One of the distinctions we continually make here on Adoption: The Long View is the difference between “open adoption” and “openness in adoption.” The former typically means having some sort of information about or contact with birth family, but the latter is more of an inside job – what’s going on inside us between us and our child. How open are we as parents to dealing with adoption issues as they come up? How comfortable can we become during tough conversations with our child around their big feelings about their birth parents or about being adopted? To what degree are we acknowledging and addressing our own triggers around our child having another legitimate set of parents out there?