Tag Archives: podcast

Dawn Davenport: Why Adoptive Parents Need to Be Continual Learners

Adoptive parenting has this in common with regular old parenting: just when you start to feel like you’ve mastered a stage, like babyhood, toddlerhood, tweenhood, or beyond, your child keeps growing and enters a new stage. And you’re back at square one, learning the ropes all over again.

This is why it’s so important, all along the journey, to update and refresh your parenting credential — or at least the knowledge behind it. Sure, you can do this the hard way, as we all do, with the school of hard knocks. But do you really want to start from scratch with every new thing?

I didn’t. I wanted as many heads-ups as I could get. Creating a Family came on my radar early in my journey, and 15 years later, it is still a top resource for me and for others living adoption. For one thing, it offers a wealth of educational content on its website and through its podcast. And for another, it has a vibrant and well-moderated Facebook group that avoids being an echo chamber of similar voices that somehow narrow each other’s views rather than expand them.

An unconscious expectation some adoptive parents have is this:

If we’re good enough parents,
the adoptee will not have an interest in or need to think about their birth parents.

Continue reading Dawn Davenport: Why Adoptive Parents Need to Be Continual Learners

Rebecca Ricardo: 3-in-1 Genuine Adoption Sage

Welcome to Season 4 of Adoption: The Long View podcast!

I owe a great deal to this month’s guest, Rebecca Ricardo. Earlier in my parenting journey, when my children were 8 and 10, I attended a conference in Richmond, VA, organized by Rebecca, called the Open Adoption Symposium. Not only did I get to learn from experts who delivered the keynotes and workshops, I also got to meet several of my online friends who were also trying to make sense of that still-new thing, open adoption.

So I’m paying the favor forward. Now YOU get to hear from Rebecca Ricardo. Damon Davis of the Who Am I Really? Podcast, calls Rebecca “the adoption constellation in one woman” (shout out, Damon of ep 303!). Rebecca is (1) an adoptee, (2) a birth mom, and (3) a social worker who prepares adoptive parents to enter into adoption with open hearts and open minds.

Some adoptees don’t begin trying to understand their adoption experience until their 60s or 70s. They live their whole life with blinders on. “It’s great! It’s all great.” But it’s a survival skill, right? For a long time, we need to believe it’s all okay, because the other side of that is terrifying.

Rebecca Ricardo, adoptee, in Ep 401 of Adoption: The Long View

Here’s more about Rebecca.

Continue reading Rebecca Ricardo: 3-in-1 Genuine Adoption Sage

Expert Adoption Advice | Roundup of Adoption: The Long View Season 3

It’s December again, and as we wrap up 2022, we are also wrapping up Season 3 of Adoption: The Long View.

As we plan for Season 4 (and maybe beyond), I invite you to give us specific feedback. What challenges would you like to hear us explore? What would you like to know more about? Drop me a line with the subject line Hey! I listen to Adoption The Long View. Let us know which episodes in the previous three seasons have had an impact on you and what that impact was. We’d love to hear from you how to make Season 4 as relevant as possible to the issues that matter to you.

Gratitude

I’m incredibly grateful for the 11 amazing guests who talked with me during Season 3, a remarkable group comprising 7 adoptees, 1 birth parent, 4 adoptive parents, 2 people who got OFF the adoption roller coaster, and 2 people in differing roles within their interracial families (some in dual positions; don’t even try with the math). We heard from playwrights and podcasters, executives and educators, moms and dads and sons and daughters, wise and generous each one of them.

Thanks also to each of you who listen and rate our episodes. It really helps get the word out. This is a completely free podcast — no advertising and no paywall. Should you wish to contribute to its ongoing existence, we simply ask that you share this podcast with others. Many thanks for doing so.

Continue reading Expert Adoption Advice | Roundup of Adoption: The Long View Season 3