Ithaka: Sara Saffian's Memoir of Being Found
I vaguely knew that Ithaca is a city in New York. I also vaguely knew that Ithaka is a Greek island, the home and the grail of Homer’s mythical Odysseus.
What I didn’t know is that Ithaka, Sarah Saffian’s telling of her reunion odyssey in her 1999 memoir would touch me so deeply. Her adoption journey has been, in so many ways, the opposite of mine. Yet our paths also have many parallels.
Ithaka was published, just one year before my husband and I entered the world of adoption with our first reachouts to local adoption agencies.
Thirty years have passed for Sarah since the time period described in her book. While she was then a journalist, now she is also a therapist.
In the intervening years, things have changed dramatically for me, as well. I have raised two humans to adulthood with my own odyssey through the various landscapes and perils of modern adoption.
After I read Ithaka‘s last page, the book stayed with me. I had questions and wonderings I wanted to bring to this fellow journaler. So I reached out to Sarah about having a conversation with me to share with you. Graciously, she agreed. We hope you enjoy.
Video Interview: An Adoptee Chronicles her Journey from a Closed Mindset to an Open Heartset
Transcript
We focused on three main areas: adoption, writing as therapy, and life post-Ithaka.
If you’d prefer to read the transcript of our conversation, click here.
Summary
Sarah and I differ in our roles, our time periods, and our available technologies.
- Sarah was born in the late 1960s, and the odyssey she documented was set in the 1990s.
- My odyssey started in the early 2000s and continues through the present day, with the last 19 years documented here.
- (Aside: Soon I’ll be posting a series of retrospectives, so subscribe at the bottom of this post if you’d like to be notified when new retrospectives appear.)
- Sarah is an adoptee who began her journey before the internet was a thing, in a time of landlines and not knowing who was calling you until you answered.
- I am an adoptive parent who has used the internet for many things adoption: learning from adoptees and first parents, finding my children’s missing birth parents, connecting with others involved in adoption, and capturing my own inner journey as a parent.
- Sarah started closed and moved toward openness.
- I started out open, and truth be told, I had some fine-tuning to do on that. I had to figure out how to calibrate openness in conjunction with boundaries and my kids’ emerging autonomy.
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Several differences, yet there are also significant parallels.
- It’s always good practice to seek and understand perspectives other than your own.
- Times and technologies change, but healthy connection and attachment are necessary if we want to grow and be healthier humans.
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I’m so grateful to Sarah for filling me in on her memoir days and also the last 30 years. We both hope you enjoyed our conversation.
(Special shout out to Debbie Schwartz for suggesting Ithaka to me and to Joni Mantell for connecting me with Sarah.)
About Sarah Saffian, author of Ithaka
Sarah Saffian, LCSW-R, MFA, is an author, a psychotherapist, and a teacher. Ithaka, her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family—both parents and three full siblings—has become an adoption classic.
As a therapist, Sarah counsels individual clients and runs support groups in private practice in New York City, around issues including adoption, infertility, perinatal wellness, grief and loss, and relationships.
Sarah has taught memoir and journalism at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Sarah Lawrence, NYU, and the New School.
As a journalist, Sarah has edited and written for such publications as Adoptive Families, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Entertainment Weekly, People, Yoga Journal, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, and Smithsonian. She earned her BA in English from Brown, her MFA in creative writing from Columbia, and her MSW from NYU.
More Sarah Saffian
Along These Lines
- The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
- “My Birth Mother Rejected Me by Letter”
- Three Identical Strangers documentary
- Louise Wise Agency: Defending the Indefensible
- Gabrielle Glaser of American Baby
- Linda Pevac/Emma Stevens on merging her author-self with her Self- self
- Anne Heffron on “How Apt Are You to Use This Adoption App?”
- Melissa Ford of Navigating the Land of IF: Understanding Infertility & Exploring Your Options
