Tag: adoption
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50 Adoptive Mamas Have Marine-Like Hearts!
It takes something special to develop a Marine-like heart in the world of adoption. A person with a Marine-like heart has completed the hard work of getting free from his painful past or condemning self. Because he has nearly experienced death in this process, he has compassion for those that are hurting. The US Marines…
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Why Some Adoptees See Their Mom As An Enemy
I’ve wondered for years why I saw Retha, my Mom through adoption, as my enemy. Why did I love getting under her skin? Why did I seek other Moms for advice, giving her a cold shoulder? Why did I delight in making her mad? Why did I hate her? Was it me? Was it because basically…
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Understanding One Adoptee’s Passion
A fellow adoptee friend told me that many adoptees and foster kids have a ! (exclamation mark) following their name. At first, I didn’t know what she meant, but as she elaborated the meaning, Anne of Green Gables came to mind. If you’ve watched this fascinating series, you would likely agree that Anne has a…
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What I Didn’t Know About Being Adopted
What I’d like to share here is “what I didn’t know about being adopted.” This first post is about my beginnings.nLooking back, I see an adorable child sitting on the porch steps. With leather high tops, a pink dress and matching bonnet, I cuddled a well-worn Raggedy Ann. Dark hair cascaded from beneath my bonnet…
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What Scared My Adoptive Parents
Who can even imagine how Retha felt? Perhaps, like a bucket of ice water was thrown on her? She probably shook in shock, like anyone when something unfathomable happened. Where was Mike? Was he holding her close? Knowing him for a lifetime, he was probably running for the back bedroom. And, there Retha was. All…
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Why I’m “Pro-Adoption”
In order to communicate this foundational truth, I’m using two words: relinquishment and adoption. When the First Mother signs off parenting rights, the term “relinquished” is apropos. This word refers to pre-adoption pain and trauma. However, when your child is placed, this is adoption, and it is positive, for it provides a forever home for…
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Why Adopted Kids Reject Their Mom’s Love
Your child wants you to know is that if she doesn’t grieve the adoption loss, her ability to receive love or attach emotionally to you and others in meaningful relationships may be seriously hindered. Dr. Daniel N. Stern, professor of psychiatry at Cornell University, says in his book, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, that…
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Why One Adopted Person Is Thankful for Tough Times
As children of God, we are all in the wonderful process of being healed by our Great Physician, Jesus. His healing can be evidenced in a new-found appreciation for life, as we learn to enjoy Him. Webster’s defines appreciation like this: “To be grateful for; to value highly; to place a high estimate on; to…
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Helping Adopted Kids Think Freely About Their Birth Parents
Parents, I know you and the fact that you’re reading this shows your heart. You would do anything to help your child come to terms with his/her first family. Here’s what you can do: Bring up the birth parents in conversation. “I wonder where you got that curly black hair. Do you think it could…
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What I Wish My Adoptive Mom Would Have Said
Sometimes, parents are ill-equipped to teach their children emotional awareness, thus increasing the child’s Emotional IQ. They may be fearful, believing that emotions like sadness or anger can be harmful. They may be controlling, seeing negative emotions as something they’re responsible to fix, or they may feel it their responsibility to help the child understand…
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The Best News for Adopted and Foster Kids This Easter
The innermost fear of many adopted humans—Is my life a mistake?This is the deepest, darkest shame possible and none of your children would admit it to you. Trust me, MOST adoptees struggle with this question.What is needed for the questioning child?
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How Adoptive and Foster Mamas Can Discover Their Legacy
For, YOU, dear one, are the gift, the heirloom to the next generation. Yes, every single inch of you that lives the daily grind is part and parcel of your legacy. Your strengths and weaknesses, your challenges and failures, your dreams and goals.
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Adoptive and Foster Mamas Are Wired for This Rare Gift
When adoptive and foster mamas hear their child’s back story, they may experience grief for their child and doubts as to whether or not they can successfully parent that child. What they don’t know is that they’ve been wired for this calling as a mama. Hearing Sherrie’s story about her mom will help mamas to…
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What Adopted, Foster Kids Must Know About Emotional Abuse
Many times we enter into relationships with unhealed moms and dads with unhealed pasts and chronic issues. We all can recognize physical abuse but emotional abuse is incredibly subtle. And, our propensity for connection blinds us to the hurtful elements of the relationship.
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Do you Want to Heal from Adoption Wounds? Here’s How.
Being a Lone Ranger doesn’t bring healing for those touched by adoption. When we are grieving deeply, we can’t see and even don’t want to see the pain of others. Pain twists our perspective. Sherrie Eldridge has been there and gives reason why striving for humble healing is essential…in the company of all that have…
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Parents Can Bypass Shame When Explaining Adoption Relinquishment
This photo of a child with a deer illustrates the world of the adopted and fostered child. Parents struggle big time to enter their child’s world when explaining relinquishment. Sherrie teaches how to communicate love vs. shame.
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Adoptee and Foster Kid Cry Prints Speak Volumes
This baby’s cries are vital for developing connections between parent and child. You will be surprised at what the parental role is in this entire phenomena. Of course. adopted and foster babies have a cry that will reflect trauma…they may be daunting to listen to. Here’s how to begin.
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Twenty Gifts of An Adoptee
There are many adoptees who will nay-say the idea of being grateful for being adopted. Most of them haven’t lived as long as I have! Looking back over seven decades, I can see so many things to be grateful for and I say them in deep respect for fellow-adoptees who are in pain or anger.
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The Beautiful Braid of Adoption
I already hear boos coming about this post. Many people believe adoption is a bad thing that should be avoided at all cost. Sherrie provides a metaphor of adoption to inspire the adoption triad to affirm each person touched by adoption and how God sees it all.
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Has God Forgotten the Fatherless?
Because adopted and foster children suffer great loss of the birth family and place of belonging, they oftentimes feel forgotten–by those in their lives and by God Himself. Sherrie provides Biblical answers of God’s inheritance to the fatherless.
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The Double-Whammy of One Adoptee
Sometimes, life throws a double-whammy at us. Something that brings new limitations and a feeling of being totally out of control. Sherrie shares two parts of her life that run parallel, that she calls her double-whammy. Learn the incredible lesson she learned from a young man in a wheel chair.
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What Does God Say About Adoption Reunions?
Almost every adoptee or foster child has a desire to search for lost birth relatives. However, the battle in fulfilling this desire is guilt–false guilt. Sherrie Eldridge offers something that will chase away the guilt…you will be surprised to see how she learned this in her own journey.
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Adoptive, Foster, and Birth Parents Long for This
Imagine standing at Tiffany’s jewelry showcase. Your eyes are drawn to a lustrous, huge. string of pearl, set in a simple, yet elegant setting. All of us would love having those pearls. However, there’s another pearl far more precious to adoptive and foster parents…a pearl you would travel to the ends of the earth to…
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Delicious Ham Loaf for Easter Dinner from Sherrie
There’s only one of my mom’s recipes that has lasted as a favorite throughout the generations. Don’t have an idea of what to cook for Easter Dinner? This is absolutely delicious and easy.
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Family Devotions and Crafts for Easter Week
It’s a challenge for Christians at Easter and Holy week to help children, especially younger ones, understand why Jesus died, was buried, and rose again. Use these short devotions from Sherrie to make this week meaningful spiritually for your family.
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Does the Bible Validate An Adoptee’s Primal Wound?
With all the changing terminology and philosophy about what an adoptee experiences at relinquishment, author Sherrie Eldridge takes us to the core meaning of what it really means. She reviews expert opinions and then gives a Biblical clue you won’t want to miss.
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A Gift Only Adoptees Can Give
It’s a gift adoptive parents can’t give, birth parents can’t give, or adoption professionals can’t give. Only other adoptees can give it to one another. I’ll never forget sitting next to an adoptive mom at an adoption carnival where I was speaking. At the end of the day the time came for the children and…
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Helping Adoptees and Foster Kids Identify and Describe Hidden Loss
Yep, we adoptees and foster kids are well guarded when it comes to talking about sadness and loss. Parents will gain hope from this post on what they can do to help their child move through it successfully.
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Become Your Adopted/Foster Child’s Cheerleader In Adoptions’ Olympics
Want to see how much adopted and foster kids are like Olympians? We run like Olympians every day in dealing with special needs resulting from relinquishment. Helpful is parental understand of special needs. List provided. Parents can become #1 cheerleaders.
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The Granddaddy Fear of Many Adoptive and Foster Moms
This post deals with a common fear among many adoptive and foster moms-that their child will someday prefer the birth mom and go and live with her. The answers presented are understanding the dual identity of the child, making verbal boundaries, and the right timing.
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Adoptees and Foster Kids MUST Honor Abusive Parents…Really?
What is an adoptee or foster kid, teen, or adult to do if parents are abusive? Adoptee Sherrie Eldridge had been taught that she was to “honor” them. In her mind, that meant, keeping the secret. That lie was blasted open when a trusted counselor taught her the true meaning of “honoring” her parents.
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Understanding Causes of Unplanned Pregnancies in Adopted and Foster Teens
Why is it so common for adopted and foster teens and 20-Somethings to experience an unplanned pregnancy? You will be surprised as the author reveals her experience and what she has learned to share with adoptive and foster parents. Parents are given tips on how to cope with this challenge.
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do When Words Fail
What is a parent to do when his loving words hit the brick wall of their child’s wounded heart? This post provides information about connecting with one’s higher power.
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Relinquishment and Adoption Are Different, by Ron Nydam, Ph.D.
Language itself is often a problem in the field of adoption. Seldom is it simply a matter of semantics. For all too long the literature has failed to carefully distinguish between relinquishment and adoption as two separate, parallel processes which interface with each other in adoptive development. And the consequences of this unfortunate muddling of…
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An Unexpected Prescription for Grieving Adoption Loss
It’s so easy to go negative about adoption, thinking that ranting about our pain will get us one step closer to healing. Speaking up and out is good, but there is an additional step that needs to be taken to become the people we were created to be.
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do When Kids “Out-Stubborn” Them
What can adoptive and foster parents do when their kids consistently resist talking about adoption? Many times, the child will yell, “You don’t get it.” And, truth be told, parents don’t get it because adopted and foster kids see life in an entirely different way than their parents. Learn here how to enter their world….and…
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The Burning Fear Adoptees and Foster Kids Find Impossible to Quench
This insidious fear lies in the basement of adopted and fostered kids heart, like mould. How can one deal with such a fear? Who could possibly have an answer that will quench the fear? Read on…
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Must Adopted and Foster Kids Fake A Smile for Gotcha Day?
Yikes! I don’t know where Gotcha Day came from! It’s the buzz among adoptive parents, but how do their adopted and foster children feel about celebrations on this day?
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do If Short-Changed by Social Workers
It’s hard to believe in this day and age that social workers often hold back vital truth from adoptive and foster parents. Withheld truth that will surely sabotage both parenting and growing up adopted or fostered. What can a parent do when this happens? Sherrie Eldridge lists six steps to help parents get started.
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Should Adopted and Foster Kids Keep Trying After Repeated Birth Parent Rejections?
Some therapists call it “repetition compulsion.” That means trying and trying with the same results. We adoptees and foster kids sometimes fall into this when we are rejected by a birth relative. We keep trying to make things better, but the birth relative keeps rejecting or abusing us verbally. What can adoptees and fostered kids…
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Yes, I’m a Christian and I Love Santa
Why is it that some people of faith get huffy at those who celebrate the culture of Christmas? Santa, his reindeer, cookies, presents under the tree? Perhaps, they need to reconsider the difference between the culture of Christmas and the culture of Christ.
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Dear younger me…the upset adopted or fostered me…remember the jellybean
A childlike way to uncouple from chaos and crisis? This has helped the younger me calm myself. Perhaps it will help you, or your adopted or foster child.
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A Craft Project to Help Adopted or Foster Kids Process Adoption Grief
Helping adopted and foster children grieve loss can seem like an insurmountable challenge. However, this post provides a setting, a poem, and just the right words to open the dialogue/
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One Adoptee’s Grief Dolly
There are many ways to deal with grief, and it shows up most during the holiday season. Is it possible to be happy if you are grieving? If you shove everything aside that remind you of your loss, will you be able to forget it? Sherrie made a wonderful discovery about grief and loss this…
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What Do Hairstyles Have to Do with Adoption?
As soon as I returned home from my adoption reunion with birth mother Elizabeth, she told me on no uncertain terms that she wanted no more contact. She proceeded to tell me she’d had her hair cut to a one inch length, like mine. Say, what? What was she really saying, and how did adopted…
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Preparing Adopted and Foster Kids for Family Holiday Gatherings
There’s nothing much more shocking than walking into a room of family members who snub you. Well, not only snub you, but act like they don’t know you’re there. I still remember when Bob and I attended the funeral of my beloved birth uncle Dave Clark, who stood up for me against a mentally-deranged and…
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Adopted and Foster Kids Can Survive Winters
With romanticized societal views about adoption and foster care, it is difficult to put a positive spin on your experience when you are in a winter of your life. There is something very special about living through the winter of one’s life touched by adoption and foster care, though. Let Sherrie share it with you?
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Dear Younger Me…the rejected adopted or foster me
Society doesn’t talk much about adoptees and foster kids being rejected by birth family members. It is more common than you may think. When I was rejected by my birth mother after our reunion, it was the year 1993. Back in those days, adoption literature was sparse and I couldn’t find anything that talked about…
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Sometimes Adoptees and Especially Foster Kids Feel Like A Burden
I took all my stuff to the downstairs bedroom, shut the door, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over my head. It felt safer there. Perhaps, there, I could escape the message that pounded in my head relentlessly: “You are a bother.” It was the time of my second clinical depression and I felt…
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What It Feels Like to Be A 12+ Year-Old Adoptee or Foster Kid
This is another wonderful article from JEWELS NEWS, written by Samantha Jones, Fall 1997 Issue. Hello, my name is Samantha and I am 12 1/2 years old. I’m Afro-American. I’m adopted. I’ve been with my adopted family for about eight years now. Being adopted to me means being with the permanent family. Sometimes I wonder…
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When Adoptees & Foster Kids Get Shamed for Depression
It is possible to add insult to injury by labeling an adoptee’s or foster child’s battle with depression as a spiritual problem. Please don’t.
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I Wish I Could Be Somebody Else
Adopted and foster kids often have no sense of self. They may pick out someone they admire and copy them…even down to hairstyles and clothes. That was the way it was for me. I was not only rejected by my birth mother, but even more painfully, rejected by my very own self.
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What Adoptees Need To Get Unstuck
As adoptees begin to deal with the realities of adoption in their lives, blaming is part of the process. What adoptees don’t know is that blaming others for their painful past is a landmine for losing their personal power. Without knowing it, they are choosing to remain a victim. Here are some tangible ways to…
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Why Adopted and Fostered Kids May Cry Old Man Tears
Why would a seemingly insignificant object trigger pieces of my adoption puzzle that stayed dormant for years? And, how could I solve the grief puzzle it surfaced?
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Adopted Kids Learn What They Live
It is absolutely essential for adopted kids to learn positive things from parents. Positive things that will fill holes of low self-worth, feelings of not belonging, and second chances when they make mistakes. So much of adoptee behavior depends on what is learned in the home.
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Most Popular Post of 2017: Why Are Many Adoptees and Foster Kids Clumsy?
Why do adoptees run into walls, drop dishes, and trip? Sherrie Eldridge discovered a possible cause and shares it with adoptees and those who love them.
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Call Me An Adoptee Druggie, But I’m Not
You can call me a druggie, but I’m not. I’m just dealing with the specifics of trauma which I was dealt. In this post I’m going to be very transparent and trust you not to judge. Why couldn’t I just go to sleep? That has been my life’s mantra. As a kid, I lay in…
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When You Need Me…an open letter to adoptive parents
When adoptive and foster parents haven’t learned to meet their own needs, they unconsciously look to the adopted child to meet them.
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Look Beneath Your Adopted & Foster Child’s Smile on the First Day of School
Your adopted child may have a big smile as you send him off to the first day of school. Be aware, however, of the possibilities of specific fears that he may be struggling with.
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Preparing Your Adopted or Foster Child for School Bullies
You can equip your adopted/foster child to make healthy choices in the midst of bullying. Here’s how.
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What Adoptees Can Do with Mixed Feelings
Dear friends, Yesterday, I posted statements that cause mixed feelings (painful feelings) in adoptees. Today, let’s talk about concrete steps for dealing with the mixed up, finger-over-the-blackboard feelings: Journal Record your current circumstances in a journal. Maybe call it your “finger-over-the-blackboard” notebook? Create Self-Portrait Or how about getting a huge piece of paper? Then, have…
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Why Do Adoptees Overextend Themselves?
I could just hear Bob saying, “You didn’t have to do that, Sherrie.” Such a familiar phrase. He said it when: I accompanied a fellow adoptee up the steps of the Indiana Capitol building when I was just 10 days out of knee replacement surgery. I invited neighbors in for wine and cheese on the…
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An Adoptee’s Search for the Missing Face
An adoptee searches for a face in a crowd that resembles her own. If we could only see the face of the lost birth mother/father, the hurt would magically disappear. The grief would be resolved and the life-long repercussions of traumatic adoption loss would be mitigated. Oops…adoptee fantasy. True, those who have found the missing…
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Why Do Many Adoptees Feel Guilty?
Dear friends through adoption, Many of us adoptees suffer from haunting guilt. Oh, we won’t tell you about it, but it’s there, like a sticky shadow. Guilt-Producing Beliefs Some of the things we feel guilty for are: YOU are responsible! (You were an unplanned pregnancy) You have no right to be alive You must justify…
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Detecting Trauma Triggers in Foster and Adopted Children
Dear friends through adoption, I write this blog post with caution, knowing that this type of trauma–sexual abuse– doesn’t happen in the majority of adoptive/foster homes. I’ve seen many parents weep with love for their children. They would rather suffer than have their children suffer. But, for the loving, weeping parents, I beg you to…
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Thinking Logically Seems Impossible for Attachment Disordered Kids
Dear friends through adoption… Last week, Bob and I were painting my office. I got all the color chips and showed him the best colors. Within two hours, I changed my mind, and by the next morning, again. The following day, other colors and then back to the first. “I just can’t track with you!”…
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The Game Changer for My Attachment Disorder
Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of your smoke alarm? Panic, right? Hasten to turn it off, right? Hate the loud, disturbing sound, right? Adoptees and foster children live with a smoke alarm in their brains everyday, but no one knows it. Therefore, it doesn’t get turned…
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My Set-Up for Reactive Attachment Disorder
Warm tears landed on my newborn body, like a spring rain. I wanted to feel them forever. To my once-orphaned delivery doctor, life was something to be celebrated, to shed happy tears over. I couldn’t wait to feel his tears again. What was it about those tears that soaked into my soul? Were they…
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This Savvy Adoptive Mama Isn’t Shakin’ In Her Boots!
See this little chickie? Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? She’s happy as can be because her mama knows what kinds of feelings and thoughts are floating around in that precious little mind. Her mama is savvy because she’s read every adoption book she can get her hands on. She knows the right time and…
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One Adoptee’s 69th Birthday Reflections
“Look!” the people around the campfire called out, pointing to the cypress trees that lined the famous Monterrey, California grill. Suddenly, a bagpiper came out of the woods, playing a melancholy tune. She wore authentic bagpiper regalia, walking through the field toward us. It was a special touch to an evening that we didn’t think…
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Amazing Research News For Birth Mothers and Adoptees
Thanks to science, we now have a deeper glimpse into our Creator’s heart that cherish’s birth mothers and their sacrificial gift in adoption….and for the child that is adopted. We all know from Dr. Thomas Verny in The Secret Life of the Unborn Child that: ~the birth mother’s heartbeat and warmth of her body makes…
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Forgiveness A Command, Reconciliation An Option?
The longer I walk this journey called adoption, the stronger my belief is that the key–the whole key–to being healthy and thriving, to having a cup brimming over with joy, is to learn to forgive. How I wish I would have known some of the things I’ve learned lately about forgiveness and reconciliation. In Dr.…
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What If Your Adoption Glass Is Half Empty?
If our adoption glass is half empty, we’ll be growing something in our hearts that is downright malicious. Something unseen and destructive. Something that keeps us from growing and moving toward maturity. Something that keeps us looking at life in a distorted way. We will fight for our rights to be heard and even become…
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Reflect Often How You Became An Adoptive or Foster Family
Without a doubt, you know that an absolute miracle transpired in your heart when you adopted your child. Trying to describe it would be impossible, for it was like a million emotions exploding simultaneously—like fireworks! If I had to pick just one moment of absolute, unadulterated joy it would be the moment I saw her…
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I Need to Know the Truth About My Conception, Birth, and Family History, No Matter How Painful the Details May Be
The late Betty Jean Lifton, author of Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, describes the adoptee’s growing awareness of his desire to know more about his biological family as an awakening: “The act of adoption puts us under a spell that numbs our consciousness. When we awaken it startles us to realize we might have…
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Your Name Is Inscribed….but Where?
Jesus carried you close to his heart
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The Forgotten Father
Adoptees Are Silently Searching for Missing Birth Fathers In the majority of adoption literature, birth mothers are mentioned as the predominant loss for the adoptee. While interviewing more than 70 adoptees for a book, I learned that they think about their birth fathers as much as birth mothers. So why aren’t birth fathers honored? Why…
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Why Adoptee Birthdays May Be Difficult and What Parents Can Do
It’s a bright and sunny fourth day of August, back in the year 1950. In a back yard on Oakland Street, preparations are underway for a birthday party for a seven-year-old named Sharon Lee. That’s me. Dad and Mom move the picnic table to a shady spot under the big oak tree and then cover…
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Can Adoptees Remember Early-Life Loss?
Moses’ life normalizes the adopted life. He blew it like many of us, yet went on to be one of the greatest leaders of all times. Also, God called him “friend.” Moses’ First Mom, Jochebed Jochebed felt her first labor pain late in the afternoon and by nightfall she had given birth to a beautiful…
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How Can Adoptees Know What Their Life Is Worth?
A single thread in a tapestry Though its color brightly shine Can never see its purpose In the pattern of the grand design. And the stone that sits on the very top Of the mountain’s mighty face, Does it think it’s more important Than the stones that form the base? So how can you know…
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Mother’s Day Tips for Rejected Adoptees
When I returned from my reunion with my birth mother twenty years ago and called to thank her for the visit, she announced to me that she wanted no more contact. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t anything written about this experience and I felt so ashamed and was sure the rejection was because of something…
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One Adoptee’s Thoughts About Her Birth Mother on Mother’s Day
Even though my birth mother was unable to receive the love I longed to give her, and even though she has passed away, I still have a deep love for her. I wish I could tell her: • I am bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. • You were a voice for…
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Adoption Pearls from the All-Adoptee ICU
A lesson from nature teaches us that pain is the catalyst that makes the precious pearl. Through all the tough issues adoptees work through in the All-Adoptee ICU, pearls of wisdom are formed. Here is my “take” on the pearls. How about yours? 1. Anyone can make love, but only God can create a life.…
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All-Adoptee ICU Signs of Recovery
Here are a few of the signs that adoptees have healed: • “I have a unique life purpose…I can see how God is working in my life!” • “I can now take rejection in stride!” • “I can now see my adoption experience through God’s eyes!” The link for the All-Adoptee Online Group is: all-adoptees@yahoogroups.com.…
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All-Adoptee ICU Success Stories
There’s nothing defective about adoptees! We just need a special kind of help.
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An ICU for Hurting Adoptees?
Where can you take an adoptee for intensive help? If you go to the psych unit at the hospital, they don’t even mention adoption-related trauma as a possible issues of depression, anxiety, or self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. There is a place, online, where adoptees can go and be with other adoptees who’ve been where…
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Adoptees Ready to Launch?
Children want and need to become their own persons. Adopted kids seek autonomy, too, while at the same time needing a safe place to verbalize the conflicting emotions that being adopted often evokes. The task of individuating for the adopted child is unique as well as complex, for it involves the dual-identity once again. With…
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Yikes…Tell the WHOLE Truth?
Many parents who adopt are terrified that their children will someday learn about the negative aspects of their child’s birth family history. “What if my son finds out that his birth father is in prison? What if he discovers that his birth mother is a prostitute, or drug addict? What if my daughter learns that…
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Before You Were Born
Before you were born, God was there bringing you to life and saying, “YES” to who you were and all that you could be. He put His arms around you even before you knew your mother’s touch. He cared for you as no one ever could. He has been your closest friend and constant companion–…
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Maximizing Pressure-Packed Days
As children of God, we are all in the wonderful process of being healed by our Great Physician, Jesus. His healing can be evidenced in a new-found appreciation for life, as we learn to enjoy Him. Webster’s defines appreciation like this: “To be grateful for; to value highly; to place a high estimate on; to…
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Sochi, Sonja Henje, and Adoption Synchronicities
When I was a little girl, my dream was to become a famous ice skater, like Sonja Henje. She was the daughter of a fur wholesaler in Norway and received her first pair of ice skates when she was six. At 14 she was the Norwegian Skating Champion. At 15 she would win the Olympic…
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Adoptees and Rejection
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Adoptee Fantasies
All children have a secret place where they can fantasize about having better parents when they are disillusioned with their own. Freud called this the family romance. However, when the non-adopted child later learns and accepts the fact that his parents have both positive and negative characteristics, the fantasy dissipates. It is not that simple…
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A Practical Tool for Helping Adopted and Foster Kids Grieve
Friends, I have always loved this poem because I think it shows the reality and redemption involved in adoption. It would be a neat project to do with the kids this weekend! Get a big piece of butcher paper, finger paints, and markers and let them create their vision of their tree. Then, ask them…
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A Letter to My Granddaughter, by an anonymous father
Dear Baby, Although I consider myself a literate and learned man, I confess that these are the hardest words I have ever written or read in my nearly fifty years of life. I want to tell you about the circumstances of your conception and birth. Since I won’t be able to do it in person,…
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Why Adopted Teens Prefer Isolation
Why do adopted teens isolate? They have virtually no self esteem and figure no one would ever be as weird as them. When the meet a fellow adoptee who will share, dynamics change. They realize the are not alone and have hope for their future.
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Change An Adoptee’s Name?
Changing an adopted child’s name is of great concern to parents of internationally and domestically adopted children. One mother wrote, “When a child is adopted at age five or six, or later, do you feel it’s appropriate to change the child’s name? Should we ask our child? Doesn’t changing the name give the message that…
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How Adoptees Think About Their Birth Mothers
All children, adopted or not, have secret places within where they can fantasize about perfect parents. They travel to these places when disillusioned with their own parents. Freud called this the family romance theory. When the non-adopted child learns around age seven or eight that his parents have both negative and positive characteristics, their fantasies…