The 2012 Adoption Blogger Interview Project is Here!

It's back! The Adoption Blogger Interview Project, that is. Mark your calendars for November 14.

We had over 100 participants last year, each with their own unique and thoughtful interview post. I loved that in the middle of the noise of National Adoption Month we took the time to listen to each other, share our own stories, and make connections outside of our usual internet haunts.

The Interview Project is for any adoption blogger--not just open adoption bloggers, not just domestic adoption bloggers, definitely not just adoptive parents. If you are a blogger who (1) writes at least occasionally about adoption, (2) is interested in meeting a fellow writer with different views and experiences, and (3) wants to extend a welcome into your own online space, this interview project is for you.

The details, registration form, and button codes are here on this page. Registration closes on Thursday, October 18. You'll be paired with another blogger, read one another's blogs, and do an online interview of each other. On last year's feedback form a lot of people mentioned wanting more time to swap questions, so this year we have about three weeks to get to know our interview partners and prepare our posts for November 14.

Pairing is random, but like last year you'll be able to make special requests when you register and I'll do my best to accommodate them. For example, you might be a first parent blogger who prefers to be paired with another first parent. I hope that the option to limit the randomness helps make this a less risky undertaking for anyone who might be wary of participating.

Please help spread the word, especially among bloggers who aren't in my usual domestic adoption/open adoption circles. To encourage everyone to talk this up, I'm giving away a $20 Amazon gift card to someone who shares the link to this post or the interview project page on social media. To enter, leave a comment on this post with a link to the tweet/blog post/forum post/Facebook mention/Pinterest pin/etc. telling people to the project. Leave as many comments as you'd like, as long as each one links to a different mention. Entries close on October 18 when the registration period ends; I'll choose a comment at random by October 23. (Further necessary but boring giveaway blather here.)

Don't forget to register by October 18. I hope you will all join in!

Incorporating Blogs into Adoption Counseling

I'm excited to share about a continuing education workshop for Pacific Northwest therapists, social workers, and counselors that I am lucky enough to be coordinating with my friend Meg Jeske, a Portland-area therapist with a particular focus on grief/loss, parenting, adoption, gender, and sexuality.

Earlier this year, Meg approached me with the brilliant idea of developing a workshop in which clinicians could learn more about using blogs as a resource for themselves and their clients around open adoption issues. Our hope is that it will be a very collaborative, discussion-based time and I am looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

The one-day workshop will be held down at the Lewis and Clark Graduate Campus in Portland on September 22. The description:

Introduction to Open Adoption: First Person Accounts

What is open adoption? How does it work? Is it confusing to the participants? Is it sustainable? This workshop will offer an introduction to open adoption and adoption ethics.

Open adoption has been portrayed, for better or worse, in popular media in movies like Juno and television shows such as Parenthood, Glee and Modern Family.

Another way to explore the topic of open adoption is through written accounts of people whose lives include open adoption. The blogosphere holds a wealth of information about personal experiences from people involved in adoption from many perspectives: as people facing an unplanned pregnancy and considering adoption, as first parents, adoptive parents, adoptees, and adoption professionals.

As counselors and therapists, we will all work with clients who are affected by adoption in some way. As clinicians, there are many points at which having awareness about open adoption will be useful. One is when working with an individual or couple considering placing a child for adoption. Another is when an open adoption already exists and the families involved encounter challenges with their emotions about adoption.

Participants in this day-long workshop will have an opportunity to imagine themselves inhabiting a position within the adoption constellation and to explore what questions or issues are important to them from that vantage point. Using the Open Adoption Bloggers website as home base, we will examine the lived (and blogged) experience of people in open adoptions in their own words.

Based on participant needs and interests, specific issues that arise in open adoption will also be addressed; for instance transracial adoption, same sex partner adoption, single parent adoption, adoption ethics, desires for different levels or types of openness within open adoptions, open adoption and social media, and post-placement grief.

If you're a counselor or student needing some continuing ed hours, we hope you'll check it out! For more information or to register, visit the Lewis and Clark website. The early registration discount ends on September 7.

It Shouldn't Have Been So Hard

It shouldn't have been so hard. Not really.

It was a matter of the smallest pen stroke, circling one word on a form. All I needed to do was circle "Yes". But I hesitated, moved to other questions, came back to that blank row and hovered still.

At well-child check ups at our pediatrician's office, they hand you a sheet of Yes/No questions to answer while you wait to see the doctor, to avoid having the nurses waste their time repeating the same list of questions of everyone who comes in, I suppose. The "correct" answers are always the second choice, the word on the right. If you wanted to you blow off the form, you could just work your way straight down the column, circling without even reading.

• Does the baby ride in a rear-facing car seat in the back row of the car at all times? No/Yes
• Do you feed the baby juice, soda, or anything other than breastmilk or formula with iron? Yes/No
• Does anyone smoke around the baby? Yes/No

Or the one that had me caught:

• Have you felt unusually sad or anxious since the baby's arrival? Yes/No

I knew I needed to say "Yes", to hopefully set the process of seeking medical help in motion. I've had times in my life when I've felt blue or adrift or overwhelmed. I've had times I knew that talking to a counselor would help give me some new perspective to help me through a stuck place. This time was different. I knew that something had shifted in my brain and wasn't snapping back into place.

And, yet. As the weeks went by and I slid deeper into the pit, something kept me from seeking out the help the rational part of my brain knew I needed. I was a living checklist of depression symptoms. But I was scared of being dismissed or ridiculed and I felt so fragile, so breakable that even the thought of that possibly happening in a doctor's office was enough to make me want to pretend everything was fine. Depression alone isn't taken seriously all too often, much less post-partum depression, much much less adoption-related depression. After all, I hadn't given birth. I hadn't had to say goodbye to a child. I had nothing happen most people would label a crisis. I was supposed to be the happy, fulfilled one in this adoption equation, rejoicing over the newest family member who so many waiting adoptive parents would hypothetically have been thrilled to have in my place.

I leaned against the wall in the waiting room and looked at the baby sleeping in his sling and was overwhelmed by despair. Things were bad, and only getting worse. Scared enough, I finally drew a small circle.

After running through the usual routine with the baby, the pediatrician turned to me. "Now," he said, tapping his finger on the clipboard over that circled word, that glaring mark in the "wrong answer" column. I stiffened. "This is what concerns me most," he said.

He asked some kind and probing questions, then broke about a dozen HMO rules to get me an appointment for the next week with a physician who was similarly nothing less than compassionate and encouraging. I left her office not with hope exactly--I was too far in the pit at that point to scrabble together anything resembling real hope--but with the feeling that something had just happened other than the sadness and anger and anxiety that had become my constant companions.

So that's where things are. I'm trying medication, which has been a new and strange (and slow) experience. And I am finally feeling like things may be getting better. I am so very ready to return back to this life I love so much, to be someone who creates and serves and nurtures again instead of just someone who exists and needs.

Thank you for waiting for me, those of you who are reading this. I am sorry that I have been gone so long.