyone who wants to broaden their view of adoption. I was chatting with a family member recently about our current reads. She reflected that the only stories she knew about adoption were, essentially, about couples picking up their child, driving away and never looking back. In many cases, there is the potential for so much more in the adoption process, as Strong so beautifully explains.
One Yes At A Time is a book that is candid, thought-provoking, illuminating, and uplifting all at once. Overall, I couldn’t recommend it more.
xx Claire
If you’re interested in reading more of my book reviews, you can find them here. To contact me about a potential book review opportunity, please reach out via my contact form.