Hoping to Adopt Archives

Finding Hope in Adoption and Parenting

BPetersonDesign2022-04-05T14:51:14-07:00October 31, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption Outreach, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

This is a guest blog post written by Amy Stewart, mom through adoption to five children, Pediatric RN, and founder of Hope in Adoption, LLC.

After five pregnancy losses and years of failed fertility treatments, my journey to parenthood felt hopeless. The pain, grief, and loneliness I was experiencing felt too much to bear. It seemed everyone around me was celebrating carefree, successful pregnancies with ease. As my husband and I considered adoption as an opportunity to grow our family, the extensive process quickly became legally, financially, and emotionally overwhelming. Yet adoption seemed to provide hope in a time of darkness and despair. As a Registered Nurse and parenting educator, I started Hope in Adoption LLC to provide evidence based research parenting education and parenting support to all, including traditional, adoptive, and same-gender parents. My mission is to help everyone adopt parenting tools that work.

The Brokenness and Sadness Inherent in Adoption

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T16:53:02-07:00October 13, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Hoping to Adopt|

Does the brokenness and sadness inherent in adoption hit you at the weirdest times?

I have an odd combination of interests, I am a huge college football and basketball fan having spent part of my career working in college athletics, but I also absolutely love musical theater having grown up in that world. Luckily my husband is usually game to catch a musical with me, and last week we went and saw the revival of Miss Saigon when it came through town. It was one of the few popular musicals I hadn’t seen, and I was so excited to go even though I was exhausted due to my two toddlers’ sleep regressions and newfound middle of the night fears.

My Loss that Led to My Daughter

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T16:54:11-07:00October 7, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

October 7 - today marks four years to the day a sweet baby boy was born, a baby I thought was mine. This day still makes me a little sad and nostalgic, even though I would not have taken home my daughter Cora two months later had we adopted this little guy. To read more about the adoption loss that lead to my daughter, click here.

“The Wait” in Adoption

BPetersonDesign2023-07-19T16:01:28-07:00October 4, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Hoping to Adopt|

This guest blog post is written by Kirstyn of Travis and Kirstyn, currently our longest waiting Purl Family. Kirstyn writes about the difficulties she’s experienced in the adoption wait, and her hope that the child meant for her arms is coming.

“The Wait”. In the adoption world, those two words refer to the time between when you are home study approved, or legally certified to adopt, and when a child is legally placed in your family and can no longer be returned to his/her biological family. This month marks a year of our “waiting” process (7 months as a Purl client), and I never imagined it would this challenging and painful.

The Emotions of Adopting a Child Born In Addiction

BPetersonDesign2023-09-14T11:54:26-07:00September 23, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Drug/Alcohol Exposure, Hoping to Adopt, Open Adoption (Learn)|

This blog piece is written by a guest blogger who has adopted two children through domestic infant adoption. I believe strongly that parents through adoption should protect their child’s story, that’s why this piece is being shared anonymously.

I’m totally in love with a woman who gave me so much of herself, so much of myself. And I hate her. I struggle reconciling these opposite, intense feelings, all for one person. How can I love someone so tragically? How can I hate her when I feel such gratitude? It was through counseling that I learned how normal it is. It was through counseling that I learned this is what it’s like to love an addict.

The Amazing Adoption Community on Instagram

BPetersonDesign2022-06-13T11:17:36-07:00September 19, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption Outreach, Adoption Perspectives, Adoption Process, Hoping to Adopt|

If you’re a prospective adoptive parent, you may have already learned that there is an amazing adoption community on Instagram. You can learn from and connect with all sides of the adoption triad through this platform. I definitely recommend my Purl families follow various professionals and influencers in the adoption community on Instagram to prepare themselves further for their own adoption journey, listening to perspectives from adoptees and birth mothers in particular. I find that competitors are collaborating and supporting each other to educate prospective adoptive families and the general public about adoption, and I find that so refreshing. To see some of my favorite adoption influencer accounts on Instagram, read more!

Parenting Children with Horizontal Identities

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T16:57:39-07:00September 3, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt, Open Adoption (Learn)|

This guest blog post is written by Ashley, a mother of three daughters through infant adoption. Her and her husband Jason are a former Purl family.

I’m raising three girls--my daughters--whose identities will be different from mine in a fundamental way. They were all adopted at birth, and unlike me, are raised by parents and others in our village who do not share their biology. This isn’t a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around anymore and while it shifts my identity as a mother and distances me from the experiences of most mothers I know just a bit, my entire family has been built on love and choice and taking purposeful steps forward, not blood--which I appreciate and feel great pride in. More importantly, though, this adoptee identity is one my children will wrestle with, wrestling that I can’t do for them. To read more, click the link below.

Google Ads: More Exposure = More Opportunities for a Match

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T16:58:37-07:00August 21, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption Outreach, Adoption Perspectives, Adoption Process, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

What if you could give your adoption profile to an expectant parent who is considering adoption at the exact moment she is asking herself, “How do I place my baby for adoption?” What if you could do this 40, 60, or even 80 times? Each month! This is what Google advertising offers adopting parents.

Google Ads is an online advertising platform. It encompasses several different types of ad approaches, but for simplicity (and I believe they’re the best type for adopting parents), we’ll focus on pay-per-click, or PPC ads. To learn more, click here.

What to Know About Parenting Transracial Adoptees

BPetersonDesign2022-06-13T11:25:15-07:00August 9, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt, Transracial Adoption (Learn)|

This guest blog post is written by Torie DiMartile about her own experience as a transracial adoptee.

Last week, in national news, a white supremacist opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The same week, in my little university town of Bloomington IN, the farmers market endured its second week of cancelled activity due to white supremacist threats. If you ask my mom, she’ll readily tell you that 26 years ago these terrifying racial headlines would have flickered across her screen with a pang of sympathy, but they would not have drastically impacted her daily life. Of course, she knew racism and violence existed, but it existed outside her own experience. Today, as the mother of a 26-year old transracial adoptee those headlines probably keep her up at night. To read more, click here.

The Adoption Profile and How it is Used in the Adoption Process

BPetersonDesign2022-04-05T07:40:02-07:00July 30, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption Outreach, Adoption Process, Adoption Profile, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

Recently, I watched the Red Table Talk where Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, hosted former Sex and the City star Kristin Davis for a talk about transracial adoption. I really enjoyed this podcast and think it can help many families considering transracial adoption (I look forward to including a post just about transracial adoption soon). However, one thing I found really interesting about this podcast was that both Jada and her mom were very surprised that the birth mothers for Kristin’s two African American children had actually chosen Kristin to raise their babies. That made me realize that there are probably many other people that don’t understand the domestic adoption process, and that it might help to educate about how adoptive parents are typically chosen - usually through the use of an adoption profile. To read more, click here.

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