When Lynelle Long wanted to connect with other international adoptees like herself as an adult, she had a hard time finding them. She decided that there should be a better way for adoptees to connect, so she built it. Now her organization, Inter Country Adoptee Voices, offers a refuge for adoptees all over the world…
There are a lot of opinions flying around these days about women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. With abortion allowances varying from state to state and people of different political persuasions imposing their expectations on these women, it is easy to forget who they are, if we ever knew. Often, women in this…
There is a lot of debate that centers around women who relinquish their children. We talk about who they might be and why they might be making the decisions they are, often without any insight into the reality of their experience. One of the reasons we guess is that there isn’t a lot of readily…
Adoption May Be More Complex Than You Think The general topic of adoption can bring a variety of things to mind, depending on who you are surrounded by.(1) If you have personal experience with adoption or foster care, you very likely have different views on it from the person whose only experience is in a…
Jean Widner’s adoptee story doesn’t start dramatically. She was raised in a stable home with adoptive parents who offered her the basic support that children need to have. As she grew and learned more about her own story and the stories of others in the adoption community, she started to understand how complex adoption can…
Young adults tend to face a lot of pressure to know themselves and their life goals well by the time they leave high school. People have probably been asking them for years what they want to do with their lives, and by graduation, they expect an answer. Often, foster youth have even more on their…
I have thought a lot about coaching and how it can benefit people. For most of my life, I have attempted to come alongside the parents and young adults I have known to help them develop meaningful goals and be their cheerleader through setbacks and successes. Over this time, I have seen how their experiences, especially within their families, have affected this trajectory. If your life has been touched by adoption or foster care, whether you experienced these as a child or a parent, they can change the way you face goals and life. I understand this nuance, not just from my own world, but from years of relationships and research from perspectives outside my own. Let me come alongside you. I will respect your experience and your path and be your cheerleader as we move toward a life you can only imagine.
This course is about how to communicate with our children about adoption in each stage of their lives. I put this course together, not because I am a mental health professional prescribing the appropriate way to parent. I am not. I have immense respect for them and what they are able to do to help keep our kids and ourselves happy and healthy. But I am speaking from my perspective as an adoptive mom with on-the-ground experience. In addition to that, I have also been a podcaster and writer about adoption and foster care issues over the past few years. I have learned from listening to others in the adoption space and doing my own research. Many adoptees have been vocal about the alienation they felt when they couldn’t talk to their parents about important aspects of who they were and how they felt about their adoption. We adoptive parents often don’t know how to navigate these conversations. I hope this course can be a starting point for parents to feel empowered to find out what will work for them and their families to allow them to bring adoption into their regular everyday conversation.
By Charlyn Spiering on November 11
Fall means birthdays around our house. We make sure that, even though some birthdays are close together, everyone gets their special moment. As I have been working on putting together a new course about talking to our children about adoption, our birthday season, especially this year, has made me think about the ways we incorporate birth culture into our lives. This year, my daughter turned 15 and wanted to include parts of a quinceañera in her birthday celebration. We did some research, and the event made her and her culture the centerpiece in just the way she wanted. It isn’t always easy to find the best way to make our adopted kids feel comfortable in our homes and in their skin, but we can enjoy the times when things come together well.
Adoption Uncovered 