Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 1/10/2024
WILBRAHAM — Wilbraham resident Kelly Pramberger has an intimate understanding of the emotional and practical parts of adoption. As an adoptive mother herself, Pramberger wanted to experience her experience while telling the stories of other people impacted by adoption. To do this, she curated and edited an anthology, “From the Heart: Writings About Adoption.”
Pramberger’s son, Luis, was adopted from Guatemala. Pramberger chose to adopt from that country because two of her younger cousins were adopted from there. She and her husband began the process when Luis was 3 months old. More than a year and several trips abroad later, the Prambergers took their 16-month-old child home.
About the time Pramberger was going through the adoption process, her mother shared that she had placed a child for adoption when she was a young woman and that child had reached out. Pramberger said her mother was raised in an era in which people were shunned and shamed for being single and pregnant. Pramberger’s family has since met her half-brother.
Pramberger said there are still stigmas associated with being adopted or placing your child for adoption. “It’s been that way in our society for so long,” she said. Dispelling those stigmas is a part of why she created the anthology.
While Pramberger has contributed stories about her experiences with adoption two other collections, this was her first time creating and curating an anthology. The book includes 25 stories and poems from 18 women. There are stories from adoptive, birth and foster mothers; people who were adopted; those that went through local adoptions and international ones; close the options and open ones.
“I first turned to the people closest to me,” Pramberger said. In addition to her own stories, her mother, sister-in-law and cousins’ stories are included in the book. She also reached out to friends. The topic of adoption is personal and emotional for many people and five contributors withdrew their stories from the anthology. Pramberger communicated with her contributors and made a Facebook group to support them through the writing process.
Pramberger said she intentionally focused the collection on women writers, although many of the stories had input from fathers or others who went through the experiences with women who put pen to page. She felt women would be open to “share more.”
At 16 years old, Luis recently began looking for his birth mother. Despite not having much information about her identity, the family found the birth mother, and Luis met her in the country of his birth.
Pramberger shared that she never had concerns or insecurities that her son would love his birth mother more than her. Instead, she said, she was focused on helping him find the answer to questions about himself and his background.
There are several choices for the circumstances around adoptions. Some are coordinated by a third party and the birth and adoptive parents do not know each other. In others, birth parents choose among prospective adoptive families. There are also open adoptions in which the families remain in contact with the birth parents.
Pramberger feels open adoptions are a better choice. “I used to think it was about the family you create,” she said, but “when those kids reach a certain age and they [have questions] ... it just didn’t seem right to keep things from [Luis].” She added, “I think it’s much healthier.”
“From the Heart: Writings About Adoption,” is available at Amazon.com.