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Lifebooks
An Adoption Backstory
By Kelly Burgess
These are the basic tenets of a lifebook:
- It should cover the child's life before the adoption.
- It should be truthful.
- It should be positive.
Other than that, there are no rules. Lifebooks can be store bought, like Charette's, or made from plain paper tucked into sheet protectors. Karin Price's first exposure to lifebooks was in the early 1960s. Her parents had been missionaries in South Korea and, because of the devastation wrought by the Korean War, their home became a home for orphaned boys. Eventually, her parents were asked to make arrangements for some of the boys to be adopted. Her father made books for each of the boys, detailing their time in the orphanage. He often didn't know, nor did the boys, when they had been born or who their parents had been, but he did know when they came to him, and he took the time to write a personal letter about each boy and include it in the boy's book.
"I'm sure if experts looked at the books my dad had made, they wouldn't officially call them lifebooks, but he felt the boys that were being adopted overseas needed something more than just their clothes," says Price. "Since he didn't have information on their real families, there was no family information, but there was information about Korea, and it gave them an understanding of how circumstances led them to adoption."
Years later, when Price went to work for Dillon International, she began introducing the idea of the lifebook to families that she counseled. Price also created a lifebook for her daughter, who was adopted from Haiti, as well as her birth son. The Price children's lifebooks are simple – three ring binders with papers in sheet protectors. It's easy, and it allows the child to omit information they may not feel like sharing, as well as add to the lifebook as they get older.