Out of the Box: a Memoir of an Adoptee

After years of childhood curiosity, a woman adopted as an infant decides to find her birth mother. It took her years to finally decide to hire a “Search Angel.” She got her call only three days later—but she found out that her birth parents had already passed on. However, her birth mother’s husband was a joyful fount of information and treated her like his own lost daughter.

In Out of the Box: A Memoir of an Adoptee, author Patricia Bauer Collins shares her journey to discover her birth parents, as she faces new challenges yet undergoes a great deal of emotional growth. Patricia shares actual letters between her birth mother, Shirley, and Shirley’s mother and grandmother regarding “Shirley’s problem” when she was just twelve years old. Patricia also tells the story of how she was able to connect with her half-siblings and other relatives—something more exciting than she had ever imagined—even traveling to her Spanish ancestors’ 1842 family adobe outside Santa Barbara.

For Patricia, connecting with her origins and with her past made her realize that her ancestors were far more important to her than she had thought. Not only did she discover more about her history and the talents and skills she shared with them; she also discovered more about herself, being rewarded along the way with an astounding epiphany of connection.