An Adoptive Parent rethinks International Adoption with Marjie Alonso
As adoptive parents, we often try our best to do our research to find a program to adopt through that seems ethical. Sometimes we find out later that the situation our adopted children were in was far more complicated than we initially thought. Marjie Alonso adopted two young boys from Paraguay. The boys were not…
Parenting Advice From an Adoptee and Expert with Bryan Post
Parenting is not an easy task. Bryan Post, an adoptee and Therapist, used his own experience as well as research and training to develop a technique that involves what he calls a love-based approach to parenting. This technique considers the attachment children have toward their caregivers, but even more so, centers on the bonding experienced…
Lynelle Long Leads Adoptees to Help Each Other and Educate the Rest of Us
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…
Erasing Some of the Mystery About First Mothers
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…
Getting to Know First Mothers with Gretchen Sisson
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…
Why All of Us Should Understand Adoption Better.
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…
Moving Toward More Educated Adoption Conversations With Jean Widner
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…
When Foster Youth Aren’t Supported After They Turn 18 We All Lose.
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…
Helping Young Adults Succeed Beyond Foster Care with Maurita McCorkle
One population of foster children that often doesn’t get the right kind of attention is those who age out of foster care. This cliff that youth often fall off of exists due to many factors. Some of the problems are due to the system they are leaving and the resources that are drying up. Some…
We Don’t Know Enough About the Adoptee and First Parent Experience. Memoirs Can Help.
The Time Before Research It wasn’t a very long time ago when many adoptions were hidden away and not spoken of in polite company. Some young women still tell us stories of when their families sent them away to have a baby, then the baby was taken from them with little fanfare and given to…
What Adoption Memoirs Can Teach us: A Talk With Marianne Novy
Marianne Novy was an adoptee who was encouraged to hide that fact and obliged the people around her by keeping quiet about it until she became a college student. Over time she chose to seek out members of her birth family and develop some relationships with some of them. When she became a college professor…
Why Do Adoptees Search for First Family?
One thing that makes adoptees unique is their connection to more than one family at a young age. (1) In the past many times, adoptive families and sometimes first families made an effort to keep this reality quiet. (2) We know better now. There are many studies and the witness of both adoptees and first…
A First Parent Surprise with Ed Di Gangi
Edward Di Gangi didn’t feel the pull to search out his first family until later in life. He felt content with the life he was living and it took a series of events to put in his mind the determination to start his search. Once he did start his search he connected with numerous people…
Acknowledging Race in Adoption Matters
Love is Important, But it isn’t the Complete Answer. Adoptive families often are full of love for the children they consider adopting. Many of these families are open to inviting children of any race into their homes. They feel like the love they have for all of the children in their homes should be enough…
Isaac Etter Discusses Adoptees and Identity
Isaac Etter grew up as a black boy surrounded by a loving but also primarily white family. It took him a long time to understand his full identity and how his race affected his place in the world. Over time, Isaac educated not only his adoptive family about race and adoption but also sought to…
When Your Adopted Child Has a Severe Diagnosis Nothing in Your Day is the Same.
Adoptive families can look similar to other families. But sometimes when families adopt they find that the children they have invited into their homes have behaviors they never imagined they’d face. Maybe social workers informed them that the children had been through a lot and they would need to prepare accordingly. Sometimes social workers were…
Families who adopt children with severe behaviors from foster care have a chance at hope thanks to Katie Rose Noto.
Katie Rose Noto always knew she wanted to adopt a child at some point in her life. She imagined a house full of children and dogs. As her life progressed she made the choice to dive into being a foster parent whether she felt fully ready or not. Little did she know that the boys…
A Native American Adoptee Discovers Her Roots
When Susan Fedorko was growing up she was content with her life and felt secure and cared for. In the back of her mind, however, this adoptee always wondered about the family that had allowed her to be adopted and who they might be. When Susan reached adulthood she put out her information in the…
We Know Adoptees are at Risk. Why Don’t We Know More About How to Help Them?
The Risk for Adoptees Is Real We all know that adoptees are almost two times more likely to face a substance use disorder (1) and about four times more likely to report a suicide attempt. (2) These numbers easily capture people’s imagination and jibe with their stereotype that adopted kids are trouble. What these numbers…
A Path Through Suicidality With Beth Syverson and Joey Nakao
Beth Syverson and her adopted son Joey Nakao have been on a difficult journey for a number of years. They have been facing the issues of addiction and suicidality. In light of these intense topics, some of you may prefer to pass on this episode and listen to a different one for today. If you…
The Truth About The Orphanages of Today
Orphan Annie is a classic portrayal of orphanage life from a time in our past, but do places like that still exist? Should they? Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s in America, orphanages were a lot like the place from Annie. City buildings where kids weren’t treated well and the meanest ones got…
Investigating International Adoption has a lot to Teach Us.
There are many Christians in the world of adoption and many of them do wonderful work supporting foster families, and foster children, and making sure children outside of the country who need homes are able to access them. Some families within Evangelical Christianity have developed adoption practices that attracted the interest of investigative journalist and…
Native American Adoptees Can Help Their Tribes Continue to Exist, but Only if They Know Who They Are.
Most of the time adoption is viewed as a rescue in a sense. A child in need of a home is given one with a family who will raise that child as their own. That simple story often doesn’t resemble the reality of what adoption can mean for a child or that child’s first mother.…
Trace Lara Hentz Talks About the Importance of “The Count 2024” to Native American Adoptees Everywhere.
Most of us have heard bits and pieces about how poorly America has treated the Native Tribes that have lived on this land. We may not understand fully how adoption was weaponized against tribes to raise children who were brought up without a memory of their heritage and culture. As journalist Trace Lara Hentz began…
What Does Searching for Birth Family Mean for an Adoptee and How Should They Get Started?
Adoptees have about as broad a range of experiences growing up as any group of people. (1)Their feelings can range from deep family love to harsh abuse trauma and land everywhere in between. One thing adoptees have in common is that somewhere out there is another family they have some sort of connection to. (2)…
Searching for Birth Family and Volunteering with Foster Care: A Talk with Lynn Grubb
Lynn Grubb felt fairly comfortable growing up as an adoptee. Then, when she became an adult she got curious and decided she wanted to find her birth family. The process wasn’t smooth for her and she learned a lot along the way. Now that she has discovered where she came from she offers advice to…
Writing as a Person Touched by Adoption
How can each part of the triad use writing to benefit themselves and the community as a whole? Putting words on paper, or typing a font onto an electronic document can be a therapeutic exercise for anyone. (1) When adoption is a part of your life it can take on a whole new meaning for…
The Dark Past and Questionable Future of Pre-Birth Matching in Adoption.
Connecting a frazzled pregnant woman’s future baby with a calm married couple is almost cliche in our culture. We gaze on such a scene with the warm glow of wholesome goodness. At the core of this practice is a dark history that most of us don’t know about. If we did know, we may pause…
In America, But Not At Home.
A Discussion With Patricia Knight Meyer about her adoption story and how she processed her trauma through writing. Patricia Knight Meyer’s story seems foreign compared to the happy renditions of adoptive families brought together for happy holiday photos. She was adopted quietly, without proper paperwork. This left her in a state of limbo for a…
Should We Rethink How We Care For First Mothers? a talk with Carlynne Hershberger
When Carlynne Hershberger found out she was pregnant at 19 she could never have known then how that experience would shape the rest of her life. Many women don’t. In Carlynne’s case she became a victim of the baby scoop era when young pregnant women were hidden away and their babies were taken from them…
Embryo Adoption Creates a New Form of Adoptee with the Same Old Problems.
New Kinds of Family Bonds Embryo adoption is already bending the way we see family and siblings. There are stories hitting papers about families forming a special bond because their children are all biological siblings even though their parents are unrelated. (1) A generous donor offered the embryos they chose not to use after IVF…
Embryos Enter the Already Complex World of Adoption.
Adoption is Already Complicated Superficially, adoption seems straightforward. A child needs a home so one is provided. Most people who have had any experience with adoption in real life know otherwise. Three longstanding methods of transferring a child from one family to another are the most common. Each of these have traumatic backstories that years…
What will Embryo Adoption Mean for the Future of Family Building: a Talk with Risa Cromer
Adoption is changing. Technology now makes it possible to adopt the embryos left over from couples who have attempted or succeeded in IVF treatments. Oversight and regulation of this transaction is in its infancy. The people adopting these embryos and those encouraging the idea of the personhood of these embryos is a select group. Where…
The Future of Adoption Includes Gay Dads
Building a family is typically an exciting and nerve wracking experience. For those like Nick Adams-King and his husband more of the process has to do with paperwork and meetings than late night cravings and morning sickness. Nick’s family was built through adoption in the UK. Since 2002 gay couples have been allowed to add…
How Two Dads Adopted in the UK
Nick Adam’s King and his husband began their adoption journey years ago with the adoption of their son. Later they adopted again and their daughter joined the family. Nick helps me understand how adoptions in the UK differ from those in the US. We learn about the ups and downs of their journey and how…
From Orphan Trains to Today
How has adoption changed? Orphan trains were an attempt to decrease the population of poor children clogging the streets of big cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (1) Aid workers who were struck with the plight of these children thought that removing them from the dirty, dangerous city and planting them down on…
A Ride on the Orphan Trains with Andrea Warren
The orphan trains were an early experiment in American history in which well meaning adults in large East Coast cities put children that didn’t appear to be in the care of an adult on a train heading west to be adopted by farm families . For some children this meant they traded a life of…
When Reactive Attachment Disorder Comes Home.
When I first heard about reactive attachment disorder it was in a paragraph sandwiched between food hoarding and developmental delays due to malnutrition. Training required for International adoption included a basic understanding of these unique conditions. This was a landscape of extremes that seemed as appropriate as the 15 hour flight I was facing to…
When Adopted Children Need a Second Chance
JeNae Goodrich was adopted into her own family as a child. Growing up surrounded by adopted siblings helped prepare her for her life of social work, but she couldn’t have predicted that she would have gotten involved with one of the toughest, most stressful and even controversial sides of adoption. JeNae heads up the KidTeen…
The Work of Being an Adoptee is not Always Visible
Adoptees may be raised in families that love them fully. Often, however, a feeling that something is missing or they don’t quite belong still haunts them. The sooner we acknowledge this invisible burden and address it, the more healthy their lives can be.
A Birth Mother’s Wisdom
Birth mothers are often the enigmatic part of an adoption who stays in the shadows. But adoption is something that never leaves her. She doesn’t forget the child she gave birth to and gifted to another family. What can we learn from a birth mother’s experience? Laura Orsini has been open about her journey…
Foster Parents Don’t Have to Do It Alone: You Can Help!
What if, when a foster family does get successfully recruited, they have community support engulfing them to meet their needs and keep them encouraged in their efforts? Studies are starting to show that support groups can keep foster families in the game longer than those families who only have a busy licensing worker making…
Adoption Uncovered 