Chapter Opener

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

The first three chapters were about what adoption is, how identity works, and how loss shows up. This one is about you talking.

When a client is deciding whether to tell you something, your language is most of what they have to go on. An adoptee sitting across from you is reading your questions for signals: is this a place where I can say the complicated thing, or is this another person who needs my adoption to be a nice story?

And most of the phrasings that close that door are ones you'd never think twice about with any other client. That's what makes them worth looking at.

Three lessons here: what your language gives away, how to repair it when it lands wrong, and what your intake form says before you've said a word.