I created this site after I started researching an article about challenges in open adoption. The assignment was a pro-open adoption article that didn't "sugarcoat" the very real challenges. I interviewed a lot of impressive folks for the piece and they all said the same thing -- pushing open adoption is meaningless without the support to back it up. But few agencies are doing this.

Those of us who are in open adoptions know how hard it is to get answers when the inevitable conflicts arise. If we talk to friends and family who don't share our commitment to openness we hear, "It's time you moved on" or "You should just close the adoption."  Even fellow members in our respective adoption communities may not be much help. If we are first parents, other first parents in closed adoptions may not be able to understand what we're going through. If we're adoptive parents, we may hear the same tired "close the adoption" from families who don't support openness.

I built this site so that we can find each other, learn from each other and support each other.

Not all of us are living open adoptions -- we may not have access to our kids or we may not have access to their other parents -- but we are living in the belief that open adoption is important to our children.

One thing I want to make clear is that this site, as an entity, does not promote one way to have a healthy open adoption. Open adoption looks like a lot of different things for different families and what works for one family may not work for another. We also understand that sometimes our belief in open adoption is not shared by our children's other parents. If you are part of a closed adoption that you wish were open, know that you are welcome here.

What we have in common is the understanding that our children have two families and that both families matter because they matter to our children. We may disagree on the details but that's the central value that drives this site. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

~Dawn