Adoption is such a beautiful, and simultaneously chaotic, journey. Someone’s gain is someone else’s loss.   I was 21 years old when I was adopted but had been living with my parents (who are my maternal great aunt and uncle) since I was 11 years old. They took guardianship of me when I turned 12. Since I was in guardianship, adoption was not talked about, rather my parents provided consistency and made it their job to ensure that I felt secure in their home.   I had trust issues and it took me a long time to feel like this was my final home. I was 11 when I moved in with m ..read more

My name is Riley and I was adopted when I was 10 through foster care.  I remember the day I met my mom, I was 6 years old, she pulled up in a blue car and I told her how happy I was she had a car. I picked up my big black trash bag of random things and put it in her car, I don’t even remember what was in it. But I do know that I was in a giant shirt that was like 1000 times bigger than my body so the next day Mom took me shopping to get my very own new clothes...and that’s when I knew that she was my Mom. Growing up my parents taught me that my identity wasn’t in anything I did or what h ..read more

My family never talked about adoption.  I was adopted in 1972 when I was four and a half years old.  I remember my adoption day, not because we were adopted, but more because my parents took my brother and I shopping for snow boots because there was a big snow storm the night before the courthouse appointment.  Shopping for snow boots seemed to be a bigger deal than the fact that we were officially becoming a family of four.   Adoption seemed to be a taboo subject in our immediate family, our extended family, our church, school and honestly our entire community.  ..read more

For me, acceptance was blue eyes. Acceptance was long curly eyelashes, pin straight hair, and looking like a clone of a sibling. Coincidentally, these things never came, and they haunted me at family reunions and birthday parties. Me, with my curly brown hair, and even darker brown eyes. Me, the only one besides my brother who didn’t share the same blood.  I was the only one who seemed to care.  I think about my family’s eyes often. Parts of my childhood consisted of admiring my uncles, aunts, and cousins, beautiful blue eyes and silky straight hair. I would go home and stare at my ..read more

I am Sally J King, a 56-year-old adult adoptee, and I wish I knew then what I know now.  The funny thing is, I didn’t realize how much being adopted had affected me until we fostered and adopted our little girl in my mid-forties. My adoption story is similar to my daughter’s in that we were both in foster care before being adopted out. The first six months of my life were spent with my birth mother until I was adopted by my adoptive family. Growing up as an adoptee was challenging, and I truly believe that so much of my struggle revolved around the fact that my adoption story was always ..read more

My name is Hannah McFetridge and I was adopted from South Korea when I was 5 months old. My parents did a few things that helped me to feel loved and celebrated in my adoption and I think other adoptive parents out there might be interested in what they did. First, I have never not known I am adopted, though that may be large in part due to my Irish-Italian family, but my adoption was never a secret. My mom tells a story about the first time I asked where I came from: my older brother asked first, and she told him he grew in her belly. When I asked if that was the same for me, she told ..read more

Adoption Advice by Christina Bauer My name is Christina and I was adopted with my biological brother at the age of 4. Adoption was a normal part of my childhood and the conversations surrounding my story were as fluid and normal as they could have been. Growing up information about our story was never withheld from me or my brother. My parents felt that our adoption story was our story and not theirs, therefore we deserved to know everything. Of course my parents shared age appropriate details and then filled us in later on some of the harder things, but if we asked specific questions we got ..read more

Written by Vicki Colls, Director of Birth Mother Advocacy at Abiding Love Adoptions How do you love an expectant mother well? It all starts in your heart. Adoptive Parents. The first thing any hopeful adoptive parent must address is their motives for adopting. Ask yourself a few questions: Have you struggled with infertility?  Have you sought counseling to address and process your grief? Why adoption? If your answer has anything to do with "saving a child," what is your answer when it comes to the child's birth mother? When you hear birth mother, what image comes to your mind? Th ..read more

Written by Lisa Qualls My husband and I stepped through the door into a yellow kitchen where a nanny was feeding three toddlers. The little boys sat side-by-side as she spooned food into their mouths moving from left to right, one little mouth opening at a time. Gesturing toward the children, the orphanage social worker said, “That’s your son.” After months of staring at his face on our computer screens, we immediately recognized him by the small scar in the center of his forehead and his big brown eyes. Minutes later a nanny handed me our baby boy. I held him close, feeding him a bottle, and ..read more

Written by Jill Thomley, Home Study Caseworker at Abiding Love Adoptions *We know that all agency’s do their homestudy processes slightly different. We admire the way that Abiding Love Adoptions conducts their homestudy process. Here is an example of how an ethical home study would be done through Abiding Love Adoptions agency. Not everyone comes to Abiding Love for the same purpose. Sure, all come in hopes of adopting, but some come in hopes to become parents, some come in response to a perceived need, and some come to grow their family further. All of these reasons may still end in adoption ..read more