This is part two of a keynote address I gave at an adoption celebration hosted by the county in which I live, Prince George's County Maryland. Please click here for part one. Continuing on:

Just like giving birth to a child, with adoption every experience is different. There is no one size fits all adoption experience. Some of us adopt after already having had a child placed in our homes as a foster child. Some of us learn about our children for... more

On Friday I was the Keynote Speaker for a ceremony celebrating adoptive families that were formed in Prince George's County Maryland this past year. It was a lovely affair held in a beautiful banquet hall with a delicious buffet lunch with adult and children's menus. Families were greeted by chamber music provided by the talented members of a local public school for the arts, Thomas J. Pullen. County and State officials were presents to bring greetings and congratulations from their respective high offices. A clown and other entertainment were set up in an adjacent room to occupy the... more

Rejection: You can read about it and try to prepare yourself for it but nothing really prepares you for the feelings you have when your child rejects you. I totally expected our daughter to be shy & withdrawn on our orphanage visits and for the first few months. I expected to be rejected on some level; after all I was a complete stranger.

I can remember my first meeting with my daughter like it was yesterday. This 14 month old child was placed in my arms… she was scared stiff. She rocked herself, was guarded and stoic. I remember... more

Well, much of what was on my mind about coercion in open adoption and that I planned to write about has already been touched upon in one way or another in the comments on my first post on the topic. I think what many of the comments reveal is how important open communication is in open adoption. Without open communication there can be no such thing as an open adoption. At least, I don't think there can be. And the open communication has to start long before the decision is made to agree to an open adoption.

I don't know how well open adoption fosters open communication.... more

I posted a comment to Coley's blog recently about what happens when adoptive parents in open adoptions decide to close the adoption. As I always write, I learn something every day from reading the blogs at www.adoption.com.

I did not even know that an adoptive parent could close an open adoption with what sounds like relative ease. Am I to understand that an open adoption is only open for as long as the adoptive parents want it to... more

Continued from my last post. Here are some of the "rules" that, at times, seem to be promoted by The Adoption Community as being the right way to do adoption.

a) Open adoption is the only right way to adopt.

b) You must make your child's first family an intricate part of your child's adoptive family. That means sharing holidays, birthdays, report cards, school pictures, etc.

c) You must tell your child as soon as possible that he or she is adopted and share the details of his adoption experience in developmentally appropriate stages.

d)... more

A reader left a comment on one of my posts that I thought was pretty interesting. In response to a post entitled "Adoption. What a bummer?" The reader wrote, in part:

Yes, I know adopted children have the right to know their biological roots. And I would never stand in the way of that. The constant beating of the "triad" drum...that your family is going to include these strangers who may or may not disrupt your family life on a whim. It is disturbing, to say the least.

She also went on to comment that parenting was... more

I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area so I saw, first-hand, the article on the front page of the Washington Post about the woman who is seeking to un-adopt her son. As I read it I cringed and thought to myself, "Oh no. Another bummer adoption story." I don't know why I take every adoption story personally. I don't know how to explain it, except to say that my personal investment in the adoption stories of other people is excessive. Particularly when the adoption story becomes public. If... more

I can see my personality traits awaken in my daughter. She talks like me, has picked up my cleaning tendencies, she has my nurturing personality and has learned my mannerisms. I also see traits of another woman. The Woman who gave her life, the woman I never met. I imagine that this Woman has the same deep brown eyes, fiery temper and hearty laugh as Livi. As I plan my daughter’s second birthday party my thoughts drift to her birth/first Mom. I know she must thinking about her as this special day approaches.

I have a deep respect... more

Today, my best friend, Jackie, mentioned another good friend of hers, who had been able to locate her first mother and father just a little while back. I suggested that she tell her friend about the blogs at www.adoptionblogs.com. Jackie knows that I write for the Adoptive Parenting and the Older Parent Blog and, sometimes, she reads just to see what I'm posting about. Today she shared with me that when she first started following my posts she used to scan through all the other blogs nearly every morning. Then she told me something that... more