Jun 2, 2026
Adoption is beautiful and wonderful and joyous … and painful and heartbreaking and exhausting. While open adoption is commonplace and encouraged by most adoption professionals today, that was not always the case. Further, even with open adoptions, the parties to an adoption still experience a wide range of emotions over time. The decision to place a child adoptively is often one of the most difficult decisions in a birth parent’s life, while accepting a child into his or her family is often one of the most joyous occasions in an adoptive parent’s life.
One very important role for adoption professionals is education: educating prospective adoptive parents, biological/legal parents, and the public. Adoption is not all “rainbows and sunshine.” While families and friends should be supportive of the adoptive process and should welcome adopted children into their hearts and homes with open arms, they also must allow the adoptee to express genuine feelings without discounting or undermining them. Every experience is unique.
Click below to read the HuffPost article, “This Is What No One Tells You About Adoption.”
