“What does it mean to build bridges within the adoption community?”
This is the question that Adoption Mosaic Executive Director Astrid Dabbeni addresses in our newest video blog. To view other videos please visit Adoption Mosaic’s YouTube channel.
Adoption disruption and dissolution has received much attention from the media in recent months due to several high-profile cases. However, disruption and dissolution is nothing new in the world of domestic and international adoption. Amid all the media buzz, thorough examination of the issue has been lacking. Remedying this, Dawn Friedman has written a very important article. The Myth of the Forever Family; When Adoption Falls Apart was published today in Brain Child magazine. Adoption Mosaic’s Executive Director Astrid Dabbeni is quoted in the article.
From the article:
“…in other ways, adoption myths betray our children by giving lie to their origins. They are not born to us. We do not create them. They arrive to our families with histories that precede their lives with us. Embracing our children means embracing their stories even when they are difficult to hear.
The hard truth is that adoption is not just like giving birth. It is rarely as straightforward. And as much as we would like to think otherwise, not all forever families are forever.”“Katie Valentino, a licensed professional clinical counselor, worked as an adoption preservation specialist for a federally sponsored program until it lost funding. She is now in private practice in Bloomingdale, Illinois.
‘People think it can’t be the child’s fault; it has to be the parent’s fault,’ Valentino said. ‘But I think the commonalities [in adoption terminations] are more the lack of support and the extreme nature of the child’s background. Social workers have to really identify and speak the truth about how difficult these kids might be. If we have the supports in place, these families and these kids could do so much better.’”
And in the afterward:
“As I worked on this piece I became increasingly frustrated and saddened by the lack of information and support both for pre-adoptive and post-adoptive families. Adoption agency websites usually have glowing stories of new families and pictures of adorable children cradled in their new parents’ arms, but very few have concrete information about preparing for children who have suffered the tremendous loss and trauma that most of these kids suffer. I feel like we’re setting families up. Adoption can be a wonderful thing but unless prospective parents go into it with their eyes open and post-adoption services at the ready, how can we blame those families that fall apart?”
One of the core values at Adoption Mosaic is the goal to support and be inclusive of all members of the adoption community, not just in words, but in action. It’s a pretty rare, and undoubtedly admirable ideal, and we could talk for a while about how cool it is, but what I want to mention is how very hard it is.
It is not true of every one, however, many people in the adoption triad don’t regularly rub shoulders with other triad members. Though I count other adoptees to be some of my closest friends, with the exception of family, I hadn’t come into much contact with other triad or community members until I became involved with Adoption Mosaic almost 5 years ago.
When I say it’s hard, what I’m talking about is the subtle (and not very subtle) walls that exist between triad members. I’m talking about the dynamics between white folks and people of color. I’m talking about generational differences and how they shade respect. And I am talking about how deeply, and intensely personal, adoption is to every individual involved and how much everyone has at stake.
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