All My Love: Stories of Hope, Inspiration & Support From A Birth Mother
96 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 9 hours ago -coming soon
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Episodes
Waiting To Adopt During the Holidays
July 14, 2024 19:24 - 35 minutes - 32.7 MB“During the holidays, for me, it was really different each season. Sometimes I really wanted and needed the love and excitement that came from those family gatherings with all the babies everywhere. And then other times it was really hard and brought a lot...
506: More Facets of Adoption Math with Adoptee Torie DiMartile (Part 2)
July 05, 2024 07:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBIn this much anticipated episode, we resume our conversation with adoptee and adoption educator Torie DiMartile on adoption math that adoptees have to deal with, the worlds they must precariously straddle throughout their lives, the opposing emotions they...
505: The Many Facets of Adoptee Math
June 07, 2024 07:00 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBWe all know from 1st grade math that a half plus a half equals 1. But for adoptees, the math doesn’t always add up the way we think it will. At one time I thought that if I could just incorporate my children’s first families into ours, then Tessa and Re...
"Let’s Keep Going!" Finding the Motivation and Resolve to Adopt
May 16, 2024 07:00 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MBWhen everything you’ve tried has failed and you’ve waited longer than you had ever imagined, where will you find the motivation to continue to try and adopt? If you’ve reached your lowest point, will you be able to push through? We all want to believe th...
Adopting Out of State
May 09, 2024 17:00 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBOver the last few episodes, we’ve focused on openness in adoption – both in the immediate time of placement, shortly thereafter, and longer term. Today, we’re going to return to one element of the adoption process itself, and that’s the ICPC, which stand...
504: 22 Years of Lessons Learned from Two Moms in One Open Adoption
May 03, 2024 07:00 - 48 minutes - 44.2 MBThe moment you become a parent, time seems to stop and you can’t see beyond the sweet baby or toddler you have before you, looking up at you with those big eyes that say you are everything. Those days of full dependence on you feel like they may go on fore...
Choosing the Right Adoption Profile Photos
April 16, 2024 19:00 - 33 minutes - 31 MBFrom dating sites to job boards and social platforms like Facebook, choosing the right photo for yourself has become a very big deal. Adoption profiles are no different. Making a strong first impression can be the start of a life-changing adoption conn...
503: A Deeper Look into Adoption and the Bible
April 05, 2024 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBMy new book Adoption Unfiltered, has three chapters in it devoted to religion and adoption, with my co-authors and I each researching and covering a chapter. Sara Easterly, an adoptee and a Christian, wrote about religion’s pain points for adoptees. Kelsey...
All About Adoption Outreach & Marketing
March 13, 2024 07:00 - 38 minutes - 25.4 MBCongratulations. You are adopting! And now that it is official, like all other adoptive parents in your position, you will be looking to make a life-changing connection with someone who is placing her child for adoption. But how will you do it? Relyi...
502: Exploring the Full Range of Adoptee Emotions
March 01, 2024 08:00 - 37 minutes - 35 MBEarly in my adoptive parenting days, when my kids were first becoming able to talk about their adoptedness and continuing through their adolescence, I was on alert for signs that adoption had hurt them. I’d been listening to adult adoptees and I knew that...
Introducing The Adoptimist Way
February 23, 2024 08:00 - 55 seconds - 862 KBWhat is an Adoptimist? It's someone with the right mindset for adopting a child. You can’t just ‘want to adopt’. You have to be willing to put that desire into action, into outreach, into total positivity while trying the very best you can to make it hap...
Learning How To Keep Your Open Adoption Open
February 20, 2024 08:00 - 23 minutes - 21.6 MB"Expect your plans to change. You don't know what your open adoption is going to look like for a lifetime. Don't worry about making plans for a year, or two years, or three. Just worry about the next three visits instead." - Linda Sexton, Open Adoption Pio...
501: What We Get Wrong About Same-Race Adoption
February 02, 2024 08:00 - 41 minutes - 38.4 MBWelcome to Season 5 of Adoption: The Long View! This month's guest is someone I made a bad first impression on (in my own head, anyway) because of an assumption I made about her that turned out to be wrong. Adoptee and content creator Jennifer Dyan Ghost...
Power Dynamics in Adoptive Parenting
January 24, 2024 22:00 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBA critical element of open adoption relationships - and one you may not have previously considered - is the power differential in the birth parent / adoptive parent relationship. This power differential is one that fluctuates over time and it can have a...
Improving Adoptive and Birth Parent Relationships
December 15, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MB"The way families approach to children in this space that they are hoping to adopt is often leading with this idea of ownership. And you see that in just language people use... While it feels like it could just be looked at as semantics, it's really reflec...
410: Best Advice of Adoption Experts from Season 4 + Something EXTRA
December 01, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBIt’s December of 2023, which means that my new book, Adoption Unfiltered, written with Sara Easterly, an adoptee, and Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, a birth parent, is finally available! The first part of this episode is our traditional season-closing digest...
Supporting Your Spouse & Staying Flexible During The Adoption Wait
November 15, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MB“ I think a lot of times without realizing it, adoptive parents start the story from where we (adoptive parents) started our story, but for the adoptee, it starts when they're conceived. And so I wanted my daughter in the story to be in her birth mother's...
409: Unfiltering Adoption: What's Been Filtered From Us Hurts Us
November 03, 2023 07:00 - 42 minutes - 38.8 MBThis is a really special episode for me because not only am I the host, as I always am, I am also a guest. I’m so excited to announce on Adoption: The Long View, that within a month, a book I, along with my two guests, have spent the last 3 years envisio...
The Impact of Social Media on Adoption Matches
October 30, 2023 07:00 - 25 minutes - 23.1 MBSocial media has changed just about every aspect of our lives. Adoption is no exception. We talked on a previous episode about using social media for outreach to expectant moms with the goal of finding a match. Today, we’re going to talk about some other...
408: The Dance of Adoptive Parenting: When to Lead & When to Follow
October 06, 2023 07:00 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MBOne of the distinctions we continually make here on Adoption: The Long View is the difference between "open adoption" and "openness in adoption." The former typically means having some sort of information about or contact with birth family, but the latte...
407: What My Adoptive Parents Did - and Didn't - Do Well
September 01, 2023 07:00 - 54 minutes - 49.9 MBSo many parents end up wishing they'd had a time machine to go back and know earlier what we didn’t know then about parenting, which is the whole premise of this podcast – to take the long view. With adoptive parenting, that wish can be even stronger, be...
Staying Encouraged When Your Adoption Profile Isn’t Chosen
August 08, 2023 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MB“You do not give up on parenthood. If this is something you want to do...there are people like us who will help you. We will encourage you. We will read your story and celebrate you...Every day I want to build more families. I want to take this financial p...
406: Talking About Race with Adoptees
August 04, 2023 07:00 - 41 minutes - 38.3 MBParenting a child of a race different from yours adds a whole new element to adoptive parenting. While this episode does focus on raising an interracial adoptee (also called a transracial adoptee), becoming more comfortable with talking about race is a w...
What Open Adoption Really Looks Like
July 05, 2023 07:00 - 24 minutes - 22.2 MBOpen adoption refers to the level of contact and relationships between the adoptive family and the birth family. Having some form of contact is where many adoptions will end up. Whether it is via text, phone calls, or even some social media, a relationsh...
Changing the "Lucky Child" Adoption Narrative
June 07, 2023 20:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MB"Whether our daughter had stayed with her birth family, whether she ended up with us, whether she ended up with any of the hundreds of other prospective adoptive families that were waiting to adopt at the same time we were, she was always going to be l...
405: How to Be a Therapeutic Adoptive Parent
June 02, 2023 07:00 - 48 minutes - 44.8 MBIf you’ve been listening here long, you know that to believe that adoptive parenting is no different from regular old parenting will likely end up with you feeling blindsided some day, without tools and without strategies. This is because all adoptions...
404: Guilt, Shame, and Boundaries in Adoption
May 05, 2023 07:00 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBOne thing we know is that adoption comes out of a broken attachment, that the baby or child we parent has already lost something primal, that biological connection to the first mother, as well as the genetic connection to her and to the baby’s first fa...
Grieving & Recovering From a Disrupted Adoption
April 26, 2023 07:00 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBA disrupted adoption is when a waiting adoptive family and an expectant family or a child eligible for adoption are matched, but the adoption is stopped at some point before finalization. Disrupted adoptions often result in the child being returned to...
The Joys and Imperfections of Transracial Adoption
April 24, 2023 07:00 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBTransracial Adoption can make some people uncomfortable. There are wide-ranging views on the topic: from “love is enough and you shouldn't have to worry about anything else,” to “You're not doing enough if you don't relocate and live a lifestyle in whi...
403: Why an Adoptee's Truth Matters More than a Parent's Comfort
April 07, 2023 07:00 - 53 minutes - 49.2 MBWhy are truth and trust so important in adoptive families? In all families, really? Isn’t it OK sometimes to keep some things under wraps, for someone’s own good? There's a philosophical paradox called sorites based on the idea that no grain of sand i...
How An Adoption Match Gets Made
March 23, 2023 19:00 - 22 minutes - 20.3 MBHave you ever wondered how an adoption match gets made? In this illuminating conversation with Steffany Aye, Founder & Executive Director of Adoption & Beyond, one of the most mysterious aspects of the adopting process - the adoption match - is explain...
How To Empower Yourself While You Wait To Adopt
March 16, 2023 07:00 - 42 minutes - 39.3 MB“We trust the process. We trust the woman who's making this decision. And we don't want to try to control it...There's so much you feel you can control, but, it's a bit of an illusion” – Stephanie Casaubon, Author & Empowerment Coach In this episode,...
402: YES to Continuing Education for Adoptive Parenting & NO to Adoption Echo Chambers
March 03, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBAdoptive parenting has this in common with regular old parenting: just when you start to feel like you’ve mastered a stage, like babyhood, toddlerhood, tweenhood, or beyond, your child keeps growing and enters a new stage. And you’re back at square one...
Everything You Need to Know About Breastfeeding Your Adopted Baby
February 21, 2023 08:00 - 25 minutes - 22.9 MBAdoptive Breastfeeding is an incredible experience that allows mothers who have adopted babies to nourish them directly from their own bodies—just like any other mother would do after giving birth naturally. Adoptive Breastfeeding requires early preparatio...
Living Open Adoption Fearlessly & Faithfully
February 08, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBWhen Kat started the adoption process: “I feared it would confuse my child. I feared that he would love his birth family more than me and not think of me as his mom. I feared that they would be too involved in our lives.”--Kat Monahan “Initially y...
401: An Adoptee, Birth Mom, & Adoption Professional All in One
February 03, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 59.3 MBThere are very few people who have the multi-perspectives and lived experience in adoption that Rebecca Ricardo has. Rebecca joined her family through adoption – this means she is an adoptee. As a young teen she placed her son for adoption, embarking o...
Post-Adoption Depression Is Real
January 19, 2023 08:00 - 31 minutes - 28.9 MBAfter you’ve adopted, everyone expects it to be an incredibly joyous time. And it is! But adoptive parents aren’t immune to the vast array of emotions that all parents feel. Post-Adoption Depression is very real - just as real as postpartum depression. Aft...
How To Gain Support From Family & Friends For Your Adoption
December 12, 2022 08:00 - 25 minutes - 23.1 MBYour family and friends may have outdated beliefs about adoption. They may not even support your decision to adopt! Be sure to share this podcast with them. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the adoption basics, including what your family and frie...
310: The Best Advice for Adoptive Parents from Season 3
December 02, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBAs we wrap up 2022, we also wrap up Season 3. This year, we have heard from seven adoptees, one birth parent, four adoptive parents, two people who got OFF the adoption roller coaster, and two people in differing roles within their interracial families. We...
309: How to Talk Open Adoption with Young Children
November 04, 2022 07:00 - 39 minutes - 36.3 MBIt’s National Adoption Awareness Month, and we can think of no better way to honor it than to listen to an adoptee, especially one who is also raising an adoptee. Our guest this month was adopted and grew up in the closed adoption era and is now an advoca...
Preparing For The Hospital Experience: What Waiting Adoptive Families Need to Know About Creating A Birth Plan
October 19, 2022 19:00 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MB"In that moment I felt like he was not quite mine yet, he was the son of his birth parents. So I didn’t want to burst into a room with a suitcase full of clothes."-- Ashley Mendoza "My experience was awful at the hospital, I won’t sugarcoat it. And it is...
How And When To Share Your Adoption Plans: Dealing with unexpected reactions when you announce your adoption intentions to family & friends
October 10, 2022 21:00 - 28 minutes - 26.2 MBLearn how to tell your family and friends that you intend to adopt. While they will often be excited and want what is best for you, family and friends may not fully understand the adoption process. And their reaction may not always be what you were hoping...
308: The Challenges of Transracial Adoptive Parenting
September 30, 2022 07:00 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBParenting is a Big Deal. But adoptive parenting? Well, that brings a whole other layer to plain old parenting. Add in a transracial element? Wrap another layer around an already wrapped Big Deal. Separation from original parents, no matter how necessary or...
Finding Support & Community While Waiting To Adopt: A Conversation With The Infant Adoption Guide's Tim Elder
September 19, 2022 17:00 - 32 minutes - 29.3 MB“We want the confidence that we can do it and know that it’s going to work out okay. And you don’t know. But, that’s why I strongly encourage community for everybody because those people get you.” – Tim Elder, Founder of The Infant Adoption Guide In this...
Birth Father Rights In Adoption: An interview with Amy Hickman of Hausmann & Hickman, P.A.
September 12, 2022 19:00 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBMuch of the adoption process is focused on the expectant mom (birth mom). In many cases, the birth father is unknown, unidentified, or his whereabouts are unknown. But there are times where he is present and actively involved in the process. So addressing...
307: Adoption in Interracial & LGBTQ+ Families: An Interview with Interracial Adoptee Tony Hynes
September 02, 2022 07:00 - 57 minutes - 52.7 MBTony Hynes is an interracial adoptee whose adoption case reached the US Supreme Court in the 1990s. While his case was knocked down to a lower court, Tony Hynes’ adoption ended up in a rare arrangement – joint custody between his Black birth grandmother an...
Non-Traditional Adoptive Families: Adoption Help & Advice for LGBTQ, Single-Parents, and Other Non-Traditional Adoptive Parents
August 17, 2022 18:00 - 21 minutes - 19.9 MBSingle parent, same-sex, older couples, and other non-traditional adoptive families are the focus of this adoption podcast. Today's podcast discusses recent trends such as the growing number of same-sex parents and single women who are adopting. As these...
306: What if Adopting Doesn't Work Out?: Exploring The Uncharted Exit Ramp of Adoption
July 29, 2022 07:00 - 47 minutes - 43.1 MBIt's estimated that there are between 40 and 100 families waiting for every available infant placement. The odds are not in everyone’s favor, and at least some of the people hoping to adopt a newborn will just not be able to. That’s a hard truth. What happ...
Keeping Your Relationship Strong While Adopting: How to manage the ups and downs with your partner as you try to adopt a child
July 08, 2022 20:00 - 25 minutes - 22.9 MBAdoption is a stressful, life-altering and life-changing experience. It is unrealistic to think that you and your partner will always be in agreement about every part of your adoption. But the relationship with your partner during the adoption process must...
Loss & Grief On The Path To Adoption
June 28, 2022 07:00 - 21 minutes - 20.1 MBIt could be that you arrived here, at this very episode, due to a loss of some kind. We take a look at different life experiences that can bring about or open up adoption as a more-specific option for family building. Would it surprise you to know that we...