“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?”

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.

What are the deeper layers of the connection between attachment and food? This is a fascinating conversation with Deborah MacNamara, PhD, author of Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (and everyone else we love), for anyone dealing with digestive or attachment issues—which is, likely, all of us.

“If food is not served in the context of togetherness, then it serves emotional distress and can’t be digested well. The whole system isn’t primed and ready to focus on nutrition; it’s focused on solving an emotional problem. This doesn’t mean parents aren’t trying; it’s what the child is experiencing.”

Our conversation covers:

What would it be like to live in a community that protects you from pain, grief, loss, and other difficult feelings? How would it be to have so much sameness among community members that envy was eradicated? What if individuals were prevented from making bad choices?

What would happen in a community that completely downplays genetic connections, a community in which everyone is an adoptee?

Newbery Medalist Lois Lowry envisioned such a community in her 1993 young adult novel The Giver, which is on many banned books lists, and was also adapted into a 2014 film starring Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. Over the years, many of us in the adoption community have read The Giver without a backdrop of adoption, but when we re-read it with adoption in mind, the story pops in a completely new way.

Watch here as adoptees, birth parents, and an adoptive parent discuss a dystopia in which emotions are suppressed, Birth Mother is a job assignment, and everyone lives in the fog—except for protagonist Jonas and title character, The Giver.

Special thanks to panelists Julian Washio-Collette and Muthoni Gaciku Kittredge for sharing their observations as an adoptee and birth parent, respectively.

Note: If you are interested in discussing The Giver in your own book club and would like access to our free discussion guide, please write to [email protected] with your request.

Adoption tropes make for blockbuster films and viral news stories, but, as we do here on Adoption Unfiltered, let's dive deeper. Why do such tropes exist and perpetuate? Why do we harbor cultural biases such as: adoptive parents being unquestioningly unselfish and amazing; birth parents being undeserving of raising their kids; adoptees being ungrateful if they speak up and share a fuller story about adoption.

Adoption Unfiltered⁠ is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation. We are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

Adoption Unfiltered: ⁠https://www.adoptionunfiltered.com/⁠

There’s a difference between listening to and taking from. People enjoy being heard but not being depleted.

What are the unspoken rules of engagement in adoption spaces? On the one hand, it’s great to have our safe spaces for adoptees only, birth parents only, adoptive parents only. Yet we also benefit from having cross-triad conversations, too. Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) talk about how and how not to approach each other about adoption issues and topics.

Listen in for the rules of engagement that will help make adoption spaces feel safe and those in it feel respected.

Adoption Unfiltered⁠ is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation. We are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: ⁠https://youtu.be/-3a7eEyqOpE

It’s November, which means National Adoption Awareness Month. Adoption talk, adoption talk, everywhere you go! We’ve described it as overwhelming, emotional laboring, and metamorphosing.

What was the original intent of NAAM? In what ways has the original intent expanded and shifted? Who has benefitted from NAAM, and who hasn’t? Who has historically owned the narrative, and how is that shifting?

Adoption Unfiltered is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation, and we are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/-3a7eEyqOpE

Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth mom) and Lori Holden (adoptive mom) kick of Season 2 with a special Adoption Constellation Round Table, for which we invited adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and others who have something to say about adoption to talk together around this question: What is the biggest ah-ha you’ve had about adoption?

We also make a special announcement! Our book, Adoption Unfiltered, will be published in December 2023 by Rowman & Littlefield! It will include the journeys and stories of the people in this round table, among others. You can pre-order on Amazon or Bookshop!

Adoption Unfiltered is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation, and we are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/xn6MkQgDYpY

What will happen when the Supreme Court officially rules on Roe v Wade? Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth mom) and Lori Holden (adoptive mom) talk about the overlap between abortion and adoption. Not an easy conversation! Adoption and abortion are so often pitted against each other as opposite sides of coin when it comes to pregnancy decisions. But as Sara points out, there are similarities:

Other places we go:

Adoption Unfiltered is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation, and we are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/g0LjNTQrqNs