What might we learn if we brought everyone into the same conversation?
That’s what we did in the first Thriving Conversations panel.
Amanda Angell is an adoptive mother. Krissy Ferrant is an adoptee and adoptive mother. Kristy Holt is a birth mother. Each shares part of her story before the conversation opens up to questions from everyone.
We hear how listening to adoptees has changed Amanda’s parenting. Krissy talks about the pressure she felt to manage the emotions of the adults around her and why we must leave children room to be children. Kristy shares what it was like to lose contact with her daughters and what changed when someone finally listened to her without judgement.
The questions take us further. Can an adoptive parent ever fully understand an adoptee’s experience? What does a birth parent need to know about the family raising their child? How do secrecy, shame and stigma affect people across the adoption triad?
There aren’t simple answers. But hearing these experiences alongside one another may help you see your own story, or someone else’s, differently.
That’s why I started Thriving Conversations. Sometimes the insight that changes something for us happens in a conversation.
Thriving Conversations is funded by the Adoption England Community Development Fund.