The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute just released the executive summary of its recent research study entitled Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption. I’m so excited to see this published study because, although the results aren’t really all that new if you already listen to the voices of adult adoptees, this study will reach a much wider audience of adoptive parents. And since they are the ones raising this next generation of adoptees, they are the ones most needing to hear the results.

We need to talk. We need to find allies outside the adoption community, not just because there is strength in numbers, because many will understand. The more folks understand, the less I have to yell about grizzly bears.

It was a long process of listen to the other points of view from adoptees and other mothers, and then, later on, learning to see adoptive parents as people too. I would carefully think about what upset me most, let the ideas run over my brain, shake up what I had thought to be true. I would try on all these different feelings about adoption and it was almost a process of trying on new clothing. I had no idea what would fit,. What would feel comfortable, but I tried on each new feeling. And I explored what it would mean to my life.