This guest post is by Meghan Dyck, a hopeful adoptive mother. Adoption is hard, but not in the way you may think. When people think of adoption, some may think of the mountains of paperwork to do. Others may think about the waiting process. And others, yet, may think about the openness that may be involved. Those pieces of the adoption process can be difficult, don’t get me wrong. But there is another piece that I found was surprisingly hard to
Adoption Blog
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Adoption Is…Love, Loss, And So Much More
No matter what the question is, we can always count on our online community to find the answer. Looking for a local support group? Want help with your home study? Need a hand creating your parent profile? Our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are always ready to step up to the plate and do their part to help. Last month, during Adoption Awareness Month, was no different. Except this time we were the ones asking the questions. And that
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“Adoption = Love” And 18 Other Things You Told Us During Adoption Awareness Month
Adoption Awareness Month has come and gone, but many of the issues and concerns it raises haven’t gone away. As we do every year, we explored them in our series, “30 Questions, 30 Days” in which we asked our Facebook followers a different question every day. Here are some of the responses we received from waiting adoptive parents, adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees based on their experiences. For more discussions on all aspects of adoption, be sure to check out our
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Will Sandra Bullock’s New Adoption Inspire Others To Adopt From Foster Care?
For months, Sandra Bullock was sitting on a secret. But today, she finally revealed it to the rest of the world: She’s a mom again. By adoption. Seven months after being named Woman of the Year by People magazine (and, at 50 years old, she was the oldest woman ever to earn that honour), Bullock tells the magazine that she has a new daughter, Laila. For months, the Oscar-winning actress denied reports that she had expanded her famous family. That’s because Laila, 3 1/2, was in
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Why We’re Not Angry With Our Daughter’s Birthparents
This guest post is by Crystal, an adoptive mother. There is a question that we get asked time and time again, from friends, family, even professionals: “Aren’t you angry with them?” The “them” are our daughter’s birth parents. Birth parents of children with special needs are faced with a hard stigma. So often in our experience people seem to want to blame them, to label them as selfish, weak or heartless. And I’m guilty of it. When we first were read
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Life After Placement: 9 Birthmothers Share Their Stories
Adoption Awareness Month is in full swing, and one of its goals is to educate people about adoption. It’s a task that Hillary Jones has taken upon herself to do not just this month, but every month of the year. Hillary is a birthmother and a photographer. Through her photographic essay, The Birthmother Series, she hopes to change the way that society views birthmothers by giving them a voice—and a face. “Giving up a child for adoption isn’t nearly as much of a taboo
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When, And How, To Look For A New Adoption Social Worker
This guest post is by Barb, a waiting adoptive mother. When my husband and I began the adoption process last year, we knew it would be met with frustrations such as not knowing when a match would happen—or even if it would happen. What we didn’t expect were the enormous delays we would face and the uncomfortable situations we would find ourselves in with our adoption social worker. From early on, something seemed off. We were asked repeatedly during our visits whether
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7 Photos Every Adoption Profile Needs
Choosing photos for your adoption profile is a daunting task. If you’re like most hopeful adoptive parents, you probably have a ton to choose from—from vacation selfies to Aunt Sophie’s 50th birthday bash. So where do you begin, and how do you decide which ones to include and which ones to leave out? A good place to start is to put yourself in the shoes of an expectant mother. If you were looking for an adoptive family for your baby, what would
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How To Create An Authentic Adoption Profile
Read any blog post about creating an adoption profile and sooner or later you’ll come across the word “authentic” or a variation of it. “To make a connection with an expectant mother, your profile needs to be authentic.” “Make sure to show your ‘authentic’ self when speaking to a prospective birthmother.” “Their profile wasn’t just gorgeous, it was authentic.” But what exactly does that mean and, more importantly, how do you you convey it to someone who knows nothing about you
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Getting The Call: 3 Adoptive Families Recall The Moment When They Were Chosen
In the open adoption community, it’s known as “getting the Call”—the magical moment when everything suddenly changes. It’s the event that every waiting parent waits and prays for—when an expectant mother (or your agency or social worker) contacts you to tell you she’s chosen you to adopt her baby. Sometimes the match falls through. The expectant mother may change her mind and decide not to go ahead with her adoption plan. But for those adoptive parents who do go on