open adoption « Parenting for Peace

Posts Tagged ‘open adoption’

Crisis Pregnancy Is Age-Old: Adoption’s Beginnings

I published two Adoption Insight booklets exactly twenty years ago, and how happy I would be if the contents of those booklets had become obsolete in that time. Oh how I wish they were relics of an outdated, reformed adoption system. Alas, that isn’t the case. Women facing crisis pregnancy is a situation as old as human history.

Volume III of Adoption Insight was going to be titled, Nurturing This Untimely Miracle ~ Insights for the Mother with a Crisis Pregnancy. It was going to dispel common myths, like the misguided one that says, if you are planning or even considering adoption for your baby, it is your “job” to begin the process of detaching now, while you’re pregnant… that it will make it easier to separate when the time comes. (more…)

Tags: adoption, birthmother, Nancy Verrier, open adoption, pregnant woman, reform, stress
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The Primal Wound: Separation Trauma IS Trauma…At Any Age

As a society we are rightly outraged by the separation of immigrant parents and children. That these children will suffer emotional wounds due to this separation, amidst such chaotic circumstances, is collectively, instinctively assumed. But where is the outrage—or even a drip of compassion—over the separation of mothers and babies in the case of adoption?

This glaring double standard regarding separation trauma was one of the forces that impelled Nancy Verrier to begin writing about this elephant in the room. You see, by the 1980s it was increasingly accepted by many progressive doctors and theorists that separation of mother and newborn was best avoided in general. But there was a cultural blind spot when it came to adoption!

[In case you’re new to this Adoption Insight 25th Anniversary situation, all year I’m reissuing my trove of adoption articles I wrote in the 90s. Usually I include a brief introduction and/or a bit of never-before-shared behind-the-scenes scoop on how it came to be. Today’s introduction is an article in itself… but you will in fact come to the original article below, “In Appreciation of The Primal Wound.”]

Honesty in adoption—the last American taboo?

(more…)

Tags: adoption, attachment, open adoption, prenatal, reform, separation trauma
Posted in Adoption Insight | 12 Comments »

The Reunion with my Birthmother

This article was published in the adoption magazine Roots & Wings in 1993 about my adoption reunion with my birthmother. (I know, “adoption reunion” is an oddly over-descriptive term to use in an article in an adoption series. Blame the tyranny of SEO!)

In the spirit of truth and authenticity, I’m reissuing this cache of 90s articles as I wrote them them, with minimal changes. If there’s some embarrassing punctuation or a cringingly awful mistake, I will make those corrections. If there is a glaringly obsolete reference or fact, I will either update it or clarify it [with a bracketed comment like this.] And I may bend a wee bit to the aforementioned tyranny of SEO, so that as many people will find this article online as possible.

Hmm, what “inside scoop” can I give you on this one? (more…)

Tags: adoption, another mother, biological mother, birthmother, open adoption, reform
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Adoption Slogans or Honest Talk About Adoption?

Of all the articles I wrote about adoption, this remained one of my favorites. In a short piece it touches upon many essentials related to adoption’s psychological issues. It was published in the California Association of Social Workers quarterly publication.

The impetus for this piece was a cover article in the L.A. Times Sunday Magazine about hopeful prospective parents’ experiences with (then far less advanced) reproductive technologies—some successful, some not. An adoptive father (that is, someone for whom reproductive technologies were unsuccessful) was quoted as saying that he had wanted to try absolutely everything they could before adopting… and once they had done that, then he was willing to adopt.

The implication came through loud and clear: for him, as for a vast majority of parents, adoption is <gasp> second choice. On the one hand, I found it sort of refreshing that he was so honest. On the other, I thought of the perky adoption slogans that I grew up with and in my characteristic (mostly private) black humor I thought, “I wonder if that’s what he’ll tell his adopted child: We did everything else possible before we agreed to adopt you.”

Of course it was a rhetorical question. But there was something there to explore and share.

(more…)

Tags: adoption, open adoption, reform, slogan
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Adoption Issues & Me: It Began 25 Years Ago

Adoption is cool again. Talking about adoption, I mean. Adoption issues. And writing about adoption issues. Speaking the truth about adoption. So in this, the 25th anniversary of my baptism into the world of adoption reform, I’m circling back to do it again in this new century.

The most interesting part of it now, at least for me, about revisiting and reissuing my articles? It’s that I bring (what’s called in the research world) a longitudinal perspective to the adoption issues I once wrote about so prolifically. In English, that means simply due to the fact that I’ve continued to live with and navigate adoption issues over the years since first plumbing them in my writing and speaking, I have gained a perspective that only comes with the passage of time and living life with abiding curiosity (plus intermittent bouts of therapy, natch). (more…)

Tags: adoption, Annette Baran, Nancy Verrier, open adoption, primal wound, reform
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Rethinking Adoption in the 21st Century

For generations, formal adoption in America consisted overwhelmingly of white babies who were born to white, unwed women and were parented by white, married couples. Our laws, policies, practices, attitudes and understanding were based on that reality – and yet adoption in the 21st century has changed quite radically. The demographics of adopted children – and the characteristics of expectant and prospective parents – no longer look anything like the ones for whom the institution was first created. (more…)

Tags: adoption, adoptive parents, birth parent, foster care, open adoption, reunion
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How Early Life Influences Us: My Roots as an Adoptee

One of the most unique things about Parenting for Peace is it’s the only parenting book that collates, contextualizes, and includes guidelines around the latest research on how powerfully early life influences us.

My birth parents Bob & Liz, 3 months before my birth

In other words, how soon parenting begins.

For me, all of this is eminently personal: it grows from the ground of my own lifelong experience, beginning in the womb of a mother who knew she would not keep me. Who met a couple who had suffered some steep losses — the death of a baby, a near-fatal miscarriage — and decided she was carrying me for them. Who held me just once that first day in the hospital, and didn’t see me again for twenty-one years.

It grows from the ground of my first six days spent in a hospital nursery, followed by the months and years in a home that was not, shall we say, steeped in “relational intelligence.” Things were pretty chilly. A bit lonely. And it wasn’t that my parents didn’t mean well, or have good intentions. They were short on information and understanding. That’s what I try to do with my book, my private coaching, my speaking appearances — make sure there is lots of information and understanding available about early life influences, so that your best intentions can be realized in practical, effective ways! (more…)

Tags: adoption, conception, early life influences, open adoption, parenting
Posted in Parenting for Peace | 8 Comments »

I’ve adopted!!

Once the title was set for my book, of course I set out to lay claim to the matching domain name. To my dismay, parentingforpeace.com belonged to someone else. I’d simply have to use a different name. The frontrunner was parentingforpeacebook.com. Didn’t really like it, not much. Too cumbersome. When one of your principles is simplicity, it doesn’t do to complicate up your URL with extraneous words.

In the 11th hour, I made a bold move: (more…)

Tags: birthparents, open adoption
Posted in Parenting for Peace | 4 Comments »