Adoptees

This is an article about the challenges and complexities of searching and reconnecting with a birth parent, and learning to cope when things don’t work out the way you’d hoped they would.

Gotcha Day is one of the names many adoptive parents use to mark the day their child was adopted. While is it intended as a celebration, adoptee Mila Konomos shares a different perspective, along with her personal adoption story. Mila is a transracial, transnational Korean American adoptee. She has been in reunion with her Korean family for over a decade. 

I’d like to address the practice of so-called “Gotcha Day.” An adoptive parent wrote to ask me for my opinion about it as an adult adoptee. 

People with FASD struggle with lifelong behaviour and learning problems. In this article, one young adoptee shares her story of life with FASD. All names have been changed.

In this article, originally shared on the Lost Daughters website, Lynn Grubb shares some of the key lessons and outlooks on life she discovered as an adopted person.

Timberline Ranch Camp is the highlight of the year for dozens of adoptive families, many of whom have attended for years. With the eighth year of Timberline just around the corner, we thought it was time to celebrate camp and reflect on what makes it so valuable and special. This article is from the fall 2016 issue of Ni Hao, the newsletter of Families with Children from China BC (FCCBC). It does a fantastic job of capturing the experience of Timberline Ranch Camp!

In recognition of BC Youth in Care Week, we asked a young adult adoptee to write about her journey to understand her identity.

Dear Self,

I know it’s been a while, and you’ve had a hard time lately. There’s a certain time every year when you feel the expanse of emptiness in our body a little more. That slow ache.

Bif Naked is a member of a lot of communities. Rock and roller, vegan, Canadian, animal lover, breast cancer survivor, humanitarian, adoptee, and author (her memoir, I, Bificus, came out in 2016 and is available from AFABC’s library). Yes, Bif Naked, also known as Beth, is an adoptee and proud of it.  In this article, she shares her story with Ronda Payne.

Janet was abandoned at birth outside a hospital in northern BC. In 2017, she found four half-siblings who were also abandoned as babies by the same mother. Through DNA testing, she learned the identity of her deceased biological mother and her biological father, Emil Weinreich. Janet met Emil for the first time just over a year ago. In this article, Janet reflects on how their shared love for her led her biological and adoptive fathers to become family to each other, too.

In 2017, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption released a ground-breaking new study of Canadian attitudes and behaviours towards adoption and foster care. The comprehensive document is packed with research and insights, but since it’s also almost 80 pages long, we’ve put together this brief overview of its key findings.

For more than 25 years, Catherine has worked in and with the adoption community as a therapist, an adoptee, and an adoptive mom, always searching for a truly effective approach to adoption therapy. In this article, she explains an approach that she's found to be highly effective for issues related to adoption trauma.