Adoption Unfiltered

Lori Holden, a veteran parent of two newly-minted young adults, writes at LavenderLuz.com and hosts the podcast Adoption: The Long View. She’s the author of the acclaimed book The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole (recommended by People magazine in 2021), written with her daughter’s birth mom. She has keynoted and presented at adoption conferences around the US, and her work has appeared in magazines such as Parenting and Adoptive Families. In 2018, she was honored as an Angel in Adoption® by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI). She lives in Arvada, Colorado. Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard is the Director of Advocacy and Policy at AdoptMatch, where she works on public policy issues impacting all adoption-triad members. She’s a birth mother who is passionate about raising the standards in adoption to better serve the children, mothers, and families affected by family separation. She has worked at various agencies and law firms in the adoption field and is also a co-host of the first-ever birth-mom podcast headed into its third season, Twisted Sisterhood. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sara Easterly is an award-winning author of books and essays. Her spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom , won a 2020 Illumination Book Award gold medal, among many others. Sara’s adoption-focused articles and essays have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Feminine Collective, Godspace, Her View from Home, and Severance Magazine, to name a few. She previously led one of the largest chapters of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, where she was recognized as SCBWI Member of the Year. She lives in Vashon, Washington.