Our Blog

  • 37 Ways Of Looking At Open Adoption

    Open adoption isn’t easy to define. There are so many ways to look at it. Ask two people what open adoption means to them and chances are they’ll give you two totally different but equally interesting answers. Well, last month, during National Adoption Month, we put that question to nearly 20,000 people — adoptive parents, hopeful adoptive parents, adoptees and birthparents on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages — to find out what they had to say about the matter, and they weren’t shy about

  • 17 Things About Open Adoption You Need To Know By People Living It

    Adoption Awareness Month is an opportunity to raise awareness and learn about all types of adoption. And that includes open adoption, which remains one of the more publicized but least understood paths to building a family. This year, as we do every year, we turned our Facebook page over to our Fans and posed a different question about open adoption each day of the month as part of our annual “30 Days 30 Questions” series. We wanted to get some insights into how

  • Dear Hopeful Parents, From An Adoptee

    This guest post is by Lisa Raymond, an adoptive mother and adoptee. Dear (hopeful) adoptive parents, Tis the season, right?  Fa, la, la, la, la; fruit cakes; carolers; and a little late night Amazon shopping? But this year you may be dragging a little through the holidays. It may have been all you could do to get through Thanksgiving and the explanations of where you are in your adoption journey to each family member.  This year the holidays might feel like

  • 10 Things Only Birthmothers Know

    When I discovered I was pregnant I knew adoption was the right choice. But I never anticipated the emotional journey that would follow.

  • A Letter To Myself Before I Became An Adoptive Mom

    This guest post is by Angela Boucher, an adoptive mother. Dear Angela, As you wait to adopt, there are so many things to say. The most important thing I will say is never, ever give up your unflinching hope to one day become a mother.   Hold onto your dreams of being a mother.  Believe that your dream is worth working for and that nobody nor anything will stop you from achieving it.   Dreams can come true. The harder

  • Confessions Of An Adoption Advice Writer

    This is Adoption Awareness Month, and if you’re waiting to adopt or have already adopted, chances are you’re aware of Rachel Garlinghouse. If you don’t know her, you’re in for a treat. Rachel is the author of five books, including Come Rain or Come Shine: A White Parent’s Guide to Adopting and Parenting Black Children. Her work has appeared on MSNBC, NPR, Huffington Post, Babble, Scary Mommy, and right here (and here, here and here).  The mother of three children whom she

  • Adults Say The Darndest Things: My Adoption Conversation With The Opinionated Notary

    This guest blog is by Kristy, a hopeful adoptive parent.  I’m usually pretty quick-witted.  I can have a conversation with almost anyone and am rarely afraid to speak my mind. Today, that all changed.  Today, I met “the opinionated notary.”  And I failed the adoption community epically. So let’s backtrack.  It had been a good day—busy with work, but in that I-like-my-job-today sort of way.  I needed to notarize a document for my adoption lawyer. No problem.  I left work,

  • Why Comments About My Multiracial Adoptive Family Don’t Offend Me

    As an adoptive mom and part of a multiracial family, I often catch people staring at me and my son in confusion. My husband, Noah, and I are Caucasion. Our son, Kelvin, who was placed with us in 2013, is clearly of Asian heritage. His birth mother is full Korean-American and his birth father is Irish and German American. Once, at a flea market, an old man asked me, “What’s his mix?” I laughed, but my friend replied “He’s not

  • The Day We Met Our Son’s Birthmother

    This guest post is by Brian Esser, an adoptive father and attorney. I recently wrote about how our first birth mother knew my husband and I were the right dads for her baby. Well, there is a sequel. A little bit before our boy Keith was 2 1/2, we decided we were ready to adopt again. And when our profile was done, we told Keith our plans. “Keith, would you like to have a baby brother or a baby sister, maybe?”

  • Why We Set Up A Baby Nursery Before Our Adoption Match

    This guest post is by Chris Hargrove and Troy Turnipseed, adoptive parents. One night a couple weeks ago, as we headed to bed and were turning off the lights in the upstairs hall outside our baby nursery, Chris asked, “Is it weird that we have a furnished nursery and we don’t have a baby?” Troy thought about it for a moment. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t think it was weird until you asked if it was weird.” Continuing into our nighttime routine of teeth brushing,