TITLE: Adoptive Parents - Out of the Fog

DESCRIPTION

This event features panelists Martha Crawford, David Smolin, Maureen McCauley, and Sujata Soni Wipper. The third edition of our 2021 adoptee ally series will feature 4 adoptive parents sharing their lived experiences. Adoptive parents discuss their own experience realizing their personal adoption story is part of a larger picture.

• Adoption and corruption

• Openness with birth/family

• Adoption and intersections with identities

• Advocating for change in the adoption community

PANELISTS

Martha Crawford is an adoptive mother of two children from Korea. She worked as a psychotherapist, supervisor for twenty-five years. She is also the founder of All Together Now Playgroups for adoptive families in NY, and served as the Parent Liaison for Sejong Camp for seven years. She now works as a mentor, teacher, writer, coach, spiritual director, and as a group and workshop facilitator. Martha’s writing has appeared in Gazillion Voices, Vox, New York Magazine, Time Magazine, The New Yorker and NPR’s Here and Now and her blog What a Shrink Thinks. Martha has received so much parental guidance and support from the adult adoptee community she is always grateful for any opportunity to pass those lessons forward.  

David Smolin is the Harwell G. Davis Professor of Constitutional Law, and Director, Center for Children, Law, and Ethics, at Cumberland Law School, Samford University. Many of his publications are available for free download at http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/,  with over 80,000 downloads.  He has worked together with his wife, Desiree Smolin, on analysis and reform of adoption systems and practices, and sometimes contributes to the adoption blog she co-founded:  http://fleasbiting.blogspot.com/ I appreciate the opportunity to support an adoptee-led organization that promotes sensitive and educational conversations on these important topics.  

Sujata Soni Wipper is an adoptive mother and a school psychologist. Her professional expertise are in the areas of psychoeducational assessment, behavior consultation,  learning interventions, and parent/family support. She and her husband adopted their now almost nine-year-old daughter through domestic open adoption. She has worked closely with Adoption Mosaic for almost 3 years as a facilitator and as a community member. Sujata is excited to share what she has learned with other adoptive families, and learn from the other panel members as well.

Maureen McCauley is a Seattle-based writer/editor and the white adoptive parent of four now adult children, all of whom are Black. She worked professionally with adoption agencies and child welfare advocacy organizations. The experiences of her children and those of other adult adoptees have opened her eyes and informed her views on adoption; she has learned so much from them. She blogs at Light of Day Stories, and will soon announce the publication of an anthology of essays by Ethiopian adoptees living in 7 countries, and ranging in age from 8 to 50+. Talking together as allies in the adoption community is a vital step to bringing about equitable, much-needed change.

Alternate Panelist, Beth Hall (she/her) is the white adoptive mother of a Latina daughter and an African American son, both now adults, and grew up with an adopted sister. She co-founded Pact in 1991 to combat the discrimination she witnessed against adopted children of color and their birth families. She is the co-author, with Gail Steinberg, of the book Inside Transracial Adoption (Jessica Knightly Press, 2010). She is a nationally known advocate for adopted children of color who regularly lectures and leads workshops on ethical, child-centered, anti-racist adoption practices. Beth believes that as adoptive parents we have an obligation to try to help our tribe (other adoptive parents) move through the fog; for her personally it is a lifelong journey of self-reflection, growth and change.