Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe

by Lori Jakiela

Once, on a street in New York City, author Lori Jakiela stopped on a whim to visit a palm reader. She told Lori, “We all have two lives and we carry the maps of those lives with us. Our left hands mark the lives we’re born with. Our right hands mark the lives we make for ourselves.”

Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe is a book about mapping those lives – the lives we are born with and the lives we are allowed – and lucky enough – to make for ourselves.

Belief is part adoption narrative and part meditation on family, motherhood, nature vs. nurture, and what it means to make our own authentic human connections. It extends the possibilities of creative nonfiction at a time when many people are talking about what exactly truth-in-memoir means. The book’s patchwork form mirrors the fragmented experience of being an adoptee confronting — and trying to heal — her roots.

Belief is the story of one woman’s search for her birth mother coupled with the parallel story of her own motherhood and her own re-making. It’s about what it means to be a mother, what it’s like to have two very different blood connections, and what it means to form a family.

Belief is about searching for roots and what that means, exactly. It’s about finding a balance between the families we’re born into and the ones we make ourselves.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Adoption, Biography, Biography Memoir

293 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Lori Jakiela is the author of seven books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post.


Her most recent book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, is forthcoming from Atticus Books in October 2023.


Her most recent collection of poems, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life, received the 2021 Wicked Woman Prize from Baltimore's Brickhouse Books and was a September 2022 Book Club Read


Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, LA Cultural Weekly, Brevity, Chautauqua Magazine, Belt, and more. The actress Kristin Bell performed Jakiela's essay, "The Plain Unmarked Box Arrived," on The New York Times' Modern Love podcast on WBUR, and Jakiela has been featured on NPR and in PBS's "People Who Write Books Around Here," a documentary by Pittsburgh legend Rick Sebak.


Jakiela has performed her poems at Lollapalooza and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.


Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best of Brevity: 20 Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (ed. Zoe Bossiere and Dinty Moore).


A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops. For four years, she co-directed the Summer Writers Festival at Chautauqua Institution. She was a co-founder of Veterans Write, a program that offered free writing workshops to veterans and their families.


The recipient of multiple Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, her column, "Let Yourself Go," appears regularly in Pittsburgh Magazine. She lives in her hometown--Trafford, Pennsylvania (the last stop in Pittsburgh's Electric Valley) --with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their children.

Reviews

[Janall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cant find words adequate enough to express how this book makes me feel. I stayed up way too late reading this story, and can say its the best book I have read in 2017 and one of my all time favorite books.

If you were adopted- read this book. If you were an only child, born to older parents, read this book. If you were born in the 60s, read this book. If you had parents who were at times harsh , cold, cruel, but loved you with everything they had, ( though it often wasn’t enough), read this book. If you were told you should be grateful for all your parents did for you, read this book. If both of your parents are in heaven, read this book. If you didn’t fit into your family because you wanted more from life, read this book.

This book came to me, as if by magic, in a massive used book store, in a seedy part of LA ( 2000 miles from my home). I was in the store with friends, and had no plans to buy anything, due to airlines luggage weight limits. I was waiting by the exit for them to finish when the black and white cover with the the word “Belief” caught my eye. It was shelved above my head, and I had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. The theme of adoption, family and belonging appealed to me, so I bought it.
One I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. A story that is so painfully similar to my own- it was my story. I was seeking what Lori was - connection and closure. My husband cant understand why I am still bothered by what happened 40 +years ago. He will never understand.
In this book, I found a gift (magic!)- I found the meaning to Kocham cie. My adoptive father called me that and told me it meant “pain in the ass” Now I know it really meant something he seldom told me- I was loved. One more piece of the puzzle solved.

[Scott Silsbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m making my way, for the second time now, through Lori Jakiela’s new memoir 'Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe.' The first time I read it, I wanted to read it for sheer pleasure, just enjoy the great gift for storytelling that Jakiela has. And it was a great first read—an utter delight. But I wanted to give it a second read through to think about it critically, so I could try to articulate why I think it’s a great book, why it’s a book that I love.

This is Jakiela’s third memoir. It’s about adoption. But it’s about a lot more than just adoption. It’s about the connections that we all make in this life. About what family means and about why family means what it means. It’s about the strange and beautiful world that we live and love in. This is an important book to me because it says important things about life, about the hardships of life, and about the things we face as who we are. As human beings. And it says all of those things in gorgeous, well-crafted prose. Jakiela is a poet and her poetry is here in this prose. The first line is already a breath-taker: “When my real mother dies, I go looking for another one.”

I love this book because it’s not only smart and brave and well-written—it’s also funny. Jakiela has a great sense of humor, even with difficult subject matter. Maybe especially with difficult subject matter. Maybe because she knows that’s when we need it most. But like the high school version of Jakiela in 'Belief...' who busses to downtown Pittsburgh to take a dip in the fountain at The Point, Jakiela comes across as full of wonder at the world around her. Sure, a little bit anxious about how fragile our lives are, but only because she realizes the richness of life. This book is invested in this world. The real world around us. The one each of us has been living in since the day we were born. There are references to Andre the Giant and Star Wars and Jeopardy. And it’s all very magical, it’s all very poignant, it’s all very real. Jakiela puts Pittsburgh on the page and it looks as magical as it is in real life. She captures the world around us in her book and it’s just as funny and difficult and wonderful as this life can be. I can’t recommend it enough.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a powerful talisman against the forces of uncertainty and loss. The writing itself is measured with a poet's eye, and the perspective the author provides to her subject brings the world into sharp focus. This book shook me, in the best of ways.

[Melanie Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never noticed it until recently, but many of the books I grew up loving and remembering in vivid detail are stories of adopted girls. First, there was the eponymous The Great Gilly Hopkins. She waited for about eight years for her birth mother to come get her out of foster care and pushed everyone away because she didn’t want to let them love her.

Then there was The Family Nobody Wanted, a memoir by Helen Doss. When Doss and her husband are unable to conceive a child, they struggle to adopt one…and then another and another until they have twelve kids from all over the world, leading people to call them the United Nations of adopting.

Another standout was Anne Shirley of the series Anne of Green Gables. While the books were too tough for me, I was obsessed with the film. There was also Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, who later wrote the memoir about her adoption, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Why have adoption stories stuck with me so? Perhaps because these stories always seem like ones of hope in which the adopted person proves that all people are valuable and worthy or love. But Lori Jakiela’s story is both quite messy and front and center of her entire life.

In Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, Jakiela writes the story of how she found her birth mother and discovered she has four half-siblings. To simplify, that’s the whole book. But, the story isn’t simple at all. Firstly, it’s important to know that Belief is Jakiela’s third memoir. I haven’t read Miss New York Has Everything, the first memoir, but I did read and review the second, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious .

I would argue that you should read The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious before you read the newest memoir, Belief. In The Bridge, the author discusses her “real parents,” which is how she refers to the people who adopted her. Her real father has passed away, and her real mother is ill and dying. Jakiela, who is in her 30s, goes to care for her mother while also spending time with new guy she’s attracted to, writer Dave Newman. When Jakiela realizes she is pregnant, despite using birth control, her real mother flips her lid and proceeds to severely shame her daughter. Dave and Jakiela do get married, but throughout The Bridge they fight constantly, insulting even each other’s writing and publications.

But this review is about the newest memoir, Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe. The people are represented differently. Dave is now a kind and supportive man: “My husband’s a writer, like me, when the world will let him work,” Jakiela explains. “Today he’s supposed to be writing. I’m supposed to be keeping the kids away. Tomorrow he’ll do the same for me. This is how we love each other” (62). This love they share is very important to understanding Belief. Jakiela has a good husband and children, but she keeps looking for her birth mother. Knowing that her relationship with Dave Newman had a tough start and began quickly (they hadn’t dated long when she got pregnant) reminds readers that though she is content, finding a man didn’t cease her shark-like looking for why she was given away by her birth mother.

Belief is written in very small sections, sometimes only a paragraph or two. By crafting such small passages, Jakiela can really capture an emotion and overpower the reader in a way that forces us to feel empathy. In one section, after Jakiela has found her birth mother, she receives a message from the birth mother that says, “I’ve thought of you often. It’s just too much after all these years. What’s done is done” (249). I’m bummed, but it’s not a bad message. There is a little section break. The next section says only this: “And then, later, she sends another e-mail that says she wishes she’d aborted me. She says she would have, had she known” (249). I’m punched in the heart when the birth mother says she wishes her daughter was dead. Section breaks often give readers pause to prepare, but Jakiela catches us off guard each time, much like she must have felt.

Let’s back up a bit: Jakiela never face-to-face meets her birth mother. She goes to the adoption agency to ask if her birth mother will give her a medical history. The answer is a big fat NO. I’m a bit confused about how it all works out, but I do know that Jakiela gets an email from someone with the username Blonde4Eva, and it’s the author’s half-sister. Blonde4Eva’s grammar and sentences are terrible, and she often highlights her messages in lime green. Apprehension aside, Jakiela keeps looking. She hears from a half-brother who read The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious and figured out that she was his sister. Jakiela and the birth family still all live in Pittsburgh, so it wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together. Jakiela writes that she plays a song on the piano for her brother (157). Later, she meets her brother and sister for the first time in a bar (191). I started to get confused. Hadn’t she played piano for him before? Maybe this is another brother! There is another brother…but she never meets him. After puzzling it out, I realized there are four children who share Jakiela’s birth mother: BLonde4Eva, a brother she meets in a bar and plays piano for, another sister who is also at the bar meeting, and a brother she does not meet. Sometimes the organization of the book gets confusing, possibly because trying to tell things in order doesn’t always work when you learn who you are out of order, like Jakiela did.

After meeting at the bar, where the brother, sister, Jakiela, and Dave Newman get wasted, I had to wonder if the meeting was significant. And Jakiela does, too. She had “…hoped for more, maybe — a little less party, a little less booziness, fewer ghosts, a little less reality TV” (208). Was this really the answer to the ache to know who she is? In the epilogue, Jakiela notes that she still sees her brother, and they continue to drink at bars and their houses and listen to music. From the reader’s perspective, the relationship isn’t adding to Jakiela’s story. We don’t get to hear their thoughts or conversations or questions. It’s just drunkenness.

Between her birth mother wishing her dead, her real parents shaming her, and her siblings who drink like fish, I kept wishing Jakiela would realize that the love she was seeking was in Dave and her children. But when it comes to adoption searches, you can only watch it unfold. My own husband grew up with his birth mother and a father who adopted him. Not knowing his birth father haunted the second decade of his life. I’ve asked him before: Why find a man you’ve never met when you have a good dad who chose you? This question is unanswerable. After ten years with my husband, the answer is still missing. Knowing my husband makes me patient with Jakiela’s search for family when she already built one, but other readers may find her obsessive nature unbearable. Jakiela finds herself annoying, too (135-136).

One of the most interesting parts of Belief is how Jakiela looks at the smashed dreams of the people in her families and lets the reader be warned that our suffering is passed down to our children. And it happens whether your parents are real or biological. Jakiela’s biological family is miserable. Her grandfather, she learns, was a cold, cruel man who loved his dog more than his children. He would beat kids for small infractions and push them away when they did good (154-156). Jakiela’s mother took on this man’s misery. She ended up pregnant by a man who was already married, so her older sister helped hide the pregnancy all while shaming her (173). (Remember how Jakiela was shamed by her real mother? There’s a lovely connection). Eventually, the birth mother ends up at Rosalia, a home for unwed pregnant women run by nuns. Once Jakiela is born, her mother gives her to an adoption agency.

Jakiela’s real parents can also be cruel people, but Jakiela reminds us how hard they tried to be good people. It doesn’t help that Jakiela’s extended family don’t see her as real family:

We are having our usual Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house when my aunts mention my [adopted] cousin’s good temperament one too many times.

I am the worst kind of teenager–a seether.

“You mean smart ass,” my father says.

“It’s in you to always look at the worst in things,” my mother says.

“She’s been that way from the moment you picked her up,” my aunt says.

“You never can tell what you’ll get,” my grandmother says, like adoption is a grab-bag sale. (116-117)

Later, when he real mother passes away, Jakiela notices a shift–her mother’s family no longer want to claim her: “After my mother died, Aunt Velma did not refer to her as my mother. My mother became her sister. Aunt Velma became simply Velma. I became some people” (98). Jakiela captures just the right sentiments to put the readers in her shoes, especially those of us who are not adopted. I hadn’t thought about how what once was family could become a sigh of relief for those who want to stop pretending to be related. Based on their cruel comments, why, we might ask, did Jakiela’s real parents adopt her? Her mother reveals that her father had been molested as a boy and it messed him up, so she thought adopting a kid might help (273). Whether the family is real or biological, Jakiela teaches us, one person’s misery is passed down to the next. And it isn’t until the end of three memoirs that she realizes her husband and kids are the important family, “the most sacred thing” (257).

Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe was a difficult book to review. Here’s how this review was created:

First outline
First rough draft
Second outline
Second rough draft
Third outline
Brainstorming session with my husband
Freewriting session
Third rough draft
Fourth rough draft

While I was incredibly frustrated trying to evaluate this book, I kept reminding myself of how frustrated Lori Jakiela must have been not only writing this book, but living a life that she has to piece together when it is her right to know. Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe is a page turner, an emotion twister, and an empathy builder.

This review was originally published at Grab the Lapels.

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe is a memoir about motherhood, adoption and the ways in which our memories can frame and re-frame our experiences. Jakiela's exquisite prose blends past and present together sharpening into focus a story about relationships – the ones we create and the ones that are created for us. She is candid, heartbreaking, funny, and honest as she lays bare her truth. From her fractured sense of identity, Jakiela forges a story about what it means to be a daughter, a mother, a sister, a wife and a writer.

Belief is its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe is a road map for the one thing we are all looking for: A sense of belonging.

[Joanell Serra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir for so many different reasons! I enjoyed the lyrical quality to the writing, with ample space to think and absorb the story in between each scene. Many of the scenes of domesticity- real life as a child, real life as a mother- made me laugh out loud. Her parents' funny expressions and no nonsense parenting rang true to my own experience growing up in a large Italian family in New Jersey. The writer chronicles several different threads in the course of the book - the loss of her parents, the search for her birth mother, and the experience of meeting parts of her biological family. In between, small slices of her current life lighten things up, as she has a precocious four year old boy and baby girl for most of the writing. As a mother, an adoptive mother, a therapist and novelist, I found the book delightful. It was a relatively quick and easy read, and yet certain scenes from this book will stay with me for a long time. This is a seasoned and skilled writer. At times I forgot it was memoir, as it also reads as fiction, which is to say, it is a story well told with like-able but flawed characters, searching for "happiness" in a tough world. I highly recommend Belief Is its Own Kind of Truth.
I received a copy of the e-book in exchange for an honest review.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lori Jakiela's Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe may be acclaimed as a work that explores adoption, but a closer look reveals that Jakiela's book is much more. In her newest book, Jakiela intertwines her story of looking for her birth mother with explorations of her relationship with the mother who raised her and her own personal struggles with motherhood.

Jakiela starts off her book with a simple statement that sets the tone for her story: "When my real mother dies, I go looking for another one. The Catholic Charities counselor's word for this other mother I want after decades to find is biological. Illegitimate is another word for people who end up like me. It's what I feel now, unlawful, unauthorized, unwarranted her in this office that smells like antiseptic and rubber gloves, hot teeth drilled down to the bone."

From this first paragraph, we are introduced to several important components of the book. Jakiela is not just feeling the loss of her mother, she is feeling a loss of herself, and she believes that looking for her biological mother is a step in regaining part of her personal identity that seems muddled and foggy (at least in her viewpoint). This is not what she tells the counselor, however. Instead, she says that she is looking for a medical history.

What follows is a braided story. First, Jakiela chronicles her journey towards finding her biological mother. Second, she retells stories that highlight her relationship with the couple who adopted her. Finally, she relays her own frustrations (and joys) of being a working wife and mother.

Readers who are new to Jakiela's work may find the nonlinear progression of her journey a little confusing, yet, I believe that many people who find this book are already familiar with many of the characters introduced in Jakiela's two previous memoirs, Miss New York Has Everything and The Bridge To Take When Things Get Serious. My advice to those who are new to the writing of Lori Jakiela: read Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe and then read her two other memoirs. I will bet you will return to Jakiela's newest memoir with a deep appreciation of the delicate way that she balances humor with her depictions of love, in its rawest, yet purest forms.

[Erica Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

HEART WRENCHING and BEAUTIFUL. So I had to put that in all caps because I feel it fits much better when describing Jakiela than sad/do not respond/mistake/etc. Lori Jakiela's memoir about being adopted is moving, relatable, and reminds you what's worth living for. In Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, Jakiela explores the dynamics of nature vs nurture, often blurring the lines between the two so that there isn't a difference at all, that the two are not battling against one another. Jakiela discusses proudly her role as a mother, although she sometimes feels as if she's failed. As a mother, I know we all feel this way at one point or another. This book, however, is not just for mothers. This is a great memoir for everyone to read: mothers, fathers, grandparents. It is a powerful story about finding your roots and realizing they've been there all along, just not in a biological sense, but that can sometimes be enough. I laughed, I cried, and I squeezed my son a little tighter as I read this novel. We don't always have to know where we came from to know who we are, and Jakiela reminded me of that.
"I think writers should write as much as they can. Not because, as Ed would say, they'd be trying 'to write for the ages,' but because writing is work and it's what we're made to do. It says, 'I was here.' It says, 'Maybe this life matters a little.'" It says we all have a voice, even if not everyone listens. The ones who matter, the one who love you, will always listen. I highly recommend this book.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Belief" is partly an adoption story, partly a memoir and partly a self-look at the author's own role as a mother. Jakiela seeks answers from Catholic Charities about her biological parents, especially her mother. The agency reports back to her that her birth mother wants nothing to do with her, that she was a mistake, that she should have been aborted - comments that Catholic Charities had never heard before from a birth mother. Yet, this woman had other children - 2 daughters, 2 sons.While they did not know of Jakiela's existence growing up, as adults they learn of her. One brother, one sister reach out to the author. The other sister sends vindictive, obscene emails to Jakiela, makes drunken phone calls and vacillates between wanting to be a loving sister and someone who wishes her dead - like her biological mother. The "saner" sibling explain away the other's behaviors by declaring them crazy - yet they are still a part of that family: closed to Jakiela.

This is a story of an adoptive child reaching out for identity. Struggling to understand - and then, accept complete rejection by her mother.

[William Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review:
http://www.neworleansreview.org/belie...

[Ben]

Something kind of magical.

[Christopher Carrolli · Rating 5 out of 5]

She’s decided to search for her birth mother. She believes that this woman may want to meet her. She believes that she may provide answers to unanswered questions. She believes she may at least provide her with a medical history, but according to the title of Lori Jakiela’s new memoir, “Belief is its Own Kind of Truth—Maybe.” “Belief” is Lori Jakiela’s third memoir, and this one is heart breaking, emotional, sad, as well as funny.

Jakiela rightfully refers to the woman who raised her as her “real mother.” The same goes for her “real father,” the other half of the parents she knew and loved her entire life. But now, in her third memoir, both of her real parents have passed on. Now, lingering questions remain unanswered in Jakiela’s mind, but the natural urge to know is nothing compared to the fact that she needs a medical history for her own family. Her daughter, Phelan, suffers from a condition that requires her to wear a leg brace. Jakiela fears that medical history has repeated itself, and that her daughter is “like her.” Though the conditions are not the same, she feels that having a medical history is pertinent. And so, the search for her birth mother begins.

Catholic Charities, who handled her adoption, is of no help to her. They are put off by her visit. They ask her why she’s initiating contact. They ask her why she wants a medical history. Then, a strange email arrives in Jakiela’s inbox; it is her biological sister. The woman at Catholic charities informs her that her birth mother was “immovable,” refusing contact, a medical history, or the divulgence of any further information. But with her reporter’s instinct, Jakiela has acquired information on her own. She has pieced together details from family, friends, and others who knew her birth mother. Those details become part of the journey that Jakiela takes us on.

She hypothesizes what happened in her birth mother’s life that led to the very moment of her conception. She dreams up the vision of her own father and grandfather, and what roles they played in her birth mother’s life. She estimates how it all happened, and she does so brilliantly.
The reception of her biological siblings is lukewarm. The mysterious sister by email turns out to be a disappointment; blaming Jakiela for the mess she accuses her of making. The sister begins to email her messages with one simple word—“Bitch!” On the other hand, Jakiela scores a lasting friendship with her brother and another biological sister. But the birth mother is “immovable.”

Through it all is the life with her real family, the family she’s created. Her son is a ten year-old, insightful little boy who gets Luke Skywalker’s feet stuck in her computer keyboard. He says things that are ironically wise, things that make more sense in the adult world than he could imagine. Her daughter is still young, but happy and loving regardless of having to wear a leg brace. Here is her real family, but the unanswered questions keep nagging her.

“Belief” makes us hold our breaths, wondering what will happen next, or who is going to show up in Jakiela’s life. We wonder along with her what it will be like when she meets her biological siblings. We are angry with her when she suffers from backlash. As usual, Jakiela demonstrates her talent for turning a memoir into a page-turner that cannot be put down.

The laughs are consistent, and so is the heartbreak, but “Belief is its Own Kind of Truth—Maybe” is an essential piece in the puzzle of Lori Jakiela’s life.

[Jan Priddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir of families, those Jakiela calls her “real” family who raised her, the birth family that let her go, and the family she made for herself. I am a long-time fan of Jakiela since reading her flash nonfiction, “You’ll Love the Way We Fly” in Brevity.

This memoir is honest and painful, beautiful and sad. She listened for her husband’s breath while he slept, fearful he had died. I did that too. It was just one of many felt points of connection. Her experiences as an adopted child in a family that was quite different from her personal identity is eclipsed by the challenge of her also-quite-different birth family.

The message seems to be that we love the people who love us, not those who made us. I am onboard with that. Jakiela's husband seems a good person.

(There are some issues with layout—random line breaks and repeated chapter numbering, but these seem to be design flaws, not deliberate choices. I hoped this book would suggest a structure for a memoir in short pieces. It did not quite achieve that for me, but I enjoyed the book very much and it will remain on my shelves.)

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the author's third memoir. Her parents are gone, she is happily married and has two totally different children. Yearning to know more about her health history, and she decides to pursue finding her birthmother. She works with Catholic Charities and learns that her birth mother does not want to meet her. The story is so sad...I had to put it down a couple of times..... during the emails from the birth mother and crazy half sister.

I love her writing style...her repetitions and progressions...I can feel her emotions, her loss and her desire to be connected. I'm hoping that she will bring us up to date with a fourth memoir soon.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each new book by Lori is better than the last one. This is a continuation of her memoir. It is well written, heart wrenching, funny, sad and fast paced. Very well done. I'm a fan.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful!

[John Grochalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a pretty fabulous read. heartbreaking at times. loved the way Jakiela played with time, moved
time around and with an almost poetic repetition of events.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written.

[Mike Good · Rating 5 out of 5]

proof that sometimes sentences can be like daggers.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lori Jakiela's engaging prose and well-paced dialogue result in this riveting memoir.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lori Jakiela is a lyrical writer whose sentences sing truth. In this memoir, she also demonstrates skill in the logic of image and narrative. The book's fragmented form, skipping between brief anecdotes, reflects the experiences of many adoptees (including me) who find themselves inhabiting two stories at once: the story of one's blood, and the story of one's upbringing.

One of the most compelling images for me was a superhero doll called "Blondie," belonging to Jakiela's little boy. The little boy wants his mother to play dolls with him, to "be" Blondie, but he won't disclose the doll's history, character, or conflict. He expects, as many children do, that his mother will simply know. But Jakiela doesn't know who Blondie is, so she can't "be" him, and her frustration is palpable. This brief anecdote vividly illustrates the guessing game that many adoptees, or anyone who's had an identity imposed on them by others, live with.

Although the narrative is fragmented, it moves swiftly and surely thanks to suspense. The desires driving the narrative are whether Jakiela will meet her birth mother, whether she will get access to her family's history, and the questions of how she might integrate a new relationship or new knowledge into her life as a writer, wife, and mother.

[Julia B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel so weepy and nostalgic about my own life after reading about Lori Jakiela's life, which is really nothing like mine, but the themes in her book somehow still end up feeling universal. I rate Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe highly among the books I've read recently—I had so much faith in it, in fact, I bought it before reading it, which I never ever do.

It's a distant but therapeutic means of reflecting on childhood and how it affects you as an adult. Since we're months into isolation now, I've been rewatching movies and TV shows from my youth pretty much every day anyways. There's a comforting sentiment in this book whereby you feel like the things that you went through as a kid and the dynamics you have with your parents are not as weird and isolating as you think they are. Having scars is normal, so why not accept that you have them and move on? Jakiela depicts love in such a real, imperfect way, showing how people can support and influence each other in monumental ways, but never makes you feel like your life is anything but your own.

[Meagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had its own unique style, and I appreciated that. The author explores her relationships with her parents (who adopted her), her birth mother and siblings, and the family she has created for herself. I loved how she described and built those characters. They felt real and reminded me of people that I knew. Perhaps that is because we are both from just outside of Pittsburgh.

Reading this book made me want to explore writing about my own family, both the people and the connections to traditions and places. It makes me want to learn a little bit of the Polish language, because I too come from a Polish family. And this line near the end stuck with me, about why writers write so much:

“‘It’s about immortality…’ writing is work and it’s what we’re made to do. It says, ‘I was here.’ It says, ‘Maybe this life matters a little.’”

[Kirtana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Lori Jakiela, and for some reason, her books are just not easy to come across around here. I ordered this one through a friend in the US and damn, it has not disappointed at all.

To be honest, I kinda gave up on this book a few days after starting it. Mainly because of a stylistic choice in the prose which I usually appreciate, but got irked by this one time. But I returned to the book today and finished it in one sitting and kicked myself for ever allowing something as silly as "too much repetition" get in the way of reading a book as sad and raw and real and profoundly lovely as this.

[Fred Zirm · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an adoptive parent, I found this book very eye opening as it helps me understand the questions and uncertainties that adopted children face, even (or especially) as adults. Very effectively written as a mosaic of thoughts, images, incidents, etc. that both tell the story of the search for a birth family and also reveal the narrator's inner turmoil. Highly recommended.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I accidentally read this straight through, losing track of time. Oh, Lori, you are such a good writer.

[Greg Rapier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was sitting on my shelf far too long. Absolutely stunning.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just beautiful - raw, powerful, emotional.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another quick, though sometimes profound, memoir by Lori Jakiela. The focus is her search for her birth mother, but also motherhood in general, her real mother, the one who raised her and her own role as mother. I really don't understand why people write memoirs, what is the impetus to share such intimate things? And why do people read them? What makes a stranger's life and what they think interesting to us?

That said, I enjoyed this book. It is written is short sections, making it easy to read, to stop and start, though I finished the entire book in less than 24 hours, while doing other things.

The last two books that I got from the library, this one and Girl at War, were new, pristine and it is a joy to read such a book. It also deters me from turning down pages. So, I had to use post-its to make the following passages.

"I can't imagine when I will ever be old enough to stop being my mother's daughter.
I can't imagine when I will ever stop needing her." (23)

"...We both judge people on their words, the books they love, if they own book shelves, whether or not they love books at all. Sometimes we feel bad, but we go on doing it, the way people on Wall Street judge people on their stock portfolios and plumbers judge people on how they feel about copper pipe and my mother judged people by whether or not they could twirl spaghetti on a fork without using a spoon.
Everybody needs a compass in this world." (31)

"Family is my son, my daughter, my husband, the ring I never take off..." (67)

"It's hard to know what you're born with and what you take in as you go." (197)

"We will tell them [family stories] the way old ladies in church tick off prayers on rosary beads, which is how I think of family now, the most sacred thing." (255)

"These days I wonder a lot about time, how much I've wasted by focusing on the wrong things or the wrong people or the wrong landscapes." (279)

[Story Circle Book Reviews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belief is its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, by Lori Jakiela, is a most moving book. The author was adopted and, although now is middle-aged, is still seeking answers to birth-related questions.

Jakiela has had a rocky life. At birth she had malformed legs and, later on, underwent many surgical procedures to correct the condition. Although she's happily married, with two children, and she repeatedly refers to her adoptive parents as her real mother and father, it's clear that there are emotional scars left from her upbringing. She tries to contact her birth mother, but is rebuffed when her mother lets her know that she wishes she'd had an abortion and will never want to meet her.

My reservations about the book stem from its episodic organization. It's occasionally confusing not to know if Jakiela is referring to the past or the present, and some of the writing seems a bit self-conscious and precious to me.

The unusual title refers, I believe, to the author's desperate desire to believe in herself and her place in the world—not as a rejected child, nor as an adopted one—but as the writer, wife and mother that she has become.

by Helene Benardo
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women