Betty Jean (BJ) Lifton, PhD, was a writer, adoption counselor and a leading advocate of adoption reform.

She wrote: Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience and Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness, as well as books about children orphaned or separated from their families by war and the Holocaust.

BJ also lectured and held workshops throughout the US and abroad on the psychology of the adoptive family, and on Janusz Korczak, one of the world's first children's rights advocates, who gave his life for the orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto.

On Friday, November 19th at 11:45 p.m., the accomplished and compassionate BJ Lifton died of complications from pneumonia.

I learned of her death moments after it happened. I had been on Facebook and there it was: BJ Lifton died. I spent several heart stopping minutes in denial and demanded confirmation from my fellow Facebook friends.

Soon enough confirmation arrived. BJ, an adoptee herself, and a voice of sanity in a time of madness around the issue of adoption, was gone.

How was it possible? Did I not just speak her to days earlier, while she was on the coast and about to go home to Cambridge? Didn't we talk about storms and ocean retreats and the lovely need to "get away from it all"?

How could she be gone?

Adoptee and writer, Patrick McMahon wrote: "BJ will always be a relentlessly sane and caring voice in the minds of so many."

McMahon speaks to my own experience perfectly.

Recently I had asked, with some awe and trepidation, if BJ might consider reading my new book Found and possibly provide a quote.

BJ, gracious and available, did both and wrote: There are many ways of losing and being lost, and many ways of finding and being found when you are an adoptee. Jennifer Lauck has experienced most of them. We share her heroic and spiritual journey as a displaced child who has lost both her birth and adoptive mothers and suffers from a series of abusive would- be-mothers. But she finds herself on becoming a mother and forgiving those who failed her, including her birth mother. A compelling and uplifting memoir.

BJ also wrote to inquire into the deeper story behind the deterioration in my reunion story. Via email, I outlined misunderstandings between myself and birth-siblings which had brought our reunion to a standstill for more than eighteen months.

Without hesitation, BJ wrote back: "The regressed adoptee wants full attention from the mother -- every baby does -- but it sounds like your mother was being pulled by her other babies -- who wanted her attention too. A form of sibling rivalry, as ridiculous as that seems. Not unusual. The mother is not free to play out the reunion drama with the returned baby when her other babies can't tolerate it.

With one email, BJ helped overcome what had seemed insurmountable and in days I was again in contact with my birthmother.

And now she is gone?

BJ was no less than an angelic presence. She changed me in the eleventh hour and fifty fifth minute of her life. How blessed am I?

How blessed we have all been by this miraculous little woman who spoke with a voice of deep resonate authority. She was so young in her appearance (like so many adoptees I know) and yet so solid.

I pray her journey is a peaceful one and if she should reincarnate among us, that she fall into the womb of a wise and powerful mother who keeps her and holds her very close.

Safe passage, BJ.