Welcome to Attach2Me.com (this site is a work in progress and is still under construction).

_ I spent five frustrating years trying to understand my adopted child's issues.  My initial attempts did not connect my teenage daughter’s anxiety to her having been adopted. It was only the prompting by my sister-in-law of a book ‘someone had recommended’ that led me to the Nancy Verrier book 'The Primal Wound'. Reading this book was like reading the life story of my own daughter’s journey. Without ever having read the book, she had used the same language as depicted in it – of having to wear a mask to survive in school, of how she could not be herself as people would not like her if they knew what she was really like. I slowly learned about the meaning of attachment as I moved more into the adoption literature. The child was chosen but the child was also left. This is beautifully expressed by Joan Didion in her book Blue Nights. The words that follow for her are abandonment, frantic, fear, anxiety. Add in a few more, trauma, a sense of shame, a need for control and you begin to understand the fragile make-up of the child. Lack of attachment is the root cause of a lot of problems not just for adopted and fostered children but for children-in-care, ‘looked-after’ children, children in guardianship relationships, homeless children or any children within a non-functioning family unit.  Over the years, as a librarian with this non-functioning teenager, I searched the web extensively. Because I did not recognise adoption as the issue, all my searches were in vain.  Terms I used like disaffected/difficult/troublesome teenagers yielded no results and certainly no links to adoption. Out of all this searching, I vowed that other parents/caregivers should not have to make the same frustrating journey. I have attempted to bring together the different books, contacts, websites, DVDs and other sources of information that I found helpful into one place. I hope my indexing of this material will ensure that any searches on any of these topics on the web in the future will at least lead people to find this site. The selected books are titles I have read and over time I will expand these to include my own book reviews. The drawings on the website are sketched by my daughter. I hope this website will be useful to adoptees, birth mothers and adoptive parents/carers. This is the triangle of people who have been presented with attachment issues from different sides. Each has a valid story to tell and I hope all will feel this collection of information supports all sides, without judgement. Mairead Mullaney

Upcoming Events Family Futures are returning to Ireland on the 6th October 2012 for a 1-day training course. Venue will be the Tullamore Court Hotel. More details to follow at a later stage.  HOLLY VAN GULDEN WORKSHOP  Clarion Liffey Valley Hotel, Dublin Wednesday 6th June 2012 HOLLY VAN GULDEN CLINICS 1. Clarion Liffey Valley Hotel, Dublin _ 2. Central Hotel, Main St., Tullamore, Co. Offaly _ 7th to 12th June 2012

"It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop"  - Wisdom of Confucius