Other Articles
by: Jane Ballback
This month’s theme has to do with the effects of adoption on the adoptee and the adoption issues that most people in the adoption community don’t want to talk about. Sadly, adoptee issues are real, and the tragedy comes when adoptive parents do not understand what they are really facing as they make the all-important decision to adopt a child. Like everyone else, I enjoy the hardcover adoption magazines full of adorable images, arts and crafts, and “my baby is the cutest” photo contests. But every time I look at one of those magazines, I have to think to myself, “Please tell the other side of the adoption story.” Adoption can be full of happiness and joy, but it can also be full of loss, grief, and in some cases... read more.
10 things adoptive parents wish their friends and family understood
These are 10 of the things I wish friends understood about what it's like to adopt children. 1. The right vocabulary to use: Just to get this straight from the start. I am my children's real mum. The people whose genes they share are their birth family. Clear? Good. Because making up bedtime stories, mending grazed knees and remembering which one hates tomatoes make me just as much a real parent as anyone else 2. Our parenting style will almost certainly be different. Yes, I know you'd put yours in a time out on the naughty step and withhold a sticker from her chart. But if my daughter has misbehaved as a consequence of believing she's had so many sets of parent figures in her short life because... read more.
10 Things Adoptees Want You to Know
by: Lesli Johnson
I was adopted as an infant, during a time when adoption was still shrouded in secrecy. My birthmother kept her pregnancy hidden from her family for nearly seven months. Her parents and my biological father's parents agreed she would be sent away to have me. She birthed me in a sterile room, frightened, with no familiar faces and no compassion for her situation. I was taken from her before she even had a chance to see me. Back then, this was considered acceptable. Today, we realize that.... read more.
The Darker Side of the Adoption Story
by: Jane Ballback
...This month’s theme has to do with the effects of adoption on the adoptee and the adoption issues that most people in the adoption community don’t want to talk about. Sadly, adoptee issues are real, and the tragedy comes when adoptive parents do not understand what they are really facing as they make the all-important decision to adopt a child. Like everyone else, I enjoy the hardcover adoption magazines full of adorable images, arts and crafts, and “my baby is the cutest” photo contests. But every time I look at one of those magazines, I have to think to myself, “Please tell the other side of the adoption story.” Adoption can be full of happiness and joy, but it can also be full of loss, grief, and in some cases... read more.
Please don’t tell me I was lucky to be adopted
By Shaaren Pine
I’ve never been good at embracing my story, but lately I’ve found help in the most unlikely of places: my 7-year-old daughter, Ara. A few months ago a good friend relayed a conversation she had just overheard between Ara and the friend’s 6-year-old son. “I heard you were talking to Graham about adoption?” I asked Ara later. “Yeah,” she said. “What did you say?” I asked. “I just said that I’m kind of like an adoptee, but instead of being taken away from my brown mom, I was taken away from my brown grandma.” I was stunned. There she was, then 6, expressing her feelings about my adoption so clearly. She was able to acknowledge that like me, she, too, feels she has been cut off from her family, her culture and her story and that she is missing a part of who she is... read more.
Genes aren’t destiny, and other things I’ve learned from being adopted
by Todd VanDerWerff
"You're adopted?" That's inevitably how people respond to me when the word comes up in conversation. I can almost hear the italics around it: "You're adopted?" I know there are dozens of questions lurking beneath the word, if only I'll talk about them. And I always will talk, because being adopted is pretty boring, honestly. It's a fact of my life, but it's background radiation — always there, but not always on my mind. The facts of my adoption have, at various times in my life, been a badge of honor I wore to make myself seem cool... read more.
by Brenda Romanchik
Open adoption is often presented to birth parents as a way to lessen the grief of losing a child to adoption. Being able to see your child and eventually develop a relationship with him or her do not, however, change the fact that you are no longer the child's parent. In fact, the loss of being Mom or Dad is often painfully obvious to us with each visit. Losing a child to adoption is one of the most significant losses.....
SILENT VOICES HEARD: Impact of the Birthmother's Experience, Then and Now
by: Donna Portuesi, MSW, and Reunited Birthmother
Living an experience is to know it. For the birthmother, however, living the experience and understanding the totality of the experience may take a lifetime journey. The relinquishment of a child for adoption permeates all aspects of a birthmother's life. Only a couple of decades ago, many unwed mothers, no matter how capable, were scorned and labeled....