Tag Archives: international adoption

Grandparents and Adoption: Creation of Community

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I’ve had 18 years to think about the role of adoption and grandparents, ever since my first granddaughter was born. I now have three granddaughters. As is true for my four adopted now-adult children, I am not biologically related to my grandchildren. We are connected by adoption, yet my granddaughters are not adopted.

Becoming a grandma has helped me reflect on my parenting: what I knew then, what I know now. I have learned so much about the impact of adoption in the last 40 years as well. I’ve talked with many other grandparents who love their grandchildren deeply, including the grandparents who have lost their grandkids to adoption. Parents who are estranged from their adult adopted children often are estranged from their grandkids as well. Grandparents whose grandkids are adopted often get to hear stories and perspectives that the kids don’t share with their adoptive parents. Grandparents who are adoptees wonder about intergenerational trauma and medical histories for their grandkids. Some grandkids know their adoptive grandparents, and don’t know their biological grandparents, who may live in another country and may remain forever unknown–or not.

I am reaching out for grandparents with a connection to adoption, to create a supportive, compassionate, and curious community for sharing stories, questions, perspectives, and experiences. 

The community will include folks from these categories:

  • Grandparents who adopted their children, and whose grandchildren are not adoptees.
  • Grandparents whose children are the adoptive parents: the grandchildren are the adoptees.
  • Grandparents whose children placed a child for adoption/lost a child to adoption.
  • Grandparents who are adoptees and whose children may or may not be adopted, and whose grandchildren may or may not be adopted.
  • Grandparents who adopted their grandchildren.

The Vision

My vision for the actions of the community is very much a work in progress, subject to change and improvement.

  • Conversation Havens: Informal, welcoming spaces to talk about adoption’s impact on us and on our families. 
  • Writing Circles: Supportive, encouraging places to share and strengthen your writing, whether for yourself or for publication.
  • Book (and Articles) Club—Maybe we will talk about entire books. More likely, we will discuss thought-provoking articles about adoption issues, including those written by grandparents.
  • Resources: We will develop and share resources on grandparenting and adoption. These could be webinars, speakers, workshops, trainings, articles, more.
  • Opportunities: There are researchers who want to learn more about the role of grandparents in adoption, and I’d love to help with that. 
  • Mentoring: Wouldn’t it be great to partner with someone who has been through what you are going through? The goal would be to develop partnerships in community, to have mentors willing to listen, advise, bounce ideas around, and provide resources to their peer grandparents.
  • Sitting with Grief: Occasional meetings, led by mental health professionals, to provide an understanding space to share grief caused by adoption. This might be estrangement, or fallout from a misunderstanding, or sadness over loss.

Some of the many questions that we can consider:

  • How has adoption affected you as a grandparent?
  • If you are connected with transracial adoption, have your views on race and racism changed because of adoption?
  • If you are connected with international adoption, what are your reflections on the adoptee’s birth grandparents?
  • If you are a grandparent whose grandchild was placed for adoption, what have been the challenges you’ve faced?
  • How can we grandparents be better parents/grandparents, and also better allies for our children and grandchildren in relation to adoption? This is, I realize, a very complicated question.

Possible topics, from a grandparent’s perspective, include a wide range. This is in no particular order, and the possible topics are not limited to these.

  • Role of birth grandparents in international adoptions
  • Race/Transracial adoption issues
  • Power and privilege dynamics in adoption
  • Biology and medical history, including mental health
  • Estrangement
  • Grief, loss, and trauma
  • Names
  • Legacy
  • Infertility and its impact
  • Epigenetics
  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Advocacy
  • Legal rights and their ramifications

A Final Note:

I had thought about an anthology of essays by grandparents with connections to adoption. I reflected further, and realized my enthusiasm needed boundaries. I’ve been an outspoken critic of those who share their children’s personal stories, believing that children cannot give informed consent. Many of these grandparent stories might blur or cross that line. So, the book as originally conceived is on hold. That said, there are ways for folks to share their stories that are respectful of personal details, and that’s something that we might explore in the Writing Circles.

Feel free to share this post, to comment here, or email me at Maureen@LightOfDayStories.com.

My middle granddaughter and I at a school event.

Dear U.S. Congress: Bring Our Deported International Adoptees Home

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Many places around the globe are celebrating Christmas today. Many deported international adoptees are “celebrating” alone without family or friends, far from home and the life they were promised when they were brought “home” to the U.S.

International adoptees have been deported because their adoptive parents (or adoption agencies or U.S. government agencies) failed to get them citizenship when they were children.

Thousands of international adoptees are estimated to be without citizenship, and some don’t even know that they are not citizens. Some find out when they commit a crime (and it can relatively minor) and are deported. Some proudly vote in local and federal elections, not knowing they are committing a felony. Some work hard all their lives and then find out they don’t qualify for Social Security or Medicare.

I do not understand why our U.S. Congress has not yet granted citizenship to all international adoptees. It is the humane, responsible, ethically right action to take, especially by those who are proponents of adoption.

Information is available at Adoptees for Justice and Adoptee Rights Law Center. I’ve written about this issue often, including recently here.

Please take action if you can, asking your U.S. elected federal officials to open their hearts and grant citizenship to all adoptees. Please send hope and resilience to the many adoptees who have been deported. May their loneliness end; may they be welcomed back (well before next Christmas) with family and friends in the U.S., the place that was supposed to be their forever home.

The “Preventable Death” of Ethiopian Adoptee Biruk Silvers

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May Biruk Silvers rest in peace and in power. May his family be comforted from heaven.

Accor5ding to a 2015 Chicago Tribune article, Biruk was adopted from Ethiopia when he was eight years old. Last month, on November 5, he died by suicide at a Utah teen treatment center. He was 17 years old.

I’ve written before about the deaths by suicide of adoptees. I don’t mean it to be exploitative or click-baiting. It’s a delicate dance. Talking about suicide is hard, and linking it with adoption is complex.

That said, Biruk’s adoptive parents, Joshua and Kathryn Silvers, have spoken out publicly about their son’s death because they believed that “medical malpractice and staff negligence led to Biruk’s preventable death” at the Discovery Ranch in Mapleton, Utah, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

In late November, the state restricted the license of Discovery Ranch, per the Salt Lake Tribune: “The Utah Department of Health and Human Services’ licensing office…said Discovery Ranch failed to follow state administrative rules because it did not protect and supervise a ‘client who had expressed suicidal ideation and intent.’ ”

The agency inspected Discovery Ranch on Nov. 6, one day after the teen, Biruk Silvers, who was living at the teen residential program, died there. Authorities reported Silvers died by suicide.

A conditional license, a DHHS spokesperson said, allows a care program to continue operation, as long as they adhere to the licensing division’s conditions.” The full Salt Lake Tribune article is here: “State agency restricts license of Utah County treatment center where teen died.”

Discovery Ranch still advertises itself as the “Top Teen Residential Center for Boys.”

Per the Tribune article, Discovery Ranch’s current conditional license requires them to do the following:

  • Comply to increased monitoring by the licensing division. Each inspection, the notice said, will cost Discovery Ranch $393.37.
  • Notify current clients — or their legal guardians and the state agencies that placed those clients in the facility — that Discovery Ranch has been placed on a conditional license. Discovery Ranch has five days to notify everyone.
  • Not accept any new clients while the conditional license is in effect.
  • Increase staff trainings, including sessions on suicide risk prevention. Discovery Ranch must provide proof of training within 15 days of the notice.
  • Submit a detailed plan that demonstrates all staff members can “ensure immediate and effective communication” when a client expresses suicidal ideation or intentions to self-harm.
  • Ensure staff compliance with all Utah Administrative Rules and statutes.

The bottom line is that “Discovery Ranch Academy ‘failed to protect’ Biruk Silvers.”

I hope that the legal decisions by the state of Utah brought a bit of solace to the Silvers family. I cannot imagine their grief.

Teen treatment centers are controversial. In 2021, the American Bar Association issued “Five Facts About the Troubled Teen Industry.” Maybe you’ve seen the Netflix documentaries such as “The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping;” “Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare;” “Teen Torture Inc.” Teen treatment centers are wildly expensive, and can range from $500 to $2000 a day in some cases. Like the prison system, the teen treatment centers can be quite profitable for the companies that own them. In June 2024, U.S. Senate report found that “Residential treatment centers put profit ahead of children’s safety.”

Many teens struggle. Adopted teens have additional struggles due to having been relinquished, having been separated from their mothers and culture, having experienced adversity prior to adoption—that adversity (including violence, neglect, medical conditions) is often the reason children are in need of adoption, or of safe, functioning families in any case. The American Academy of Pediatricians published a report stating that adopted teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted teens. According to Adoption Competent Mental Health Services for Transracial Adoptees, “adult adoptees, who are overrepresented in counseling and more likely than the national average to struggle with suicidality and complete suicide, commonly seek therapy for adoption related issues that involve depression, anxiety, and self-esteem issues.”

Academic and scientific research has substantiated all this, yet we are still far from the number of adoption-competent therapists that are needed. We are far, as a society, from acknowledging the complexity of adoption, wanting only to see it through a Hallmark Special lens.

What to do? Listen to adoptees, both their lived experience and their professional expertise. Learn about suicide prevention. Share adoption-related research with counselors, therapists, doctors, pastors. For example, share the Adoptee Consciousness Model, as well as the Adoptee-Therapist Directory..

My heart aches at the loss of Biruk Silvers, for his friends and families in the U.S. and in Ethiopia.

Additional Resources:

Research on Adoptees and Suicide by JaeRan Kim, PhD. Blog: Harlow’s Monkey

Coping With Loss From Adoptee Suicide by Lina Vanegas, MSW. Lina’s IG

From United Suicide Survivors International (USSI). I was honored to host this discussion, which is the most-watched USSI webinar:. “Adoption and Suicide Prevention: Adult Adoptees Speak Out

Quebec Suspends International Adoptions

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Due to human rights and trafficking concerns, the Canadian province of Quebec has suspended international adoptions.

The Montreal Gazette reports that ” ‘Quebec’s decision is part of a global “culture change” in recent years as countries have become aware of serious shortcomings in the way many adoptions are carried out,’ Anne-Marie Piché, a professor in the social work department at Université du Québec à Montréal who studies adoption”

Further, according to the Gazette, “The province said it does not believe the current international system guarantees the rights set out under The Hague Convention, which protects children and their families against the risks of illegal, irregular, premature or ill-prepared adoptions abroad. The moratorium, it added, will be in place while it develops a stronger framework to prevent those practices and also limit adoption failures that result in children entering the child welfare system.”

The Canadian province joins many other entities (both so-called sending and receiving countries) around the globe in suspending, limiting, or ending international adoption, including France, Norway, Flanders, Denmark, Romania, Guatemala, China, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. South Korea has substantially decreased the number of children it sends out of country for adoption; its Truth and Reconciliation Commission is reviewing fraud and corruption in hundreds of adoptions.

I’d argue that these government decisions are in tandem with increasing calls for the abolition of adoption.

The government decisions seem largely to be rooted in concern over fraud, corruption, bribery, human trafficking, and commodification of children—none of which should be any part of adoption, yet we have evidence for all that, in many countries: hence, the suspensions or closings.

I realize, of course, that governments can have other reasons to suspend or end international adoptions: embarrassment that their children are leaving their country, fear over what happens to internationally adopted children (abuse, neglect, death), political retribution, and so on.

International adoption is under more scrutiny than ever before.

No one wants children to suffer, die, or languish in orphanages. Suspending or ending adoption, along with the demand for abolition, (a thorough overhaul—many would say end–of the current system), are moving to the forefront of policy decisions. This movement is focused on orphan prevention and family preservation, a close examination of the role of money and privilege in adoption, genuine financial and other resources to families in crisis, equitable access to medical care, education, clean water, and more. The goal is lofty. If we really believe children should be in safe and loving families, it’s the only way to move ahead.

Adoptees Support the Abolition of Adoption?

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Adoption Mosaics’s November 9 “We the Experts”panel will feature adoptees who favor the abolition of adoption.

This has to be among the most complex issues in adoption, which overflows with complexity. It’s not a simple issue nor an easy conversation. I know many adoptees who favor abolition. Some had terrible experiences because of adoption. Some love their adoptive family and hate the adoption industry. Some see adoption’s complicity with capitalism and imperialism, along with white saviorism, as more than enough reason to abolish adoption.

And it’s not because they want children to languish, to be unsafe, to die in orphanages, to be aborted, or to suffer in any way. Ideas like family preservation, adequate resources, legal guardianship, systemic change, the dynamics of power and privilege, organized abandonment, and more, I imagine, will be discussed.

These are my ruminations. The best approach is, of course, to hear from the experts, the adoptees themselves.

This Saturday, November 9, you have the chance to do just that. I will be there. We non-adoptees don’t talk or ask questions or make comments—we agree to listen and learn. Whatever connection you have to adoption, please join this conversation. You can register here.

The notion of abolishing adoption is a tough one for many folks; at the same time, it is increasing in the adoption community. “Abolition” is itself is a term that raises controversy and confusion, along with “reparations.” These words need to be parsed thoughtfully; all have nuance and depth.

I have no doubts the panelists—JinYoung Kim, Lina Vanegas, Marly Osma de Forest, and Schai Schairer—will be passionate, insightful, and challenging. As de Forest says on the Adoption Mosaic IG page, this will be an opportunity “to spend time with other adoptees imagining more expansive, holistic, and trauma-informed practices of care that do not demand severance and possession.”

Full disclosure: I am a consultant at Adoption Mosaic, an adoptee-led, adoptee-centric organization providing resources and support to all members of the adoption constellation.

A Podcast With Ethiopian Adoptee Mike Davis, Speaking Out for Citizenship for All International Adoptees

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Mike Davis, a 61-year-old Ethiopian adoptee deported to Ethiopia in 2005, did a wonderful job in talking about his hopes for citizenship for himself and all international adoptees, on a podcast with Unraveling Adoption.

I was honored when Mike asked me to join him on the podcast, hosted by Beth Syverson. (Be sure to check out Beth’s other podcasts and resources on Unraveling Adoption.) I appreciated Beth’s compassion and openness. Mike was focused and strong, for which I give him great credit given the harshness of his situation.

You can help Mike with his legal and medical issues via this GoFundMe. All the money goes to Mike, for legal expenses as well as doctor bills and medicines. It is not easy to be alone in a country far from family and friends, and to have significant health issues. Mike has been working with Adoptees for Justice and their lawyers (thank you!) to, we deeply hope, return home to his wife, children, grandchildren, and friends. Many thanks to all who are able to donate, and for sharing the GoFundMe.

If you want more information on ways to help all international adoptees gain citizenship, check out this blog post.

International adoptees prior to 2000 were not granted automatic citizenship, contrary to what many in and out of the adoption community might think. Some have been deported. Many fear being deported. Please join Mike and others in advocating for citizenship for all international adoptees. Please help Mike and all deported adoptees come back home.

Why Are Americans—and Especially Adoptive Parents—Not Outraged by the Deportation of International Adoptees?

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“The U.S. is unique in this: No other nation that has taken in adopted children deprives them of citizenship.”

That’s a quote from an AP article, “Thousands of children adopted by Americans are without citizenship. Congress is unwilling to act.”

It’s plausible that adoptees without citizenship could be included in mass deportation actions.

Thousands of international adoptees, brought here to the U.S. for adoption from an assortment of countries,, do not have citizenship, through no fault of theirs. The children were not responsible to obtain citizenship. Adoption agencies, adoptive parents, and the U.S. government had and have responsibility–not the adoptees.

Citizenship is handled through federal legislation (not on a state level). Our federal government has not yet acted to help these children, who are now adults. Adults who often didn’t know they were not citizens. (If they vote, they are committing a felony.) Adults who now live in fear. Adults who worked all their lives and cannot access Medicare or Social Security. Adults who committed a crime, served their sentence, and then were deported. Adults who were brought here to live with “forever families” and were deported, now living in a place with no family, no friends, often no language. They are often severely limited in ways to support themselves. They are living in horrific poverty. loneliness, and isolation. Many were adopted by U.S. military officers, and now the U.S. denies the adoptees citizenship, through no fault of the adoptee.

Bureaucrats and virulent anti-immigration sentiments are destroying the lives of international adoptees. Some of those bureaucrats are ostensibly pro-adoption, pro-life. The hypocrisy is devastating, and thousands of adopted people are at risk.

Please read the AP article. Please share it with others.

Mike Davis, pictured above, has been separated from his family since his deportation to Ethiopia in 2005. His wife and sons are waiting to welcome him home. He has five grandchildren he’s never met. He has significant health problems. As an international adoptee, whose adoptive dad was a U.S. Army officer, how much does he have to be punished?

Adoptive parents, and anyone else, please take action.

Contact your federal Senators and Representatives and ask them to sign on to the Adoptee Citizenship Act. In the U.S. Senate, the bill is S. 4448.

Right now the Senate bill has a total of 7 co-sponsors. That’s right: only 7 U.S. Senators (out of 100) are willing to work for citizenship for all international adoptees. That’s just over 5% of our Senators.

In the U,S, House of Representatives (435 Members), the bill is H.R. 8617. So far, the bill has 23 co-sponsors, or also just about 5% of the House.

You can find your U.S. representative in the House here., and your U.S. Senators here. You can send a brief email saying you are their constituent and you want them to co-sponsor the Adoptee Citizenship Act. It’ll take just a few minutes, and it could make an enormous difference. Thank you.

Other actions are to support the work of organizations such as Adoptees For Justice, Alliance for Adoptee Citizenship, Adoptees United, the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and any others working to provide this basic right. Stay informed, and share the information with others.

Contribute to the Mutual Aid Fund of Adoptees For Justice to provide funds for deported adoptees, who are often struggling mightily.

If you have any connection to adoption, if you believe in adoption, if you care about adoptees, please take action.

Deported Adoptee Adam Crapser Has Strong Words for South Korean Government, Holt Adoption Agency

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Though many international adoptees have been deported, Adam Crapser may be the best known, due to press coverage and to his lawsuit against South Korea and Holt.

According to an Associated Press article, yesterday Adam “delivered a scathing denunciation of the Korean government and his adoption agency in a Seoul appeals court,” Now 49 years old, Adam was adopted in 1979, and deported back to South Korea in 2016. In 2019, he filed a lawsuit in Korean courts. He “accuses Holt and the Korean government of ‘malfeasance’ that contributed to his traumatic adoption experience in the U.S. He says he was abused and abandoned by two different pairs of adoptive parents who never filed his citizenship papers.”

Lawsuits can take many years to work their way through the system. The South Korean court ruled on Adam’s case in 2023; there are still additional matters pending. Per the AP article: “Crapser’s lawyer, Mina Kim, said her client was seeking 200 million won ($144,700) in damages and urged the court to see how the Korean government and Holt were supposedly liable for ‘their role in this illegal adoption, which was similar to human trafficking.’

The Seoul High Court will decide on the case on Jan. 8.

Crapser’s lawsuit accuses Holt of manipulating his paperwork to disguise him as an orphan despite the existence of a known birth mother, exposing him to abusive adopters by botching background checks and not following up.”

I’ve written for over 10 years about the unethical and tragic reality that the United States deports international adoptees who came here as children with the oversight of the both the U.S. and sending country. If for whatever reasons the children’s parents did not get their adopted children citizenship, the children, when they become adults, are subject to deportation if they commit a crime. The crimes can range from selling marijuana in the case of Joao Herbert, who was deported back to Brazil and murdered there in 2004, when he was 26 years old. He had been adopted when he was 8. Adam Crapser’s crimes were more serious. His childhood was more fraught as well, including multiple placements and the conviction of his adoptive parents for sexual abuse.

Since at least 2016, there has been legislation in the U.S. Congress to grant citizenship to all adoptees. It has still not passed, despite the efforts of organizations such as Adoptees For Justice and others.

Via Adoptees for Justice: “There are 18,603 Korean American adoptees alone who do not have American citizenship, according to the Korean Health Ministry.”

Further, “There are cases of individuals without citizenship who were adopted from 28 countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Ireland, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, South Korea, St. Kitts, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Vietnam.”

I also know of at least one deported adoptee in Morocco.

Being deported is a traumatic, lonely event. Often the adoptees don’t speak the language, don’t have any family or friends in their country of origin, and have tremendous struggles to make even a poverty-level living.

You can help by supporting the Congressional legislation, by sharing information about deported adoptees, and by donating to a Mutual Aid Fund set up by Adoptees for Justice.

Also, please support the work of the Adoptees United and their Citizenship Clinic.
They provide free and low cost services for intercountry adopted people who have US citizenship issues or questions. “The clinic’s services include legal screenings, consultation and advice about legal options, and legal representation to secure a Certificate of Citizenship.”

All of us in the international adoption community, and especially we adoptive parents, should step up to help all intercountry adoptees get citizenship, and to bring home those who have been deported,



Korean Birth Mother Sues Holt Agency and Government of Korea for Wrongful Adoption of Her Daughter

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Han Tae-soon is 70 years old. She says that in 1976, her four-year-old daughter was wrongfully sent to the United States for adoption.She is now suing the Holt Adoption agency as well as the government of South Korea.

Per the Associated Press article, this is the “first known case of a Korean birth parent suing for damages against the government and an adoption agency over the wrongful adoption of their child.”

From the article: “Han accuses Holt Children’s Services, South Korea’s biggest adoption agency, of facilitating (her daughter Laurie) Bender’s adoption without checking her background. Her lawyers said the Jechon Children’s Home made no effort to find the parents after Bender was placed at the facility by police in May 1975, a day after Han reported her as missing. 

In her adoption papers, Bender, named Shin Gyeong-ha at birth, is described as an abandoned orphan with no known parents. Under a new Korean name made by the orphanage, Baik Kyong Hwa, she was sent to the United States in February 1976. 

“For 44 years, I wandered and searched for my child, but the joy of meeting her was only momentary and now I am in so much pain because we can’t communicate in the same language,” Han said, fighting back tears. 

“It turns out they didn’t make an effort to find her clearly existing parents and instead disguised her as an orphan for adoption abroad. I want the government and Holt to explain to us how this happened.” 

The AP article notes that “In 2019, Adam Crapser became the first Korean adoptee to sue the South Korean government and an adoption agency for damages, accusing them of mishandling his adoption to the United States, where he faced legal troubles after surviving an abusive childhood before being deported in 2016.

After four years of hearings, the Seoul Central District Court last year ordered Crapser’s adoption agency, Holt, to pay him 100 million won ($74,000) in damages for failing to inform his adopters they needed to take separate steps to obtain his citizenship after his adoption was approved by a state court. 

However, the court dismissed Crapser’s accusations against the Korean government over alleged monitoring and due diligence failures. The case is now with the Seoul High Court after both Crapser and Holt appealed.”

Lawsuits like these in Korea and elsewhere can take a long time to work their way through the system. I hope that Adam Crapser, Han Tae-soon, and her daughter find justice.

A New Adoptee-Therapist, Specializing in Adoption, Eating Disorders, and More

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I’ve known Aselefech Evans since 1994, when she arrived for adoption in the United States from Ethiopia. She and her twin sister are my beloved daughters. Through the years, I have seen Aselefech grow and work hard, always staying true to herself, her family (around the globe), her heritage, her empathy, and her compassion.

She is now available as a therapist, and I have no doubts she will bring insights, understanding, and resources to those with whom she works.

She “leans on somatics (body-based therapy), meditation, and ancestral exploration while drawing from Cognitive Behavioral therapy and Mindfulness…tools which have transformed her own healing and sense of belonging.”

She is in the process of setting up her private practice, which is exciting. Meanwhile, she is currently available to see clients through Alluvial Counseling, taking major insurances.

Aselefech works with youth 16+ and adults. She has a particular interest and expertise supporting people impacted by family separation, adoption, immigration, eating disorders, racial trauma, grief, workplace burnout, anxiety, and depression, and those impacted by oppression such as racism, ableism, sexism, classism, queerphobia, and fatphobia. 

Aselefech received her Bachelor’s in Sociology with a focus in Black Studies from Bowie State, a Historically Black College in Bowie, MD. In 2022, she completed her MSW with an emphasis in Integrative Health and Mental Health from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

She can be booked through Psychology Today and Alluvial Counseling.

I am, of course, very proud of Aselefech. Beyond my personal perspective, having an empathetic, Black, immigrant, adoptee, woman, insightful, knowledgable therapist in the community is wonderful beyond words.