[Birth Mother] First Mother Forum is a blog site run by Jane Edwards & Lorraine Dusky.

On 3 November 2017, Lorraine Dusky revisited Joan Didion’s Blue Nights (2011), Didion’s memoir about the death of Didion’s adopted daughter, Qunintana. This was a blog she originally posted in 2011. The occasion for the revisiting was the release of a documentary about Joan Didion, The Centre Will Not Hold.

In her blog post, Lorraine Dusky speaks of, years ago, writing to Joan Didion & her husband, wondering if their adopted daughter, Quintana Roo, could be her daughter. She did – eventually – receive a response & was told no. And eventually Dusky did find her daughter.

In her reflection on Blue Nights, Lorraine Dusky wonders if Didion had ever “read a single book about adoptee psychology” as she seems not to understand that Quintana has been providing “clues about how being adopted is affecting” her.

That said, Dusky sees it as a positive that “Didion does not pretend that adoption was not much more complicated than she ever imagined it would be…”