Lori Holden, a veteran parent of two young adults, writes at LavenderLuz.com and hosts the podcast Adoption: The Long View. She’s the author of the acclaimed book The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole (recommended by People magazine in 2021), written with her daughter’s birth mom and featured on adoption-agency required-reading lists across the country. Her new book, Adoption Unfiltered, co-authored with adoptee Sara Easterly and  birth mom Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield in December, 2023.

Lori has keynoted and presented at adoption conferences in the US and Canada, and her work has appeared in magazines such as Parenting and Adoptive Families. In 2018, she was honored as an Angel in Adoption® by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI), nominated by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado.