Lynn Grubb

Yesterday I went to see " Instant Family " with a friend of mine. This movie was timed to open during National Adoption Awareness Month, and brings much needed awareness to the children in foster care, some of whom are available to adopt. As a former CASA/G.A.L. for my local juvenile court, I was very interested in seeing how this movie portrayed the system, foster/adopt training and support, the realities of kids biological parents, the courts, and adoption in general.  (I tried to take notes in the pitch dark and wasn't very successful 😍).  My husband and I have gone through foster-to-adopt training three times. We briefly were emergency foster parents in the 90s.  And of course, we are also kinship adoptive parents to a now-teen via a private adoption. I had read two reviews ( one negative and one positive ) before viewing it myself.  My rating is 7.5 out of 10 as I believe it will educate the general public about the plight of children in foster care. *******

Flipping the Script on a mainstream National Adoption Awareness Month article. It has lots of advice about adoption. I just picked this one at random called "9 Ways to Celebrate National Adoption Month" and re-wrote it. 1. Retell Your Child’s Adoption Story to Them . How about you allow your child to tell his/her own story? Buy them an art pad or journal to draw or write their adoption story as they see it. Pro vide them lots of photos and information so they can make sense of their Chapter 1. Include their birth story. 2. Spread Awareness Through Social Media . The article advises to share your family’s adoption story. We don’t need more adoption stories via the eyes of adoptive parents. We need more #adoptee stories. 3. Watch Positive Adoption Movies With Your Family . Watch This is Us instead. Or better yet watch, "A Girl Like Her " by Ann Fessler. Or any documentary produced by an adoptee or birth parent. My favorites are by Jean Strauss

November has arrived and with it an Ohio monsoon on the first day of National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM). I debated whether to write anything. No time for blogging much these days so I will say a few things you may have heard before. Being adopted does not define me as a human being yet it has limited my choices as a full, equal US citizen. It has limited my knowledge of who I was born to and who my ancestors were because of outdated laws created in an era of secrecy an d shame. Being adopted in the US has limited mine and my children’s access to important and potentially life-saving medical history and even limited my entry into organizations like DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) which require a paper trail of ancestry to join. I have spent many years writing and asking people to listen to adoptees Instead of adoption professionals who financially benefit from the industry or adoptive parents who host morning shows. Adopted people should be the