Learn more about the adoption process.
Dear Birth Father of My Child
This is a letter by an adoptive father to his daughter's birth father, who was not involved in the adoption plan and is still unknown to her adoptive family. I am a dad through adoption and the only person my daughter has known as a father. I wanted to write to you on Father’s Day to share some thoughts I have and to introduce you to the daughter you may not even know is out there. I think of you often but felt compelled this year to share with you my thoughts and feelings about our adoption and about your beautiful daughter. Click here to read more.
Trauma in Domestic Infant Adoption
We are continuing our series on the “Things I Did Wrong” in our own adoptions to help prospective adoptive parents better prepare for their own adoption journeys. Once again CEO/Founder is coming back to share more of her mistakes. This time, she’ll be sharing her mistakes in choosing infant adoption as a route to grow her family, erroneously assuming this would avoid any trauma in an adoptee, as compared to either adoption from foster care or international adoption. Click here to read more about trauma in infant adoption.
Saviorism in Adoption
Today we continue our series on “What I Did Wrong as a Prospective Adoptive Parent”. In this blog Purl Advisor, Kelcie Grace, will discuss the concept of saviorism in adoption and how prospective adoptive parents early in the adoption process often see themselves as “helping a baby in need of a loving home” and fail to grasp the complexities and trauma of adoption. To read more, click here.
Oversharing My Adoption Story
Hi there! My name is Aubrey, I am one of the Purl advisors and today I am sharing one of the biggest mistakes I made on my personal adoption journey: oversharing my child's adoption story. Parenting is hard and it's easy to get caught up in all the things we could have done better. My hope is by sharing a sliver of my story, prospective adoptive families that are just starting their journeys can learn from my mistake. Click here to read more.
Celebrating Adoption Finalization – This Gay Dad’s Perspective
If you've been following along, our CEO/Founder, Katie Zimmerman, has been doing a series surrounding the things she feels she did wrong in her domestic infant adoption journey, with the benefit of hindsight. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from our readers and our fellow Purl Families who we have helped along the way. Daniel Duran, who adopted his daughter a few years ago with his husband with our support, sent this response to our recent post about whether we should celebrate adoption finalization days. In it, Daniel shares what celebrating adoption finalization means to him as a gay dad. We hope you enjoy this perspective and we hope this encourages you to also share your thoughts on the "mistakes" we have been discussing! Click here to read more.
Celebrating Adoption Finalization Day
We are continuing our series on "What I Did Wrong as a Prospective Adoptive Parent" with a discussion about celebrating adoption finalization day. I know this one in particular may be hard to hear for some prospective adoptive parents or adoptive parents, and you may not agree with me on it, but please hear me out. I recognize that I too celebrated my child's own adoption finalization day for years, and still acknowledge it even now due to the mistakes I made early in my own adoption journey. But I wanted to at least post about this so people consider whether it makes sense to regularly celebrate this day, particularly once your child has a better understanding of its actual meaning? Click here to read more.
Insecurity About “Mom” and Fears About Open Adoption
As Mother's Day approached, I (Katie - CEO/Founder of Purl) tried unsuccessfully to get this blog post up. Because Mother's Day is complicated for so many people, including those touched by adoption. I struggled to organize my thoughts about my own insecurity with my own motherhood through adoption and how that related to my fears of open adoption. While it has been relatively easy for me to share my other mistakes in my adoption journey, this was one area that was especially hard for me. Maybe it was due to embarrassment, but after the 10th draft, here are my still scrambled thoughts... The mistake I'm discussing today centered around my own insecurity about the role of "Mother", and how that impacted my adoption journey and even the early years of my child's open adoption. Click here to read more.
Naming An Adopted Child
One area I (Katie - CEO/Founder of Purl) went wrong as a prospective adoptive parent was my thoughts and process on naming an adopted child. My perspective at the time of our adoption journey was that this was going to be my child and I should get to name my child. The adoption professionals we worked with didn’t give me any education on this area, and instead said the name the expectant mother gave the child didn’t really matter because we could change the name after finalization. Click on this link to read more about how dramatically my opinion has changed about the right and privilege to name a child, as well as a discussion as to how the issuance of the birth certificate works in an adoption setting, and what impact that has on adoptees' ability to secure a copy of their birth certificate later on.
Centering Myself as A Parent Instead of My Child
Hi, Katie (CEO/Founder of Purl) here again, following up as promised about the things I did wrong in my own adoption journey to help other prospective adoptive parents. When we started the adoption process we were naïve, and definitely should ...
Things I Did Wrong, And You May Have Done Wrong Too…
Hi there! Happy Friday! This is Katie, CEO/Founder of Purl. As I have discussed before, I was pretty naïve as a brand new prospective adoptive family, and I had little education/preparation from the adoption professionals we worked with in our ...
Choice of Law Analysis in Interstate Domestic Adoption
Did you know that most interstate domestic adoptions include a choice of law analysis by an adoption attorney or attorneys to determine which state's law to apply to the adoption proceeding? An interstate domestic adoption means that a family is ...
Funding Your Adoption Using Adoption Grants
Did you know that there are a lot of organizations that are available to help fund your domestic infant adoption through adoption grants? As we have discussed before, domestic infant adoption costs are high, and have been increasing dramatically in ...
Why We Are NOT Adoption Consultants
Purl founder and CEO, Katie Zimmerman, shares why she intentionally does not call Purl Adoption Advisory an adoption consultant. She shares her own experiences with a well-known adoption consultant, how she formed Purl to do things differently than what was being done in the adoption community, and how the services Purl offers differ dramatically from what other adoption consultants offer.
Sharing the Adoption Story: Navigating Sensitivity and Consent
In today’s blog post, Adoption Advisor, Kelcie Grace, talks about the importance of NOT sharing your child’s adoption story. She urges adoptive parents to recognize that the entire adoption triad is involved in the adoption story and adoptive parents do ...
Why You Are Still Waiting: The Hard Truth About the Current State of Adoption and the Importance of Open Preferences
Adoption can be a long and difficult journey, but it's important to understand the current state of domestic infant adoption in the US. In this blog post, Adoption Advisor and mother of one child through adoption, Kelcie Grace, shares the ...
Racial Mirrors in Transracial Adoption
Aubrey is a Purl Adoption Advisor as well as a white adoptive mother to three wonderful Black children. Having spent endless hours reading articles from transracial adoptees and adoptive parents, psychology studies and opinions from a range of qualified people, she found that one quote seemed to sum it up: “love is not enough”. Your child may feel loved, while also feeling lost, insecure, and a lack self-worth. Providing racial mirrors for your transracially adopted child can build a bridge to their racial identity. In this post, Aubrey discusses what racial mirrors are, why they are so important, and where to start. Click here to learn more.
New Years Resolution
As the New Year approaches, many people take the opportunity to reflect on the past year and set goals for the future. For some, this may include adding adoption to their resolution list. Adopting a child is a life-changing decision, ...
Dear Mom of a Child Through Adoption (Author Unknown)
I (Katie - Founder/CEO) have seen this circulate a hundred times since adopting, but for some reason it hit me harder today so I thought I would memorialize here on our page. For anyone who needs to hear this and ...
Dear Birth Father of My Child
This is a letter by an adoptive father to his daughter's birth father, who was not involved in the adoption plan and is still unknown to her adoptive family. I am a dad through adoption and the only person my daughter has known as a father. I wanted to write to you on Father’s Day to share some thoughts I have and to introduce you to the daughter you may not even know is out there. I think of you often but felt compelled this year to share with you my thoughts and feelings about our adoption and about your beautiful daughter. Click here to read more.
Trauma in Domestic Infant Adoption
We are continuing our series on the “Things I Did Wrong” in our own adoptions to help prospective adoptive parents better prepare for their own adoption journeys. Once again CEO/Founder is coming back to share more of her mistakes. This time, she’ll be sharing her mistakes in choosing infant adoption as a route to grow her family, erroneously assuming this would avoid any trauma in an adoptee, as compared to either adoption from foster care or international adoption. Click here to read more about trauma in infant adoption.
Saviorism in Adoption
Today we continue our series on “What I Did Wrong as a Prospective Adoptive Parent”. In this blog Purl Advisor, Kelcie Grace, will discuss the concept of saviorism in adoption and how prospective adoptive parents early in the adoption process often see themselves as “helping a baby in need of a loving home” and fail to grasp the complexities and trauma of adoption. To read more, click here.
Oversharing My Adoption Story
Hi there! My name is Aubrey, I am one of the Purl advisors and today I am sharing one of the biggest mistakes I made on my personal adoption journey: oversharing my child's adoption story. Parenting is hard and it's easy to get caught up in all the things we could have done better. My hope is by sharing a sliver of my story, prospective adoptive families that are just starting their journeys can learn from my mistake. Click here to read more.
Celebrating Adoption Finalization – This Gay Dad’s Perspective
If you've been following along, our CEO/Founder, Katie Zimmerman, has been doing a series surrounding the things she feels she did wrong in her domestic infant adoption journey, with the benefit of hindsight. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from our readers and our fellow Purl Families who we have helped along the way. Daniel Duran, who adopted his daughter a few years ago with his husband with our support, sent this response to our recent post about whether we should celebrate adoption finalization days. In it, Daniel shares what celebrating adoption finalization means to him as a gay dad. We hope you enjoy this perspective and we hope this encourages you to also share your thoughts on the "mistakes" we have been discussing! Click here to read more.
Celebrating Adoption Finalization Day
We are continuing our series on "What I Did Wrong as a Prospective Adoptive Parent" with a discussion about celebrating adoption finalization day. I know this one in particular may be hard to hear for some prospective adoptive parents or adoptive parents, and you may not agree with me on it, but please hear me out. I recognize that I too celebrated my child's own adoption finalization day for years, and still acknowledge it even now due to the mistakes I made early in my own adoption journey. But I wanted to at least post about this so people consider whether it makes sense to regularly celebrate this day, particularly once your child has a better understanding of its actual meaning? Click here to read more.
Insecurity About “Mom” and Fears About Open Adoption
As Mother's Day approached, I (Katie - CEO/Founder of Purl) tried unsuccessfully to get this blog post up. Because Mother's Day is complicated for so many people, including those touched by adoption. I struggled to organize my thoughts about my own insecurity with my own motherhood through adoption and how that related to my fears of open adoption. While it has been relatively easy for me to share my other mistakes in my adoption journey, this was one area that was especially hard for me. Maybe it was due to embarrassment, but after the 10th draft, here are my still scrambled thoughts... The mistake I'm discussing today centered around my own insecurity about the role of "Mother", and how that impacted my adoption journey and even the early years of my child's open adoption. Click here to read more.
Naming An Adopted Child
One area I (Katie - CEO/Founder of Purl) went wrong as a prospective adoptive parent was my thoughts and process on naming an adopted child. My perspective at the time of our adoption journey was that this was going to be my child and I should get to name my child. The adoption professionals we worked with didn’t give me any education on this area, and instead said the name the expectant mother gave the child didn’t really matter because we could change the name after finalization. Click on this link to read more about how dramatically my opinion has changed about the right and privilege to name a child, as well as a discussion as to how the issuance of the birth certificate works in an adoption setting, and what impact that has on adoptees' ability to secure a copy of their birth certificate later on.
Centering Myself as A Parent Instead of My Child
Hi, Katie (CEO/Founder of Purl) here again, following up as promised about the things I did wrong in my own adoption journey to help other prospective adoptive parents. When we started the adoption process we were naïve, and definitely should ...
Things I Did Wrong, And You May Have Done Wrong Too…
Hi there! Happy Friday! This is Katie, CEO/Founder of Purl. As I have discussed before, I was pretty naïve as a brand new prospective adoptive family, and I had little education/preparation from the adoption professionals we worked with in our ...
Choice of Law Analysis in Interstate Domestic Adoption
Did you know that most interstate domestic adoptions include a choice of law analysis by an adoption attorney or attorneys to determine which state's law to apply to the adoption proceeding? An interstate domestic adoption means that a family is ...
Funding Your Adoption Using Adoption Grants
Did you know that there are a lot of organizations that are available to help fund your domestic infant adoption through adoption grants? As we have discussed before, domestic infant adoption costs are high, and have been increasing dramatically in ...
Why We Are NOT Adoption Consultants
Purl founder and CEO, Katie Zimmerman, shares why she intentionally does not call Purl Adoption Advisory an adoption consultant. She shares her own experiences with a well-known adoption consultant, how she formed Purl to do things differently than what was being done in the adoption community, and how the services Purl offers differ dramatically from what other adoption consultants offer.
Sharing the Adoption Story: Navigating Sensitivity and Consent
In today’s blog post, Adoption Advisor, Kelcie Grace, talks about the importance of NOT sharing your child’s adoption story. She urges adoptive parents to recognize that the entire adoption triad is involved in the adoption story and adoptive parents do ...
Why You Are Still Waiting: The Hard Truth About the Current State of Adoption and the Importance of Open Preferences
Adoption can be a long and difficult journey, but it's important to understand the current state of domestic infant adoption in the US. In this blog post, Adoption Advisor and mother of one child through adoption, Kelcie Grace, shares the ...
Racial Mirrors in Transracial Adoption
Aubrey is a Purl Adoption Advisor as well as a white adoptive mother to three wonderful Black children. Having spent endless hours reading articles from transracial adoptees and adoptive parents, psychology studies and opinions from a range of qualified people, she found that one quote seemed to sum it up: “love is not enough”. Your child may feel loved, while also feeling lost, insecure, and a lack self-worth. Providing racial mirrors for your transracially adopted child can build a bridge to their racial identity. In this post, Aubrey discusses what racial mirrors are, why they are so important, and where to start. Click here to learn more.
New Years Resolution
As the New Year approaches, many people take the opportunity to reflect on the past year and set goals for the future. For some, this may include adding adoption to their resolution list. Adopting a child is a life-changing decision, ...
Dear Mom of a Child Through Adoption (Author Unknown)
I (Katie - Founder/CEO) have seen this circulate a hundred times since adopting, but for some reason it hit me harder today so I thought I would memorialize here on our page. For anyone who needs to hear this and ...
