Episode 410: Best Advice for Adoptive Parents
I really, really love this episode.
As 2023 comes to a close, so does the 4th season of Adoption: The Long View. This season we heard from 6 adoptees, 2 birth parents, 4 adoptive parents, and 5 professionals in the field, like attachment therapists, a social worker, a psychologist, and agency professionals. I’m honored that each of these guests came to share their personal and expert experiences to help us all get a better understanding of adoption’s long view.
As you may already know, the last episode of each season is a bite-sized recap from each guest, and altogether it forms the Best Advice of the season. For Season 4, the question that ended each interview was this: How can we best support adoptees in building healthy identities and connections right from the start – or at least from today?
Bonus! Audio Excerpts from the book Adoption Unfiltered
After you hear what each guest has to say, stay tuned for excerpts from the new groundbreaking book Adoption Unfiltered, narrated by Sara Easterly (and adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (a birth parent), and me (an adoptive parent).
So now I offer you the brilliance of our Season 4 guests, distilled into this season’s best advice. What you’ll hear in the next half hour or so are brief clips from the end of each episode – guests giving you their very best advice for taking the long view of adoption — plus brief excerpts from Adoption Unfiltered, narrated by the authors. We have a transcript available so you can easily find any episode you’d like to refer back to and dive in for more of any guest.
So it’s a wrap for Season 4! We will take a short break and see you soon for more captivating guests in Season 5. To support our efforts in bringing you high-quality guests and episodes, it really helps us out when you share this episode with others, and when you give it a heart or a rating on your podcast platform – thanks to those of you who already have, and thanks to those of you who are about to. Make sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you know when new monthly episodes are available.
Show Notes from Ep410’s Advice for Adoptive Parents
Click on the name to go to the guests’ own site. Click on the episode number for that guest’s full interview.
You may also wish to search all episodes in all seasons by role, such as episodes featuring birth parents or a male perspective or therapists as guests. You can do that, too.
- Rebecca Ricardo, adoptee, birth parent, and adoption social worker on adoption from all sides. Ep401.
- Dawn Davenport, adoption community leader, on why adoptive parents must be continual learners. Ep402.
- Brad Ewell and Fred Nicora: two late discovery adoptees on why adoptees’ truth matters more than adoptive parents’ comfort. Ep 403.
- Dr Brad Reedy, therapist, on adoptive parents setting boundaries and understanding guilt and shame. Ep404.
- Adi Tilford, adoptive parent, on becoming a therapeutic parent and creating a therapeutic home. Ep405.
- Dr Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, adoptee, adoptive parent, and psychologist, on how to talk about race with children. Ep406.
- Greg Gentry, adoptee, sharing 5 things his parents did well and 6 things they didn’t. Ep407.
- Maureen McCauley, seasoned adoptive parent, on the dance we do with the adoptees we parent. Ep408.
- Sara Easterly and Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, co-authors of Adoption Unfiltered. Ep409.
- Transcript for Ep410.
Quotes from Season 4
Ep401: 3-in-1 Adoption Sage 
Ep402: Continuing Ed as Adoptive Parents 
Ep402: Continuing Ed as Adoptive Parents 
Ep403: Truth for Adoptees 
Ep403: Truth for Adoptees 
Ep404: Guilt, Shame & Boundaries 
Ep404: Guilt, Shame & Boundaries 
Ep405: Therapeutic Parenting 
Ep405: Therapeutic Parenting 
Ep406: How to Talk about Race 
Ep406: How to Talk about Race 
Ep407: Hindsight for Adoptive Parenting 
Ep407: Hindsight for Adoptive Parenting 
Ep407: Hindsight for Adoptive Parenting 
Ep408: The Dance of Adoptive Parenting 
Ep408: The Dance of Adoptive Parenting 
Ep408: The Dance of Adoptive Parenting 
Ep408: The Dance of Adoptive Parenting 
Ep409: Unfiltering Adoption 
Ep409: Unfiltering Adoption 
Ep409: Unfiltering Adoption
How to Tune In Regularly
You can find us on Adopting.com, and on these and other platforms.
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
- Amazon Podcasts
- Castbox
- Search for “Adoption Long View” on your preferred podcast platform.
A new episode comes out the first Friday of the month. Thank you for sharing, subscribing, and rating this episode!
Lori Holden, mom of a young adult daughter and a young adult son, writes from Denver. She was honored as an Angel in Adoption® by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.
Her first book, The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole, makes a thoughtful anytime gift for the adoptive families in your life. Her second book, Standing Room Only: How to Be THAT Yoga Teacher is now available in paperback, and her third book, Adoption Unfiltered, is now available through your favorite bookseller!
Find Lori’s books on her Amazon Author page and catch episodes of Adoption: The Long View wherever you get your podcasts.
2 Responses
Where is the mother of yesteryear, here.
The teenage unmarried mothers of forced adoption.
Where are her views here.
We are the silent mothers without a voice here.
Now in our twilight years, where is their our voice.
Our history.
A voice, now,
we share our history our INJUSTICE,
A history never acknowledged, never validated.
What I am reading here is current practices and outcomes.
Forced Adoption was forced upon teen mothers ,
by Professors of Sociology /Judges,
Predicted our babies be taken as PUNISHMENT,
claimed we were societies FILTH.
Having a baby out of wedlock.
We brought the moral fabric if society into disrepute, we were deemed, sexually deviant, feeble minded, unfit to mother.
Worse still, if you were white and had a coloured or black boyfriend,
You were deemed emotionally unstable, and of LOW INTELLIGENCE,
And this was felt by us mums, In every day life,
made to feel the lowest of the low.
Where are these documented truths exposed today.
In many cases our boyfriends FLED,
we were,left holding the baby.
A tsunami of terror took hold, seared to the marrow by that one word
ADOPTION
you have no idea ,
how that word triggers/traumas,
unless you live it.
That adoption literally took our life.
The teens we were then,
died emotionally, psychologically,
The trauma seared so deeply,
became the hallmark of these mums.
Thrown to the wolves into life’s abyss
so Mentally,emotionally, SCARED,
Left the permanent marks
of the teen mum of yesteryear
ALONE,
Battered, bruised,
with NO-ONE, NO WHERE to turn to.
It’s every Nations Disgrace,
that this horrendous inhuman treatment
Became her lot.
Many suicided,
many languished in mental institution,
many had breakdowns,
in and out of hospital,
many had a lifetime severe bouts of depression.
NEVER to this day acknowledged ,
that ADOPTION separation loss grief
their mantle 24/7/52.
That reared it’s ugly head,
In every facet of life
From that day thence.
The outcome of these predictions,
our babies to be taken from us as a PUNISHMENT.
Indelible suffering ensured.
Why are these comments truths not HIGHLIGHTED in todays truth and justice of past unlawful practice.
These predictions endorsed by Church,
Social Work,
Governments legislated,
teen mothers and family COERCED,
continued COERCION to surrender by Social Services.
We were societies FILTH then, and still are today according to many,
We are the sole cause,
and deserved to be punished,
says many adoptees even today,
many adoptive parents wish we had died a death never to be
Mentioned again.
Many reunions that take place,
the ABSENT father, is more in vogue than,
the teen mother left with her fate.
Many new found siblings enjoy that relationship
Whilst the unmarried teen mum, then,
has now yet again became,
The scapegoat,
and left ALONE,
in this bottomless abyss of sorrow,
ALONE
Alone in her twilight years
All because she fell in love,
That love ,
created love.
Love that was hers, a precious love,
Her beautiful baby.
TAKEN.
Healing starts with Love.
A bridge of compassion must prevail,
A must that all parties, to recognise that,
ADOPTION
When mentioned literally means LOSS,
Especially for Mum’s , that were mum’s,
Not birth mums,
just mums till the last breath leaves our bodies.
And in many cases,
accept our taken babies,
grew to love and were loved,
by their adopted parents.
Thank you for sharing that perspective here, Marion. Mothers of yesteryear have such important stories to tell about the history of misguided and harmful adoption practices.