Episode 36: An Interview with Lori Holden, Author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole

The Essentials for Adoption Attuned Parenting

Join hosts, adoption coaches and adoptive parents, Joann DiStefano and Susan David of Growing Intentional Families Together as they host special guest, author and adoption writer, Lori Holden for a discussion about the benefits of openness in adoption.

Lori’s book The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole is on required reading lists at adoption agencies around the country, offering guidance on how parents can help their children heal the split between their biology and their biography. Her teachings help adoptive families of all types (foster, international, domestic) grasp the benefits of openness, regardless of contact with a child’s birth parents. Lori helps adoption professionals and adoptive parents shift from an Either/Or paradigm that “splits the baby,” to a BothAnd paradigm that comes from better understanding adoptee experiences. Lori encourages us to parent with openness and intention.

Lori lives near Denver, CO. She and her husband are parents-by-adoption to young adults. She has been listening to adoption perspectives during her 14 years of writing at the award-winning site, LavenderLuz.com. She is also host of the monthly podcast Adoption: The Long View and features interviews with adoption experts on timely adoption related topics -- all with the goal of making adoption a kinder, gentler, and healthier experience for adoptees and those that love them.