As the calendar turns from May into June, the rhythm of our households naturally shifts. We move away from the multi-layered reflections of Mother’s Day and step into a month dominated by the imagery of Father’s Day.

For many families connected by transracial adoption, a traditional calendar grid rarely tells the whole story.

Speaking as an adopted person who has lived the lifelong journey of navigating adoption, I can tell you firsthand that Father’s Day seldom fits into a neat, perfect little box. June invites us to notice the fathers and father-figures who shape an adopted person’s life through presence, absence, consistency, or complexity. While fathering is often less openly acknowledged in adoption spaces than mothering, it plays a massive, undeniable role in our identity development and core sense of belonging. Belonging deepens when every single influence on who we are becoming is respected and named without hierarchy or erasure.

Navigating the Tenderness of Fatherhood

Because fatherhood moves in many directions, June can surface silence, unanswered questions, or mixed emotions. From the adopted person’s perspective, Father’s Day can bring up a simultaneous wave of curiosity, grief, loyalty, pride, and confusion, especially around our original.

I have noticed the instinct of caregivers is often to try and resolve these feelings for children. But June asks you to resist the transactional fixing and instead, you are called to practice true  inclusion, curiosity, and care.

To hold space for the full truth of fathering, it helps to start by checking in with your internal parenting:

• Examine Language: Do you speak differently about fathers of origin than you do about mothers of origin? If you notice you are, do you understand why? 

• Acknowledge the Absence: Remember that absence is still a form of influence. Acknowledging a birth father’s place in a child's history, regardless of how much information you have, signals to a child that no part of their narrative has to be hidden.

• Validate, Don't Fix: The goal isn't to tie the day up with a perfect bow, but to build a bridge. Adopted children need to know they can hold love for the adoptive fathers walking beside them daily, while safely wondering about the fathers who came before.

Finding the Bridge at Camp 2026

Building these bridges and navigating these tender conversations isn't work meant to be done in isolation. You cannot hold the complexity entirely on your own within the walls of your house; you need a community to help.

This is precisely why the Together on the Journey community gathers.  Camp is the physical space where the quiet, internal work you do at home becomes a tangible and even more connected reality.

For adoptive fathers, camp offers invaluable, necessary relationships. It is a space where men can step into space with other fathers who are navigating the exact same joys, questions, and responsibilities. It’s a place to unpack assumptions about fathering, gain real-world tools, and stand together as allies for children.

Claim Your Space This Summer

The countdown to Athens, Ohio is officially on, and spots are nearly filled. Don’t wait, let’s walk this journey together.

Most Mother’s Day cards are written for a world of "one." One mother, one bond, one uncomplicated story. But my life has always been a story of "many."

Before I reached the arms of the mother who raised me, I was held by Helen, my mother of origin. Next, a foster mother held and looked after me. For those first few precious months, she was the steward of my safety. When it was time for me to leave, she didn't simply hand me over; she left detailed notes of my routine and wrote in those notes that I was very hard to give up.

In the adoption community, we often talk about the "two mothers" - the mother of origin and the mother of experience. But this May, I want us to look at the whole ecology of care. I call May the "mother of all months" not just because of the emotional tension, but because it forces us to recognize that for an adopted person, care comes from many hands.

Auditing Your Mothering Landscape

To move beyond the standard Mother's Day narrative, I invite you to think about mothering not as a static identity, but as a cultural practice that needs to be "customized" for the child entrusted to you. Ask yourself:

• What is my "Mothering Heritage"? We often parent the way we were parented. But does the child in your home—with their unique history, culture, and trauma—need a different kind of mothering than the one you received?

• Am I the Bridge or the Destination? You are the steward of connections, not the person erasing them. Are you helping your child maintain the ties to their "many hands," or are you asking them to choose just one?

• Who Validates My Motherhood? If you rely on your child to validate your role through their gratitude or performance on Mother’s Day, you are placing a weight on them they weren't meant to carry. Own your celebration so they don’t have that extra expectation.   

This May, I am holding space for the original mother I miss in my bones, the foster mother who held me in those first few months, and the mother whose heart and confidence sustained me.

When we embrace the "many," we stop competing with the past and start building a more honest and healthy future where there doesn't have to be only one mother or mother figure.

Register for Together on the Journey Family Camp 2026

"I wish my parents had more tools in their parenting toolbox." I said this in a recent podcast, and it’s the reason TRJ Family Camp exists. We are down to our final few spots!

Featured Presenter: Bryan Post We are thrilled to welcome back Bryan Post! Bryan will lead sessions on his "Love-Based Parenting" model. If you’ve struggled with the "Great Behavior Breakdown," Bryan’s trauma-informed approach is the tool you’ve been looking for.

Register today—only a few spots remain!

Don’t Miss Our May Parent Session!

Join us for our monthly space of support and connection.

What: TRJ Parent Support & Connection Session

When: Wednesday, May 13th | 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST

Where: Online via Zoom

Sign Up Here

Growing up in rural New England, the phrase “April showers bring May flowers” was a meteorological fact. It usually rained a lot in April, then things bloomed in May. But as I got older, I realized people used that line to suggest that hardship eventually gives way to joy. As a Black/bi-racial transracially adopted person in a majority white community, feeling sadness and discomfort wasn't seasonal—it was a regular feeling all year long.

The tears showered down my cheeks easily. I cried when I was sad, mad, hurt, or confused. Sometimes I had no idea why I was crying.

As I grew, I was labeled a "cry baby," "dramatic," and an "attention-seeker." My emotions were in direct contrast to my adoptive family, where folks almost never cried. What they didn't understand was that my tears weren't manufactured simply for attention; they were the manifestation of emotional pain and confusion related to ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, and identity confusion.

In the 70s, child welfare professionals didn't talk to adoptive parents about the impact of early life trauma or separation. The conventional wisdom was that a baby under a year old should just be "happy and well” after being adopted.

The Data Behind the "Rain" Today, we have the data to understand what I felt then. Research from the Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) underscores the unique mental health journey of our community:

• Higher Utilization: Adopted children are 2 to 5 times more likely to be referred for mental health services compared to their non-adopted peers.

• Complex Origins: Statistics show that roughly 12% to 14% of adopted children are diagnosed with ADHD, and many experience symptoms related to post-traumatic stress, often rooted in early separation and loss.

• The Need for Support: Studies indicate that up to 70% of adoptive families seek some form of therapeutic support to navigate the complexities of identity, attachment, and trauma.

These numbers aren't meant to cause alarm; they are meant to offer validation. They prove that the "April showers" of emotion many adopted children experience are a predictable part of their development and healing.

Today, I still cry a lot. But now I know why.

There is a lot to cry about these days, and the state of the world leaves many of us at a loss. But I have learned that there are "May flowers" of truth and brightness on the other side of that release. We can create more of that for children when, as caregivers and parents, we resist the urge to label them and instead recognize the sadness is the impact of trauma.

Navigating the "April Showers" at Home

To help children move from the "storm" to the "bloom," consider these shifts in perspective:

• Audit the Labels: When a child is highly emotional, notice if you instinctively use words like "dramatic" or "attention-seeking." Replace those labels with an acknowledgment of stress and identity bewilderment.

• The "Both/And" of Tears: Remember that a child can love the family that is present and still feel deep grief for their origins. Tears are not a rejection of you; they are a recognition of pain and emotion.

• Check Your Own "Weather": Before reacting to a child’s emotions, check your own emotional "grip" connected to adoption.  Are you comfortable with sadness? Your ability to sit with your own "April showers" can determine how safe your child feels in theirs.

• Create Safe Release Zones: Normalize that crying is a necessary, beautiful release. Sometimes, just sitting with a child in their "rain" without trying to "fix" it is the most healing thing you can do.

Meet Our Featured Presenter for Camp 2026: Bryan Post

We are thrilled to announce that Bryan Post will be joining us at camp again this year! An adopted person and former foster youth himself, Bryan is one of America’s foremost experts on child behavior and adoption.

Bryan’s "Love-Based Parenting" model is a paradigm shift. He moves away from traditional behavior modification and focuses on the Stress Model—helping parents understand that what looks like "acting out" is actually a brain-based response to fear and trauma. Having Bryan with us is a game-changer for any parent who has felt exhausted by the "Great Behavior Breakdown."

Register for Together on the Journey Family Camp now to secure your spot! We’ll be announcing more presenters in the coming weeks. Register Now!

Don’t Miss Our April Parent Session!

Join us for the TRJ Monthly Parent Meet-up. We welcome parents and extended family to the session.

• What: TRJ Parent Support & Connection Session

• When: Wednesday, April 15th | 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST

• Where: Online via Zoom

• Sign Up: Head to the calendar to register and receive the link.

Every March, as the world turns green and messages of "luck" fill the air, I find myself reflecting on the complicated relationship between adoption and the four-leaf clover. For years, I’ve written about the "lucky leprechaun dust" society sprinkles over adoption to mask its inherent loss. But this year, in my conversations with adoptive families, a deeper, more practical theme has emerged: the complexity of connections to family of origin and the true meaning of openness.

I often hear adoptive parents say, "I’ll help them connect when they’re older and they ask for it." But let me offer some truth from my lived experience as a 54-year-old transracially adopted person in partial reunion: When parents wait for the child to ask, they are inadvertently giving the child the job of managing the adults’ discomfort. If we don’t talk about a mother of origin who can’t stay in touch, or a father of origin who is "unreliable," the child assumes those people—and by extension, those parts of themselves—are "unlucky" or "bad."

The data reflects this necessity for transparency. During my time at the Donaldson Adoption Institute (DAI), we released a landmark report, "Openness in Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma to Knowledge and Connections," which fundamentally changed the conversation. The research emphasizes that openness helps children resolve "genetic bewilderment" and that adolescents with ongoing contact report higher satisfaction with their adoption than those with no contact.

Essentially, even when contact is "complex," having the information and the connection is what allows a child to build a healthy, integrated identity. Research consistently shows that "communicative openness"—the ability to talk freely about the hard stuff—is linked to better self-esteem. Yet, while roughly 95% of domestic infant adoptions now involve some level of openness, the "quality" of that openness varies wildly when life gets hard. It’s easy to be open when families are "doing well." It takes a lot of courage and work to stay connected when they aren't.

To navigate this, I’ve developed a L.U.C.K.Y. framework for parents to use when the family of origin feels like a burden rather than a blessing:

• L – Listen to the Complexity. Don't try to "fix" the fact that birth parents didn't call. Listen to the disappointment while managing your own, and validate that it is hard.

• U – Understand the Loss. Recognize that even if your home is a sanctuary, the "unluckiness" of the original separation remains a foundational piece of your child's experience.

• C – Create Agency. Don't wait for them to ask. Bring up family of origin in natural ways. "I wonder if your birth mom liked this kind of music, too?"

• K – Keep the Connection (Where Safe). Even if physical contact isn't possible, keep the narrative connection alive. Share the "good" they carry forward from them.

• Y – Yield to the Journey. Accept that you cannot control the outcome of these relationships. Your job is to be the steady anchor while you and your child navigate the layers of their origins.

Ultimately, as the parents, you are in charge of keeping openness in the many layers of adoption.  This includes making sure you are proactively keeping track of where family of origin are and how they are doing before there is a reconnect with the children you are parenting.  This may include staying in touch with family of origin even when the child entrusted to you wishes not to be.  

In my own journey, I found my mother of origin as an adult, only to learn that physical violence was part of my conception and she wasn't in a position to embrace me. It was gut-wrenching, and it didn't feel "lucky" in any way. But over time, with a lot of work I did without my adoptive parents, I can see the humanity in her struggle to include me in her life—both in the beginning and when I finally found her.

We are not defined by the worst circumstances of our beginnings. We are shaped by the honesty, humanness, and love with which we carry those experiences forward. This March, let’s stop looking for the pot of gold and start honoring the rainbow—in all its colors, even the dark ones. I wished my parents and society had helped me learn this so much earlier in my life.

Join TRJ for our next all-family session where you and your children are welcome to join. For camp families, you’ll see familiar faces including beloved counselors. For new families, you’ll get to know our community and we can’t wait to meet you.

Wednesday, March 11th 7:30-8:30 PM EST

https://cwlibrary.childwelfare.gov/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991000491399707651/01CWIG_INST:01CWI

February holds Valentine’s Day and Black History Month, making it both tender and complex. It carries messages of romance and belonging alongside reminders of racial harm, resistance, and resilience. It holds celebration and grief, connection and questions—often all at the same time.

This year, February arrives in a moment when life in the United States feels especially unsteady. We are witnessing more public harm to Black and Brown communities, more overt racism in leadership, more family separation, and more fear layered into daily life. Children are not shielded from this. They are seeing it. They are absorbing it. They are asking questions—out loud and silently, through their behavior, their bodies, and their relationships.

For parents who deeply love the children entrusted to them through adoption, this is not the moment for silence.

Growing up, my parents loved me deeply. They did not realize that as a Black child raised in a white family, I needed a different kind of protection than my siblings who were white and born to them. That gap between love and protection is not about blame—it is about awareness, history, and responsibility. And it is one that many transracially adopted people carry quietly into adulthood.

Many adopted people grow up hearing, “You were so loved.” Love is often named as the motivation for adoption—by parents of origin and by adoptive parents. That can be true and still deeply incomplete. As an adopted person, I wanted proof. I was told my mother of origin loved me, but my adoptive parents had never met her. How could anyone know something so important about someone they had never known? And what about children separated from family because of abuse, neglect, poverty, or systemic failure—can love exist alongside fear, shame, or harm? How does a child build a grounded understanding of love when so much of their beginning is unknown, simplified, or withheld?

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This is why love must now be practiced as protection.

Many transracially adopted people grew up in majority-white environments where they were included but not truly protected. Racism showed up in daily life—sometimes loud, often subtle, always cumulative—and adults missed it, minimized it, or explained it away. Protection was not just about slurs. It was about the accumulation of moments: being stared at or singled out, comments brushed off as “no big deal,” teachers misreading tone or intent, friends’ parents treating you differently, being the only one who looks like you again and again.

There is another layer families don’t always name—sexualization and exposure. Black and Brown children, especially Black girls and mixed-race girls, are often treated as older than they are, watched differently, commented on differently, and perceived through stereotypes they did not create. In white spaces, they can be invisible and hyper-visible at the same time. This is not oversensitivity. It is a lived reality.

So love must ask a harder question: Is my child protected—not just inside our home, but in the spaces our home sends them into, and in the world they are watching unfold?

There is another truth transracially adopted people often carry quietly: Black children raised in white households need to see their parents loving Black people—not just loving them. Because loving your child is not the same as loving Blackness. It is not the same as loving Black community. It is not the same as being safe or trusted in Black spaces. Children can feel the difference.

So I want to ask a question that may land hard, especially at this moment: White adoptive parents—have you ever loved a Black person? Not admired from afar. Not worked alongside. Not supported in theory. Have you loved a Black person in a way that required something of you—accountability, consistency, humility, change? Have you stayed in spaces where you were not centered? Have you loved in a way that cost you comfort or approval?

If the answer is no, this is not a shameful question. It is a protection question. Because if your child is the first Black person you have ever deeply loved, your child may also become your first teacher, your first mirror, your first real proximity to Blackness. That is too much for a child to carry—especially in a world that is already asking too much of them.

This moment calls for activist love. For white adoptive parents raising Black and Brown children, being “not racist” is not enough. Being nice is not enough. Private love is not enough. Racism is not private, and children cannot love their way out of systems that were never built to protect them.

Activist love is not performative. It is daily and practiced. It shows up in believing your child the first time. In interrupting racism even when it is uncomfortable. In advocating in schools, faith spaces, teams, neighborhoods, and extended family. In choosing your child over other people’s comfort. In building real, mutual relationships with Black adults. In repairing harm without asking children to carry it.

February reminds us that love is something we feel and it’s something we must practice. And in transracial adoption, love must be practiced as protection. Let this month be both an invitation and challenge. Choose love that tells the truth. Choose love that stretches beyond your child. Choose love that becomes action.

Because your child deserves more than celebration. They deserve a family willing to stand between them and harm—with courage, consistency, and a love big enough to act.

This post is from our January 2026 newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, as well as information about our annual TRJ Family Camp and our monthly Zoom call providing support for our transracial adoption parents, please subscribe.