Children Like Us: A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home

by Brittany Penner

A Métis girl is adopted by a Mennonite family in this breathtaking memoir about family lost and found—for those who loved From the Ashes, Educated and Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

"Such a lucky child, so many remind me. To be unwanted and then adopted, how lucky. To be raised by someone who doesn’t have to love you but chooses to love you—how special."

By the time Brittany Penner is seven years old, she has loved and lost twenty-one foster siblings who have come into her family and left—all of them Indigenous like her. "When will it be my turn?" she asks her mother time and time again. "When will I be taken away?" You won't be, she is told. You're adopted. You're here to stay. You're the lucky one.

Brittany was relinquished into care on the day of her birth in 1989 and adopted by a white Mennonite family in a small prairie town. Her name and where she came from are hidden from her; all she is told is that she is part-Métis. Her childhood is shaped by church, family, service and silence. Her family is continuously shapeshifting as siblings enter and leave, one by one. She knows, to stay, she has to force herself into the mold created for her. She must be obedient. Quiet. Good. No matter what.

Whenever she looks in the mirror, she searches her features, wondering if they've been passed down to her by her biological mother. She thinks, if she can ever find her mother, she'll find all the answers she's looking for. As Brittany moves into adolescence and then adulthood, she will uncover answers about her roots and her identity—but they will be more tangled than she could have imagined.

Children Like Us asks difficult questions about family, identity, belonging and cultural continuity. What happens when you find what you are looking for, but it can't offer you everything you need? How do you reckon with the truth of your own story when you've always been told you're one of the "lucky ones"? What does it mean to belong when you feel torn between cultures? And how does a person learn to hold the pain and the grief, as well as the triumphs, the joys and the beauty, allowing none to eclipse the other?

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Indigenous, Audiobook

384 pages, Paperback

Published July 29, 2025

Reviews

[JR is Reading · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Glass Castle. From the Ashes. H is for Hawk. I read fiction 99% of the time, and yet these books are as much a part of my reader’s heart as the best fiction I’ve read. Children Like Us by Brittnay Penner has just joined those books deep in my chest. This story of a Metis woman who gets adopted into an extended Mennonite family in Western Canada is as uplifting as it is heart wrenching. I felt everything Brittnay felt growing up. I cried and laughed with her. This book made me want to be the kind of person that little Brittnay would have been safe with. I was rapt from the first sentence to the very end of the author acknowledgements. If you read ONE nonfiction book this year, make it this one. It will heal your soul, and make you remember that amidst everything Canadians are facing right now, is it the way we approach our identify, our family, our friends, our neighbours, that sets us apart and brings us together. God, I love this book.

[Shannon (The Book Club Mom) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy Sunday, book friends! I have a memoir recommendation for you today. In CHILDREN LIKE US by Brittany Penner, the Métis author recounts her experience of being adopted at birth by a Mennonite family. The reader follows Penner from childhood to adolescence, and into adulthood as she navigates the strong pull between two cultures. Raised in a white household, and unfamiliar with her biological roots, her questions and observations amp up as the years go on. Themes of belonging, acceptance, identity, and fear of abandonment are greatly explored.

This memoir takes place in Manitoba, the province I grew up in, so it felt very local to me. Penner doesn’t name the town that she was raised in, but I knew immediately which one it was. The local references made me smile, and truly miss Manitoba!

READ THIS IF YOU ENJOY:

- Adoption and foster care stories
- Indigenous lifestyle and culture
- Canadian history
- Manitoba prairies setting
- Insight on the healthcare system
- Family drama and dynamics
- Complex mother-daughter relationships
- Themes of race and identity

CHILDREN LIKE US also showcases a shameful piece of Canadian history referred to the Sixties Scoop, in which indigenous children were taken from their families, placed in foster care, and then adopted by white families—a problematic method used to colonize indigenous people and strip away their identities. This is the first I’d ever heard of this policy, so learning about it was extremely eye-opening, informative, and absolutely heartbreaking.

Thank you, Brittany for your tremendous strength and bravery in sharing your story. I learned so much, and will never forget it. CHILDREN LIKE US is available now in Canada, and releases in the USA on November 4th. Highly recommend! 5/5 stars!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving memoir about a young biracial Metis girl who was adopted by a Mennonite family only to grow up constantly feeling like she didn't belong and searching for her birth family and Indigenous community. There are some common adoption story themes here but also the unique lens of being part of the tail end of the 60s Scoop. At times heartbreaking but also hopeful in places too. I really enjoyed that the author narrates her story herself and that she chose to go into medicine and obstetrics where she fought to help provide better care for Indigenous women and mothers. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy and @libro.fm for a complimentary ALC. Recommended for fans of authors like Alicia Elliott.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️

[Andrea Grift]

❤️

[Lyon.Brit.andthebookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Report: Children Like Us: A Métis Woman’s Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home by Brittany Penner

Children Like Us is a powerful and deeply moving memoir where Brittany Penner reflects on growing up as a Métis girl adopted by a white Mennonite family near the end of the Sixties Scoop. As she watches twenty one foster siblings each Indigenous like her come and go…she learns early about love…loss and what it means to belong. Through adulthood Brittany begins piecing together her identity and family story…uncovering truths that are both painful and healing.

Children Like Us asks profound questions like…What does it mean to belong when your life is split between cultures? How do you hold grief and joy in the same breath? Brittany’s voice is both tender and fierce sharing loss and hope equally and boldly.

I absolutely loved this book. My mom was adopted and her story has always captured my heart…Brittany’s did the same. I felt honored to receive a review copy and found it truly unputdownable. Closing the book I felt as though I had journeyed beside her…learning and reflecting with every chapter.

To me Children Like Us would make an incredible Book Club pick especially with #NonfictionNovember coming up! I’d love to see it chosen by one of the celebrity book clubs. It’s honest…eye opening and unforgettable💫

Here are a few quotes that stayed with me:
📖 “But such a life is difficult when you are afraid of so much.”
📖 “I am in constant search of story, of a narrative that feels whole and truthful and that helps me understand my family and my place in it.”
📖 “I carry the stories of these women within me with no place to lay them down.”
📖 “My grandparents' home always smells like a mixture of warm yeast from the buns rising in the oven and softened cabbage from soup simmering in a huge stockpot on the stove. It smells like the wood shavings left on our grandfather's collar and the manure wafting in from the pasture. It is earthy and it is comforting and it is familiar. I will never grow tired of it. In a few years, once my grandfather's health begins to fail and my grandparents move into town, I will wish I had paid closer attention. I will wish I could capture it all in a Mason jar like the ones Fred and I used for catching tadpoles in the ditch.”

Brittany’s story is one that deserves to be heard heartfelt…and beautifully written🌸

Thank you KCCPR & Regalo Press for the ARC!

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Lyon.brit.A...

[Melissa • melissa.moodreads]

No rating- memoir

Where do I even begin. Brittany Penner grew up about an hour away from Winnipeg (where I’m from and still live). She is my age, we are 8 days apart actually. She went to the same university as me at the same time, we have the same millennial quips and I smirked when she talked about how winnipeggers forget how to drive after every first snowfall.

Her story is inspiring, hopeful, and heartbreaking.
Brittany is a Métis woman and is adopted into a Mennonite family, and grew up with several foster sisters and brothers over the years. Her relatives also would adopt and foster Indigenous/Métis children. Brittany tells stories about her childhood and shares her family’s dismissiveness, and racial bias but also their care and love for her.

Brittany grapples with identity and self discovery, while being engrained to be grateful for her upbringing, always wondering who her biological parents are. Brittany’s mother is very… sensitive? Brittany spends a lot of time consoling her when Brittany herself is in pain. Brittany’s father is a bit cold, traditional in the sense he had the notion “he is the head of the household” and Brittany had a tough time connecting with him but expresses how he is there for her in need and loves him just the same.

Brittany shares the traumas she experienced as a child, and her journey trying to find out who her bio parents are. She shares learning about indigenous culture, history and how her cousin suggested they were part of the 60s scoop, which officially ended in 1991.

Now a physician and writer, Brittany continues to inspire anyone who crosses her path, I am sure. An amazing memoir.

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Thank you to NetGalley and Post Hill Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

In a wonderful coincidence, the granting of this arc coincided with me studying the topic of métis communities in Canada as part of my French course at university. Penner's story is at once both deeply personal and unique to her family situation and also a harrowing picture of the sixties scoop of native children from their homes and their placement into the foster system to place them with non-native families.
There was some really interesting reflections in here about how time and life experience gave her the tools to look back on her own childhood and see struggles that she hadn't noticed before. I was also very moved by the descriptions of the bonds she had with all of her siblings over the years, and how much of an impact they had on each others' lives.

[Josette Boudreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Giveaway
Thank you so much for sharing your story. I was captured right away from the beginning. I am. So sorry you had too go through this evil life. I c’ant understand how this can happened in this lifetime. I hope that people will see clearer through your story.
Thank you again for giving the chance to read your book.
Sending virtual hug your way

[JennShesBooked]

Every white Canadian should read this book. This book made me sit in a whole other uncomfortable position that I had never considered before and I am so grateful for everything I learned.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Really good! A Métis baby girl is adopted by a Mennonite Ukrainian couple who also foster numerous indigenous children during Brittany’s childhood. I enjoyed reading about the experience of Brittany’s childhood and felt compassion for her and also recognized her love for her adoptive family at the same time as her wanting to know her birth/first family. Adoption is a complex relationship, and very few people get out of childhood without some heartbreak and trauma to work through, nevermind adding in abandonment or attachment issues that adoption can highlight. Brittany is a great writer. My holding back a half-star is just because it feels like it’s still a little mid-story - I really want to know if her and Andrew are together…

Thanks for sharing your story, Brittany.

(I listened to the audiobook, read by the author and it was great! But I guess there were pictures - wish I could see them.)

[Ula (avibrantmind) Kaniuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

What struck me while reading was how unflinchingly honest the writing is about adoption, identity, and the challenges of moving through medical training while carrying those questions. I found myself crying at moments that seemed simple on the surface but were written with such depth that they stopped me in my tracks.

This isn’t only a book for healthcare workers—though I think anyone in medicine needs to read it—it’s a book for everyone. It opened my eyes and reminded me how important it is to take the time to learn what it’s like to live as someone else in our country. You can always learn more from other people’s experiences, and that’s why books like this matter so much.

The impact was so strong that I’ve already deemed it a must-read. After finishing my advance copy, I went out and bought a physical edition just so I can put it into the hands of others. That’s how important this book feels.

[Lacie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in depth look at the many sides of being adopted, lost, figuring out your place in family.

Relating to the yearning for knowing one's roots when one finds out they were adopted, the search is a painful truth that can be faced with patience, understanding, & time.

The depth of the Author's stories and photos help to keep the real alive! A Wonderful heartfelt read and learning about how so many different family types are raised within, especially when one is not from that same culture. An eye-opening look in to one life, when so many others have similar stories.

I won my ARC copy through a Goodreads Giveaway.

Thank you to the Author for sharing her story.

[Ashlee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read - full stop.
Such a powerful humanization of the tragedies of colonization on Indigenous Peoples in Canada. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking narrative of complex intersectionality, trauma, and the loneliness of feeling outside of belonging. When I first saw the words “…walking herself home” on the cover (one of my favourite expressions), I know it was for me. Her story resonates deeply, but also highlights impossibly hard truths that I will never fully understand but impress heavily on the heart. 10/10. Do not skip the acknowledgements. I’m so sad it’s done.

[Incredible Opinions · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brittany Penner's "Children Like Us" is a raw and honest memoir that delves deep into the complexities of adoption, familial love, and intergenerational trauma. It's a story that is both heart-wrenching and necessary.

The author recounts her life as a Métis child adopted by a well-intentioned white Mennonite family. The unique twist in her story is the environment of constant transition her parents created by fostering other children. While reassured she was "permanent," the constant cycle of children arriving and then disappearing planted a seed of fear that her security was never guaranteed.

This underlying anxiety leads to her struggle to form an identity. Always told to be grateful for the life she has, she struggles with the silence around her Métis heritage and the story of her birth mother. The book is a powerful exploration of being caught between two worlds and the journey to find a way to hold space for both the grief and the beauty of that position.

I think every Canadian should read this to understand the systemic policies that attempted to erase Indigenous identity. It asks difficult but essential questions about belonging and cultural continuity. A difficult but necessary story, told with honesty and grace.

[Jocelyn Lockyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly compelling story about a Métis woman and physician who grew up in rural Manitoba and has returned there to practice medicine. She was adopted at birth by a Mennonite family. While a different time, she grew up in Miriam Toews’ home town.Through this memoir, Brittany Penner chronicles her life from her earliest infancy to the present as she grapples with the uncertainty of not knowing about her indigenous roots, struggling with racism and abuse, meeting her birth family and finally moving onto university and medical school.
While not described as such, the trauma she experienced in her childhood through the church and at high school, within the indigenous friends and family she connected with as a young adult, and finally in her medical school rotations and residency programs had a profound affect on her. The book speaks to vulnerability and resilience. It also speaks to the power of relationships she has had through her life.
Wishing Brittany strength and power as she moves onto the next decades of her life.

[Esosa]

In this heartfelt memoir, Brittany Penner shares her story of being a Métis girl adopted by a white Mennonite family in a small town. Her parents fostered many other children over the years, most of whom were eventually taken back into the system. That constant cycle created a lingering fear for Brittany, no matter how often her parents reassured her she was different because she was adopted, she couldn’t shake the worry that one day it would be her turn.

Beyond that fear, Brittany is also searching for her identity. All she knows is that she’s half Métis and that her birth mom gave her up for adoption. But growing up, she’s constantly reminded to “be grateful” for the life she has, and of the life she could have had—a weight that makes the search for self even more complicated.

This memoir is an honest and moving reflection on childhood, belonging, and the complexities of understanding your identity when the world tries to define it for you.

[Amanda T · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

I wanted a little more examination of whether the author thinks she was better raised in a foster home with white parents or a foster home with non white parents. She definitely has opinions about it, but she doesn't go deep enough. For instance, her foster siblings got shuffled from one home to the next, yet she remained her entire childhood with one family because they adopted her as a baby. Would that have been better (to be shuffled from one foster family - even an Indigenous one) or to remain with one white family who doesn't understand her biological heritage? She does eventually come full circle with her criticism of her white parents lack of understanding of her Indigenous heritage (her adoptive parents were Mennonite), but it feels a little harsh given the alternative at the time (meaning, you can't get a time machine and go back to the future).

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brittany Penner is placed in care and later adopted by a white Mennonite family. She is told she part-Métis, but otherwise left in the dark about her identity and background. Over her life, her adopted parents foster other indigenous children who come and go from the home, and as a young child, this confuses Brittany, never firmly feeling rooted, that she, too, might have to go. The descriptions of Brittany looking in the mirror, hoping to discover some semblance of her birth mother, so tenderly drawn.

Brittany eventually discovers more about her birth family, but those discoveries come with other weights. A complex story and rendered so beautifully, Brittany’s journey to self is moving, inspiring, informative, and shines a light on her bravery and heartrending eloquence. My highest recommendation.

I received a gifted copy.

[Kayla Kostyniuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible, heartbreaking, nuanced, and an absolute must-read. I am not Mennonite, but I was raised in the same Mennonite town as the author, and her portrayal and accuracy is completely spot-on. The details and layers she included in every page of the book had me feeling so many emotions, and I could feel her strength and resilience through each word. I couldn’t put this book down, and I’d rate it 10 stars if I could.

[Cec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should try to read this. Being Mètis and being raised so different yet similar to Brittany this book is so needed. Im tired of people saying Mètis people don't go through similar things to other indigenous people. We shouldn't have to go through trauma. I've suffered through the same feelings Brittany does of "Am I indigenous, what if I don't know everything about my culture am I just pretending" I cried a few times reading this beautiful book

[Heather D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do believe this story was important to tell, and we all can benefit from a greater and more personal understanding of this part of our nation's story. However, like I find with most memoirs, no matter the subject matter, it was too long and I started to skim and lose some interest toward the end. I'm still glad to have read it though.

[Joan Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penner’s prose is simultaneously dispassionate and intimate. I was thankful for that balance. It allowed me to read and understand the most heartbreaking secrets of a lifetime, without turning away from the pain. Children Like Us, in beautiful prose, shows the reader what it is to be uniquely human, while revealing a larger and important story that should never have been buried over time.

[Joanne Mcleod · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give this beautiful and inspiring memoir more than five stars if that were an option.
I found so much connection and wisdom from this young Métis woman and author. Another similarity is both of us being called into Family medicine from a young age. It would be an honour to call Brittany, “cousin”, even if we share no blood connection other than being Métis/Michif.

[Siobhan Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

I added this to my library holds list because it sounded interesting, and I'm so glad I did. Penner tells an incredible and human story. I love how she told her story and never wanted it to end. I appreciated how reflective and thought-out it felt. Penner's story is heartbreaking at times and beautiful at others. This is an absolutely worthwhile read for anyone interested in Indigenous lit.

[Care]

Mennonite to Mennonite, I appreciated this memoir a lot. The feeling of cultural inclusion yet exclusion by prejudice within the community resonated with me. Loving our family yet seeing the flaws and knowing they don't see or accept our authentic selves.

[Josee Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and beautiful. Pulled me in with raw honesty and emotional depth.
Reading this felt like being trusted with someone’s truth, and that’s not something I take lightly. I feel incredibly privileged to have read it.

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written book about losing your heritage and finding yourself. Brittany Penner talks about the impacts on herself and her families from Canada's darkest times. I highly recommend this book.

[Sherri Funk]

Interesting autobiographical read of one Métis girl's story of adoption into a MB Mennonite family in the 80s and her struggle to find her identity in the middle of 2 very different cultural experiences. No rating on this one.

[Kayleigh A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not rating her experiences, but rather my enjoyment of how they were communicated. Regardless, I appreciate the insight into her experience as an adopted Indigenous person as well as the Mennonite side of things.