October 21, 2024 • 30 mins
"I can read a book and tell you if it's written by an adoptee, written by an adoptive parent or written by somebody who's just a famous author and someone told him to write about adoption and they know nothing about it." -- Allison Olson
EPISODE SUMMARY:
In this episode of Unraveling Adoption, I had the pleasure of speaking with Allison Olson, an adoptee and adoptive parent who has made significant contributions to children's literature on adoption. We explored her personal adoption story, which began in 1979 when she was adopted as a baby in a closed adoption, and how her experiences shaped her perspective as both an adoptee and a parent to an adopted child.
Allison shared her insights on the evolution of adoption practices, particularly the shift from closed to open adoptions, and the importance of representation in children's books. She expressed her frustration with the common narratives found in many adoption-themed picture books, which often portray adoptees as "lucky" rather than "loved." This inspired her to write her own books, including Surrounded by Love: An Open Adoption Story and Learning About My Friend's Adoption, aimed at educating children about adoption in a balanced and loving way.
We discussed the challenges adoptees face in educating their peers about their experiences and the need for more resources that accurately reflect the complexities of adoption. Allison emphasized the importance of normalizing conversations about adoption and providing children with the tools to understand and embrace their identities.
Listeners will find Allison's work invaluable, as it not only addresses the needs of adopted children but also serves as a resource for their friends and families. I encourage everyone to check out her books and share this episode to help spread awareness about the importance of thoughtful representation in children's literature.
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RESOURCES:
Allison’s information:
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Check out Allison’s website for her own books plus her lists of children’s books: OurAdoptionBooks.com
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Find Allison’s books on Amazon:Â
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Mark as PlayedTranscript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to this episode of Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to
delve into adoption's complexities together. I'm Beth Syverson. I'm
an adoptive mom of a curious and deeply feeling 20-year-old
son, Joey. I'm walking beside him while working on my
own personal growth and healing. I'm also a certified coach helping
primarily adoptive parents. Joey and I are committed to helping anyone
(00:23):
impacted by adoption and we want to help the general public understand adoption's
complexities better too. So listeners, when's the
last time you thought critically about what messages we give our
children, adopted or not, through children's picture
books? Today's guest is Alison Olson, who
brings insight as both an adoptee and an adoptive
(00:43):
parent, and she has written several children's books about adoption.
Her goal is to change the adoption narrative from the lucky
child, that lucky word, oh lordy, to the
loved child. Her books are called
Surrounded by Love, An Open Adoption Story, which
also has an activity book. She also has Love Letters
(01:05):
to My Child, a keepsake journal. And this
is the one that I find fascinating. It's called Learning About My
Friend's Adoption. So we are excited
to have you on Unraveling Adoption, Allison. Thanks for being here. Thanks for
having me, Beth. Yeah. So you're an adoptee and
an adoptive parent. So let's hear about your own adoption story
(01:29):
Yes. So I was born in
1979 and adopted shortly thereafter. In fact, I was a
They were waiting. So my older brother is adopted as
well. And then I'm going to answer this before you ask, because everyone asks
us. No, we are not biologically related, but
(01:53):
very much he is my brother. And he is a year and a half older than
me. And back in the 70s, adoption was very
different. The wait time was between five and seven years
in the Midwest. And the fact of two adopted
children was a very extreme thing back then. They
thought they would age out because they had an age cap back then. And
(02:15):
so they had to wait. I can't remember the
wait time, right? I think it was like a year after
my brother had been placed with them. And then they put
their name back in the hat and then they were only on the wait list for six months.
And they got the phone call. So they were not expecting it. In fact, one of my
favorite stories that my mom had is that they went to
(02:35):
the adoption agency. Back then, they wouldn't give you the news over the phone. So
they had to come into the adoption agency. They were on vacation. And
they said, you have to fly back. You have to meet a new social worker.
Oh, OK. It seems like a lot of work. But they flew back to meet
this new social worker. And the new social worker told them that
there's a baby girl that has just been born in this hospital and
(02:57):
she's ready to be picked up. Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, right,
right then. So my mom said, hold on, let me call my dad. So my
grandfather called him and said, go buy a crib because
my brother was only a year and a half, right? Still in the crib.
He needed another crib. So he went and bought a crib, put
it together really quickly for my arrival home. So my adoption,
(03:18):
my typical adoption terms are domestic infant
adoption through an agency, right? Private adoption through an agency. And
closed is the biggest word associated with
my adoption. And then I have two daughters, myself,
the oldest one, biological, she's nine, and our youngest is
adopted, she's three and a half. And her adoption terms, some
(03:41):
of them are similar to mine, domestic infant adoption
through an agency. So that means it's private. But the biggest difference
So the open has been kind of trending for the last
Yeah, it's they started testing it out and then it really ramped
(04:03):
And now it's really that's the way they are marketed is
Yep. 90 plus percent of adoptions are open.
Most agencies won't even write a closed adoption because
of all of the psychological studies that they have done on adoptees and
the benefits. of openness, but I will give your
(04:25):
listeners just a quick definition because people get very
confused on what means closed versus open. So
first of all, sometimes people think it's this light switch, right?
Closed, open. I think about it as a dimmer switch. So off
means off, closed means closed, but then open, there's a whole spectrum,
but it's all open. So that's also why the term semi-open is
(04:45):
weird to me because I'm like, you're just picking a random spot on a
scale. But what it means to have a closed adoption. It
means that my records are legally sealed
by the courts. So growing up and even as an adult,
I still hear this untruth being said around
that when an adoptee turns 18, they get access to
(05:06):
the records. This is not true. No, this is not true. So I
am 45 years old, professional and a taxpayer, and
I do not have rights to my original information. And
what is this information? What makes it closed? literally names
on a birth certificate, getting access to the names. So
now that you know that it's names of birth family and specifically birth
(05:28):
mother, right? Because sometimes the birth father is not on
the certificate. And so just having names. So
once you know that, you know that any adoption from foster
care is open. Okay, because they obviously know the names, right? So
and that's a big chunk of adoption right there. So that's closed,
which is very, very different because I see sometimes in adoptive
(05:50):
parent forums where they're saying like, Oh, our open adoption
went closed. We haven't heard from the birth mom and mom that that is
not true. You can no longer take away the name
people know about. So that
just means the relationship isn't as strong as it was, right?
The dimmer switches further down than higher up. So
(06:11):
open can range from just having that name and not knowing
them, not meeting them a person, not knowing much else, all the
way to the spectrum of they live down the street, hanging out
all the time. Birth grandparents are watching them on
the weekends and then anywhere in between as a
relationship ebbs and flows anyway. So that's the major difference.
(06:31):
And so for our daughter and her birth family, we
love them dearly and we view them as just an extension of
It's kind of like families built with step parents or step siblings.
It's just like we're just expanding the definition of family, opening
it up. More relationships equals more love
(06:57):
But that happens anytime. And just to clarify, the 90% open
is domestic, I believe, because almost all international adoptions are
Yeah, I'm focusing on domestic. But even there,
And they're also lessening quite a bit. There's very
(07:20):
Yep. Yes. Okay. So this openness is great when
it's really used and when all involved are really working
hard to stay. in communication. And what
did you notice when you adopted your child? What got pulled
up for you as an adoptee? I'm sure that was interesting, especially since
you had a biological child already. And then now you're in
(07:44):
That is an excellent question. So I will say there
were some surprises that were good, some surprises that I was like,
whoa, I'm shocked about this. So
some of the positive ones were how much
they had learned psychologically from these different studies
and what all as a family that
(08:07):
was going through the home study and going through the education and
all of that to get approved to be a waiting family, what
all we needed to go through. It made me comforted as an adoptee.
You know, federal background checks, like we
had to have the local police also write something up
for us. We had to get physicals. We went through
(08:31):
40 plus hours of attachment specific training, like
all of this stuff. Right. And our agency was
wonderful, but we had two separate agencies because we live
in Oregon and our agency did not do home study here.
So, so we had two separate, but both were wonderful in
their own right. But our agency, they started off saying,
(08:52):
we only do open adoption. And this is how little we
as an adoption community educate outside of our community.
As an adoptee, I didn't even know. I was like, what? What is this? I'm
like, this is the best. This is what I needed. This
is what we need. You know, you wish you would have had that. And
so I thought, wow, the progress. and
(09:14):
the attachment training, all of that, even down
to I like to tell people so they have a frame of reference of how much work
it is to get approved for adoption. We even had
Oh, my God. Say this cat is acceptable. to
(09:36):
Yeah. Okay. Wow. So really extreme stuff. So
I felt like, okay, I feel good about this. And
I liked that the birth mom has
all of the power and picks the families. And
I liked all of that. Okay. So then we were
selected. And we had the nursery ready
(09:57):
to go. And we're, you know, well aware of that there's
a chance that she could decide to parent. Change her mind. Yeah. And
just to be clear, she's a wonderful parent. So if she had made that choice, it
would have been wonderful. Okay. So I was having this moment sitting
in the nursery and I had bought all of the
highly recommended adoption books for children at
(10:18):
the time. I literally had scoured Google for everyone's
different top lists, right? Okay. And I bought them and I had this
pile and I was sitting in the rocking chair and I
was like, okay, I'm going to have this moment with my child that's not even
born yet, that's not even in our house. And I started reading
the first book and I'm like, oh, oh my goodness. Oh no. And
(10:38):
I threw that one on the floor. The other ones I gently placed on the floor, but
Oh, that's an excellent question. Well, so first I will tell you as an adoptee,
I can read a book and tell you if it's written by
an adoptee, written by an adoptive parent or written by somebody
(10:59):
who's just a famous author and someone told him to write about adoption and
they know nothing about him. And this is one where they knew
nothing about adoption. And it's a very famous author.
I do like his other works. I'm not going to say his name
or the title, but you will know if you're in the world of adoption. Every
spread of the book was like this. You open it, and
(11:20):
one page says, you needed a home. The
other page, we were there to give you a home.
Cringe. Flip the page. You had tears. Other
page, we were there to wipe away your tears. So
if anyone is listening to me and does not understand
why that is cringe worthy to an adoptee, it
(11:43):
is adoptive saviorism at its best. It is
telling that young child you alone are not worthy.
We had to be there to save you. And
to me, that is not the actual story
for an adoptee, even if they're being adopted from
foster care. That is not the story for them. So
(12:04):
going with our daughter, the true story, the way that I
saw it for her was if she had stayed with her birth mom,
she would have been loved, massively loved by all of her birth family.
If she had gone with any of the other hundreds of
waiting adoptive families, she would have been loved.
And with us, she would have been loved. So I'm like, why is that not
(12:28):
the story? Why is that not the story? But I'm like, OK, that's just
the first book. Got a bad one. Go to the next one.
And then I would say this was more of the theme of
several of them where I felt they were unbalanced is
the way I describe them. And that tended to be, I could tell
they were written by adoptive parents. And so this one,
(12:49):
and people are going to be like, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's two bears.
It's a mama bear and she's reading to her baby bear in
a rocking chair. And so I'm not going to say the book, but there's this
want again, not using the right word. And she wanted this
child and this want grew and it grew and it grew. Right. And
so I'm just sitting there feeling this love from the adoptive parent
(13:11):
side. And then I flipped the page. And then she
starts talking about the birth mom and it's
struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. And I,
as an adult adoptee, had never until I got to
the end of that book, felt so abandoned before in
my entire life. So I want to make sure these parents that are
(13:32):
reading this cute little bear book understand. And
again, I I'm a pretty healthy person. You know, it
just was like, oh, my goodness. And what I realized was
You can make any story look like that and feel
like that when you're imbalanced. And what I mean by that
is coming to adoption, everyone has
(13:54):
struggle and love. Yes. And
so why are we not only talking about the love
from the adoptive parents, not the struggle? We had infertility, all
these struggles to get here. No, you only talked about the love.
The birth mom had so much love. She investigated all
of the different adoption agencies. They don't just make one
(14:14):
phone call and then adoption works. It's like all of this interactions
with the adoption agency to make sure this is happening, make sure
this is the right decision that she wants to do. And all
of that work if there wasn't love. And of course there's struggle. So
to me, I didn't like that it was imbalanced. And
in children's books, they usually just
(14:37):
focus on the positive and the love. So the thing I always like to compare is
like books about farms. They're like happy. They
talk about the farm animals. Look at the pigs and the cows and,
you know, the horses. They do not talk about that. It
Yeah. 12 to 14 hours for these farmers to
(14:59):
do all this stuff. Right. Going back to that moment, though,
of when I was sitting in the chair, I realized I have to
write a book. I don't have the time. I don't have all these
things, but I'm not going to read these books to my daughter. I'm
not going to do that to her. I owe it to her birth mom
to have a birth mom illustrated in a book. and
(15:20):
look beautiful, not look disheveled and struggling
and like give her the do she deserves, right?
Yeah, dignity. Yeah. If any of us were in a book, if any of us were
in a movie, it would be a beautiful representation of us. That
is what she deserves. And so that's why
I wrote Surrounded by Love, my first book. That was your first one.
(15:41):
And that was my big focus. on it was to make sure that the
birth mom was evenly represented the same amount
And then one of the things I just want to share with you the little Easter egg on
this one that I only tell in podcasts. So my
illustrator's brother was adoptive. Okay, so she understood.
(16:05):
So she understood the complexities and sensitivities. So
I would say things like put relief in the face,
not necessarily happiness. Different things like that. She
was able to convey through her amazing art, the
emotions that I was wanting to show in the book. But the thing
that she did that I didn't even ask her to do that I love, is
(16:26):
that every character has a color. The birth moms represent in
pink, the adoptive moms represent in yellow, the adoptive
fathers represent in blue. And if you look at the young adoptees, she
always has a bit of color from each of
them to show the important impact they
Oh, that gave me shivers. Oh, that's so beautiful. You fixed
(16:50):
it. I'm so proud of you for doing that. Like a lot
of people say, yeah, I'm going to write a book. Well, you actually did it, and that's
not your only one. And I'm thinking about you in
that rocking chair before your child was even there, how triggered
you got as a healthy adult adoptee that's probably done
some work. Imagine what your two or three or four or
five-year-old child who has no tools, has no concepts
(17:14):
of any of this. I can't even imagine how that must hit
them, these big concepts of being abandoned your
birth mother was incapable and oh
Nobody wants to hear that when your
life started when you were like inside the
womb that somebody was struggling, like at that young of an age, when
(17:36):
it's age appropriate, and they understand that. Can you
imagine explaining to a young child like that, just
a simple thing, like two different people can
both have jobs. And one person's job pays
for their rent, and their groceries, etc. And this other
person's does not cover that That is beyond,
(17:59):
I don't even know if my nine-year-old fully could comprehend
that. So then you try to take that down to a
toddler where you're just explaining where'd you come from. And
it's these deep things where you're trying to over explain
a situation that honestly, as an adoptive
parent, we have not been in, right? So if
(18:20):
you're going to write about something around the birth mom,
Like, do you know what I'm saying? Go talk to somebody or
I mean, there is. So like Raquel McLeod, she's
a birth mom. She's written a book. Go with that book, you know? So
that's where my issues led, where the common theme
(18:42):
in a lot of them was that it was this unbalanced. There
was the lucky theme that was kind of like woven
in, whether it was a big theme or a small theme. throughout.
And I just wanted it to be, you came to
this world, there was a lot of love. There was a
lot of love that surrounded you that you weren't aware of.
(19:05):
There was love before you were born. And so every time
I show, and again, I showed both sides. So it starts
with adoptive parents, and it shows them wanting a
child, dreaming about a child. And
then they make the decision around adoption. And
I simplify that because it's a children's book. So
(19:25):
I have a scene where they look up at the night sky and then
the stars outline the baby. And
then I do the same thing, the same type
of scene when the birth mom is
making the tough decision around adoption. with the
same words. She wished on shooting stars. She
(19:48):
meditated and she prayed. And it says prayed. It's not a necessarily
a religious book. It's just more of made a deep decision.
Yeah. It wasn't like, oh, let me just do this right now. Yeah. It
gives kids an idea that both sides really put
And then I made sure whenever there were the pregnant illustrations
(20:10):
that there were hearts That she was lovingly looking down
and holding her belly. And then I put the phrase, this is
when you know an adoptee wrote it. She loved you, even
when you were tiny in her belly. And I
will even read this sometimes too. I did a panel
a couple months ago for an adoption agency that adopts from
(20:31):
foster care. And someone was trying to say, well,
our situation is different because addiction, blah,
blah, blah. And I said, it does not change this. It does
not change the statement. They did not want this child to
be taken away from them. They loved this child.
So it does not matter the situation. these
(20:52):
struggles. This is an important statement for
self-confidence, self-esteem, that I just wanted adoptees
So beautiful. Well, you put so much thought into that and
really intentionality and there needs to be more books
(21:14):
Tell me about the book, Learning About My Friend's Adoption, because
I've never heard of a book like that, that addresses adoption from that angle.
Yes. So it's intended for kids that are not adopted.
What we would call non-adoptees. They don't
even know. That's what they're called, right? That's
right. Yeah. That is how much we
(21:37):
have focused on education inside this bubble
of our adoption community. We all try to stay on
top of the latest adoption language. Even
just folks listening to this podcast, you are trying to learn, right? You
are somehow touched by adoption. You are trying to learn. Let me tell
you, your mailman's not doing that. The person at the gas
(21:57):
station's not doing that. The grocery store clerk is not doing that.
Teachers. Teacher, oh goodness, yes, teachers who
should, librarians, etc. I would go so far as
to say, as an adoptee and adoptive parent, that the
education level outside of our community is
straight up the 1950s. I get the
(22:18):
craziest things said to me. And when I tell people, they're like,
I can't believe it. And then you find another adoptee or
adoptive parent and they're like, oh, yes, get that all the time. Right. You
know, as an adoptee, heaven forbid you ever say anything that's even
Said to my face by a stranger, you know. And
(22:40):
the one, it was very interesting to me because always
growing up as an adoptee, as soon as people found out that we
were adopting, because we told a lot of people because we didn't want it to then
be a shock and they say weird stuff around our child, we wanted it to
be like, Get it out now, people that know
us, whatever. But I got so many people. And in fact, there
was a teacher multiple times from the daycare who would stop me.
(23:04):
Oh, thank you so much. And she's going to be so lucky. And I had to
educate every time. And that one, because that was important. She
Yeah. Other ones, I was like, oh, I'm just going to leave this be. But I
was having some sleepless nights. thinking, how
do I, just this one individual, it's so
(23:24):
many people, it's so pervasive. It's like, it's just, it's
everywhere. And they just say the wrong things,
like the most offensive things. And
I was thinking about how much transgender and
stuff, like they've done such a great job. Like we now all say,
like, what are your preferred problems? now it's like yeah we're
(23:45):
getting it that's amazing i was like how do we do that and
i just thought the only way i can is through children
and through children's literature yeah and i thought i can help
educate the kids because i know beth i've
said this to you before but to all the adoptive parents listening this
might be the first time you hear this and this might shock you but let
(24:06):
it sit with you the responsibility of
educating your children's friends is 100% on your
adoptee. That's right. Let that sit with you. I have
educated every person in my life until
getting this community, Beth, that we have, right? But
(24:27):
I have had, like, as a child, educate teachers, educate
parents of my friends. Sure. It's a lot. And
you just take it on. And your parents have no idea how much
burden is on your shoulders to do that. And some adoptees
are ready for it. Some are done doing it.
Some are not ready for it. And so I wanted to,
(24:50):
again, just being one person out there in this world, take
a little bit of that burden away. So
my thought would be with this book by a whole bunch of like paperbacks,
right? You just have them laying around. Hand them out like
whenever your kid starts a new grade, give it to that teacher,
right? Pass them out like candy. It is so
(25:12):
important to educate outside
of our adoption bubble. But here's the problem. They
are not reading adoptee memoirs. They are
not going out of their way to search this information because they think they
know about it. And I will tell you, I did a panel when
I created this book because I wanted to hear from people, because
(25:34):
how do you advertise a book that people don't know they need
to ask for? And one gal joined who
is a neighbor of a couple who's about to
adopt and she has young kids. And she said, well, here's
what happened. I thought, oh, I'm going to have this big conversation with
my kids. And she's like, hey, they are adopting.
(25:56):
So they are going to be having a baby soon, but you won't
see, you know, her belly get big because the baby's not growing in
her belly. And then she froze and didn't
know what else to say. And then they were asking her questions and she's like, uh,
and I, I don't know. Right. And so
I thought about, and I thought about how does this go, right? How does
(26:19):
this friend, cause when you're young, you learn stuff about your friends and
you're like so excited. Like this is something different. I've never heard
of this. So what do you do? You come home to the dining room
table and you're like telling your family a dinner, right? So
I have this little boy be the narrator and he comes home
to dinner and he's so excited. And he's like, hey, my
(26:40):
friend, she's just like you and me. She likes to build rocket ships,
dance, play dress up. But I
learned today that she's adopted and I'm not saying this word for word.
And so I didn't know what that meant. So I asked her to tell
me her story. then it launches into a
bit of a flashback and it's questions and answers
(27:02):
that little kids always ask adoptees and
then how this very confident adoptee is
answering these questions very simplistically to
where he can understand it. So, you know, she's explaining about
her birth mom. She's explaining about her parents. And
he says, so you have two moms. And
(27:24):
she says, yes, but more than that, I have two families. Right.
And then she explains that grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins
on both sides. I stay in touch with them. And then
he's bewildered and he scratches his head and he's
like, do you love both of
your families? And this is where, to me,
(27:47):
it was very important. There are certain things I
do intentionally throughout these books, and this is to normalize this.
So that when they know that's kind of a strange question without
making them feel like embarrassed or something, she giggles. She
giggles. It's like, kind of like, that's kind of silly. You know, she
giggles. Yes, of course. I
(28:09):
love them both. Just like you love
your family. And so this
just helps give some answers to
some questions that kids would have all in
a kid-friendly tone, kid-friendly conversation. And
what happens at the very end? They go back to playing. They
(28:31):
go back to playing, the story's over, and
his family is like, oh, thank you for telling us.
Nice. Oh, that's so beautiful. Such a necessary book.
And I don't know, I know I thought of that before, but I'm glad you did. So
important. So I will list those links to
(28:53):
get your book. Do you have a website you want to let us know about too? Or is
Yeah, you can go on Amazon. We also have redirect links from
the website, our adoptionbooks.com and I post
blogs in there too. where since I've gone
through and read so many children's books, I
have basically my list of kind of this adoptee, Alison
(29:15):
Olsen's approved children's books, and then a few
children's adoption books specifically. But then I have another
blog in there that if you only want to read adoptee written
Oh, adoptee. Ah, nice. Well, that's a great resource
for anyone. And, you know, listeners, you might be thinking, I don't have a
(29:37):
kid. Oh, well, you know, someone that does or, you know, a teacher or,
you know, a Sunday school teacher or, you know, a pediatrician that should know
about this or, you know, a family in your neighborhood, and
we need to get these books into people's hands so our
adopted kids can be more supported. I think what you're doing is
amazing. It's been great getting to know you. Thank you so much for being on.
Thank you for having me. Yes, yes, yes. Thank
(30:01):
you everyone for listening. Make sure and check out Allison's offerings at
her website, which I will put in the show notes below. And
while you're on the internet, go check out unravelingadoption.com where
you'll find all sorts of things about our events, our podcast episodes, and
our book called Adoption and Suicidality. And
mark your calendars for an event in Southern California on February
(30:25):
8th, 2025. It'll be an all day healing event
for the Adoption Constellation. Mark your calendar if SoCal is
even a remote possibility for you, February 8th, 2025. Please
share this episode so we get this information to more people and
get Allison's books in more people's hands. Thank you again
for listening. As always, Allison and I want you all
Welcome to this episode of Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to
delve into adoption's complexities together. I'm Beth Syverson. I'm
an adoptive mom of a curious and deeply feeling 20-year-old
son, Joey. I'm walking beside him while working on my
own personal growth and healing. I'm also a certified coach helping
primarily adoptive parents. Joey and I are committed to helping anyone
(00:23):
impacted by adoption and we want to help the general public understand adoption's
complexities better too. So listeners, when's the
last time you thought critically about what messages we give our
children, adopted or not, through children's picture
books? Today's guest is Alison Olson, who
brings insight as both an adoptee and an adoptive
(00:43):
parent, and she has written several children's books about adoption.
Her goal is to change the adoption narrative from the lucky
child, that lucky word, oh lordy, to the
loved child. Her books are called
Surrounded by Love, An Open Adoption Story, which
also has an activity book. She also has Love Letters
(01:05):
to My Child, a keepsake journal. And this
is the one that I find fascinating. It's called Learning About My
Friend's Adoption. So we are excited
to have you on Unraveling Adoption, Allison. Thanks for being here. Thanks for
having me, Beth. Yeah. So you're an adoptee and
an adoptive parent. So let's hear about your own adoption story
(01:29):
Yes. So I was born in
1979 and adopted shortly thereafter. In fact, I was a
They were waiting. So my older brother is adopted as
well. And then I'm going to answer this before you ask, because everyone asks
us. No, we are not biologically related, but
(01:53):
very much he is my brother. And he is a year and a half older than
me. And back in the 70s, adoption was very
different. The wait time was between five and seven years
in the Midwest. And the fact of two adopted
children was a very extreme thing back then. They
thought they would age out because they had an age cap back then. And
(02:15):
so they had to wait. I can't remember the
wait time, right? I think it was like a year after
my brother had been placed with them. And then they put
their name back in the hat and then they were only on the wait list for six months.
And they got the phone call. So they were not expecting it. In fact, one of my
favorite stories that my mom had is that they went to
(02:35):
the adoption agency. Back then, they wouldn't give you the news over the phone. So
they had to come into the adoption agency. They were on vacation. And
they said, you have to fly back. You have to meet a new social worker.
Oh, OK. It seems like a lot of work. But they flew back to meet
this new social worker. And the new social worker told them that
there's a baby girl that has just been born in this hospital and
(02:57):
she's ready to be picked up. Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, right,
right then. So my mom said, hold on, let me call my dad. So my
grandfather called him and said, go buy a crib because
my brother was only a year and a half, right? Still in the crib.
He needed another crib. So he went and bought a crib, put
it together really quickly for my arrival home. So my adoption,
(03:18):
my typical adoption terms are domestic infant
adoption through an agency, right? Private adoption through an agency. And
closed is the biggest word associated with
my adoption. And then I have two daughters, myself,
the oldest one, biological, she's nine, and our youngest is
adopted, she's three and a half. And her adoption terms, some
(03:41):
of them are similar to mine, domestic infant adoption
through an agency. So that means it's private. But the biggest difference
So the open has been kind of trending for the last
Yeah, it's they started testing it out and then it really ramped
(04:03):
And now it's really that's the way they are marketed is
Yep. 90 plus percent of adoptions are open.
Most agencies won't even write a closed adoption because
of all of the psychological studies that they have done on adoptees and
the benefits. of openness, but I will give your
(04:25):
listeners just a quick definition because people get very
confused on what means closed versus open. So
first of all, sometimes people think it's this light switch, right?
Closed, open. I think about it as a dimmer switch. So off
means off, closed means closed, but then open, there's a whole spectrum,
but it's all open. So that's also why the term semi-open is
(04:45):
weird to me because I'm like, you're just picking a random spot on a
scale. But what it means to have a closed adoption. It
means that my records are legally sealed
by the courts. So growing up and even as an adult,
I still hear this untruth being said around
that when an adoptee turns 18, they get access to
(05:06):
the records. This is not true. No, this is not true. So I
am 45 years old, professional and a taxpayer, and
I do not have rights to my original information. And
what is this information? What makes it closed? literally names
on a birth certificate, getting access to the names. So
now that you know that it's names of birth family and specifically birth
(05:28):
mother, right? Because sometimes the birth father is not on
the certificate. And so just having names. So
once you know that, you know that any adoption from foster
care is open. Okay, because they obviously know the names, right? So
and that's a big chunk of adoption right there. So that's closed,
which is very, very different because I see sometimes in adoptive
(05:50):
parent forums where they're saying like, Oh, our open adoption
went closed. We haven't heard from the birth mom and mom that that is
not true. You can no longer take away the name
people know about. So that
just means the relationship isn't as strong as it was, right?
The dimmer switches further down than higher up. So
(06:11):
open can range from just having that name and not knowing
them, not meeting them a person, not knowing much else, all the
way to the spectrum of they live down the street, hanging out
all the time. Birth grandparents are watching them on
the weekends and then anywhere in between as a
relationship ebbs and flows anyway. So that's the major difference.
(06:31):
And so for our daughter and her birth family, we
love them dearly and we view them as just an extension of
It's kind of like families built with step parents or step siblings.
It's just like we're just expanding the definition of family, opening
it up. More relationships equals more love
(06:57):
But that happens anytime. And just to clarify, the 90% open
is domestic, I believe, because almost all international adoptions are
Yeah, I'm focusing on domestic. But even there,
And they're also lessening quite a bit. There's very
(07:20):
Yep. Yes. Okay. So this openness is great when
it's really used and when all involved are really working
hard to stay. in communication. And what
did you notice when you adopted your child? What got pulled
up for you as an adoptee? I'm sure that was interesting, especially since
you had a biological child already. And then now you're in
(07:44):
That is an excellent question. So I will say there
were some surprises that were good, some surprises that I was like,
whoa, I'm shocked about this. So
some of the positive ones were how much
they had learned psychologically from these different studies
and what all as a family that
(08:07):
was going through the home study and going through the education and
all of that to get approved to be a waiting family, what
all we needed to go through. It made me comforted as an adoptee.
You know, federal background checks, like we
had to have the local police also write something up
for us. We had to get physicals. We went through
(08:31):
40 plus hours of attachment specific training, like
all of this stuff. Right. And our agency was
wonderful, but we had two separate agencies because we live
in Oregon and our agency did not do home study here.
So, so we had two separate, but both were wonderful in
their own right. But our agency, they started off saying,
(08:52):
we only do open adoption. And this is how little we
as an adoption community educate outside of our community.
As an adoptee, I didn't even know. I was like, what? What is this? I'm
like, this is the best. This is what I needed. This
is what we need. You know, you wish you would have had that. And
so I thought, wow, the progress. and
(09:14):
the attachment training, all of that, even down
to I like to tell people so they have a frame of reference of how much work
it is to get approved for adoption. We even had
Oh, my God. Say this cat is acceptable. to
(09:36):
Yeah. Okay. Wow. So really extreme stuff. So
I felt like, okay, I feel good about this. And
I liked that the birth mom has
all of the power and picks the families. And
I liked all of that. Okay. So then we were
selected. And we had the nursery ready
(09:57):
to go. And we're, you know, well aware of that there's
a chance that she could decide to parent. Change her mind. Yeah. And
just to be clear, she's a wonderful parent. So if she had made that choice, it
would have been wonderful. Okay. So I was having this moment sitting
in the nursery and I had bought all of the
highly recommended adoption books for children at
(10:18):
the time. I literally had scoured Google for everyone's
different top lists, right? Okay. And I bought them and I had this
pile and I was sitting in the rocking chair and I
was like, okay, I'm going to have this moment with my child that's not even
born yet, that's not even in our house. And I started reading
the first book and I'm like, oh, oh my goodness. Oh no. And
(10:38):
I threw that one on the floor. The other ones I gently placed on the floor, but
Oh, that's an excellent question. Well, so first I will tell you as an adoptee,
I can read a book and tell you if it's written by
an adoptee, written by an adoptive parent or written by somebody
(10:59):
who's just a famous author and someone told him to write about adoption and
they know nothing about him. And this is one where they knew
nothing about adoption. And it's a very famous author.
I do like his other works. I'm not going to say his name
or the title, but you will know if you're in the world of adoption. Every
spread of the book was like this. You open it, and
(11:20):
one page says, you needed a home. The
other page, we were there to give you a home.
Cringe. Flip the page. You had tears. Other
page, we were there to wipe away your tears. So
if anyone is listening to me and does not understand
why that is cringe worthy to an adoptee, it
(11:43):
is adoptive saviorism at its best. It is
telling that young child you alone are not worthy.
We had to be there to save you. And
to me, that is not the actual story
for an adoptee, even if they're being adopted from
foster care. That is not the story for them. So
(12:04):
going with our daughter, the true story, the way that I
saw it for her was if she had stayed with her birth mom,
she would have been loved, massively loved by all of her birth family.
If she had gone with any of the other hundreds of
waiting adoptive families, she would have been loved.
And with us, she would have been loved. So I'm like, why is that not
(12:28):
the story? Why is that not the story? But I'm like, OK, that's just
the first book. Got a bad one. Go to the next one.
And then I would say this was more of the theme of
several of them where I felt they were unbalanced is
the way I describe them. And that tended to be, I could tell
they were written by adoptive parents. And so this one,
(12:49):
and people are going to be like, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's two bears.
It's a mama bear and she's reading to her baby bear in
a rocking chair. And so I'm not going to say the book, but there's this
want again, not using the right word. And she wanted this
child and this want grew and it grew and it grew. Right. And
so I'm just sitting there feeling this love from the adoptive parent
(13:11):
side. And then I flipped the page. And then she
starts talking about the birth mom and it's
struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. And I,
as an adult adoptee, had never until I got to
the end of that book, felt so abandoned before in
my entire life. So I want to make sure these parents that are
(13:32):
reading this cute little bear book understand. And
again, I I'm a pretty healthy person. You know, it
just was like, oh, my goodness. And what I realized was
You can make any story look like that and feel
like that when you're imbalanced. And what I mean by that
is coming to adoption, everyone has
(13:54):
struggle and love. Yes. And
so why are we not only talking about the love
from the adoptive parents, not the struggle? We had infertility, all
these struggles to get here. No, you only talked about the love.
The birth mom had so much love. She investigated all
of the different adoption agencies. They don't just make one
(14:14):
phone call and then adoption works. It's like all of this interactions
with the adoption agency to make sure this is happening, make sure
this is the right decision that she wants to do. And all
of that work if there wasn't love. And of course there's struggle. So
to me, I didn't like that it was imbalanced. And
in children's books, they usually just
(14:37):
focus on the positive and the love. So the thing I always like to compare is
like books about farms. They're like happy. They
talk about the farm animals. Look at the pigs and the cows and,
you know, the horses. They do not talk about that. It
Yeah. 12 to 14 hours for these farmers to
(14:59):
do all this stuff. Right. Going back to that moment, though,
of when I was sitting in the chair, I realized I have to
write a book. I don't have the time. I don't have all these
things, but I'm not going to read these books to my daughter. I'm
not going to do that to her. I owe it to her birth mom
to have a birth mom illustrated in a book. and
(15:20):
look beautiful, not look disheveled and struggling
and like give her the do she deserves, right?
Yeah, dignity. Yeah. If any of us were in a book, if any of us were
in a movie, it would be a beautiful representation of us. That
is what she deserves. And so that's why
I wrote Surrounded by Love, my first book. That was your first one.
(15:41):
And that was my big focus. on it was to make sure that the
birth mom was evenly represented the same amount
And then one of the things I just want to share with you the little Easter egg on
this one that I only tell in podcasts. So my
illustrator's brother was adoptive. Okay, so she understood.
(16:05):
So she understood the complexities and sensitivities. So
I would say things like put relief in the face,
not necessarily happiness. Different things like that. She
was able to convey through her amazing art, the
emotions that I was wanting to show in the book. But the thing
that she did that I didn't even ask her to do that I love, is
(16:26):
that every character has a color. The birth moms represent in
pink, the adoptive moms represent in yellow, the adoptive
fathers represent in blue. And if you look at the young adoptees, she
always has a bit of color from each of
them to show the important impact they
Oh, that gave me shivers. Oh, that's so beautiful. You fixed
(16:50):
it. I'm so proud of you for doing that. Like a lot
of people say, yeah, I'm going to write a book. Well, you actually did it, and that's
not your only one. And I'm thinking about you in
that rocking chair before your child was even there, how triggered
you got as a healthy adult adoptee that's probably done
some work. Imagine what your two or three or four or
five-year-old child who has no tools, has no concepts
(17:14):
of any of this. I can't even imagine how that must hit
them, these big concepts of being abandoned your
birth mother was incapable and oh
Nobody wants to hear that when your
life started when you were like inside the
womb that somebody was struggling, like at that young of an age, when
(17:36):
it's age appropriate, and they understand that. Can you
imagine explaining to a young child like that, just
a simple thing, like two different people can
both have jobs. And one person's job pays
for their rent, and their groceries, etc. And this other
person's does not cover that That is beyond,
(17:59):
I don't even know if my nine-year-old fully could comprehend
that. So then you try to take that down to a
toddler where you're just explaining where'd you come from. And
it's these deep things where you're trying to over explain
a situation that honestly, as an adoptive
parent, we have not been in, right? So if
(18:20):
you're going to write about something around the birth mom,
Like, do you know what I'm saying? Go talk to somebody or
I mean, there is. So like Raquel McLeod, she's
a birth mom. She's written a book. Go with that book, you know? So
that's where my issues led, where the common theme
(18:42):
in a lot of them was that it was this unbalanced. There
was the lucky theme that was kind of like woven
in, whether it was a big theme or a small theme. throughout.
And I just wanted it to be, you came to
this world, there was a lot of love. There was a
lot of love that surrounded you that you weren't aware of.
(19:05):
There was love before you were born. And so every time
I show, and again, I showed both sides. So it starts
with adoptive parents, and it shows them wanting a
child, dreaming about a child. And
then they make the decision around adoption. And
I simplify that because it's a children's book. So
(19:25):
I have a scene where they look up at the night sky and then
the stars outline the baby. And
then I do the same thing, the same type
of scene when the birth mom is
making the tough decision around adoption. with the
same words. She wished on shooting stars. She
(19:48):
meditated and she prayed. And it says prayed. It's not a necessarily
a religious book. It's just more of made a deep decision.
Yeah. It wasn't like, oh, let me just do this right now. Yeah. It
gives kids an idea that both sides really put
And then I made sure whenever there were the pregnant illustrations
(20:10):
that there were hearts That she was lovingly looking down
and holding her belly. And then I put the phrase, this is
when you know an adoptee wrote it. She loved you, even
when you were tiny in her belly. And I
will even read this sometimes too. I did a panel
a couple months ago for an adoption agency that adopts from
(20:31):
foster care. And someone was trying to say, well,
our situation is different because addiction, blah,
blah, blah. And I said, it does not change this. It does
not change the statement. They did not want this child to
be taken away from them. They loved this child.
So it does not matter the situation. these
(20:52):
struggles. This is an important statement for
self-confidence, self-esteem, that I just wanted adoptees
So beautiful. Well, you put so much thought into that and
really intentionality and there needs to be more books
(21:14):
Tell me about the book, Learning About My Friend's Adoption, because
I've never heard of a book like that, that addresses adoption from that angle.
Yes. So it's intended for kids that are not adopted.
What we would call non-adoptees. They don't
even know. That's what they're called, right? That's
right. Yeah. That is how much we
(21:37):
have focused on education inside this bubble
of our adoption community. We all try to stay on
top of the latest adoption language. Even
just folks listening to this podcast, you are trying to learn, right? You
are somehow touched by adoption. You are trying to learn. Let me tell
you, your mailman's not doing that. The person at the gas
(21:57):
station's not doing that. The grocery store clerk is not doing that.
Teachers. Teacher, oh goodness, yes, teachers who
should, librarians, etc. I would go so far as
to say, as an adoptee and adoptive parent, that the
education level outside of our community is
straight up the 1950s. I get the
(22:18):
craziest things said to me. And when I tell people, they're like,
I can't believe it. And then you find another adoptee or
adoptive parent and they're like, oh, yes, get that all the time. Right. You
know, as an adoptee, heaven forbid you ever say anything that's even
Said to my face by a stranger, you know. And
(22:40):
the one, it was very interesting to me because always
growing up as an adoptee, as soon as people found out that we
were adopting, because we told a lot of people because we didn't want it to then
be a shock and they say weird stuff around our child, we wanted it to
be like, Get it out now, people that know
us, whatever. But I got so many people. And in fact, there
was a teacher multiple times from the daycare who would stop me.
(23:04):
Oh, thank you so much. And she's going to be so lucky. And I had to
educate every time. And that one, because that was important. She
Yeah. Other ones, I was like, oh, I'm just going to leave this be. But I
was having some sleepless nights. thinking, how
do I, just this one individual, it's so
(23:24):
many people, it's so pervasive. It's like, it's just, it's
everywhere. And they just say the wrong things,
like the most offensive things. And
I was thinking about how much transgender and
stuff, like they've done such a great job. Like we now all say,
like, what are your preferred problems? now it's like yeah we're
(23:45):
getting it that's amazing i was like how do we do that and
i just thought the only way i can is through children
and through children's literature yeah and i thought i can help
educate the kids because i know beth i've
said this to you before but to all the adoptive parents listening this
might be the first time you hear this and this might shock you but let
(24:06):
it sit with you the responsibility of
educating your children's friends is 100% on your
adoptee. That's right. Let that sit with you. I have
educated every person in my life until
getting this community, Beth, that we have, right? But
(24:27):
I have had, like, as a child, educate teachers, educate
parents of my friends. Sure. It's a lot. And
you just take it on. And your parents have no idea how much
burden is on your shoulders to do that. And some adoptees
are ready for it. Some are done doing it.
Some are not ready for it. And so I wanted to,
(24:50):
again, just being one person out there in this world, take
a little bit of that burden away. So
my thought would be with this book by a whole bunch of like paperbacks,
right? You just have them laying around. Hand them out like
whenever your kid starts a new grade, give it to that teacher,
right? Pass them out like candy. It is so
(25:12):
important to educate outside
of our adoption bubble. But here's the problem. They
are not reading adoptee memoirs. They are
not going out of their way to search this information because they think they
know about it. And I will tell you, I did a panel when
I created this book because I wanted to hear from people, because
(25:34):
how do you advertise a book that people don't know they need
to ask for? And one gal joined who
is a neighbor of a couple who's about to
adopt and she has young kids. And she said, well, here's
what happened. I thought, oh, I'm going to have this big conversation with
my kids. And she's like, hey, they are adopting.
(25:56):
So they are going to be having a baby soon, but you won't
see, you know, her belly get big because the baby's not growing in
her belly. And then she froze and didn't
know what else to say. And then they were asking her questions and she's like, uh,
and I, I don't know. Right. And so
I thought about, and I thought about how does this go, right? How does
(26:19):
this friend, cause when you're young, you learn stuff about your friends and
you're like so excited. Like this is something different. I've never heard
of this. So what do you do? You come home to the dining room
table and you're like telling your family a dinner, right? So
I have this little boy be the narrator and he comes home
to dinner and he's so excited. And he's like, hey, my
(26:40):
friend, she's just like you and me. She likes to build rocket ships,
dance, play dress up. But I
learned today that she's adopted and I'm not saying this word for word.
And so I didn't know what that meant. So I asked her to tell
me her story. then it launches into a
bit of a flashback and it's questions and answers
(27:02):
that little kids always ask adoptees and
then how this very confident adoptee is
answering these questions very simplistically to
where he can understand it. So, you know, she's explaining about
her birth mom. She's explaining about her parents. And
he says, so you have two moms. And
(27:24):
she says, yes, but more than that, I have two families. Right.
And then she explains that grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins
on both sides. I stay in touch with them. And then
he's bewildered and he scratches his head and he's
like, do you love both of
your families? And this is where, to me,
(27:47):
it was very important. There are certain things I
do intentionally throughout these books, and this is to normalize this.
So that when they know that's kind of a strange question without
making them feel like embarrassed or something, she giggles. She
giggles. It's like, kind of like, that's kind of silly. You know, she
giggles. Yes, of course. I
(28:09):
love them both. Just like you love
your family. And so this
just helps give some answers to
some questions that kids would have all in
a kid-friendly tone, kid-friendly conversation. And
what happens at the very end? They go back to playing. They
(28:31):
go back to playing, the story's over, and
his family is like, oh, thank you for telling us.
Nice. Oh, that's so beautiful. Such a necessary book.
And I don't know, I know I thought of that before, but I'm glad you did. So
important. So I will list those links to
(28:53):
get your book. Do you have a website you want to let us know about too? Or is
Yeah, you can go on Amazon. We also have redirect links from
the website, our adoptionbooks.com and I post
blogs in there too. where since I've gone
through and read so many children's books, I
have basically my list of kind of this adoptee, Alison
(29:15):
Olsen's approved children's books, and then a few
children's adoption books specifically. But then I have another
blog in there that if you only want to read adoptee written
Oh, adoptee. Ah, nice. Well, that's a great resource
for anyone. And, you know, listeners, you might be thinking, I don't have a
(29:37):
kid. Oh, well, you know, someone that does or, you know, a teacher or,
you know, a Sunday school teacher or, you know, a pediatrician that should know
about this or, you know, a family in your neighborhood, and
we need to get these books into people's hands so our
adopted kids can be more supported. I think what you're doing is
amazing. It's been great getting to know you. Thank you so much for being on.
Thank you for having me. Yes, yes, yes. Thank
(30:01):
you everyone for listening. Make sure and check out Allison's offerings at
her website, which I will put in the show notes below. And
while you're on the internet, go check out unravelingadoption.com where
you'll find all sorts of things about our events, our podcast episodes, and
our book called Adoption and Suicidality. And
mark your calendars for an event in Southern California on February
(30:25):
8th, 2025. It'll be an all day healing event
for the Adoption Constellation. Mark your calendar if SoCal is
even a remote possibility for you, February 8th, 2025. Please
share this episode so we get this information to more people and
get Allison's books in more people's hands. Thank you again
for listening. As always, Allison and I want you all
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