Coffee and Cake ― An Adoptee in Search of Her Past

Julia Meyers is an adoptee from a German closed adoption who makes the decision to shine light on the truth. In her new book, Coffee and Cake: An Adoptee In Search of Her Past, Meyers takes the reader on a journey across continents and time, as she uncovers the mystery of her past. An often untold point of view, Meyers dispels many myths in adoption as she honestly lays her emotional journey out for the reader to see. Fierce in loyalty to her adoptive parents, Meyers reveals the true motivation behind her search for her birth family: they are a part of who she is. As she uncovers the answers, new dilemmas emerge. Her family grows, yet as Meyers discovers, each has their own story to tell as well. A beautiful weave of time and place, the book takes the reader from Germany to the United States and proves just how small our world truly is. Readers will come to understand how societal pressures can lead to misunderstandings, how closed adoptions deny a child’s beginnings, leaving them feeling a piece of who they are is missing, and how time does not always heal all wounds. Ultimately, the story is one of love, the growth of family, the joy of truth, the construction of self-image. Meyers provides us with a much needed piece of the adoption puzzle and a great read to accompany an afternoon with coffee and cake!

Julia Isabell Meyers was born in Germany in 1968. At two months she was adopted by her loving parents and grew up with one younger brother in a small, picturesque German community.After her high school graduation in 1987, Julia completed a two year apprenticeship at a local bank. Not being fulfilled with this profession, she began to study Cultural Anthropology at the University in Frankfurt, Germany and graduated with a Masters Degree in 1995.In the meantime she had found her love for Archaeology and for four years traveled throughout the world excavating in the American Southwest, Germany and the Andes of Argentina. In 1997 she was accepted at the Ph.D. program to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. There she met her husband Ross and they married in 1999 in Germany. The couple have two children: Carmen is ten and Sean is eight.In 1996, Julia Meyers decided to search for her birth mother, who she met for the first time in December of the same year. In 2004, she then continued her search for her birth father, who had been an American soldier stationed in Germany. They met in December 2004. In 2005, when her husband Ross graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, they relocated to the Midwest, where he was born and raised.Julia finished her Ph.D. in 2007 and is now pursuing her career as a writer. Today Julia and her family are residing near Madison, Wisconsin.