In honor of the coming holiday (and in light of recent negative studies and related grumblin) I wanted to comment on some positive, loving things that can come out of the open adoption experience.

People always have things to say about the difficulties that adoption brings with it. It can become way to easy to get bogged down and forget what we who are involved in an open adoption are working so to hard to make happen.

It’s about the kids, loving them and respecting each other.

If... more

Since I have been writing about birth grandparents yesterday and today, I thought it would be only fitting for today’s Love Thursday picture to be of my parents, Charlie’s birth grandparents.

My parents were a little hesitant about open adoption and seeing Charlie in the very beginning. You have to remember that they come from the closed adoption era. If someone placed a child for adoption... more

Continued from part 1....

Do birth grandparents grieve too? Just as birthmothers grieve the loss of their motherhood to the children they placed for adoption, birth grandparents may feel a sense of loss and grief at times too. They also tend to grieve the loss their child (the birth parent) is experiencing too.

A Few Tips Here are a few great tips from Brenda Romanchick’s article, Can... more

When I was pregnant and making an adoption plan I didn’t really think about how my relinquishing Charlie would affect my family too. I was so busy worrying about how it would affect me, what I was loosing and would be grieving that I neglected to think about the loss my family would also feel.

In some open adoption agreements, the extended birth family is also involved. I have even heard of cases where birth grandparents are involved when a birthmother may not be ready for a relationship with her child yet.

What does birth grandparent involvement... more

My co-blogger Deb just posted an excellent series about siblings separated by adoption and this got me thinking about my own two boys who are half brothers but yet separated by adoption and living in separate households with different parents.

One of the reasons I chose open adoption was so that my boys would know one another. Before Charlie was born, A and I discussed this and talked about how important it was to both of us that they know they are brothers,... more