Open adoption isn’t easy to define. There are so many ways to look at it.

Ask two people what open adoption means to them and chances are they’ll give you two totally different but equally interesting answers.

Well, last month, during National Adoption Month, we put that question to nearly 20,000 people — adoptive parents, hopeful adoptive parents, adoptees and birthparents on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages — to find out what they had to say about the matter, and they weren’t shy about sharing their opinions.

Here are some of the dozens of responses we received. This is in addition to the answers we got to our annual “30 Days 30 Questions” Q & A series. Continue reading →

Adoption Awareness Month is an opportunity to raise awareness and learn about all types of adoption.

And that includes open adoption, which remains one of the more publicized but least understood paths to building a family.

This year, as we do every year, we turned our Facebook page over to our Fans and posed a different question about open adoption each day of the month as part of our annual “30 Days 30 Questions” series.

We wanted to get some insights into how it works and what people need to know in order to succeed, and we figured who better to ask than the people living it every day. After all, they’re the experts.

Here’s a sampling of some of the questions, and what our Fans had to say.

For more open adoption insights and experiences, don’t forget to check our Facebook every day of every month for the latest news and stories.  Continue reading →

This guest post is by Lisa Raymond, an adoptive mother and adoptee.

Dear (hopeful) adoptive parents,

Tis the season, right?  Fa, la, la, la, la; fruit cakes; carolers; and a little late night Amazon shopping?

But this year you may be dragging a little through the holidays. It may have been all you could do to get through Thanksgiving and the explanations of where you are in your adoption journey to each family member. 

This year the holidays might feel like a reminder of your wait or that you don’t have a little one to pop up on Santa’s knee in their “my First Christmas” finest.

Stop right there.

Continue reading →