Chapter Opener

This first chapter is the groundwork. Before we get into the harder, more clinical material later on, we need a shared vocabulary and a few basic ideas that everything else rests on. So in Foundations we'll look at the words used around adoption and how much they can carry, the different forms adoption can take and why those differences matter clinically, and the idea that runs underneath the whole course, that adoption isn't a one-time event but something a person lives with across their whole life.

Before we start, one thing about how to hold all of this. Everything in this course describes patterns that are common in adoptee experience, but not every adoptee will have them. Some will recognize these patterns strongly, others will feel them only a little, and some won't relate to a given one at all. The point is to help you recognize these things when they show up in the room, while holding what you learn loosely enough to follow the actual person in front of you. An adoptee is entitled to the same range of presentations as anyone else.

With that in mind, let's start with the words.