This is day 6 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

Adoption Mosaic is an adoptee-founded, adoptee-led, and adoptee-centric space, One of its main mantras is that adoptees are the experts in adoption. Their “We the Experts” series of workshops has featured panels of adoptees talking about birth/first parents, humor, names, substance abuse, siblings, reunion, and more. Today (November 6), there is a panel of adoptees speaking about their decision to become adoptive parents. Some issues are more controversial than others; Adoption Mosaic looks at the whole range.

Astrid Castro is the founder of Adoption Mosaic. She was adopted from Colombia as a young child, and has been consulting about and presenting workshops on adoption for decades. I have known her so long that we don’t really remember where we met: an adoption conference? In full disclosure and transparency, I have been an advocate for Adoption Mosaic for a long time, and have had the honor of participating on panels and workshops. Astrid, as an adoptee, and I, as an adoptive parent, have talked about adoption from our own perspectives, and I have learned so much from her lens.

We are currently co-facilitating a workshop as part of Adoption Mosaic’s Conscious Adoption series. The workshop is for “seasoned parents” such as myself, an adoptive parent whose children are now adults. Astrid and I viewed this as important because adoption-related issues don’t disappear when a child turns 18. The realities of trust, loss, grief, and identity manifest in different ways in adulthood. Sometimes they don’t even emerge until adoptees have children themselves, or decide to search for birth family, or become estranged from their adoptive family. At our first session last week, our group considered what we thought about adoption before we adopted, what we thought/learned about adoption as our kids were growing up, and what we think about it now. My eyes and heart have opened a lot in the last 30+ years.

Adoption Mosaic serves all members of the adoption constellation: parents, adoptees, professionals. They emphasize the need for “compassionate, informed education, training, and resources for the adoption constellation.” At the “We The Experts” presentations, non-adopted people are requested to listen—not to comment or otherwise impose ourselves. And that’s good. There are occasional “Adoptee Ally” presentations as well. One of the best ones was the panel of adult children of adoptees talking about how adoption had affected them. The adult children were not adopted; adoption had, however, deeply affected them via their parent (the adopted person). An upcoming “We the Experts” Ally panel is about partners/spouses of adoptees, and the December “We the Experts” panel is about Adoptees and Judaism.

Please feel free to share the programs of Adoption Mosaic with others.