All My Love: Stories of Hope, Inspiration & Su

It’s December of 2024, which means we're bringing you the 5th -- and last -- Best Of advice. The first part of this episode is our traditional season-closing digest of best advice from all Season 5 guests, and the last part is a special musical treat from...

Have you ever noticed that -- much like Riley in Disney•Pixar's Inside Out series -- you have different parts? The Internal Family Systems (IFS) framework asserts that everybody consists of different parts. Our guest this month, Kathy Mackechney, LCSW, IFS...

When our adoptees are young, we cannot anticipate how and when they will process their adoptedness someday as adults. Such processing may not even be on our radar. For adoptees, figuring out their identity with the added layer of adoption, requires extra...

In a previous episode of Adoption: The Long View (ep505), an adoptee noted that her parents are the center of their adoption story just as she is the center of hers. It’s no big duh that the parents of an adoptee and the adoptee themself experience the sam...

If you are trying to adopt and putting you and your family online, don’t be surprised when you are contacted by adoption scammers. If you are new to adoption, the very idea of an adoption scam may sound absurd. But this is the internet and conversing with...

One of the myths of adoption is the now debunked “blank slate” theory that if you get your baby early enough, they won’t have experienced any trauma. And therefore, you won’t be raising a child with a trauma history, and you won’t be dealing with big, baff...

In this much anticipated episode, we resume our conversation with adoptee and adoption educator Torie DiMartile on adoption math that adoptees have to deal with, the worlds they must precariously straddle throughout their lives, the opposing emotions they...

We all know from 1st grade math that a half plus a half equals 1. But for adoptees, the math doesn’t always add up the way we think it will. At one time I thought that if I could just incorporate my children’s first families into ours, then Tessa and Reed...

When everything you’ve tried has failed and you’ve waited longer than you had ever imagined, where will you find the motivation to continue to try and adopt? If you’ve reached your lowest point, will you be able to push through? We all want to believe that...

Over the last few episodes, we’ve focused on openness in adoption – both in the immediate time of placement, shortly thereafter, and longer term. Today, we’re going to return to one element of the adoption process itself, and that’s the ICPC, which stands...

The moment you become a parent, time seems to stop and you can’t see beyond the sweet baby or toddler you have before you, looking up at you with those big eyes that say you are everything. Those days of full dependence on you feel like they may go on fore...

From dating sites to job boards and social platforms like Facebook, choosing the right photo for yourself has become a very big deal. Adoption profiles are no different. Making a strong first impression can be the start of a life-changing adoption connecti...

My new book Adoption Unfiltered, has three chapters in it devoted to religion and adoption, with my co-authors and I each researching and covering a chapter. Sara Easterly, an adoptee and a Christian, wrote about religion’s pain points for adoptees. Kelsey...

Congratulations. You are adopting! And now that it is official, like all other adoptive parents in your position, you will be looking to make a life-changing connection with someone who is placing her child for adoption. But how will you do it? Relying o...

Early in my adoptive parenting days, when my kids were first becoming able to talk about their adoptedness and continuing through their adolescence, I was on alert for signs that adoption had hurt them. I’d been listening to adult adoptees and I knew that...

Introducing a brand-new podcast, from the adoption outreach pioneers at Adoptimist.com! The best way to adopt faster is to adopt smarter. And this podcast is going to help you do that with informative interviews with marketing professionals, profile expert...

"Expect your plans to change. You don't know what your open adoption is going to look like for a lifetime. Don't worry about making plans for a year, or two years, or three. Just worry about the next three visits instead." - Linda Sexton, Open Adoption Pio...

Welcome to Season 5 of Adoption: The Long View! This month's guest is someone I made a bad first impression on (in my own head, anyway) because of an assumption I made about her that turned out to be wrong. Adoptee and content creator Jennifer Dyan Ghoston...

A critical element of open adoption relationships - and one you may not have previously considered - is the power differential in the birth parent / adoptive parent relationship. This power differential is one that fluctuates over time and it can have a re...

“During the holidays, for me, it was really different each season. Sometimes I really wanted and needed the love and excitement that came from those family gatherings with all the babies everywhere. And then other times it was really hard and brought a lot...