Grief and Loss
Identity Blackjack: The Adoptee Experience
Being an adoptee can feel a lot like sitting at a blackjack table, anxiously awaiting the next card to be flipped over to decide your fate. While most people grow…
Read MoreEmbracing Curiosity as a Part of Adoptee Identity
Many adoptees grow up carrying questions that don’t have easy answers—or any answers. Questions about origins. About resemblance. About temperament, health, culture, history, and the people who came before us.…
Read MoreBiological and Cultural Continuity Privilege: What Adoptive Parents Need to Understand
Most non-adopted people move through the world with two distinct forms of privilege so woven into everyday life that they are rarely named: biological privilege and cultural continuity privilege. For…
Read MoreWhen Parenting Shifts: Navigating the Teen & Young Adult Years with Your Adoptee
There’s a quiet but powerful shift that happens as your as your teen steps into young adulthood. The rhythms you once relied on in parenting begin to feel out of…
Read MoreBeyond Words: How Unspoken Moments Create the Deepest Opportunities for Healing
There is a particular kind of comfort that comes from being understood without explanation. As an adoptee and a psychologist, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful this unspoken understanding can be…
Read MoreIt’s Time to Expand the Definition of “Helpers”
After tragic events such the two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton this past weekend (and the numerous shootings prior), many parents are seeking the right words to reassure…
Read MoreWhat We Ask of You
Understand that we do not ask you to hear our voices because we are grieving. We ask you to hear our voices because we are exhausted from grieving. Biologicals cannot…
Read More#29Days29WaystoSupportAdoptees
Did you miss out on February’s #29Days29WaystoSupportAdoptees? Review them all here! #1: Journal about your adoption process before you even receive a referral, so that your child can see how…
Read MoreScreening Questions When Seeking an Adoption-Competent Therapist
Adoption is beyond complex – the language, the losses, the expectations, the norms, the family dynamics, the feelings…the list is long, in-depth, and specific. When you’re searching for an adoption-competent…
Read MoreTips for Parenting Trauma-Reactive Kids
While I could write for days on the topic of trauma in adoption and foster care kiddos, I’m writing this blog with the assumption that many parents already understand quite…
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