A Reflection on Adoption, Voice, and the TriSpective Approach
By Dr. Adam Anthony
I have spent a lot of time thinking about a question that seems simple until you are an adoptee:
Who holds the story?
Is it the birth parent who made the decision that changed the course of a child’s life?
Is it the adoptive parent who raised that child, loved them, sacrificed for them, and built a family around them?
Or is it the adoptee, the person whose life was shaped by decisions made before they were old enough to have a voice in them?
For a long time, I think I approached that question as though there had to be one right answer.
Watching Growing’s conversation about the TriSpective Approach gave me language for something I had been experiencing but hadn’t fully named. The framework recognizes adoption as three interconnected stories: the adoptee’s, the birth parent’s, and the adoptive parent’s. Those stories are distinct, but they are also permanently connected through what Growing describes as Tri-Relational Interconnectivity: what happens to one person in the adoption relationship can ripple into the lives of the others.
That idea challenged me.
Not because I suddenly questioned the importance of my own story.
But because I began to wonder whether the question was wrong.
Maybe the question isn’t:
Who owns the adoption story?
Maybe the better question is:
How do we honor three perspectives within a story that none of us experienced in the same way but still centering the adoptee?
The TriSpective framework helped me see something that can get lost when we talk about adoption.
There isn’t one universal adoption experience.
There are at least three lived experiences happening within the same relational system.
The birth parent carries a story of loss, decision, circumstance, hope, grief, and whatever meaning they have made from the experience.
The adoptive parent carries a story of longing, parenting, love, responsibility, fear, faith, sacrifice, and the experience of raising a child who entered their family through adoption.
And the adoptee carries a story that begins before they had any ability to understand, participate in, or consent to what was happening.
These stories overlap.
But they are not interchangeable.
That distinction matters.
Because sometimes, in an effort to honor one person’s experience, we unintentionally erase another person’s perspective.
A birth parent can have a legitimate story about relinquishment without that story becoming the complete story of the adoptee.
An adoptive parent can have a legitimate story about becoming a parent without that story becoming the complete story of the child they raised.
And an adoptee can have a legitimate story about their identity, separation, belonging, reunion, grief, or healing without denying the experiences of the two parents connected to their adoption.
All three can be true.
At the same time.
The Adoptee’s Story Is Not a Supporting Character
This is where I have found myself wrestling the most.
As an adoptee, I know what it feels like when people tell a story about your life as though you are part of the setting rather than one of the people who lived it.
Sometimes, in the past, the story sounded beautiful.
“You were meant to be together.”
“God had a plan.”
“You were such a blessing.”
Sometimes those things may be deeply meaningful.
But they can also become incomplete when they leave no room for everything else.
The separation.
The questions.
The missing history.
The biological family you never knew.
The identity questions.
The reunions you imagined but could never fully predict.
The things you wanted to know but didn’t know how to ask.
The parts of yourself that you recognized only after seeing them reflected in someone who shared your biology.
My own reunion with my birth mother taught me this in a very personal way.
I had imagined what reunion might feel like.
She had her own story, her own history, and undoubtedly her own expectations.
And then, suddenly, years of wondering became a real-life encounter.
As I reflected on Growing’s TriSpective conversation, I realized that reunion isn’t simply the moment when an adoptee meets a birth parent.
It is the collision of three histories.
Two people may meet in the present, but they arrive carrying years of separate experiences.
The adoptee arrives with questions and a lifetime of wondering.
The birth parent arrives with the history of the decision and the years that followed.
And somewhere around that reunion is the adoptive family, whose story is also connected to what happens next.
TriSpective thinking doesn’t erase those differences.
It makes room for them.
The Story Can Be Shared Without Being Taken
This is where I think the conversation about storytelling becomes especially important.
I don’t believe that birth parents should be prohibited from telling their stories.
I don’t believe adoptive parents should be prohibited from telling theirs.
And I certainly don’t believe adoptees should have to surrender their stories simply because other people were part of them.
But there is a difference between sharing your story and claiming someone else’s experience as your own.
That distinction can be difficult in adoption because the stories are so deeply intertwined.
My adoptive mother’s story includes me.
My birth mother’s story includes me.
My story includes both of them.
But that doesn’t mean any one of us can fully speak for the others.
I can tell you what it was like to be adopted.
My adoptive mother can tell you what it was like to raise me.
My birth mother can tell you what it was like to place a child for adoption and eventually experience reunion.
Those are three different vantage points.
And perhaps the healthiest approach is not to force them into one narrative.
Perhaps the goal is to allow each person to tell the truth from their own seat.
What TriSpective Thinking Changed for Me
One of the things I appreciate most about the TriSpective Approach is that it doesn’t ask me to choose whose pain matters most.
It doesn’t require me to minimize my experience to make room for someone else’s.
And it doesn’t require me to deny someone else’s experience to validate my own.
Instead, it asks me to hold the complexity.
That is harder.
But I think it is also more honest.
I can acknowledge that my adoptive parents had their own hopes, fears, faith, and understanding of adoption.
I can acknowledge that my birth mother has her own story, one that existed long before I was capable of understanding it.
And I can still say:
My experience matters.
Those statements don’t contradict one another.
They exist together.
That is what Tri-Relational Interconnectivity helped me see more clearly. The experiences of the three people connected through adoption don’t exist in isolated compartments. They ripple into one another, even when we don’t fully understand the ripple at the time.
So, Who Holds the Story?
Maybe the answer is:
All three hold a story.
But none of us holds the entire story.
That distinction feels important.
The birth parent holds their lived experience.
The adoptive parent holds theirs.
The adoptee holds theirs.
And when we bring those perspectives together with humility, something larger becomes visible—not one person’s version replacing another, but a more complete picture of what adoption actually is.
For me, this changes the way I think about storytelling.
I don’t need to erase my adoptive parents’ experiences to tell my own.
I don’t need to diminish my birth mother’s story to honor mine.
And I don’t need to make my story smaller so everyone else can feel comfortable with it.
I can tell the truth about my experience while recognizing that other people are carrying truths of their own.
That is not competition.
That is connection.
Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts of the TriSpective Approach.
It reminds us that adoption is not a single story with supporting characters.
It is a relational story.
Three perspectives.
Three lived experiences.
Three people whose lives are permanently connected.
And if we are willing to listen deeply enough, perhaps we don’t have to decide whose story matters most.
We can finally make room for all of them.
Because the goal shouldn’t be to determine who gets to hold the story.
The goal should be to create enough space for everyone to tell their part of it—without taking away someone else’s voice.
And for adoptees especially, that means remembering:
Our story does not have to exclude theirs to belong to us.
But it must still be ours to tell.
About the Author
Dr. Adam Anthony is a same-race Black adoptee, leadership strategist, educational consultant, and community-builder whose work centers belonging, identity, leadership, and the lived experiences of adoptees and foster care alumni. Drawing from his own experience as an adoptee and his professional work in leadership development, he creates spaces where lived experience and meaningful reflection can inform how we understand one another.
His work is grounded in a simple belief: every voice matters, and every story deserves room to be told with truth, dignity, and care.
EmpowerMENt by Dr. Adam
Nashville, TN
empowermentbydradam.com
______________________________________
Adoption Matters: Real People. Real Life. Real Talk , and
Essentials of Adoption Attuned Parenting
Read books written by our coaches
Click to learn more about Adoption Attuned Certified coaching!
