Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm
Lanette and today we are continuing our discussion about Open Adoption 101. So
this is part two. Emphasis on the open, right? Yes, it's all about open adoption
and what makes that unique. So today we're going to talk about what open
adoption might look like and really tie in some of our personal connections to
open adoption and talk about how that has played out in our family, some of our
experiences. And we'll also share a couple of adoptee interviews that we've
had on the podcast in the past that focus on what openness looks like or
what the lack of it might look like. And of course all of these experiences might
be different but we thought these were really helpful in highlighting how open
discussions and especially open relationships where you see your
biological family or help your adoptee see their biological family, how that can
enhance relationships. Yeah, so today's episode is open adoption in practice
basically. So we're gonna jump in. Ready? Yeah. All right. So open adoption in our
family has really been this huge evolution. We knew we wanted an open
adoption when our daughter was born, right? Yeah, but by that point I mean we
had already created a relationship with her birth parents a little bit. Yeah, so
we met them a little bit before she was born, a couple months. And yeah, we had a
good relationship with them. We really loved them and I feel like it was really
obvious that we wanted to continue having them in our lives and especially
in her life when she was born. Yeah, maybe we can highlight a little bit
about how we got there. So we were introduced to our children or our
daughter's birth parents in an adoption agency. We met them under the guise I
guess of them wanting to get to know us a little bit more, but they had already
decided to place with us. And before that we had emailed with them that asked us a
bunch of questions and would email them back. So we had a previous bit of contact
but not face-to-face. So at the end of this face-to-face meeting for the first
time is when they announced to us that they would like to place their daughter
with us. And that night, it was Valentine's Day that year, but that night
we all went out to dinner and we went out to dinner with her birth parents and
their parents as well. So super cool. It was this really awesome opportunity to
really connect with all of these people who love our daughter so much and
feeling all of this combined love and care for her I think just really sealed
the deal that hey this is what we want for her for her entire life. Yeah and
like trying to imagine having that type of connection when you know we were
matched and then to just turn that off after she was born. Yeah it would have
been really wrong. And yeah. Yeah and so we really were pretty novice. I mean
obviously we were novices at this. We had never done it before and so talking
with professionals and everything the advice we had been given at that point
was that we should have really clear discussions really specific about what
we expected this relationship to look like over time and to set really clear
boundaries. And so what that looked like for us the way we interpreted that we
like said hey so let's plan on like having you guys over maybe every three
months or something like that. And so it was a little more rigid right? Like yeah
and I think I think early on Lynette and I had this discussion where we said we
want to under promise and over deliver rather than over promise and under
deliver and so we wanted to set like the like kind of the bare minimum of what we
would hope for in our connection. And like what we knew would be able to
follow through with. Yeah for sure. Like stuff got crazy or yeah. And then we went
above that. Yeah so we always planned on doing more than that but I don't think
we even told them that which in retrospect I think just being really open
about everything and all of your expectations and hopes is really
important. But our daughter's birth mom is seriously incredible and as we all
kind of learned through this and worked through it it was really really a huge
blessing to us that she is so graceful and even when maybe we didn't communicate
things as well as we should have always so kind to us and we're grateful for
that but also would definitely advise being super transparent and just like I
don't know I feel like we talked about this in our last episode but when you
have someone literally entrusting their child to you I think that it seems
really obvious that you should be trusting them too right like it should be
a mutual trust in these kinds of situations. And so yeah I mean that
relationship grew and the trust grew and we're gonna talk about that more yeah in
a couple minutes. But by the time our second was born we had
already established a great relationship with Carrie and her parents and we kind
of had this kind of an open adoption culture kind of figuring it out. She was
almost two and a half when our second child was born so we had some time to
figure it out. Yeah and by then we knew that we wanted as much openness as his
birth parents would be okay with basically and so we jumped right in and
just a couple years later we were really fortunate to be able to adopt our third
child and it was the same thing where we just wanted all of the openness we could
have and by the time he was born like before he was born I should say we had
already brought these three bonus sets of grandparents into our family so we
have like the grandparents who are Sean's parents the grandparents who are
my parents but then we also had three other sets of grandparents and they're
incredible and they were all like these amazing loving resources for our kids
and so we were really excited to add more to our village and we were seeing
our kids birth mothers multiple times a year too pretty often. So by the time our
third child was born we had this great culture and we were just so excited to
jump and with more family right to add to our village and so we did it was
amazing so our third child was born and we started a conversation with one of
his biological grandmas and she was like you know I'm really so sad that I'm not
going to have a relationship with my grandson and Sean and her talked on the
phone as she was talking about this heartache she was experiencing and Sean
told her about what our family culture was looking like you want to talk about
what that was yeah yeah I mean I can actually like remember what I where I
was pacing in our backyard and like this summer evening anyway it was a
poignant conversation and one that led to a really great relationship but yeah
her biggest concerns were that she was losing a grandchild and I talked to her
about what what it looked like with our other kids and how we were connected to
not only their birth parents but grandparents and in some cases
grandparents even more than their birth parents depending on the time well and
also some of the grandparents had really embraced both of our kids or all of our
kids at that point yeah so yeah so that conversation was well really you're not
losing a grandson but you're actually gaining three grandchildren and if you
if if if you want to accept all of our kids as your grandkids then you're part
of the family like this we're all in this is a lifelong thing and I would say
we don't like strong-arm grandparents and no accepting all of our kids as
their grandkids like that doesn't work for everybody and that's okay like we
are definitely happy to encourage whatever relationships we can have for
our kids but it is a lot easier to embrace grandparents when they're
embracing all of our kids it's a lot easier to say hey let's spend a lot of
time together let's have them over they can stay at our house they we can go to
their house like you have so much more freedom yeah I think yeah when all the
kids feel like the same type of love coming from those grandparents then none
of them ever feel like left out or mistreated yeah and they all feel loved
and appreciated and it's really awesome and so I mean that's not what it looks
like with all of their biological grandparents but with quite a few we've
had some really incredible grandparents who have really embraced our whole
family and so yeah you talked about that with this grandma yeah and and she
dived all in she's amazing yeah it was awesome and we live I mean on opposite
sides of the country from one another and so I think it could have easily been
the type of thing where it was lip service but they live in the DC area and
we had never been there but I think we've been there four times now and
they've been here they've stayed with us and it's just bloomed into a really
beautiful relationship to the point where they were like wishing and hoping
that we would have another baby so that they could have another grandkid and
they got their wish that's true we adopted a fourth child and the way his
adoption we're not gonna go like super deep into anything but the way it
happened we adopted him because his birth mom wanted to make sure that she
had a super open adoption and she found out about us and our track record and
was just like yeah like she heard Carrie talking about us on a movie or a video
on Instagram and said yeah that's exactly what I want I want this
relationship with my son and his family and so we adopted a fourth and it blows
my mind that we've adopted four kids but yeah but yeah and it's just grown our
village and so so much yeah we have so many supports yeah so we've been at this
for now over a decade and things kind of get into their groove but maybe we should
talk about some of the things that like annually that kind of we do to promote
action yeah so every time one of our kids has a birthday we'll have a birthday
party that everybody is invited to so there we do sometimes you like kid
parties to like where they can invite school friends or whatever but every
time we try to also have a family party right where they can invite a couple of
friends too but it's like cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and
it's like a big family collaboration kind of thing and at some of those we
have grandparents of each child like biological grandparents of each child
there and yeah I feel like we have a picture of four different sets of
grandparents that aren't biologically related to me or you at one birthday
party and so we invite this really cool yeah to all of the birthday parties
everyone is invited and it's really fun also our birth moms have also met one
another and have you know connected and began to develop a relationship too yeah
yeah it's been awesome so we do that holiday time we always try to get
together with everybody whenever they're able to usually like Christmas afternoon
for some people or like Boxing Day the day after Christmas it just depends on
who it is but yeah and that's them coming here us going there just
depending on the year and another thing that we do our kids are pretty musical
and they three the older three are taking lessons in piano or violin and so
they have recitals a couple times a year and we always invite grandmas and
grandpas to those recitals and typically at least one set of their biological
families come if not more and it's just super sweet we get to hang out there and
sometimes we'll come back here for get together or we'll go out to ice cream or
something like that yeah yeah and then we'll invite them to other school things
as they come up or performances sporting events and stuff yeah yeah and I don't
know what else do we do well I think another thing that we have going are
some Google or sorry Facebook messenger groups for example with our youngest he
has some birth family that lives across the country that we haven't been able to
meet in person yet but we created this huge chat and a messenger chat yeah and
so as his birth parents and their parents and their parents I think it's I
think what up to there's like 14 yeah yeah yeah but multi-generation and yeah
oh yeah we often post the little videos or pictures just updates and it's fun to
be connected with those people and just feel this extra support and love yes and
as our kids are getting older our older kids at least our daughter has a cell
phone and so she can Marco Polo with her birth mom anytime she wants they text
each other I mean I don't know how often they call each other but they can yeah
and and Carrie has been awesome about that like in the beginning when when our
daughter first got her phone she's like so where are my boundaries and we talked
through something but honestly I feel like it's been pretty we've chilled out
a lot too like we were advised to have a lot of like boundaries or whatever in
the beginning and I think that that is important in some families and cultures
but in our personal family culture it's we're not really as rigid about things
like that yeah and so we're pretty cool with most things yeah and then recently
our our older two boys got gab watches and they can call grandmas and grandpas
and yeah we're working on that one making sure they don't use them in
school and everything but it's been really cool to try to start giving them
the reins in some of these relationships to have a little bit more autonomy yeah
and one of them says you know I miss grandma so-and-so and Mike well let's
call her yeah or you have her number why don't you send her texts and I love you
or something like that and it's been it's been sweet yeah it's awesome one of
my favorite things we do actually the grandma that we talked about a little
earlier our third child's bio grandma she's amazing she and her husband are
both awesome and they had this brilliant idea to play bingo over zoom yeah so
they sent us like a big package one day it's been a couple years it was during
2020 but like a big bingo set and a bunch of prizes and treats and stuff that
could be bingo snacks and prizes yeah and so fun so we will play bingo with
them on zoom and we have all the gear they have the gear and so we can just
bond that way and technology really does make it so easy to connect even when
you're not able to jump on a plane yeah and it's really nice face-to-face yeah I
also thought of another thing that happens kind of annually we have a
arse our second he has a set of biological grandparents that live not
too far away and every year there's a state holiday where they can have a big
family party and if we're not traveling that weekend or that week we're always
invited and I remember or they always have these really big like blow up
water slides and stuff at in the backyard and the kids even now would
just reflect on those fun memories and it's it's important for us to build
those bonds and create those memories and they reflect back on them pretty
regularly and ultimately I think they are experiencing what we're hoping for
with open adoption just a lot of connection and a lot of love and support
it's awesome I agree so that's essentially I think what open adoption
kind of looks like in our family in our culture and it's not you know super by
the book or whatever but that's what works well for us and I feel like it's
been incredibly empowering but it didn't just happen right so for example if
we're looking at our relationship with Carrie in the very beginning years ago
we were really a lot more structured would schedule visits would have a
specified number of times each year that would plan on visiting and then we
always said like you can text us or call us anytime because it seemed silly to be
yeah like that rigid crazy but over time like when our daughter was three years
old I remember we were going out of town would have we'd had a trip scheduled
for me and Shawn and our babysitter fell through and so we called her and said
hey could you help us out right now like could you come over and babysit our two
kids while we're out of town for this overnight trip and she was awesome I was
like yeah I'll come and we had zero worries like zero completely trusted
that they were gonna be so safe and well cared for and they were they were great
and then a couple years later and I feel like that relationship got even closer
and it just felt so organic right just yeah I mean I'd compare it to like she's
like our sister right I mean it's not it's probably not the exact same but it
feels like that yeah well and it's it's really interesting to look now it's been
almost 12 years and in that very beginning or even pre connecting with
her imagining someday one of our children's birth moms staying in our
house watching our kids while we're gone and out of the house totally would have
freaked us out and totally yeah that totally seemed so weird but as you live
something it can like the weirdness really fades away yeah I don't know I
feel like in the beginning too we were probably a little more possessive of the
idea of hey we are mom and dad and we are the only mom and dad right yeah but
over time we've realized we're not like the only mom and dad right like a
biological mother and a biological father they're also legitimately part of our
kids and they can claim them too and so we've really tried to help our kids feel
comfortable recognizing that our family's just not as traditional as other
kids and hopefully they feel comfortable voicing that however they want to but my
daughter we've talked specifically about this and I said hey how do you think of
it and she's like well I have two moms and I have two dads and that's her
reality and that's how she likes to see it so we were at therapy a while ago
with a new therapist and he asked her about her real mom and she got so mad
and she was just like livid with this therapist but didn't really know how to
say it she was just so cute and just kind of like struggling to express what
she wanted to him and I was trying to be you know a good therapy mom and not say
anything but I could see her just struggling she's just like no no no I
have two real moms like they're both real like you can't say real like and
she was so upset that he didn't seem to understand this but it's been really
rewarding to see each of our kids as they grow and mature and process their
stories in their own way right yeah I'm sure it's going to be different yeah
well even last week this is kind of a tangent but I picked up the kids from
school and our second said yeah dad not very many people at school were adopted
I was like yeah I know buddy and and he's like yeah it's pretty cool I was
like what's cool about it he's like I have so much more family than other kids
do it's awesome and that was just a really cool kind of organic thing that
came up one day yeah so I mean and of course there's hard things too for them
yeah they have days where they're like you know I'm really sad about this and I
think we've gotten knock on wood I think we're getting better at trying to
listen without projecting anything on them right and so my kids were all in
the car a couple weeks ago and one of my kids was sad about something and we were
talking for a minute and it came out that they were kind of sad that they
hadn't seen their birth mom for a while for a couple of months and I was like
yeah that's a sad thing and then one of the other kids kind of looked at them
and said well but you don't need to be sad about that right because we have
these other family members that we do see and I was like well you're allowed to
still feel sad about that and I told all of them and I hope that they took this
seriously but I said you know you can feel whatever you want to feel about
your adoption and your story like it's okay if you want to feel like if you
feel sad about adoption and you feel like you're missing somebody and you
wonder about what life would be like if you lived with your birth mom and you
also still love us and you're happy with us like you can feel both of these
things like there's it's okay to have space for multiple feelings that kind of
seem like they might conflict yeah and luckily with the connections that we
have it's not hard for us to you know create a quick video and send it to a
birth parent or a grandparent and just ask how they're doing and it's often
that we'll get a pretty quick response as well and with those connections even
even even in the hard times they're able to kind of process a little bit better
and and and talk through it yeah yeah so I mean these relationships and our
efforts into having open adoptions it's all a work in progress we don't really
like have all the answers obviously but we are sharing this because we feel like
it's super valuable and important to bring our kids more love to try to help
them have a better sense of their identity and a better feeling of control
of like themself and I don't know just ultimately more love right that's our
goal so yeah I think these conversations are important even if we're still
learning and but yeah so we have these relationships and honestly I would say
that they've been really enriching and like huge blessings to both us right but
that's not the point the point is to help our kids and to bring them that
connection but I do feel like even for the grown-ups for lack of a better word
right for the grown-ups in these relationships for us for their biological
families I think it really has been such a huge source of connection and love and
support where we just have really benefited too and we know that some of
their biological family definitely feels this too because they've told us things
like I have a couple of thoughts here we had one set of grandparents who said you
know instead of feeling like we lost a granddaughter we feel like we've gained
another son and another daughter so ultimately like their families grown and
then we have another set who said you know from the beginning we've felt
welcomed in their home and their lives and we feel a connection that connection
of family and they've all embraced us as grandparents to all of their children
we've felt loved as such their family really has become part of our family and
so I mean hearing these thoughts from our family right from our kids biological
family who's become family to all of us has been incredibly touching and just so
rewarding and yeah we feel super blessed to have these relationships but you know
these healthy relationships don't just happen they usually take a lot of work
and there's definitely rough patches and there's definitely a lot of times where
we need to forgive and be forgiven and seek grace from each other right because
these are normal family relationships where they're not all perfect do you
have anything to say about that yeah it's true I mean there's sometimes we
say things or somebody else says some things just like in any family or any
relationship that you're like man I shouldn't have said that or man I wish
they wouldn't have said that and you get over it just like you do with other
people that you love I think we're gonna transition just a little bit and
talk about some experiences that others have had I mean we've we've lived our
experience and we can share that but we've also interviewed a lot of people
on the podcast and I think we're gonna highlight two in this episode the first
is Jamie and she grew up in a closed adoption situation and in her particular
case she never talked about being adopted with her adoptive parents and
in this clip she's gonna share a little bit about what it was like when she did
reconnect with her biological family and her comfort level of telling her mom her
adoptive mother about that connection you know I am in reading them however
since we didn't talk about being adopted growing up I also didn't ever talk about
searching or being in reunion so I searched from the time I went off to
college and I found my maternal side of the family and was reunited with them
for about ten years before I ever was able to talk to my adoptive mom to let
her know I had even searched much less that I had found them or that I knew
them and I had been reunited so and I by the time I told her I had found my
paternal side as well so so my adoptive mom had told me once when we're now
talking about my reunion because we now have been able to discuss things not
everything but most things so to say and she said you know she thought that if
she was adopted she would have never had any desire to find out anything about
her first family or to to find them like well right because you grew up with your
family so you don't know what it's like to not have them there right so she
thought I guess that yeah wouldn't have that need I don't know but once she has
actually seen me in reunion so she has actually spent time with me and some
biological family she's quite amazed at how much we're similar and how much I
needed that and she actually now said she thought she would not have wanted to
know but now she's like I think yeah I probably actually would have wanted to
know too so ultimately she ends up having a reunification right ultimately
her adoptive mother's kind of tune turns but I bet there's a sense of regret in
that adoptive mom's life and saying ah I wish I could have I wish that she could
have felt comfortable coming to me and talking to me yeah ten years ten years
of being reunified without telling your biological parent your adoptive parent
and so for us when when Jamie shared that story with us it helped just kind of
re solidify our desire to have this connection and ultimately our kids at
some point are going to drive those relationships we're doing what we can to
facilitate them now but we just want to lay the foundation and groundwork so that
it exists when they're really ready for it yeah and when we talk about open
adoption we're talking about like relationships right like having
connections but you can't always control like maybe the biological family doesn't
want that but as an adoptive parent you can always control having open dialogues
and creating that psychological safety to talk about these hard things being a
safe space for that and so I mean that is something that you are completely in
control of and I think it's a really important lesson to us that we want to
make sure that we are open to these discussions and even if it's
uncomfortable yeah yeah yeah we're gonna contrast that last experience from Jamie
with Dakota we we interviewed Dakota really early on in the podcast it's
almost been two years now which is kind of crazy and Dakota had an open adoption
for all of his life or at least as long as you can remember yeah and so we're
gonna play this clip and I mean you can compare and contrast the two and see
what benefits would potentially be the case so we'll jump to that clip now but
because I was so young when my parents reconnected with my birth mom it was
like like I never questioned any of it I always knew each other's purpose and
place in our family because she is family but it's I don't know how to like
no relationship can be compared to like a birth mom and an adopted child but if
I were to it's like kind of like an aunt like an aunt she's like my aunt right
like I love her I respect her but she's not my mom so what's really crazy is I
may be fibbing a little bit here because I was so young but her husband lost her
job and they lived semi like semi close to my family so when I was really young
her and her husband not my birth dad ended up like moving in with my family
for several months so you know I just like I saw her all over the place like I
woke up and hung out with my half-brother that was two or three at the
time I think I was like four maybe five so he's just a little younger than me we
were like best friends so obviously just like being aware of situations like it
was just an ideal situation for me as I grew up she was always in my life it was
really cool obviously I didn't have her around as much as I wanted to at some
points and some points I had her around more than I wanted to right my family
moved to literally the middle of nowhere when I was like 10 years old we went
moved to Monticello Utah which is like five hours from where she lived but
once a year my baseball team got to go to state in like the Utah Valley and it
was just one of the coolest things ever I was so excited to play baseball
baseball was like my first love it was like one of the most touching
experiences looking over in the stands and like seeing my birth mom and her
kids over there at that point it's not like your aunt right it's just wow that's
so cool I love her so much and I actually talked to her all the time right
now but this is just like bringing back so much emotion as I talk about it
because like I didn't realize how much she loved or cared about me growing up I
was just like she was there so of course every adoptee is going to be having
different experiences every adoption story is different right so we can't
just listen to these two thoughts or experiences of adoptees and say that's
how it is for everybody because it's not but I think it really is so telling to
listen to these two experiences and see the difference it made for these people
and we have a lot of interviews on our podcast with adoptees that you can
listen to and find other similar threads of how open connections and open dialogue
can help improve an adoptee sense of identity and belonging yeah and almost I
can't say every but many many of those that we've talked with that grew up in a
closed adoption situation at some point in their life whether it's when they're
14 years old or 50 years old have this desire get to the point where they act
and they actively seek and search and they yearn for this connection and
ultimately I mean ultimately we can't rewrite history you can't rewrite
people's stories but maybe if they had that connection early on or known more
than that yearning that comes would have already been filled yeah well and of
course we always want to do the best we can for our kids always and from what we
know from all of the research we've read and the people we've talked to it seems
really clear that open adoption is the best thing we can be doing for our kids
we can't change the fact that they were adopted but the best thing we can do to
help them to feel confident and and whole is to talk openly and have these
relationships with their biological family and as adoptive parents it's
really our role to try to facilitate these relationships and help make them a
positive experience for our kids yeah and I mean you're you're talking about
wholeness right that reminds me of a quote from the open-hearted way to open
adoption so this is a great book we recommended it in the last episode it's a
few years old now but this is my biggest favorite takeaway from the book it says
adoption creates a split between a child's biography and her biology
openness is an effective way to heal that split and help your child grow up
whole I just love that that imagery that having these open adoption
relationships can really ultimately help our kids to heal that split that they're
very likely going to feel that void can be filled by having these connections
yeah so I think I mean one invitation we could give you if you want to know more
is go back and find some of those adoptee interviews yeah not just on our
podcast find adopt yeah just adopt these follow adoptees on Instagram find
adoptees that you can listen to and try to listen to lots of different adoptee
perspectives because there are many different ones right and you want to
understand adoptees listen to as many as you can and be balanced in that
approach yeah yeah so on our podcast we recommend all of our adoptee interviews
and honestly I'd also recommend all of our biological parent interviews too and
there's a couple of episodes that I feel like can create a bit more of a detailed
picture of openness like we've discussed in this episode that I'd recommend yeah
so Dakota and Jamie we talked about you can go back and listen to our episodes
but I have a couple more so there's one with Shane and Alicia and their foster
parents and just a great connection with the biological family of the kids that
they foster and just basically like open adoption but it's open foster right yeah
and and I mean their situation is unique and every situation is unique but like
lessons really yeah it would be good for you listen to you and then another one
we did was called adoptee focused language mm-hmm yeah I think that one's
a really important one also just making sure that we're respecting adoptees and
their preferences in language that we use and then we also have an adoption
professional Q&A episode it's with Kim Perry she's a licensed social worker and
I think it's the closest thing we have to like an adoption 101 episode at this
point like you know without the open focus we talked about it in that episode
but I think that's a good one too and then Sean made this really great episode
it was kind of a last-minute idea he had when I was sick during season two we
were going to wrap up our season with an episode and I ended up being really
unwell and so Sean put together this episode that was adoptee voices it's a
montage of adoptee stories from our second season of the podcast and it
gives this really broad overview of different themes and differences
throughout that whole season of interviews with adoptees yeah because you
ask an adoptee the same question as the other 50 and everyone has a different
answer and everyone is unique and it's it's instructive as an adoptive parent
to listen to those that have a collective voice and how they differ from
one another so we have three action items particularly for prospective
adoptive parents anyone listening to this episode these are our three
takeaways that we're hoping that you can take home from this the first one is
to have clear discussions before an adoption takes place prospective
adoptive parents we want you to be completely honest and transparent about
what you see this relationship looking like one month out a year out five years
out 12 years out I mean get really specific and talk about what you expect
things to look like over the course of time make sure that you're really honest
really transparent and do not over promise you need to be completely
invested and committed to following through with whatever you're saying that
you're going to do also make sure that you make space for and invite some
honest feedback from the biological family like sincerely seek information
and see how they're doing you know we've noticed that a lot of biological moms
after they place a child for adoption they just are like well maybe this isn't
perfect but I don't want to get booted out right and that's really not a fair
way to have them feeling so make sure that the biological family especially the
bio mom bio dad make sure the bio mom knows that you really value her that you
want this to be a cooperative relationship and actively seek feedback
on how the relationship is doing how it's feeling so that you can improve it
yeah our second invitation or action item for you would be to listen to adopt
you voices obviously we've mentioned that here already but this is for
everyone right this is for us for bioparents grandparents you know
adoptive parents especially adoptive parents we need to listen to adopt you
voices and don't listen in an echo chamber don't only listen to things that
you want to hear it's important to hear a lot of different perspectives yeah some
of these perspectives might challenge you and they might be hard to hear and I
feel like it's really sad that we have to say this but sometimes we see
adoptive parents getting really antagonistic and challenging adoptees
who have opinions that might make them feel threatened so of course I think
it's really obvious but just to be clear be respectful this is not about you it's
not about your feelings and I think our opinion would be if you want to adopt
you need to be doing all of this work beforehand to make sure that you're well
and stable it's not about you and you shouldn't be attacking adoptees who have
opinions you don't like I think that's so sad yeah so happens yeah be well
versed in adoptee experiences it will it will only help you be a better parent
mm-hmm and then third our last challenge for you is to commit to making this a
lifelong educational process that's a big part of why we're here obviously
also to share adoptee voices but also to promote continual learning to make it a
lifelong endeavor all right well I hope that this series has been helpful
talking about open adoption next week we'll be back with an interview with a
first mother and it's a really powerful story she is incredible we're excited to
share that one and then the few episodes after that we have several adult
adoptees who grew up in open adoption situations we're really excited to share
these also just a quick little call out we are always looking for more adoptees
to talk to but especially adoptees who grew up in an open adoption is kind of
our thing that we've been focusing a little more on lately and so anytime if
we have any adoptees listening that are in who are interested in sharing their
stories we would love to have you on the show and if you grew up in an open
adoption would also love to talk about that with you on the show if you're
willing and interested in that yeah so reach out to us on Instagram or at open
adoption project or you can email us at open adoption project at gmail.com and
do you want to tell them about the adoption in the media that's happening
yeah so on Thursday this week we have another adoption in the media
discussion it's going to be on zoom so if you would like to join you can go to
our website and find the link there to register so you can get all of that
information but it's going to be focused on more foster care and that portrayal
in the media foster to adopt yep and so we mentioned Shane and Alicia and they
are actually going to be leading that discussion and we're really excited for
it we have quite a few people who have RSVP'd including adoptees and biological
parents and adoptive parents and so anyone who's interested in coming we
would love to have you there yeah we're talking this time about the movie
instant family and obviously I mean the whole movie is themed about this family
bringing into their home three children as foster parents so we're looking
forward to having a great discussion about that movie one more quick thing
that we wanted to mention is we do have a newsletter if you're interested you
can subscribe to our newsletter at open adoption project org we share content
about once a month about adoption thank you so much for being here we are
so grateful for all of you and for your interactions with us and if you ever
have more questions about open adoption or would like us to discuss in depth
something else we're always open to suggestions please reach out to connect
and connect with us in any way you can yeah it's such a learning curve I feel
like we're still learning I don't think we're ever gonna stop learning in the
adoption world which is kind of daunting and exhausting to think about but I
think it's really important to recognize that we're still on that learning
journey and we're really grateful to have so many of you here with us
learning with us as we continually find new things that we don't know or that we
didn't know we didn't know all right well that's a wrap thanks to each of you
for listening to this episode of the open adoption project we'll be back in
your feed in two weeks
you