Join us as we discuss Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies by Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori Holden on March 28, 2024 at 7:30pm CT. We will be joined by co-author and birth mom Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard to help us discuss the book.
When
Thursday, March 28, 2024 @ 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT
Cost
$10 per attendee. To RSVP, Venmo @stephiepredllc or Paypal stephiepredmore@gmail.com – include “book club” and your email address or Instagram handle in the note section. I will add you to a calendar invite with the Zoom link using the included email address.
*If you do not include an email address or IG handle, I won’t be able to send you the Zoom link, so please be sure to include one of those pieces of info!*
Book club fees help to cover administrative fees and to pay our adoptee and birth parent guests for their time and emotional labor. Fees are nonrefundable.
Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies
Adoption Unfiltered reveals the candid thoughts and feelings of those most directly involved in adoptions: adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents.
Adoption Unfiltered authors Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies–all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption. While finding common ground in the sometimes-contentious space of adoption may seem like a lofty goal, it reveals the authors’ optimistic aim: working together with truth and transparency to move toward healing.
Healing isn’t possible, though, without first uncovering the hurts–starting with adoption’s central players: adoptees, who are so often in pain, suffering from what the latest brain science validates as the long-term emotional effects of separation trauma. By encouraging others to vulnerably share their stories, the authors discover that adoptees aren’t the only ones in the adoption constellation who are hurting. Birth parents regularly shut down after being shut out by adoptive parents. Adoptive parents often struggle with unique parenting challenges and hidden insecurity, feeling the need to hide the fact that they are not the Super Parents they led the agency to believe they would be. Across the industry as a whole, misinformed and even unethical practices abound.
Adoption Unfiltered models the importance of adults in adoption working together in the spirit of curiosity and empathy–to better support adoptees and their first and adoptive families.
Grab a copy of Adoption Unfiltered from Bookshop.org (affiliate link)