- Community Connection
Adoption Identity Race Exploration (AIRE)
AIRE was created out of the need for an inclusive space for BIPOC adoptees (of all genders, identities, and experiences) to build and collaborate. AIRE also offers holistic emotional and spiritual counseling and partners with other organizations to provide consultations about programming, curriculum development, and workshop planning.
- Community Connection
Adoption Reconnect
The Adoption Reconnect Facebook page focuses on partners of adoptees. It validates the feelings of partners of adoptees, explains an adoptee’s feelings/differences, and how one should support their adoptee partner. This source can apply to and most benefit spouses of adoptees who want to understand/support their partners.
- Community Connection
Transfiguring Adoption: “A Spouse’s Love for an Adoptee”
This narrative article shares the author’s experiences and perspectives on what it is like to be a spouse of an adoptee. He emphasizes with his wife’s feelings, explains the reasoning of his own feelings, and how he chooses to support her. This source can apply to and most benefit spouses of adoptees who want to understand another spouse’s perspective.
- Community Connection
Adoption.com: Spouse of adoptee issues/support
This forum thread is to support spouses of adoptees. It deals with attachment issues, self-blaming, and biased personal opinions. It is important to understand that these perspectives are not universally true and may be triggering. This source can apply to and most benefit spouses of adoptees who want to connect with others and want new perspectives.
- Literature
Adoption Stories: Excerpts from Adoption Books for Adults
This book shows that adoptees are an assorted population with varying backgrounds. It argues that adoptees should be given the right to ask questions about our background and even gain access to our adoption documents when we inquire. They have the right to ask questions—even if it makes adoption agencies uncomfortable. This book, containing excerpts from Janine’s “Adoption Books for Adults” collection, is “completely biased on the rights of adopted people and void of influence from adoption authorities”.
- Mental Health
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy: “Adoption”
This article explains how adoption, and the attitudes surrounding it have changed over the years. It explains different reasonings behind the decision to adopt, and how adoptive parents, like biological parents, love their children and want the best for them. The difference is that adopted children face different challenges that family therapy can help resolve or manage.
- Mental Health
North American Council on Adoptable Children: “Therapy Plays an Important Role in Adoptive Families’ Lives”
This article discusses the important role family therapy plays in adoptive families’ lives. It describes why therapy is important, and urges the reader to choose a therapist that is right for them.
- Mental Health
No Hands But Ours: “Preparing for Adoption: A Family Therapist’s Perspective”
An article on preparing for adoption by Ashley Yeager, a family therapist and Trust-Based Relational Intervention Practitioner. She incorporates a spiritual feel, and explains different steps for prospective adoptive parents to take.
- Media
The Dark Matter of Love (2012)
A documentary on the psychological aspects of growing up with and without parental love. The story centers around the Diaz family, who chooses to adopt three orphans from Russia, and how their new and old kids handle family together. It also covers their work with individualized family therapy that helps them to begin communicating more effectively.
- Media
Stuck (2013)
A documentary that follows four children from three different countries on their individual voyages from orphanages to their new homes with families in the United States. It explores the corruption and greed behind the adoption process as parents try to adopt kids but are blocked by outside efforts.
- Media
Unlocking the Heart of Adoption (2002)
This is an hour-long documentary which chronicles the filmmaker’s journey as a birthmother and reveal the personal storeis of adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents. A wide variety of perspectives on adoption are explored, including the connections between birth families and adoptive families.
