Edmond Philippe de Vilmorin Horsey

I read Hole in My Heart and was moved to tears. It is an unflinching memoir of motherhood: author Dusky’s giving up her daughter for adoption at birth; Dusky’s subsequent struggle to find her child; and once found, the joy and heartbreak of parenthood. Dusky is a crusader against “sealed record” adoption laws – laws that would deny the most basic knowledge to a mother of her child’s welfare and to a child of her birth history. But Hole in My Heart is not a polemic. It is a rich life portrait, both the lovely and the less so. We do not arrive in this world as blank slates, Dusky shows us. We each have a unique history that informs who we are – for better or worse – and this history is our birthright irrespective of what the law would have. I write this as the half-brother of a sibling I know not. As a young woman, my mother gave birth out of wedlock and relinquished the infant. I know neither when the birth occurred – other than sometime between 1946 and 1953 – nor where – other than in Europe. It took my mother’s deathbed to bring her to admit to this child. She too had a hole in her heart. But rather than acknowledge that loss, my mother chose to shoulder a burden of shame: a poisoning that led to such inexplicable sadness, to so many holes in other hearts. I suspect that many families suffer in similar silences. Dusky is to be commended for sharing her story, which will resonate with many readers, and for her advocacy which will help many families heal.