Adoption Stories

Yours. Mine. Ours.

by Meredith Resnick, L.C.S.W.

Love and Parenting, and Cancer

When I was growing up my father was diagnosed with cancer, a metastatic, malignant, melanoma that grew as a mass of black on his lower back (imagine a giant portobello mushroom sprouting where it shouldn't be). Read More

Amazing Dogs, Attachments, and Bonds

Trauma. Attachment. Loss. Grief.

These are words people associate with adoption.

Asperger's. Autism. Reactive Attachment Disorder.

These are a few of the diagnoses kids receive based on their symptoms.

Families seek medical and psychiatric care; they look for support groups and therapist. They search and wear themselves out. They lose hope. Read More

What the Kindness of Strangers Can Do

Two books recently came to my attention, and both, completely different and compelling in their own ways, are about foster care—and life after it.

When you adopt a child, you have to learn the rules, study the laws, take note of the current events that could impact your adoption. Read More

The Day After National Adoption Day

This is the day after. It is much like the day before. Or the day of.

It is a reminder that to many, adoption in and of itself seems like the end result. The finish line. The prize. Read More

Does Motherhood Define Us?

While attending a recent seminar, I listened to Jungian analyst Katharine Bainbridge talk about the mother archetype. Read More

Parental Conundrum: Teaching Kids to Behave Online

This year's Banned Books Week ends today. I wrote about Banned Book Week before, from the perspective of having Russian kids (who are now no longer kids, or even teens; they are adults--time really does fly). Read More

Back-to-School Lessons Learned in the Classroom with Internationally Adopted Children

Back-to-school season is an especially unique time for children who are in the throes of changing schools. Even more so if they come from another state or country. Read More

In Conversation With Jennifer Lauck

Jennifer Lauck is an award-winning journalist and the author, most recently, of the memoir, FOUND, which is the sequel to her memoir BLACKBIRD, the New York Times bestseller. Read More

What One Mom Learned About Infertility Could Fill a Book (And Did)

Early in this blog, I wrote a post titled What's Worse--Infertile or Insensitive? Read More

Follow-up: More pieces to the cancer-custody case to consider

In regards to the post I Sit Here Shaking My Head....I must include a link that was provided by a reader and commenter (thank you) in that post so if you have not seen it, you can read it, too. The link, from The Herald Sun details many problems between both parents in the family. I want to post it here - and please read the comments on the post I've linked to above. Read More

I sit here shaking my head: Judge's ruling in cancer-custody case

When I was in elementary school, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He spent long stretches in the hospital, more than once. More than twice. My parents were not divorced, but as a child, the fear I had is that my father would die. That I would lose him. Read More

On Mother's Day and Every Day--Defining Who a Mother Really Is

Mothers-to-be, mothers who want to be. Women who always thought they'd be mothers, who everyone told would be so natural at motherhood but who could not become pregnant...and perhaps did not choose to adopt.

The woman who are waiting for babies from another city or state or country. The women who lost a child, had a child taken, removed, had a child die. Read More

The Foster Care Conundrum: Reunification

It's complicated. It's complex. And it--meaning foster care--centers around concurrent family planning. Read More

Really Understanding Foster Care (Part 2) - The Child's Clock & The Parent's Motivations

Parenting is a choice--one many people make to soothe a part of themselves. The fantasy of becoming a parent--how it will fix me, make me grow up, help me see my own childhood more clearly--are some of the reasons people want to have children. Not the best intentions, really, but not a federal offense, either. People are human, so this happens. Read More

Really Understanding Foster Care (Part 1) - What is Home?

According to Sharon Landis, MSW, with the County of Orange, California, the objective in foster care and adoptions is to strengthen families. However, she adds, "our primary goal is for family reunification, so we work to strengthen parents so that they can parent their children safely." Read More

Facebook & Adoption: TMI or a Good Thing?

We adopted eleven years ago and what a different world the process was back then. For starters, it was all on paper, on hard copy. Forms were completed in ink. They were FedEx'd or mailed or hand carried; the telephone was used. There were, pretty much, no email efficiencies you could rely on. The web was there, sure, though not as it is today. Read More

Themes of Adoption, Literally?

The ties that bind—and unbind—us from each other are staggering, and come in all different shapes and moods, emotions and motives. Adoption, so often viewed as the end of the family journey, is actually one timepoint on the continuum of a person's life. Read More

Does it Have to Be Win/Lose (or Winner/Loser)?

I recently found this among a folder of short essays I'd written, ideas I was saving to put into a kind of real-world memory book for my daughters. I penned it more than a decade ago, but as we move into a brand-new year, it somehow seems perfectly fitting and appropriate to tell a little story that takes place during summertime, at a middle school graduation. Read More

National Adoption Month: A Meditation (on Reality)

Last year I wrote about the bittersweetness of National Adoption Month. I still harbor some of that (you'll have to read the post to understand).This year, as we prepare to celebrate the eleventh anniversary of our family, Read More

Talking Adoption with NPR's Scott Simon

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. He was in Portland at the time promoting his new book, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other—In Praise of Adoption. (In case you're wondering the answer is yes: his voice sounds exactly the same as it does on the radio.) Read More

An Army Family's Adoption Story: Challenges, Rewards and Lots of Phone Calls Home

One goal of the Army's Operation Tribute to Freedom program is to share the individual and family stories of soldiers who have or are currently serving in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. This week, I'm featuring the story of Col. Mann and his wife, Connie, and their sons Franklyne, 14 and Rizane 17. Read More

Finding a Way In: 5 Different Takes on Adoption

As I look forward and prepare for a new series of interviews and posts for Adoption Stories, it seemed like the perfect time to take a look back at some of the diverse voices I've had the pleasure of featuring here. These six approached the topic of adoption from such entirely different angles, I decided to call them out and (re)share--something I'll be doing from time to time. Read More

A Young Woman's Journey to Find Herself

"With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers - one mixed-race and one Korean-Brooklyn teen Avery grew up in a unique and loving household. But when her curiosity about her African-American roots grows, she decides to contact her birth mother. Read More

Divorce and Co-Parenting in a World of "He Says, She Says"

One of the things our kids often said about my husband and me was that, when it came to being parents, we were always—sometimes to their dismay—on the same page. About curfews, homework, chores, for example, and about bigger issues as well. One couldn't be wrangled to go against the other. They didn't always like it, but it made the intense work of being a parent easier. Read More

The Huge Myth of Control

There are so many incredible parenting bloggers out there. So many! Often times I read posts and wonder—how did you know that? How did you figure that out? Of course, the bigger question is: How did our parents, and their parents, and their grandparents figure it out? Read More

Celebrity Adoptions Revisited

Celebrity adoptions are something I've written about before:

In our celebrity-obsessed culture we need someone to tell the world once and for all that adopting a child is not like picking out a commodity. It's not like deciding which car might be a lemon. It's about creating a family, creating connections, and enriching your stay here on Earth. Read More

The "Blues" Can Surprise Even Adoptive Parents

In between attending the screening of Rodrigo Garcia's ("Big Love," "In Treatment," "The Sopranos") new film "Mother and Child," interviewing the director and sitting down to write this post, I learned the renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller passed away. Miller spent her career examining the complexities of the parent-child bond. Read More

One Woman's Truth: Placing Her Baby for Adoption

Mother, pregnant. Baby, born. The little one who grew inside now gone, in someone else's arms. But the bond that only happens in the womb, that still remains. Read the words and images flash in our minds. They reverberate, echo. Read More