Effects of adoption on the birth mother other important milestone in the child’s life. Reports show that a birth mother feels grief when she has more children because this evokes the memory of the child she gave up. If she is faced with future infertility, she may believe it is a form of “punishment” for relinquishing her parenting rights over a child. Many birth mothers continue to mourn the loss of their child but with varying intensity. It is not until a mother actually places her child for adoption that she experiences what Julie Axelrod believes is similar to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining,
Grief (novel) the example of the narrator, Mary Todd Lincoln and Henry Adams. Grief comes to be the idea that one cannot overcome the idea of living without someone they love because “after someone you love dies, you are homeless, really, because your home was once with them” (142). This theme is the overpowering theme and motif throughout the story. Holleran's novel, Grief, had a great initial reception among gay literature critics. Even popular critics commemorated Grief for its craftsmanship and the intense themes it evokes within the story. For example, "Andrew Holleran's novel Grief could be to fiction what Joan Didion's