Katherine G. Hoyt, MS
Caseworker, Post Placement Services
5/8/2008
"I admire the honesty with which the two of you were
able to share things that might be hurtful, sensitive and/or
disruptive with each other. I believe that's how all relationships
become solid and real. If you only talk about the 'good stuff',
the bond seems phony and unreal and you might as well be living
in the same fantasy vision you had before you re-connected."
..................................................................................................................
Denise
Morency Gannon
Pastoral Minister
Stonehill College, Easton, MA
Author/composer of The Way Of The Cross, Invitation to Prayer,
Lift Up Your Hearts
World Library Publications
Feminist theology invites us to share the stories of our
hearts, encouraging all women to reveal their tales of pain
and possibility, discovering within the stories that we are
not alone. The stories connect us to one another and to another
community of women who lived before us and felt the same agony
when we gave birth to our children, rejoicing in the lives
we created, and loving more than we ever thought possible.
Telling our stories means baring our hearts and souls as we
hold out the hand of solidarity of sisterhood to those who
loved and lost the most precious gifts given us beyond measure:
our children. Telling our stories invites us to become family
with all those who walked, walk and will walk this path.
Even before we begin the body of the book The Same Smile,
the members of Susan Mello Souza's family embrace us as friends
in the acknowledgments, inviting us to turn the pages and
bravely stride with them on this sojourn of unrelenting love,
passionate persistence, anguish and unmitigated joy. Extraordinary
grace threads its way through this story that encourages all
women to trust in their own instincts and believe in their
hearts and stories that hope exists in the most arduous of
circumstances. The proof is in the pudding: the author shares
the storytelling with the daughter Joanne, lost to her through
adoption 30 years earlier.
A celebration of motherhood and daughterhood, The Same Smile
bonds us with the children of Susan: Joanne, lost and found,
Jackie, gone from this life but never forgotten, Kristine
and Bethany, daughters, sisters and friends, women connected
by the same smile, nurtured by the same loving heart. We must
remark that this book also extends the embrace of family to
willing men prepared to weep and be changed, ready to share
this story of redemption, forgiveness and healing. The Same
Smile encourages us to believe that with love, courage and
hope, all and anything becomes possible.
...................................................................................................................
The Same Smile, gets 5 stars. This is a
must read!
Susan contacted me with an interest in Fm magazine just months
after we began promoting our project. Due to the enormous
amounts of e-mail I received her letter somehow became hidden
from my sight. Many months later and just days before we were
scheduled to meet with Fm's layout designer I came across
Susan's letter. Sitting at my desk, attempting to sort through
a myriad of notes, copyrights, and countless articles, I saw
it. The Same Smile.
Just moments before my eyes came over her letter I had been
on the telephone with a friend of mine and we were discussing
how long I've been wearing braces. I had told her, "I
want my real smile when I see my son for the first time. I
want to have the same smile." Recalling that conversation
with her just seconds before, I immediately went to Susan's
website and read about her journey and the book she wrote
with her birth daughter, Joanne. I had to have it.
I do not know Susan. I've never spoken with her on the telephone.
I have only known her in the last, few weeks through e-mail
communication. However, I do know that it was not happenstance
that brought her letter to the top of my pile that day. After
sending off a very quick letter to her in which I explained
that I needed her book sent to me immediately in order to
get it into our Premier Issue, I sat back and wondered; what
exactly was in that book that I needed to read?
She promised to send it priority mail. Several days later
I found it waiting in my mail box. She had inscribed the book,
"To Courtney ~ Follow Your Heart ~ Fulfill Your Dream
~ Susan M. Souza."
It is 9:05 p.m. My deadline is in just fourteen hours. If
I stay up all night reading I can finish the book review and
maybe catch a few hours of sleep before driving the 70 miles
to Denver. I contemplate writing a filler (a bunch of jibberish
text to put in place of the real text until it arrives). I
am exhausted and still have three more articles to edit, over
thirty graphics to burn onto disc, and still have not saved
the magazine content into organized files. I pull up an ad
copy. It is done in Corel. I do not have Corel. I find it
on-line and request a trial download. The download tells me
that I will be waiting at least 15 minutes. I pick up The
Same Smile and decide to float through some of the pages while
waiting.
It is now 12:02 a.m. in the morning. Corel finished downloading
hours ago as I close the book and pull it against my chest.
My screensaver blinks at me, I am suddenly aware of the clock
ticking, and as I sigh deeply in amazement I realize I've
read the entire book in one sitting.
Perhaps it was the vivid imagery that kept my eyes glued
to the pages. Maybe it was how oddly similar Susan's account
of emotion was to mine so many years ago. Or maybe, just
maybe, it's just a damn good book. Excuse the language, but
in this case, there are no other words or expressions.
I lived Susan's life for three hours tonight and yet in a
world far away … she allowed me to become her. The ways
in which she expresses the trauma of saying goodbye to her
daughter, Joanne, encompass the true vulnerability of a mother's
natural instinct to love. After being sent to live in a home
for un-wed mothers Susan, like so many others, was given a
false name and a lie to tell others back at home. She was
not Susan, mother-to-be. She became Stella, and she was supposed
to be a counselor at a summer camp.
Through the journey of Susan's labor, delivery, and her entry
back into "normal" society as some classified it,
she kept her resolve. She'd made a promise to little Madlyn,
the name she gave her birth daughter, after all. She had,
in those last few perfect moments with her daughter, whispered,
"Madlyn, I promise Mommy will find you when you turn
twenty-one. And, when I see you then, I will tell you again
how much I love you."
The story of Susan finding Joanne, the strength it took
each of them to make contact, to swim through the seas of
emotion and the tides of possibilities and needs, is a tale
of two women who courageously embarked on the discovery of
one another. Accompanied by writings from her daughter, Joanne,
Susan's book gives both mother and daughter perspectives in
the most honest way possible. Inside of Susan's story I found
much more than a telling of a birthmother who ached and grieved
for the first child of her heart. I found a real woman whose
life was strangely similar to my own. Someone I related to,
and understood. Someone from whom I received validation for
questions I never realized I still had. This is not just a
story of loss, survival, and reunion. This book emulates a
woman that I am humbled to call Phenomenal.
I re-open her book. "It's amazing that Joanne thinks
I have no regrets. I have more regrets than I know what to
do with. She views my life in a totally different light when,
in fact, it's been difficult to the point of exhaustion. Needless
to say, the secrets and lies of adoption have transformed
me into a marvelous actress, able to portray myself in any
light. Even my own daughter believes me. How sad is that?
Who am I, really? I don't even know, but I'm sure as hell
going to find out. The time has come to search for the real
Susan Mary Mello."
...............................................................................................................
Spanning thirty years, this true-life story is an emotion
filled journey of painful choices, loss, survival and hope.
Recounted in the voices of the author, Susan Mello Souza,
and her daughter, Joanne, it sheds light on their individual
perspectives.
The social stigma attached to unwed mothers during the Sixties
gives seventeen-year-old Susan no choice but to give up her
baby for adoption. In the eight days she spends with her daughter,
she develops a special connection and resolves to search for
her when the latter turns twenty-one. Unfortunately she is
unable to keep her promise as tragedy strikes again and she
loses her sixteen year-old daughter, Jackie, to leukemia.
Overcome with grief and heartache, she postpones her quest,
and only much later, when her first-born is thirty, is she
able to summon the strength to finally trace her.
The same determination and courage that enable Susan to endure
teenage pregnancy and relinquishment of her baby, also sees
her through a divorce, the trauma of Jackie's death, and eventually
helps her to reunite with Joanne and heal her own life. Her
story is a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit
and the bonding power of motherhood. Birth mothers and adoptees
will be able to identify with Susan and Joanne's candidly
shared experiences. This deeply moving book, guaranteed to
tug at the heartstrings, is definitely one to read with a
box of tissues handy.
What impressed you most about this book?
This book is really beautifully written – Susan Souza does
a lovely job shaping the narrative, providing compelling and
rich dialogue and descriptions. The momentum works well –
the story unrolls smoothly and cleanly. I’m often a little
wary of memoirs being told in present tense, but here I found
the choice worked well: it lent an immediacy and urgency to
the telling that I thought was very effective.
I’m always very impressed with writers’ ability to go
back and relive troubling experiences; I think that the death
of a child (or children) has got to be one of the most difficult
experiences to even endure, let alone be able to relive for
many months in the pages of a book. The author’s eventual
message of hope and renewal were very helpful in an often
troubling and sad narrative.
Rating: 5 Stars
Pros: Very well-written - Flowing story line
- A "feel-good" book
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: This wonderfully human
story of a 60's relinquishment and a family reunited is told
in the blended voices of mother and (found) daughter.
Instead of a tragic account of the loss of a child to adoption,
compounded by the death of a subsequent child to leukemia,
this book is a triumph of strength. The losses are not diminished,
the emotional scars are still there, but author Souza's story
is forward-looking and encouraging. The added voice of her
(found) daughter adds another dimension, with her (Joanne's)
honest expression of her initial discomfort, and her growing
closeness with her new-found family. The "happily-ever-after"
ending is well- deserved, paid for in tears and anguish. The
Same Smile is an apt title, as seen in the photographs
of Souza with her three daughters, but after reading the book,
I think the title "The Same Heart" would have been
equally appropriate.
Susan begins her story in February of 1968 when she finds herself
pregnant and is later shipped off to a home for unwed mothers.
The love she felt for her daughter Madlyn and the decision that
was made for her to relinquish is described with unparalleled
eloquence.
Fast forward to 1989. By this time Susan has had three more
daughters and Jackie, the oldest, is diagnosed with Leukemia.
After Jackie dies at the age of 16, Susan is left to wonder
if God is punishing her for giving up Madlyn. Susan decides
to search for Madlyn once and for all in 1997. Susan and Joanne
meet in May of 1999.
I could not put this book down. It grabbed me from the get-go.
As I was reading it, I felt like I was there with her through
the loss of not one, but two daughters. It is refreshing to
read about the strength of a family’s love for one another.
I was touched by the inserts of letters that Joanne (Madlyn’s
adoptive name) had written when she first learned that Susan
was looking for her. This book is real, not fantasy. I was
so impressed with the process that Susan went through to first
of all grieve for Jackie and then conclude that, in fact,
God was NOT punishing her. The process of reunion is tenuous
and fragile and their process of reuniting was beautifully
chronicled with all its inherent ups and downs.
Bottom line . . . This book is about love, relinquishment,
and redemption. Susan has survived the loss of two daughters—one
to adoption, and another to Leukemia. The hope is apparent
throughout the book and the message I received was to never
give up—always follow your heart because it will never lead
you astray.
In this writer’s opinion, Susan Souza’s book “The
Same Smile,” is destined to take a place in the ranks
of “the best” in the growing selection of books in the
adoption reunion genre.
Susan, a reunited birth mother, takes the reader on a journey
through the stages of teen-age love, subsequent pregnancy
and abandonment, to a spell in a home for unwed mothers, the
birth of her first-born daughter and a heart-rending relinquishment
during the unforgiving 1960s. Her story easily carries us
through her struggles in her quest to find herself as she
finishes high school and makes her way through a first marriage,
childbirth, divorce and the difficult years of single motherhood.
Life wasn’t easy, but there aren’t many pre-1990 birth
mothers who can boast of an easy life. The guilt and remorse
baggage isn’t easy to shake off.
For Susan, it was a second heartbreaking loss that would
sorely test her limits of endurance. As if the pain of relinquishing
a first-born wasn’t enough, her whole world would be shaken
a second time, when, two decades later her beloved second
born daughter, Jackie, suddenly contracted Leukemia.
As painful as the loss of a child through relinquishment
is, at least we can hold out hope of reunion some day. Losing
a vibrant teenage child to an incurable illness or an accident
has a finality that leaves one totally helpless – there
are no magic wands to wave to make it easier, and there can
be no hope of reunion; at least not in this life.
As Susan’s story continues we are brought to the process
of search and contact as first-born daughter, Joanne, enters
the picture as a co-author of the book. Susan must tell her
two surviving daughters about their eldest sister, and the
story of reunion and recovery begins to unfold.
This well-written book truly deserves a place on your “must
read” list. It is a story of endurance and courage ... proof
that “birth mothers are survivors”!
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