From the category archives:

Shame

Lost and Found: The Adoptee’s Voice

January 13, 2012

To be found implies you have been lost. Many adoptees express that they feel or have felt lost, due to loss.
Adult adoptees’ insights and experiences should not be ignored or disregarded; however they often are. Adult adoptees’ stories, sometimes painful or joyful or mixed, are valid. They should be invited to the “table” and encouraged [...]

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Can We Heal? Can We Help To Heal?

November 3, 2011

By Presidential proclamation November is again Adoption Awareness Month. In regard to this, two-time adoptee Jennifer Lauck, author of the best sellers Blackbird, Still Waters and Found, has launched an initiative to open up a national conversation about adoption.
Jennifer believes, as I do, that there is a way to heal and transcend the experience of adoption [...]

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The Hard Truths: Band-Aids Won’t Work

September 22, 2011

I can’t stress enough how important it for parents to share all of their child’s birth history and related facts with them prior to adolescence, in age-appropriate language. Yes, the hard truths are difficult to share because adoptive parents have so much emotion invested in the adoption journey and love their children so deeply. But [...]

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Now on Sale: What To Expect From Your Adopted Tween

August 1, 2011

Parenting is the most exciting, challenging, rewarding, emotionally taxing, and, hopefully, joyous role you will ever undertake. (I’m sure you have a host of words to describe parenting that I didn’t use…) My new e-guide, What To Expect From Your Adopted Tween, offers a balanced approach to understanding and supporting adolescents who have been adopted [...]

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How to Help Your Child Process the Past

October 21, 2010

Adoptive parents are very good about painting the rosy picture—how they came to be families, how they love their children. Parents do this to claim their children. The also do this because as an adoptive family they are in the position of having to validate their family to extended family, friends and strangers. But often, [...]

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And What of the Fathers?

June 17, 2010

My children have rarely asked about their birth fathers. Their questions and comments focus on their birth mothers. When attempting to steer them in the direction of birth fathers, I’ve had little luck.
I can’t walk in my kids’ shoes. But I try as hard as I can to understand their perspectives, a way to relate, [...]

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