Regifted: An Adoptee's Memoir of True Belonging

(Paperback)

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A raw, often wry, memoir of mothers, mysteries, and miracles.

Surrendered at birth in a closed adoption, Candi Byrnes biology and ethnicity is a secret. The impending arrival of her first grandchild ignites an urgency to identify potential genetic time bombs and confirm her ancestry. Due to arcane privacy laws, Candi is repeatedly denied access to the one person who could provide that informationher biological mother.

After years of failed attempts, she resigns herself to never learning the truth about her roots; that is, until her ninety-year-old Aunt Delores has a vision and insists Candi resume efforts to find her birth family. Candi is gobsmacked when an internet search shes performed thousands of times before suddenly reveals her birth mothers identity. Within hours, she ends up on the doorstep of her birth mothera place shes sworn never to visit.

After a series of guilt-driven interactions with Those People, as she refers to her maternal birth family, Candi terminates contact. Although the reunion proves disastrous, it opens her eyes to truths about her relationship with her adoptive mother, Delphine. Though their relationship was difficult and contentious during Delphines life, a series of miraculous experiences after her death guides Candi home to herselfwhere, she learns, she has belonged all along.

Author Bio

Candi Byrne is a gregarious introvert, nomadic homebody, and pragmatic woowooist. She lives in an enchanted forest on the south side of North Mountain in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Her cozy, colorful cottage contains a bounty of art supplies for the Magic on the Mountain creative retreats she facilitates, as well as the Lets Get Messy sleepovers she has regularly with her two granddaughters, who live over the creek and through the woods. She lives in Martinsburg, WV.