“What is the hard part about adoption? ADOPTION is the hard part of adoption.”
—A guest in Episode 21
Several adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies gather around the table to suss out the question, “What is hard about adoption?”
- Is it relinquishment vs adoption? Abandonment vs assimilation?
- Is it severance of family and cultural ties?
- Is it having to forage for information?
- Is it ignorance coming into the adoption process for both expectant parents and adoptive parents?
- Is it later feelings of guilt and regret for all we did not know?
- Is it separation that’s felt all through the years?
- Is it unexpected and unacknowledged grief?
- Is it the gratitude that is expected?
- Is it the imbalance in power dynamics?
- Is it powerlessness over how the story is told?
- Is it any number of other aspects brought on by the institutionalization of adoption?
Thanks to each of our guests—each of whom we interviewed for our book, Adoption Unfiltered—for sharing their personal experience, professional insights, and hard-won wisdom about the hard parts of adoption.
