Today on the podcast we’re taking a field trip to the online classroom of Maris Blechner, a social worker, educator and expert in the field of adoption. So pack up your notebooks, sharpen your pencils and get prepared to learn at the feet of a master. This episode is so rich I didn’t want it to end. There’s so much to think about here that I decided to split it into two episodes. Be sure to come back next week for the second part.
This conversation was one of those where I could literally feel the synapses in my brain firing. I thought I understood adoption, I mean, I’m a social worker after all so it’s not like this is my first rodeo, but this conversation gave me a new understanding, a deepening and richness to the nuances of chosen families that I am so grateful for. What happens when a family adopts a child? What is it like to accept the “wrapped present” and watch it begin to slowly show itself to us? What are the challenges with identity formation between the adoptive family and child? And what about the hundreds of thousands of children foster care system? Children who desperately need a home?
Perhaps the biggest learning for me was around the topic of loss. “Adoption begins with loss,” Maris reminds us. A foundation of loss that never goes away. I was so struck by this reminder. Of the need to verbalize that loss, to bring it out into the open and give the child a language to talk about an experience that brought them to this moment. The notion that without loss the new family would never have formed. In a world that favors brevity and quick fixes, this conversation reminds us of the richness in the complexity of life, the “stepping stones” as Maris puts it, that without which there would be no story.
Maris Blechner is an adoptive and birth parent, a licensed clinical social worker and educator, and an internationally respected trainer and speaker who has spent the last thirty-nine years working for the improvement of the lives of children in the child welfare system. One of the founders of the parent-led multi-service adoption agency that she directed for twenty-six years, Maris relates proudly that she comes from the citizen-activist child-advocacy community and brings that neighborhood and personal family experience to her professional work. These days she has enjoyed mentoring, doing specialized consulting and training, and teaching at her own school, the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. She has been featured as a storyteller (about adoption) on the Moth Radio Hour, on NPR and podcasts, and even on the BBC, and has a chapter in It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion & Open Adoption, 2016.The NYS Adoptive Parents Committee: www.adoptiveparents.org.
To learn more about adoption, please check out the following links:
Resources Maris mentioned in the episode:
Maris Blechner (the MOTH appearance)
You can listen to Maris’ episode here.
