Reflections for National Adoption Awareness Month

November marks National Adoption Awareness Month, a time that stirs a wide range of emotions within the adoption community. For many of us—adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families—it’s both a celebration and a reckoning. It’s a time to honor families created through adoption while acknowledging the complex and lifelong impact adoption has on identity, relationships, and belonging.

President Bill Clinton named November as National Adoption Awareness Month in 1995, expanding it from a week into a month in order to draw attention to the thousands of children in foster care still waiting for adoptive families. Approximately 117,000 children in the United States currently await permanent homes. They face challenges such as being older, part of sibling groups, or special needs—factors that can make their path to adoption longer and more complicated. 

Besides being a member of the adoption triad, November carries another personal significance. Two years ago this month, my collection of essays, Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship (Muse Literary, 2023) was released. The book is a compilation of significant blog posts and personal essays. I published it to serve as a supplement to my two memoirs: Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging (She Writes Press, 2021) and Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood (She Writes Press, 2025). Each of these nonfiction books explore themes of identity, belonging, and the lifelong process of understanding my closed adoption.

Adoption is often framed as rescue or charity, but in truth, it’s an experience rooted in both love and loss. One of the most meaningful essays in Belonging Matters centers on empathy—on listening deeply and honoring the lived realities of adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families alike. Real empathy requires us to see all sides of a complicated issue, and to hold space for the emotions surrounding it. If you’d like to read the essay, “Empathy: The Ripple Effect,” send me an email, here, and I’ll forward a copy.

As background, I began my blog, That Girl This Life, at age fifty-two, when a health issue made me realize I needed family medical history—something I didn’t have because of my closed adoption. Because of my late entrée into the ramifications of closed adoption, I am considered an adoptee who came “out of the fog,” a phrase that describes the process of awakening to the deeper emotional layers of adoption after years of accepting simplified narratives. My adoption search and reunion literally changed everything for me. It led to new connections with birth relatives, a more honest relationship with my adoption story, and a late in life writing career.

Since “coming out of the fog,” over the past fifteen years—besides writing—I’ve served on several adoption center boards. And I continue to receive post-adoption support through Catholic Charities in Chicago, where I’ve shared my experiences with others who are navigating similar paths. Through this work, I’ve come to realize that adoption isn’t something you “get over.” Rather, it’s something to integrate into life, piece by piece, as understanding deepens and story expands.

For me, storytelling has always been one of the most powerful ways to raise awareness and build empathy surrounding adoption. In Belonging Matters, I explore questions like: What’s the difference between open and closed adoption? What happens during a late discovery adoption? How do adoptees navigate relationships with birth relatives? How do we build bridges of understanding between adoptees, birth families, and adoptive families? These questions don’t always have easy answers, but they open important conversations that help us see adoption as a lifelong experience rather than a single event.

For those looking to explore adoption more deeply, some books that have shaped my understanding include:

• The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
• Adoption Unfiltered by Lori Holden, Sara Easterly, and Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard
• Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson
• American Baby by Gabrielle Glaser
• The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier

National Adoption Awareness Month is not just about celebration—it’s about reflection and empathy. It’s about listening to adoptees reclaim their stories, supporting foster youth still waiting for families, honoring birth parents who made unimaginable choices, and celebrating adoptive families who approach the journey with openness and humility. It’s also about acknowledging that we are all, in some way, searching for belonging.

Follow Me Here

Nov. 15: Julie will present a workshop at the Michigan City Library on “How to Write Memoir That Reads Like Fiction” from 1-3 PM. Sign up through the  Library website. 

Nov. 17: Julie will discuss “How to Write Compelling Memoir” to the New Buffalo Township Library from 6-7:30 PM ET.

Follow Julie by visiting her website, subscribe to her bimonthly newsletters, and listen to previous podcast recordings where she discusses topics like adoption, identity, family relationships, sisterhood and belonging.

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