Chapter Opener

Short solo video. Renee on camera, roughly 2 minutes.

Everything so far has been about what adoptees have in common. This chapter is about what they don't.

An adoptee's experience is shaped by things this course hasn't touched yet. Whether their body matches their family. Whether they lost a country and a language along with a mother. Whether the family that raised them was also, biologically, their family. Whether they found out at forty-seven. And underneath all of it, structures most clients never see: sealed records, the law in their state, the money that changed hands.

Five lessons, two of them conversations, because some of this you need to hear from the people who lived it. Three are reference, because you'll want to come back to them when a particular client is sitting in front of you.

One word about scope. Each of these territories has its own literature, written largely by the adoptees inside it, and none of them fit in a single lesson. Treat this chapter as orientation, and expect to read further, get consultation, and sometimes refer or co-treat.