Blog
What is Black Market Adoption? The History Behind America's Hidden Baby Trade
Most people assume adoption has always worked the way it does today. A licensed agency. A home study. A court proceeding. A paper trail. They assume there were always safeguards. T…
2025-2026 Must-Reads: Six Adoption Books That Crack Open Family Secrets and Tell Our Truths, Plus a Bonus Book
Every year, I seek out books that speak our truth loud and proud. I am happy to report that 2025-2026 is delivering five remarkable books jammed full of adoption and DNA surprise t…
Celebrating My DNA Hero on National Adoption Day
It was then that the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, Dr. Kary Mullis, the brains behind the polymerase chain reaction technique (PCR), the man whose discovery The New York Times de…
CUB Retreat 2025: Liminal Loss and the Beauty of Our Community
"Adoption trauma is about liminal loss—loss that is vague, ambiguous, ever-present, and not publicly mourned. But it's also about liminal hope—an unspoken, against-all-odds hope th…
11 Adoptee Tips for a Successful Adoption Reunion
Adoptee reunion guide: searching for birth parents, managing expectations, setting boundaries, and navigating complex birth family relationships."
“Grief... A Comedy” - AKA an Epic Love Story from Alison Larkin
“I tell them I understand how terrifying it can be, for someone who has been abandoned to trust in love, but after 50 years, I’ve finally taken the leap, and I have never – ever – …
Finding Your Birth Family: An Adoptee's Guide to Adoption Reunion
For many adoptees, the idea adoption reunion feels like a daunting dream. Here’s what I’ve learned from my own reunion with my birth parents.
AWP & More Eggcellent Adoption Books for Your Spring Reading
Discover adoption books for your spring reading by and about adoptees. From Alice Stephens' "Famous Adopted People" to emerging voices in adoption literature.
TWICE THE ADOPTION MEMOIR: An Adoptee Twin Doubles Down on Her Adoption Story
Adoption Book Review: An Adoption Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood” by Julie Ryan McGue,, Available Feb. 4, 2025 | Memoir / Nonfiction
2024 Gave Us 15 Powerful Adoption Books: The Hits and Hidden Gems"
As we reflect on 2024's remarkable contributions to adoption literature, I'm struck by the depth, courage, and compassion these authors bring to our community's ongoing conversatio…
CUB Retreat 2024: A Transformative Experience for This Adoptee
As an adoptee, I recently had the privilege of attending the CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) Retreat 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. Having attended two Untangling Our Roots con…
Three Don't Miss Adoption Books
I am excited to share with you my thoughts on the Rebecca’s and Monica’s wonderful books, which have touched my heart and kept me awake on a few long trips between New Orleans and …
Six New Adoption Books for Eggcellent Spring Reading
Is it just me or does 2024 seem to be showing itself as the year of adoption books? Weekly, I find myself adding a new adoption book to my cart. Adoptee, adoptive parent, and first…
Adoptee Resiliency and My 10-Year Climb Back to Happy
Talk about adoptee resiliency, I see that the spontaneous combustion of my writing cabin, an event that seemingly took everything that day, was truly the catalyst for a new reckoni…
A Dozen Shareable Doozies: 12 Gretchen Sisson Quotes on Adoption
12 Gretchen Sisson Quotes from a recent discussion of "RELINGQUISHED: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood."
Adoptee Writing Residency Project (AKA Spartan Trailer "Somebody's Baby" Update)
Adoptee renovates 1952 Spartanette trailer where she was conceived to honor birth father and offer a writing residency getaway for adoptees.
Adoptee Life & The Outside In
But this time the adult me had embraced the 12-year-old me, still trying to prove she belonged. The same me that once wrapped Daddy's Lincoln around a gas pump, trying to get the c…
What is a Search Angel?
A Search Angel plays a crucial role in adoption search support, helping individuals reunite with birth parents, adoptees, and other relatives. These dedicated individuals form netw…
Dec. 22 & The Not Knowing
The Not Knowing had driven me to ask strangers in the street if they’d ever relinquished a child, to ask my mother if I looked like this girl or that, to weave a magical fantasy th…
Let's Talk Memoir Writing: A Sneak Peek at "The Power of Memoir to Heal Your Heart and Claim Your Story."
This year’s virtual conference is titled "Honoring the Past, Treasuring the Present, Shaping the Future." So it seems fitting that I will present a session on memoir writing titled…
The Adoptee Army Uprising at Pokagon State Park
Yet no matter how supported we feel online, it does not compare with being together in flesh and blood. A moment when we join forces to stand up for not just what we believe, but w…
"Parallel Universes" by David B. Bohl - An Adoptee Memoir to Remember
Like the sailboats dotting David’s life, his story glides across the page; a sturdy hull gracefully parting the sea of his dark past, propelled by resilience, telltales of truth le…
Attachment, Identity, Adoption: 10 Related Quotes by Dr. Gabor Maté
Dr. Gabor Maté is a well-known figure in the fields of addiction, stress, and child development. His work on these topics has given birth to many insightful quotes, many of which, …
Summer Reading: The Adoption Memoirs Inside this Adoptee’s Beach Bag
“Where better to read an adoption memoir than on the beach in front of my childhood home,” I thought, stuffing more books than I knew I’d be able to make time for into my suitcase.…
A Tribute to Patricia Long Legs
Patricia Long Legs was born 12 years ago, July 16, 2011, in the pasture facing Camelot Lane, the day I met my birth father Jerry Knight and step mother Susan.
A Father’s Day Post from the West End of Galveston Island
My adoptive father and my birth father, met for the first and only time in Galveston, Texas, at a west-end marina, sometime between 1953 and 1961, a decade or so before I was born.
Eight Books That Healed This Adoptee's Heart
Books to help adoptees heal core adoption issues, including adoption trauma, abandonment, attachment, loss, grief, and identity.
United: The Healing Power of the Adoption Constellation
A piece on the healing power of the adoption constellation & a mini-retreat by the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP)
A Mother's Day Book Review: GOD AND JETFIRE, by Amy Seek
Book review of GOD AND JETFIRE by Amy SEEK, review written by Adoptee Patricia Ann Knight Meyer to honor birth mothers on this difficult day.
Claiming Your Voice Podcast Interview
Paying It Forward: My Dream to Offer an Adoption Writing Residency in the Vintage Trailer Where I was Conceived
Reunited adoptee plans to offer adoptee writing residency in the vintage Spartanette Trailer where she was conceived.
Adoptee / Birth Father Speak at Adoption Knowledge Conference, Austin, Texas, 2012
Adoptee and Birth Father speak at this adoption conference about reuniting 41 years after daughter was put up for adoption without fathr's knowledge or consent.
10 Year Adoptee / Birth Father Reunion Anniversary: A Video Tribute
GUEST POST: Why Is That Controversial? Adoptees have a stake in the fight to protect abortion rights.
Tony Corsetino offers an adoptee's perspective on abortion right, a hot topic among adoptees: "There is an enormous moral difference, however, between relinquishment and adoption a…
Our Alternate Universe: A Mother's Day Letter to My Biological Step-Mother
From the moment we met, I knew you were not just my birth father's wife, but that you'd somehow always been a mother I'd been missing.
The Day I Asked to Be Un-Adopted
“Please don’t be sad Mommy, but I figure I should live with Dora. She is not old like you, she has freckles like me, and she can give me a brother. See, I will be right there!” I s…
A Memoir About an Adoption that Never Happened.
A memoir about an adoption that never happened. It is a black market baby’s story about the parents who held onto her as tightly as they did her secret, and the mother who let her …
Healing the Child Within, ACE Scores & Please Hear What I Am Not Saying
Marking 10 Years In Reunion
Steadying the feet of my camping chair deeper into the stones, I sink in and press my face to the sun. I take a long sip of a Dos Equis and toast the fact that tomorrow makes a dec…
Seven Years' Time
From the Ashes
An excerpt from "Somebody's Baby" - How tragically ironic that all my worldly possessions, memoirs and keepsakes from my adopted life would burn to ash on the property of my birth …
NOLA Radio Interview on Meeting My Birth Mother
An interview with WHIV Radio on meeting my birth mother.
Meeting My Birth Father: Our Reunion Video
Watch our reunion video, where I meet my birth father for the first time and read an update on how the reunion is going.
Adoptees & Divorce
Articles about adoption and divorce, exploring how adoption experiences impact relationships and family dynamics.
Finding My Birth Father
A year ago today, thanks to my birth mother Lina's search for the truth and the man connected to it (and her sharing that information with me), I learned my birth father's name is …
Mirror Mirror
How Being an Adoptee and Single Parent Shaped My Parenting Style and Relationship With My Daughter
In My Birth Mother's Shoes
At 19 years old, I created the same circumstances to put myself squarely in my own birth mother’s shoes. Do I keep my unplanned baby? The moment the plus sign appeared I knew what …
Fear, Anxiety & The Primal Wound
Harm Unintended
Acknowledging My Birth Mother's Angst After Reading My Last Post
Adoption Reunions: Managing Expectations, Assimilating Birth and Adoptive Families
The Ugly Goat: The Importance of Genetic Mirrors in the Adoptee's World
What if I see things in that mirror that I don't like? Where does that leave me? Those were my fears, steeped in a mixture of insecurity and the unknown, driving up that long drive…
Adoption Reunion: Why I Celebrate My Conception Day
Through my adoption reunion, I learned that my conception took place along the banks of the San Bernard River in Brazoria, Texas.