Adoptee Healing + Support Group
This is a community by adoptees for adoptees to have a safe space to call home and a container for us to share our experiences and stories while we have the opportunity to feel seen, heard, loved, understood, and supported by fellow adoptees from all around the world. Join us in conversations that heal!
We hold a weekly call every Tuesday at 5:30 PM PST to connect, share our stories, and learn from one another as we give and receive support together.
Speaking about our own life experiences as an adoptee and hearing about other adoptees’s life experiences can bring great learning and deep healing for us. This container is an opportunity for each of us to access profound healing for ourselves by creating connections and relationships with fellow adoptees.
Each call will begin with the host, Ali Jameson, opening the call with a brief grounding exercise and asking all participants if they agree with the following Community Container Agreements so that we co-create a space for everyone to feel safe and supported. These agreements are what we as a group aspire and aim towards while understanding that we are all humans on ongoing learning/unlearning processes and we are all walking our own unique healing journeys.
Ali ensures that each participant has time to share and will conclude each call between 6:30 - 7 PM PST.
Before joining each call please refresh your memory by re-reading the Community Container Agreements. If you feel there is something important missing from the agreements please contact Ali (adoptyourself@gmail.com) and the suggestion will be openly discussed on the next call where the community will vote to have it added in.
Community Container Agreements:
We are 100% committed to our healing as adoptees and as human beings
This is a consciously created safe, nonjudgmental space rooted in unconditional love where any and all adoptees are welcome
We enter this space learning to accept ourselves and others just as they are. We accept and respect how we (as an individual) and each participant chooses to show up on any given day honoring their full human experience
We all come to this space to learn, to give and receive support, and to love one another
In this community we do not judge or drop anyone because of their beliefs or stance, we learn to accept, acknowledge, and understand while connecting to our hearts, love, and oneness
We respect one another’s privacy and experiences. What is shared here stays here and we do not share what is said here outside of this space
We speak for ourselves only
We do not interrupt one another or correct one another
This is a listening space similar to a classroom, filled with questions and curiosity
No FRACKing (fixing, rescuing, advice giving [unless asked for], complaining, killing someone’s experience)
We intend to hold this community rooted in an awareness of our personal and collective commitments to liberatory relationships, honoring at all times our responsibilities as a community that welcomes people from all races and ancestry. This especially means that in our adoptee circle we are committed to the work of creating safe space for people of color by being present to name and address whiteness relational dynamics whenever they show up. We are committed to doing so in a way that always honors everyone’s full humanity, personal safety, and dignity.
In this community there is zero tolerance for hate or discrimination of any form including blind hatred of race, religion, gender, politics, or sexual orientation. (‘Hate’ is defined as any form of bigotry, prejudice, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, etcetera). If any form of hate comes up we will address it by immediately stopping the hate/discriminatory action and then create space to address the incident in community with safety and accountability for all in order to reach an agreed upon solution on how to move forward
We are here to hold the topic of adoption as adoptees however the spectrum of human experience is huge and many other aspects of our individual lived experiences will always naturally emerge during the call. With us co-creating a space for open dialogue there may be times where a topic or conversation may activate/trigger/agitate a participant. Any activation/trigger/agitation is an opportunity for that person to initiate some self-exploration and can request a pause and group support for that, or pause and express the need to exit the call for the moment to tend to self-care outside of the call space. It is the responsibility of the activated/triggered participant to understand in the moment where they are mentally, emotionally, and somatically in order to kindly respect themselves and all community members. It is up to the participant to choose to reach out for help or politely excuse themself from the conversation.
We are here to hold all complexity that might emerge in our sharing with the safety of knowing that we will be supported by one another without any type of harmful relational dynamics occurring when complexity emerges. Some examples of the types of dynamics we do not engage with in our group are abruptly dropping the call, lashing out, escapism, blame, or shame. If there are other dynamics you would like included in the list, please let us know.
About the host, Ali Jameson:
Ali is an adoptee, an Adoptee Empowerment Coach, and a trauma-informed healer. She has been facilitating this call since October 2019 and creates containers for adoptees and non-adoptees to connect and heal in community through online and in-person events. She does not coach on this call, she solely holds space for the participants and she will only give advice if asked directly. Ali has been doing inner engagement surrounding justice and equality of all humans for many years and is committed to consciously holding a safe space for adoptees of any and all identities.