I’ve been wearing my mom’s “Transplant Recipient” hoodie a lot lately while I’m at home writing. It helps me feel close to her—which I like, especially with our mother-daughter book releasing next week.

I didn’t realize I’d still had my hoodie on when I took the kids to the Burgermaster drive-in the other day.

“I’m glad you’re still here,” the server said to me as she handed me the check.

“Excuse me?” I asked. Had she thought I’d dine and dash from my minivan?

She pointed at my chest, where the words “Transplant Recipient” were printed inside a heart.

“Oh!” I smiled, and then explained. Despite the image of the heart, my mom had been the recipient of a double lung transplant. It bought her a few more years with us, but she died five years ago. “For whatever reason, I like to keep this on sometimes.”

“I get it,” she said. “My mom died of cancer a few years ago.”

We had a touching moment between us, as often happens when meeting others in the “Dead Mother’s Club.” It’s the club nobody seeks to join. But its members, once initiated and in the same space together, understand each other in a deep and meaningful way. Conversation almost always goes straight to the heart.

I enjoyed the server’s story about how she’d donated two feet of her hair to her mom while she’d been undergoing chemo. She and her mom had been quite close.

My mom and I weren’t always close. We were, in many ways, but as I write about in my memoir, something was missing. My heart.

It was difficult for me to attach deeply to my mom. I lost my first mother through adoption, so I spent my lifetime working to keep my next mother close.

From the outside, it worked. Everyone, including my adoptive mother, just assumed we’d bonded. But even though I’d worked painstakingly hard at winning my mom’s love, molding myself into the daughter she wanted me to be, my heart wasn’t altogether into it. She wasn’t perfect, for starters. My brain needed to tally her faults, as if to prove mothers aren’t safe. Besides, I was too afraid of revealing the real me, the complete me—too scared of losing her love.

So growing up, I never had a chance to test whether her love was real. My mom loved the façade me. But would she love the authentic, complete, sometimes messy me? The longer I hid my true self, the more insecure I felt deep down.

I didn’t realize that I’d be given a chance to test this all out during my mom’s death, after a secret that I’d been keeping wrapped in a hidden box of shame was opened. I didn’t realize that this was the grand finale, after other secrets of mine began spilling out over the last two years before my mom died.

What happened during this time was transformational. It turns out that my mom’s “Transplant Recipient” label wasn’t only about my mom. And the heart icon makes a lot of sense—especially on the other side of writing a whole book that’s about, and straight from, my own heart.

I can’t wait for you to read it—my book, I mean. Though in doing so you’ll inevitably be reading my heart, too.

Here are a few early blurbs for Searching for Mom from some really amazing people who were kind enough to read an advance copy and share their words:

“A disarmingly honest memoir about pursuing truth—truth about herself, her faith, her family, and even truth about her pursuit of truth. She beautifully conveys that a genuine pursuit of truth becomes the soil in which healing love grows. A worthwhile read from beginning to end.”
—Richard Dahlstrom, Senior Pastor of Bethany Community Church and author of The Map is Not the Journey and The Colors of Hope—named a Best Book by Christianity Today

“Fiercely personal, Sara’s memoir exposes the cracks in her formerly sugarcoated adoption story. Sara perseveres in seeking the truth, revealing the painful wounds of adoption loss. We follow her journey to healing with both her mothers, which unexpectedly culminates in a newfound understanding of God’s mothering.”
—Haley Radke, Creator and host of Adoptees On podcast

“Sara Easterly has created a fearlessly beautiful story of a daughter’s search for a kind of perfect love she actually—in the end and much to her own surprise—finds.”
—Anne Heffron, Author of You Don’t Look Adopted and founder of Write or Die

“A touching story of raw daughter-mother attachment with all its imperfections and heartaches, together with surprising twists and redemptive forgiveness. It rings true because it is truly delivered.”
—Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., Founder, Neufeld Institute, and best-selling author of Hold On to Your Kids

Searching for Mom is available for pre-order as an eBook right now and will launch on Tuesday. The paperback releases next week.

Thanks, friends, for your love and support that’s hugely lifting me up as I share my story.