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Candace lost her son. Twice.

The first time to adoption and the second not long after their reunion twenty years later.

In this heart-wrenching and heart-warming memoir, Candace Cahill offers an intimate view of child relinquishment and child loss, the definition of motherhood, and how two things can be true at one time.

Book Progress

  • Draft, Edit, Revise Memoir Done
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Publication Date November 15, 2022

Why Write Goodbye Again?

The seeds of Goodbye Again began during the early days of my reunion with my son, Michael. As I struggled to develop a relationship with my adult son, I sought out the stories of others who’d come before—first mothers and adoptees—in hopes they would provide guidance.

There were so few.

Society seemed focused on the “rainbows and unicorns” of adoption, with pictures of happy, fulfilled couples cradling newborns and messages that first mothers are brave and selfless. But an alternate narrative, quieter and less intrusive, included adult adoptees and first parents addressing the trauma of abandonment and life-long mental health issues, giving me my first glimpse out of “the adoption fog.” Then, in the aftermath of my son’s death, I searched again for examples of how to endure the loss and found support through groups like The Compassionate Friends. Their focus, however, tended to be on traditional family structures and did not address ambiguous and disenfranchised grief like mine. So, I continued my search and finally found a commonality among those struggling with infertility and miscarriage. Their grief, like mine, was not openly discussed nor understood, and it was at this point I pledged to use my voice and experience to help start a conversation.

It doesn’t matter how you get here; the grief of child loss is universal.

~Candace

Praise for Goodbye Again

Lorraine Dusky

author of Birthmark and hole in my heart

Goodbye Again is the poignant and engrossing emotional journey of a birthmother through sorrow to redemption. Cahill’s all-too-short reunion with her son makes the memoir especially helpful to mothers who meet waning or ambiguous interest in building a relationship after reunion.

Lori Holden

Writer, author, and podcaster of Adoption: The Long View

Candace Cahill’s is a supremely necessary voice for acknowledging trauma and healing from it. Her writing moves me as a daughter, a mother, a friend, a woman, a human. I only wish I lived nearer to her so I could also hear her singing voice! For now, I must settle for reading everything she writes and listening to every interview she grants.

Laura Engel

Author of You’ll Forget This Ever Happened: Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960’s

Written with raw honesty and courage, this important book takes the reader straight to the traumatic experience of relinquishing a newborn to adoption and beyond to the magical joyfulness of the reunion of birth mother and adopted child eighteen years later. This is a love story in so many ways and it will break your heart and fill your soul.

Julia Stolle

MSW, LSW, Adoptee, Adoptive Parent

Goodbye Again: A Memoir is amazing. It reads like a great fiction novel. I felt like I was living the experience right along with the author. As an adoptee, I kept wondering if my birth mom had any of the same thoughts, pregnancy counseling, judgmental comments, longings, self judgement, questioning, and fears. And as an adoptive mom, this book articulates the expectations often set on me to be an ideal mother, a heavy and unachievable goal. But this book is not just about adoption and loss. It is also about deciding how life’s heartbreaking events and circumstances shape us – do we let it reduce us into destructive, diminished, isolated versions of ourselves or do we grow more resilient, vibrant, connected, and fulfilled. Choice is clear in Goodbye Again. Healing is not easy, though, and often comes in waves. And only after monumental effort and time.

Spoiler Alert - Memoir Details

Short Synopsis

I lost my son. Twice.

The first time to adoption, when a lack of resources and low self-esteem convinced me I was not enough. I tried to block the grief, married an old flame, and relocated to Alaska, but when a letter arrived two days before my son’s eighteenth birthday, my hope for reconnection ignited. After two long years navigating the roller-coaster of reunion, I finally embraced my son on the doorstep of his childhood home. But my joy was short-lived: he died in his sleep shortly thereafter.

In the years that followed my son’s passing, I learned to reconcile the layers of grief, both of his relinquishment and his death and developed a loving relationship with his adopted family. Resilience, intention, and love combined to guide me to healing.

A heart-wrenching and heart-warming memoir, Goodbye Again offers an intimate view of child relinquishment and child loss, the definition of motherhood, and how two things can be true at one time.

Full Synopsis

In 1989 I was twenty-one and pregnant, and my path seemed clear: parenthood. But at the urging of my scared boyfriend, I agreed to attend crisis pregnancy counseling in hopes he would stick around. Instead, the program exposed my history of abuse and emphasized my incompetence to parent, so when the baby’s father left, I succumbed to the adoption agency’s subtle persuasion and placed my child for adoption.

Determined I’d made the right choice yet traumatized by the aftermath of placement, I hardened my heart to thoughts of my absent child and threw myself into constructing a new life. A college degree, marriage, and yearly updates helped me soften around the adoption, but I built a wall around my feelings when the promised status updates ceased without warning and with no recourse.

Then, the day before my son’s eighteenth birthday, an unexpected letter arrived from the placement agency. Thrilled to receive news after so many years, I tore open the envelop only to discover his adoptive mother had committed suicide and was the reason communication had ended. I took this information as further evidence that I was a bad mother for choosing a poor replacement. Fear that my son would hate me, and the complex emotional nature of reunification, created a new layer of turmoil. Two turbulent years would pass before we finally met in person, and I could again hold my son in my arms. But it would be the only time: he died in his sleep at twenty-three.

The shock of his sudden death was tempered by the unexpected compassion I received from his adoptive family at the funeral. They welcomed me and introduced me to everyone as his mother, contradicting years of negative internal messages. Their acceptance, along with my husband’s encouragement, launched me on my path to healing, both the trauma of the adoption and his death.

I found solace from other first mothers and grieving parents, started a blog, developed mindfulness, self-compassion, and opened myself to vulnerability. I discovered the connection between the relationship with my mother and my own “mother wound,’ and learned two things can be true at one time. And, despite not being perfect parents, I could forgive my mother, my son’s adoptive mom, and myself to find peace.

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