Sometimes you don’t know how a holiday is going to affect you until you’re already in the middle of it. You might have plans, be spending time with family, or have a full day of things to do. Everything may seem to be going fine, and then something ...

Holidays are often filled with family traditions, celebrations, and memories. They also mark the passing of time, which can make them particularly meaningful for birth mothers who have experienced adoption placement. As children grow older, the thin...

Just because a birth mother looks okay doesn’t mean you know what she’s carrying. One of the things people don’t always understand about adoption is that placement isn’t the end of the experience for a birth mother. The adoption may be finalized, ev...

Sometimes a birth mother wants to talk about her child but doesn’t know whether anyone wants to listen. She may have stories to share, questions on her mind, or something exciting happening in her child’s life. But bringing those things into a conve...

Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. It’s a day to remember the babies who never got the chance to grow up and to recognize the mothers, fathers, and families who carry that loss with them. But I also think it’s a day to talk about so...

Have you ever looked at a date on the calendar and realized it means something completely different to you than it does to everyone else? That’s something that can happen after adoption placement. For everyone else, it might just be another day. The...

You know what I think people don't realize about adoption? Just because the adoption is over doesn't mean everything is over for the birth mother. Everybody else gets to go back to their lives. The appointments stop. The phone calls slow down. Peopl...

When someone you love is hurting, your first instinct is usually to try to make it better. You want to say the right thing. You want to reassure them. You want to remind them why everything is going to be okay. But sometimes a birth mother doesn’t n...

One of the things people can struggle with after someone places a child for adoption is knowing what to say. They may be afraid of saying the wrong thing, bringing up something painful, or making an already difficult situation worse. So sometimes th...

About a month after I placed my daughter for adoption, I started noticing something. People stopped checking in as much. It wasn’t like everybody disappeared on the same day. There wasn’t some moment when everyone decided, Okay, the adoption is over...

People often talk about adoption as though there should be a predictable emotional path afterward. A birth mother makes a decision. Placement happens. There may be grief, there may be healing, and eventually she is expected to move forward. But emot...

Sometimes silence is mistaken for healing. When a birth mother stops talking about her adoption, the people around her may assume she has moved on, that she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, or that it simply isn’t a big part of her life now. B...

Before an adoption placement, there may be appointments, decisions, questions, and people regularly checking in. After placement, much of that attention can disappear. But the need for support doesn’t disappear with it. And support after placement d...

When people talk about milestones in a child’s life, they are usually talked about as things to celebrate. Birthdays. First days of school. Learning to drive. Graduations. Becoming an adult. They are the moments that mark time and remind us how quic...

There is an idea we often attach to grief: that enough time will eventually make it go away. We expect the hardest days to happen in the beginning. Then, little by little, we’re supposed to hurt less, think about it less, and eventually reach some i...