My intent is to make adoption better, to fix the problems that we face, and to preserve it as a safe choice for women. Because in my experience, as it is and always has been, adoption is not a safe choice for women to make.

— Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, birth mom,
in Ep 205 of Adoption: The Long View —

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.

↑ Listen right here! ↑

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.