T. Berry Brazelton, MD, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Medical School
"This is a great idea and you have done it beautifully. I can recommend it to adoptive parents and children!"

Susan Caughman, Publisher, Adoptive Families Magazine
"...Probst will help a generation of children answer their questions. This is a book no adoptive family should be without."

Joan Clark, Executive Director, ODS Adoption Community of New England
"...Cindy's approach is warm and supportive, while imparting a wealth of knowledge about adoption and child development..."

Book Description
'Adoption Lifebook: A Bridge to Your Child's Beginnings' is a new, easy-to-read workbook for international adoptive parents and waiting parents who wish to document their children's early lives for them, in the form of a lifebook. Through exercises and text, readers become more comfortable telling children the truth about their beginnings while emphasizing their strengths and resilience. Adoption specialist Cindy Probst guides parents through such topics as talking with children about their birth parents and orphanage or foster care experience, answering "why was I adopted?" questions, and using empowering adoption language. 'Adoption Lifebook: A Bridge to Your Child's Beginnings'is an invaluable resource for helping children feel good about who they are.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of 'Adoption Lifebook: A Bridge to Your Child's Beginnings' will be donated to international orphanage projects.

About the Author
Cindy Probst, MEd, MSW, LCSW believes that the stories of children's beginnings belong to them. She has a particular talent for framing difficult truths in ways that are empowering to children, and for teaching their parents to do the same. Cindy works with parents, both individually and in groups, to help them think about how to share the stories of their children's early lives with them, in ways that nourish the spirit, while also honoring the truth. Cindy, an adoption specialist at a Massachusetts adoption agency, is also an adoptive parent.

Someone has finally done it!, April 20, 2002

As an adoption professional I see many parents who love their children but struggle with their child's life story. Many children have joined their adoptive families through difficult or challenging circumstances and this can be hard to balance with a parent's joy of welcoming their new family member. Some parents feel that creating a lifebook for their child will focus more on the unpleasant details. I also see children who have in their minds created their own "lifebook" with details that may not be true or accurate such as "my birth mother did not keep me because I was an ugly baby".

My suggestion is always that their child has already lived this part of their life and would it not be helpful to have these memories written down in a way that the child can better understand them. It is a remarkable process to watch as a child reads their lifebook for the first time and realizes how decisions were made for them or what the circumstances of their adoption were. Each of their smiles and sighs are etched in my memory forever. They finally have a memory and a story that is their own!

It is welcoming to finally see a message I have always given to adoptive families and feel so strongly about in print. Ms. Probst's book validates and gives permission to many of the feelings that adoptive parents encounter when they begin the journey of writing their child's lifebook. Her belief of taking this journey to head and to heart and not push to just have a book is an invaluable message. By following the steps of this book, a parent is writing for their child the most loving and caring heirloom a child could ever have, a story of their beginnings before they became part of yours.