“What is the hard part about adoption? ADOPTION is the hard part of adoption.”
—A guest in Episode 21
Several adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies gather around the table to suss out the question, “What is hard about adoption?”
- Is it relinquishment vs adoption? Abandonment vs assimilation?
- Is it severance of family and cultural ties?
- Is it having to forage for information?
- Is it ignorance coming into the adoption process for both expectant parents and adoptive parents?
- Is it later feelings of guilt and regret for all we did not know?
- Is it separation that’s felt all through the years?
- Is it unexpected and unacknowledged grief?
- Is it the gratitude that is expected?
- Is it the imbalance in power dynamics?
- Is it powerlessness over how the story is told?
- Is it any number of other aspects brought on by the institutionalization of adoption?
Thanks to each of our guests—each of whom we interviewed for our book, Adoption Unfiltered—for sharing their personal experience, professional insights, and hard-won wisdom about the hard parts of adoption.
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Some of our Round Table Guests:
- Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao
- David Bohl, MA, CASC, MAC
- Susan Devan Harness
- Kathy Mackechney, LCSW
- Maureen McCauley
- Ashley Mitchell
- Marci Purcell
- Beth Syverson
- Diego Vitelli, LMFT
- Jennifer Winkelmann, MA, LPC, NCC
Sara Easterly:
Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard:
Lori Holden:
Episode List
Sara, Kelsey, and Lori reveal candid perspectives on adoption—along with those of 50 other adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies—in their recent book, Adoption Unfiltered, now available by Rowman & Littlefield.