As soon as we began paperwork for our first adopted daughter, we joined a local “support” group called Ours. It used to be called Ours by Adoption, and it was a national organization with subchapters. They published a magazine and if I am not mistaken, I believe that magazine was a precursor to Adoptive Families magazine.


When we started attending meetings, we had no adopted children. What we did have were two blond-haired, blue-eyed children who were quite young. As was my habit, I threw myself into the group wholeheartedly. The year our daughter arrived home, I was president of the local chapter.


I thought since it was a support group, perhaps we could all be better parents for our children if we learned something about adoptive parenting. To that end, I arranged for Pat Johnston of Perspectives Press to present a workshop about pre-adolescent adoptees and their understanding of adoption at that point in their development. Very few members of the group attended this meeting.


Another time I arranged for a prominent adoption attorney to speak to us about domestic adoption. Most of the members of this group were adopting (or had adopted) from Korea. Again, this meeting was poorly attended.


What I learned was that very few of those parents (but there were exceptions) were there to learn about adoptive parenting. They were there to validate their families. They were there to convince themselves that other people had built their families by adoption, so their family was OK. I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I really believe it was the situation. My husband summed it up when he said, “Their children are not adopted, they’re Korean.”


Once these families attended meetings for a few years, they stopped. There were no kids in this group much into double digits, although the group had been in existence long enough for this not to be the case. The parents weren’t there to help their kids feel less isolated; they were there to help the parents feel less isolated. And most of the meetings before I became president were Easter egg hunts and parties with Santa...which were quite well attended.


To be continued...

Photo taken at one of the meetings (1991)... the day "Grandma Holt" visited.