The Lost Coin: A Memoir of Adoption and Destiny

He plays golf with a Tibetan lama, and experiences transcendence in a vivid dream, ultimately becoming a psychotherapist in his sixties. We witness the heart-rending scene when he and his wife adopt their own son, and we join him for a poignant reunion with his birth mother, who, it turns out, had desperately hoped he might appear in her life after she'd given him up for adoption. As we accompany Stephen Rowley on this adventurous and reflective journey, we come to understand more deeply the trauma engendered when separating mother from child, and the unspoken restlessness and yearning for connection many adoptees feel. "It is my hope," he writes, that we all "may discover the unique capacity within us to heal and even thrive, not in spite of the wounds we carry, but of them."