What does it mean to be truly child centered when considering adoption? It begins with listening, sincerely and without dismissal, to the adoptees involved. Most importantly, being child centered in adoption means that the interests of the adults...
Demographics, Myths, Lies and the Real TruthThe paradoxical treatment of birth mothers is even more confusing than what adoptees experience. Adopted children are told that their mothers loved them so much they gave them away, selflessly, to be...
Mother’s Day is a triggering day on the calendar for many people. For those of us impacted by adoption, it can be ten times that on the Richter scale. As an adoptee who has sought more information about my first mother, I’ve now compiled a cluster...
Within the sub-culture of adoption, few theories are as celebrated and simultaneously controversial as “The Primal Wound”. The book with the same name, written by Nancy Verrier in 1993, calls out the idea that separating an infant from its mother is...
This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of “The Adoption Paradox” on the History of Adoption.The tales of the atrocities of the U.S. government against Native Americans are lengthy and well-known. There are two key aspects to note when one...
From deep inside the womb, I know both love and sadness. They ripple through my blood, my bones, and intertwine to create the essence of me. This invisible truth sits inside, certain, a spark that will not die. Like the campfire that no matter...
The mother who raised me was an addict. She and my father adopted me, but I’m not sure why. In 1962 when you got married, you started a family. Those were the rules. Never mind that my mother had already begun her dark slide into depression and...
I’m married to Matt, and I’m a petite little thing, and I don’t cycle properly. We married later in life. I was 28. We started looking at adoption immediately because it took us a year and a half to get pregnant with our first son...
My story is the age-old tale of black and white, my mother being white, my father black. It goes back to the story of an older man with a younger woman. She was a teenager, got pregnant, and had me. She tried to keep me for a while, but for whatever...
My Mother Didn’t Want Me. My Mother Couldn’t Keep Me. Sit with those two sentences. Feel the differences implied by their words. In one, you are rejected and abandoned. Discarded. Given away, never to be thought of again. The other gives a different...