If your main sources of information about adoption are from the loudest voices — namely adoption professionals and adoptive parents (like me) — you may be missing out on key aspects that would help you better navigate your own adoption situation and better serve your child. You can’t see your own blind spots, by definition, and you don’t know what you don’t know, which is why it’s important to diversify where you get your information.
As you diversify, find and choose trusted sources, people with lived experience, people who also encourage diversity in their own sources of information, rather than from echo chambers.
To that end, with me in this episode are two amazing guests, two trusted and incisive women in the adoption space: Sara Easterly, a well-respected adoptee voice, and Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, a well-respected birth mom voice. Each of them has their finger on the pulse of not only their own part of the adoption triad, but they also crossover into other parts. Each of them seeks to elevate the voices of the lesser-heard, and each is busting myths about adoption.
Episode 205 of Adoption: The Long View will help you better understand your child’s experiences and your child’s other parents’ experiences and proceed accordingly, with fewer blind spots.
5 Myths Adoptive Parents Still Believe
Listen in as Sara, Kelsey, and I talk about:
- Busting myths about adoption that adoptive parents still believe because they aren’t listening to all voices;
- How being critical of adoption practices is actually the opposite of being anti-adoption;
- Sara on adoptees’ responses to a mainstream adoption article on Wired.
- Kelsey on birth mothers’ responses to a mainstream adoption article in Time
- Their best advice for adopting well and for adoptive-parenting well.
Show Notes from Episode 205 on Busting Myths about Adoption
Sara Easterly is an award-winning author of books and essays. Her spiritual memoir (which I loved), called Searching for Mom, won a gold medal in the 2020 Illumination Book Awards, among many other awards and honors. Sara’s adoption-focused articles and essays have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Feminine Collective, God’s Space, Her View from Home and Severance Magazine, just to name a few. Sara has guest posted here about what’s behind You’re Not My Real Mom! and 8 Dynamics to Consider Before Oversharenting.
- Sara’s website: saraesterly.com
- Sara’s book: Searching for Mom
- Read: Common Ground in Adoption Land in Severance magazine
- Listen: Sara on coming out of the adoption fog and You’re Not My Mom! (Ep 106)
- Read: Adoption Moved to Facebook and a War Began in Wired magazine
- Ponder: Adoptee and therapist Amanda Transue-Woolston’s response
Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard is the Director of Advocacy and Policy at Adopt Match. She’s a birth mother who is passionate about raising the standards in adoption to better serve the children, mothers, and families affected by adoption.Kelsey has worked at various agencies and law firms in the adoption field and can often be found fervently and frequently begging the question, “How do we fix this?” She’s also a co-host of The Birth Mom Podcast, Twisted Sisterhood.
- Kelsey on Instagram: @fromanothamotha
- Read: Who is Anti-Adoption & What Can We Learn from Them?
- Read: Common Ground in Adoption Land in Severance magazine
- Time magazine: Baby Brokers: Inside Adoption’s Murky Private Adoption Industry
- Listen: TwistedSisterhood podcast reviews Time article
Prefer to read? Here’s a transcript (but listening is so much better!).
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!
