by Gayle Swift | Feb 7, 2024 | Adoptee experience, Adoption Attunement, Adoption constellation, Adoptive parenting, Deep listening, Intentional conversations
Adoption. We’ve GOT to talk! Adoption is complicated and overflows with coexisting ambiguities. It both creates and fractures a family. Adopting parents gain a child. Birth parents lose a child. The adoptee loses his birth parents and family. He also gains adoptive...
by Gayle Swift | May 3, 2023 | Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool|Blogs by Gayle Swift|Blogs by Guests|General Discussion, Blogs by Gayle Swift, Strengthening Family Relationships, Uncategorized
May conjures images of spring flowers, of growth and renewal, of hope and expectation. Yet for those of us connected by adoption, May is also a month fraught with emotions. Mother’s Day is the defining event of the month. Social media, television, and advertisements...
by Gayle Swift | Oct 2, 2019 | General Discussion
As Intentional Parents. we hold the belief that adoption is not an event but rather a journey. We accept that adoption operates as a permanent factor that shapes and influences who our children are, how they think, respond, grow, and experience the world. We...
by Gayle Swift | Feb 6, 2019 | Adoption-attunement, Blogs by Gayle Swift, Difficult Discussions, Empathy
Unless adoptive parents are also adoptees, we can only approximate in our minds and hearts what it must be like for our children. Adoption was the answer to our prayer; but for our children, it is far more complicated. The benefits they gained via adoption coexist...
by Gayle Swift | May 2, 2018 | Blogs by Gayle Swift, Family dynamics, General Discussion
Last weekend my son turned thirty-three.* (He’s grown a fair bit since this photo was taken!) We marked the day with the usual festivities including ice cream cake, candles to blow out, voices raised in off-key song. Sounds pretty typical but it was far from...