Adoption creates a split between a person’s biology and biography, and openness is an essential way to help adoptees heal this split.1
This article covers what openness means in the context of adoption and how adoptive parents can, through openness, help adoptees
integrate and heal. There are three shifts adoptive parents can make—supported by adoption professionals—to better focus on
what really matters. This article addresses situations faced by adoptive parents who have contact with birth parents, those who do not
and feel that is just as well, and, finally, those who wish to be in contact with birth parents but, for various reasons, are not.