Navigating Openness in Adoption: A Workshop with Lori Holden - Seattle

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity that openness brings to adoption? Are you worried whether you’ll have what it takes to navigate the challenges that come with parenting by adoption, especially in moments when emotions are high (including yours)? Do you wonder how you’ll sustain your resolve to remain open when things get tough with your adoptee, their birth family, or even yourself?

All of this is super normal!

Being a parent by adoption is an ever-evolving experience, which means we need to keep striving to grow and become the parents our adoptees need us to be while they grow and become who they are. How we navigate openness, internally and externally, profoundly impacts our adoptees as we continually make decisions – ideally decisions that attune with them and address their deeper needs. But how do we do that?

In this full-day interactive workshop, you will:

• Gain an understanding of an array of experiences within adoption;
• Discover three meaningful shifts that can better guide you as you face challenges now and in the coming years;
• Learn about healthy boundaries, conflict, and parenting with intention and attunement;
• Develop a new orientation from which to generate creative solutions to common tricky situations in adoptive parenting;
• Hear from three adoptee and birth parent panelists who share their lived experiences and viewpoints on openness, with time for Q&A. Panelists include:
• , transracial adoptee, author of You Should Be Grateful and founder of The Adoptee Mentoring Society;
• , LCSW, adoptee, birth mom, and Executive Director at a mid-Atlantic agency that prepares adoptive parents for openness in adoption; and
• , who placed her son in a fully open adoption in 1988 before there was any guidance for her and her son’s parents in doing so.
• Understand what truly benefits adoptees and strengthens their relationships with us, their adoptive parents; and
• Learn alongside other adoptive parents and have the opportunity to build community.

Lunch: Snacks and beverages will be provided. Additionally, participants can bring their own lunch or go to a nearby restaurant/food truck during the one-hour lunch break.

Parking: On-site parking available (information included in registration confirmation).

If you have trouble registering or have questions about this event, please email [email protected].

Host or Publisher Open Adoption & Family Services