Blind In One Eye by David R. Ford

Blind In One Eye: A Story About Seeing The Possibilities - A Memoir by David R. Ford.

Was my brother, the one born seven years before me but kept by my birth parents? Was it really possible that, after the lifetime I'd spent wondering about him, he was the guy a friend had just seen on the subway - the one who supposedly looked like my older twin?

Finding my brother would soon feel like a naive goal. His secretive and frightened parents had far more to hide than I could have imagined, and they had worked hard to maintain the elaborate facade of an ordinary family. Breaching their defenses would trigger events that quickly took control of my life.

Blind in One Eye is the true story of an adoptee finding, and being absorbed into, a shockingly troubled birth family - a story about abruptly leaving behind life as an only child. But it's also the story of someone with focused and demanding expectations who learns to see other possibilities, to see that the answers he actually gets in life might be more important than the ones he thought he wanted.

The most remarkable discoveries seem to come while looking for something else - as long as you're open to the possibilities.

What I Can Tell You:
Imagine growing up as an only child with loving adoptive parents knowing you have a brother out there with your birth family but then finding out that you don't just have a brother, you have 5 other siblings too! David calls them "the keepers" and "the throwaways". His birth parents put him up for adoption along with three girls before him then went on to have more babies that they kept.

It's a complicated story, one that David tells with a candid approach encased in realism and humor. It reads like an letter between friends. I felt like David is a wonderful person who is sharing his very complicated story because he wants to advocate for open adoption. He spent 40 years of his life searching for a family he knew was out there and then to hear that his eldest sister had been looking for him for years and had a semi relationship with the birth mother who comes off as a scared woman of the 40's. As a mother, reading the story of these "throwaways" and wondering how a mother could continue to have babies and give them up could if written by a different person, may have made me angry. However, David has such a way of telling the story, that I don't feel anger toward his birth mother. I feel pity, sadness and shame. If it were a different time maybe things would have been different. I am so happy that David has a family that he is getting to know and love.

Enjoyable, good read even if you have never experienced adoption. David is truly a wonderful story teller and I love his relationship with his wife. Kudos to him for putting this all down on paper for other adoptees to have a reference on how removing the veil of secrecy with adoptions can heal, soothe, and foster relationships that wouldn't have had a chance to flourish without knowledge and communication.

Sample pages

For more information on David R. Ford and his book, visit him on Facebook, Twitter and his blog.  To purchase his book, visit Amazon.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from FordWords Publishing for my honest opinion.