16 Nov 2020

Denver Open Adoption Expert Launches Podcast for Adoptive Parents

In time for National Adoption Awareness Month, Mile High Mama Lori Holden has unveiled a new podcast called Adoption: The Long View. Sponsored by Adopting.com, Lori’s podcast helps adopting and adoptive parents understand that filling the crib is just the beginning of the journey, not the end.

“It’s like the wedding versus the marriage,” Lori says from a Denver-area suburb. “Once you are legally joined to your beloved child, your journey is not over. It’s the beginning of the much longer journey. This podcast covers many of the things parents need to know early on to navigate adoptive parenting over the long view. That means from the baby years to the toddler years, through the school years and teenage years and into young adulthood. With some amazing guests, we cover what I’ve learned from listening to adopted people and others over the last 20 years, perspectives I wish I’d known at the beginning.”

Lori, mom-by-adoption to a son and daughter aged 17 and 19, is a longtime writer at LavenderLuz.com as well as here at Mile High Mamas. Senator Michael Bennet honored her as an Angel in Adoption® in 2018. Her book The Open-Hearted-Way to Open Adoption, is on required reading lists of adoption agencies around the country, as it helps parents shift from an Either/Or mindset to a BothAnd heartset. That shift in orientation, Lori says, “can help the child better integrate all their pieces, those of biology and those of biography.”

Spend National Adoption Awareness Month listening to adoption luminaries who explore topics helpful to adoptive parents.

(Angela Tucker of Episode 4)

Ep 1: Cultivating Openness in Your Adoption, with single mom Leah Campbell. People may think that “open adoption” is all about having the birth parents around. But Leah and Lori let parents in on a secret: openness is even more about what you want to cultivate between you and your child. You want to be their safe space, the person they can come to with anything and everything. We do this by working on our own stuff and healing our own wounds.

Ep 2: Birth Mother Grief, Healing, and the Importance of Adoption Education, with first mom Ashley Mitchell. Ashley tells of how she and her son’s parents learned to “dance” together to ensure that he remained the focus of their efforts. Fourteen years into living in open adoption, Ashley is a voice for birth parents and a coach of adoptive parents. She shares her thoughts on pre-adoptive education for all parties and post-adoption counseling, as well.

Ep 3: Inconceivable Yet True: One Mom’s Journey Through Adoption, Surrogacy & Parenting, with Carolyn Savage. Maybe you heard about this unbelievable case on the news when it happened. Within a span of 18 months, Caroline both placed her newborn in the arms of another woman, and received her twins from the arms of another woman. She has lots to say about being on either side of this sacred sharing, and offers parents her guiding principle.

Ep 4: Ending Shame & Secrecy: A Discussion about Adoptee Rights, with adoptee and activist Rich Uhrlaub. Rich answered so many questions about the adoptee perspective: why is it wrong to seal records from adopted people? Why is genealogy an acceptable hobby for everyone except adopted people? What’s it like when your family is not your ancestors? He also shares how “Gotcha Day” can land with an adoptee and why adoptive parents may want to avoid using that phrase.

Ep 5: Wedged Between the Pain of One Set of Parents and the Joy of Another, with transracial adoptee Angela Tucker. Angela tells a story about what can happen to an adopted person when they repeat an oft-used adoptive parent explanation like “born in my heart.” She also reveals the one thing that can stop an adoptee in their tracks from being authentic and vulnerable with their parents.

Ep 6: “You’re Not My Real Mom!” and Other Real Fears of Adoptive Parents with adoptee Sara Easterly. Sara tells what was behind that dreaded exclamation, and how it was actually an invitation to intimacy. She also tells why adoptees sometimes have an extended adolescence and why parents must be willing to delve beyond simplistic notions of adoption for the sake of their children.

Ep 7 (available mid-November): What Went Wrong in this Kinship Adoption? with Clemencia Deleon. She placed her son with relatives when he was a few months old in what was supposed to be an open adoption. But by the age of 10, he still hadn’t been told he was adopted, nor did he know that the lady who came to family dinners was his birth mom. Here’s what happened when Clemencia was cornered into telling the truth.

Five more episodes are coming during Season 1, each with the guest’s best advice for adoptive parents.