Estrangement in adoption is a tough, somewhat taboo topic.
It’s real. It affects many parents and adult adoptees. Research shows that many families experience estrangement, and adoptive families fall into that sphere.
Adoption Mosaic’s Navigating Estrangement class for adoptive parents is now open for registration. We start on Wednesday April 28 and meet for 8 weeks. I am a co-facilitator, along with adoptees Becca Flatt and Jenna Lowe.
The idea for this class evolved from our work in Adoption Mosaic’s Seasoned Parents course, geared to adoptive parents whose children are over 18 (and often are much older). The parents want to learn how to better communicate with their adult children about adoption, including issues such as race, the adoption industry, the role of gratitude, the complexity of parenting. I have co-facilitated the class three times. We talk about why we chose adoption, about how adoption has changed over time, about the role of race in our children’s lives and our own, and about the fact that issues in adoption don’t end when a child turns 18.
In fact, sometimes the issues manifest in different ways as our children get older. And communicating with a 35 year old adult is very different from communication with a 15 year old.
We have had adoptees ask (or insist that) their parents to take the Seasoned Parents class; some adoptees have done the same for the Estrangement class. You can contact Astrid Castro (Adoption Mosaic’s founder and CEO) and schedule a free 15 minute consultation to talk about how to approach this, and to answer any other questions.
You can register for Navigating Estrangement here.
There are many resources provided in the class. There are also many resources about estrangement available to the community via Adoption Mosaic.
Adoption Mosaic runs a program for estrangement adoptees as well: Adoptee Beacon.
Being in community can make such a difference. Please feel free to share this info! Many thanks.
