Adoption Constellation Round Table Fall 2023
“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 […]
Attachment, Adoption, and the Connection Between Food and Caring
What are the deeper layers of the connection between attachment and food? This is a fascinating conversation with Deborah MacNamara, PhD, author of Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (and everyone else we love), for anyone dealing with digestive or attachment issues—which is, likely, all of us. “If food is not served in […]
Book Discussion of Lois Lowry’s The Giver
What would it be like to live in a community that protects you from pain, grief, loss, and other difficult feelings? How would it be to have so much sameness among community members that envy was eradicated? What if individuals were prevented from making bad choices? What would happen in a community that completely downplays […]
The Past, Present, and Future of Adoption as Seen Through Sage Eyes
Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao has been living adoption for more than 75 years as an adoptee—and professionally connected to adoption for 55 years in various roles, including as a psychologist and lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of The Family of Adoption, and we three authors are incredibly fortunate that Dr. […]
Late Discovery and Transracial Adoptee Perspectives on Adoption
“Adoption seems simple from the outside. But when you’re in the thick of it, you see things in ways you never expected.” Author Melissa Guida-Richards (What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption) joins us to talk about discovering at age 19 that she had been adopted, and that her ethnicity didn’t match her parents. What was it like to experience such a shifting in fundamental truths about herself? And how could such a breach of trust end up bringing her and her parents closer together?
Problematic Adoption Narratives
Adoption tropes make for blockbuster films and viral news stories, but, as we do here on Adoption Unfiltered, let’s dive deeper. Why do such tropes exist and perpetuate? Why do we harbor cultural biases such as: adoptive parents being unquestioningly unselfish and amazing; birth parents being undeserving of raising their kids; adoptees being ungrateful if they speak up and share a fuller story about adoption.
How to Engage with Other Constellation Members
What does healthy engagement look like around adoption? Rules for how to engage when talking with others in the adoption constellation.
National Adoption Awareness Month
It’s November, which means National Adoption Awareness Month. Adoption talk, adoption talk, everywhere you go! We’ve described it as overwhelming, emotional laboring, and metamorphing. What was the original intent of NAAM? In what ways has the original intent expanded and shifted? Who has benefitted from NAAM, and who hasn’t? Who has historically owned the narrative, […]
Adoption Constellation Round Table
Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth mom) and Lori Holden (adoptive mom) kick of Season 2 with a special Adoption Constellation Round Table, for which we invited adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and others who have something to say about adoption to talk together around this question: What is the biggest ah-ha you’ve […]
Adoption and the Abortion Debate
What will happen when the Supreme Court officially rules on Roe v Wade? Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth mom) and Lori Holden (adoptive mom) talk about the overlap between abortion and adoption. Not an easy conversation! Adoption and abortion are so often pitted against each other as opposite sides of coin when […]