Mental Health

Beyond Words Psychological Services

This LLC, established by Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, offers a directory of professional (medical and mental health) resources in the Denver Metro Area. Dr. Wirta-Leiker specializes in issues of race, identity, societal expectaion, family relationships, and adoption.

Birth Family Search

Family Ties: Chinese Adoptee Birth Family Search

Family Ties is a Facebook group that offers guidance and support for people searching for birth families in China. This is NOT an advocacy group and is a platform solely for searching, guidance, and support.

Birth Family Search

Nikwi Hoogland

In an Instagram page in blog-like format, this source offers a personal look at an adoptee’s thoughts and experiences surrounding her identity and reunion experience. This source can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are wondering about an experience like this.

Birth Family Search

A Family in China

An archive of a podcast that discusses the searching journey in multiple perspectives (adoptees, birth parents, & searchers). This source can apply to and most benefit those who are invested in learning more about this topic.

Birth Family Search

NPR: “I Found My Birth Mother. It Didn’t Rock My Life — And That’s OK”

This is a short narrative story about an adoptee’s experience of meeting her birth mother and her feelings about it. This story can apply to and most benefit adoptees who are wondering about an experience like this. It is important to remember that this short story is not meant to be discouraging but comes from a rather realistic point of view.

Literature

Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother

When Delly Duck lays an egg, she is excited for it to hatch. But she doesn’t really know how to keep an egg safe, or how to look after her chick when he hatches. See how a concerned goose tries to help Delly to learn how to care for her chick, in this touching adoption story.

Literature

God Painted Me

This book imagines the way we came to be and how we are loved through adoption. Mason tells his mommy how God painted him and all that is in the world. With divine creativity and color, we are all God’s masterpiece.

Literature

A Family Is a Family Is a Family

This is a book that talks about the many different types of families. Ones of every shape, size and relation.

Literature

Ten Days and Nine Nights: An Adoption Story

Follow a little girl as she and her family prepare for the new baby that will soon be joining them. And simultaneously, watch the girl’s mother fly off to Korea, meet the new baby, and bring her home. Here is an utterly simple, sweet, and child-centric look at the adoption process through the eyes of a soon-to-be older sibling. From cutting a red paper heart and taping it above the new baby’s crib to telling her best friend about the adoption, the young narrator counts down every day and night with growing anticipation, marking them with a big X on her calendar. This is also perfect for older children who are about to become big sisters and brothers.

Literature

The Red Blanket

Eliza Thomas went to China in 1994 to adopt her daughter PanPan, who was then 5 months old. This is their story. It is a touching and beautiful adoption story that reveals the challenges as well as the joys of forming a new family. It is a story about a little girl who needed a mommy and a forgotten blanket that needed a little girl and a woman who needed them both. This is a journey about the forming of a family.

Resources