Tag Archives: Astrid Castro

National Adoptee Awareness Month (Formerly National Adoption Month)

Posted on by
Reply

In 1976, Gov. Dukakis of Massachusetts designated the first week of November as Adoption Week, an effort to increase adoptions from foster care. In 1984, President Ford proclaimed Adoption Week a national event. In 1998, President Clinton declared November as “National Adoption Month.”

The month has thus had many iterations, as have attitudes about it. More recently, the month has been recast as National Adoptee Awareness Month, by Grace Newton (a Chinese adoptee) writing here in Red Thread Broken, by Shane Bouel, an adoptee writing on Medium “Taking Back National Adoptee Awareness Month, and via Astrid Castro, a Colombian adoptee and founder of Adoption Mosaic, speaking on Instagram.

Last November, The Rumpus devoted its November issue to adoptee-focused essays to reclaim National Adoptee Awareness Month.

While those examples are current, this effort to reframe the month has been going on for at least ten years.

In 2014, Korean adoptee Rosita Gonzalez of Lost Daughters created a #flipthescript campaign on Twitter. That campaign generated a significant video in 2014, “Adoptees ‘Flip the Script’ on National Adoption Month,” via (and including) Angela Tucker of The Adopted Life. Full disclosure: I know, love, and admire many of the speakers.

U.S. adoptee Laura Barcella wrote about the video and the efforts to reframe National Adoption Month in the New York Times: “Adoptees Like Me ‘Flip the Script’ on the Pro-Adoption Narrative.”

Be sure also to check out this resource: “Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology (The AN-YA Project,” described on Amazon as “a dynamic artistic exploration of adoptee expression and experience. This anthology offers readers a diverse compilation of literature and artistry from a global community of adoptees. From playwrights to poets, filmmakers to photographers, essay writers to lyricists —all have joined together inside these pages to enlighten and educate.”

This month, if you are reading and learning about adoption, be sure to see who is speaking: is it an adoptee? Or is it an adoptive parent or adoption agency? Focus on learning from adult adoptees first.

Upcoming “Seasoned Parents” Class From Adoption Mosaic: Join Us!

Posted on by
Reply

Adoption has its own rhythm through our lifetimes, depending where we are in the constellation. There’s certainly no magic ending to issues when a child turns 18; legal adulthood can look very different from the emotional and psychological realities.

In fact, as adopted people and adoptive parents get older, many new issues can emerge. Our understanding of what adoption means can change over time, as well as our lens on parenting. Our adopted children may become parents themselves, and that can raise significant new thoughts. The role of race in the case of transracial adoptions can become more pointed as our children are out in the world, and as they reflect on their childhood experiences.

I, for one, am constantly learning and growing and striving to do better, even as my children are in their 30’s and I have 3 grandchildren.

I also have the honor to co-facilitate Adoption Mosaic’s Seasoned Parents class, a 6-week program start October 16, for adoptive parents whose children are over 18. My co-facilitators are Adoption Mosaic’s founder Astrid Castro, an adoptee from Colombia, and Katie Christians, a U.S. adoptee with extensive experience in Adoption Mosaic youth groups, panels, and programs.

Maureen McCauley (L) and
Katie Christians (R)

From the website:

“Need help trying to figure out how adoption plays a part in your family now that your kids are adults?

In this course, participants will:

  • Reflect on why we chose adoption, and what we have learned over decades of raising children; 
  • Dig into the challenges of talking about race, the adoption industry, gratitude, anger, adoption fog, search, and reunion; and
  • Practice talking about these adoption issues with our adult children and with others, in ways that are clear, respectful, and helpful.”

Adoption Mosaic: NAAM

Posted on by
Reply

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.