Adopted Reality

28/06/2019

For our mothers, for mothers who had their children taken from them, and for mothers who were told it didn’t really matter that much anyway.......

I can’t imagine—or, rather, it hurts my heart to think about—how my five-month-old son would feel in the arms of a stranger, hungry, abandoned, alone.

28/11/2016

Adoptedness

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Holiday season

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20/11/2015

It's been crickets on Adopted Reality for a while, but it's NAAM and we've published a new book at Entourage Publishing!

Restored -- by Deanna Doss Shrodes

http://www.laura-dennis.com/restored/

I'm so pleased to have Deanna back on my blog today, talking about her latest book, Restored, Pursuing Wholeness When a Relationship is Broken. It's the follow-up book to her memoir, Worthy To Be F...

09/06/2015

New memoir by Soojung Jo, with a 2-part interview!

Part 1 on my blog ...
http://www.laura-dennis.com/ghost-sangju-interviewing-soojung-jo/

Part 2 on Deanna's Adoptee Restoration blog!
http://www.adopteerestoration.com/2015/06/interview-with-soojung-jo-part-2-author.html

22/04/2015

The writers for our latest project:

with Brooke Randolph, Brooke-Randolph, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Jodi Gibson Haywood, Becky Conrad Drinnen, Kimberly Kudrna Bain, Karen Brown Belanger, Cherish Asha Bolton, Lucy Sheen, Veronica Gilmore, Tracy L. Hammond, Catana Tully

http://www.laura-dennis.com/anthologies/adoption-therapy-2/

15/04/2015

Day 15

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

I’m thankful that Laura Dennis has blown the lid off of secrecy and given the writers of Adoption Therapy a voice to share their experience.

Because of her stewardship, what we have gone through is no longer swept under the carpet or forgotten. And she didn’t just bring adoptees together to pour it all out unabated, but to join forces with therapists who could actually speak to our pain and do something about it.

It’s my prayer that Adoption Therapy and books like it become required reading for any potential adoptive parent.

Are some of our stories hard to read? You bet.

But unless one is willing to truly investigate the adoptee experience from an actual adoptee, I am highly suspect of his or her ability to parent an adoptee son or daughter effectively.

- Deanna Doss Shrodes

14/04/2015

Day 14

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

Corie - I have heard a lot of adoptees express that these attempts (whether they are medicine that is prescribed by a physician or a self-attempted strategy simply to somehow get some relief from the negative feelings), do not ever seem to work long term because they never address the root issue of abandonment. It is the number one critical complaint I hear about therapists.

Typically, the therapist fails to acknowledge the adoptee’s early trauma, or else he or she minimizes or dismisses entirely the lingering effects of separation. …

Lisa - I think it is very unfair to label any one group as being co-dependent, but it is compelling to look at the similar behaviors displayed by adoptees and try to understand what the commonality is.

I believe I have exhibited co-dependent traits because I did not know who I really was. I had to reunite with my birth family and find out about the beginning of my life in order to feel connected to myself and the world. I have my missing pieces, and I feel like I can move forward into a future that I am very excited about.

- Corie Skolnick, M.S. LMFT and Lisa Floyd

13/04/2015

Day 13

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

Ultimately, what was I was trying to bend myself to become?

Obviously, I knew that I could not make myself White.

Yet I came to lament so intensely that I had not been born the ideal White woman, that I believe my anorexia was a manifestation of an intense self-hate of not only my body, but of my entire appearance, and ultimately, my irrevocable Asianness.

How was I supposed to grow up in a White family within a White World and not wish I was White?

Did I ever have a chance of growing up not wishing that my body wasn’t my body, wishing that my face was not my face?

- Mila Konomos

12/04/2015

Day 12

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

Jodi—There’s nothing politically correct about honest adoption dialogue, nor should there be, if honesty is to be encouraged.

Historically, the goal of post-adoption therapy (when addressed at all) is to integrate the adopted child into his or her new family, regardless of differences in background, race, ethnicity, culture, etc. …

Karen—It is no small thing that Jodi points out she had no consent (and no voice) when she was the object of a legal contract that permanently changed her life.

It is beyond many people’s ability to comprehend that being adopted means someone legally took possession of your body, changed your name, and deprived you of your ancestry without your consent. (If you really try this on emotionally you will probably find yourself slipping towards a feeling of horror.)

- Jodi Haywood and Karen Caffrey, LPC, JD

11/04/2015

Day 11

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

The adoption fog is a state-of-mind the adoptee utilizes to keep going in the world. It is a coping technique that helps manage painful emotions.

The fog tells us that our adoption has had no substantial impact on us and allows us reprieve from distressing feelings.

The Late Discovery Adoptee differs slightly, in that we clearly acknowledge the negative impact of the deception we experienced, but the fog can obscure further investigation into how deeply our losses actually run.

- Lesli Maul, LCSW

10/04/2015

Day 10

Quote-a-Day from “Adoption Therapy,” available in ebook & paperback exclusively on Amazon:

Being a transracial adoptee is a lifelong condition. Once you have been transracially adopted there is no going back.

This action cannot be reversed. Neither is it something that can be discarded.

It will remain an essential part of me until the day I die. For that reason I often refer to myself as, ‘a recovering transracial adoptee.’

It interlocks and interfaces with me, my identity, self-perception and the assumptions that many in the wider society still have of me as an East Asian.

To me that meant dealing with loss. After having first accepted that I had suffered a loss.

Dealing with the trauma. The baggage, the racial discrimination, the cultural dislocation, and the linguistic disenfranchisement.

- Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen