A Support Group for Adoptive Parents Facing Adoption's Challenges:
APtitude
Are you an adoptive parent?
Or maybe you’re a foster parent, guardian, kinship parent, donor conception parent, or parent through surrogacy?
Is your child struggling with acting-out, addiction, mental health issues, or relationships and connection?
Do you wish you had a group of peers who understand what you’re going through?
Would you like support around dealing with your child’s relinquishment trauma?
Welcome to APtitude:
A Support Group for Adoptive Parents Facing Adoption's Challenges
If you are looking for a community of adoptive parents that will help your personal growth and help heal your family, APtitude is it!
Turn toward the source of the pain and find a way to support your adopted child (and yourself) in a healing way…
Find out what APtitude is all about - and who's behind it.
Hi, I’m Beth Syverson, Joey's adoptive mom
APtitude is an outgrowth of two successful projects Joey and I created:
The Safe Home Podcast (rated top 10% in the world by ListenNotes) and Safe Home Bookclub, where adoption has always been on the table for discussion.However, I felt a deep passion to focus more on adoptive parents, their struggles and open a safe place to have those “other” more difficult conversations we often avoid as APs.
The intention is to come together as a community and better understand adoption trauma - and our own losses as Adoptive Parents - so we can better help our kids and save our sanity.
Not ready to join yet but want to keep in touch? Sign up for our email list here:
💝 Monthly Forum (typically on the 3rd Sunday at 4pm PST on Zoom) where we check in with one another, hear from a Guest speaker who is touched by adoption, and have transformative discussion/Q&A aftewards. May's event will be on May 28, 2023 with Glenn Morey, an interracial Korean adoptee and filmmaker. We will be screening his film Side By Side at 3:15pm PST that day, and starting the speaker forum at 4pm. Make sure you join APtitude in order to receive the Zoom link.
💝 AP-only bookclub with a focus on adoption-related books. We're currently reading You Don't Look Adopted by Anne Heffron.
💝 Private/hidden Facebook group for daily conversations with other APs plus occasional online special events - film screenings, social gatherings, or educational opportunities
💝 A curated-by-me database of resources for Adoptive Parents, exclusively for APtitude members
What's NOT Included?
❤️🩹 Gripe sessions about birth parents or your child’s genetics
❤️🩹 “I am the only Mom” type exclusionary language or using the acronym “BM” for birth mother (Use BP or First Mom or Birth Mom or …)
What Makes APtitude Different?
We talk about the hard stuff, the roots of the issue, and offer solutions and support. We help move away from an “ownership” mindset and into a "radical acceptance" mindset.
You are allowed to go deep into the subjects that matter to you as an AP, and as a community, we evolve any pain into progress.
This comprehensive support group for APs includes the AP-only bookclub, monthly speakers with check-ins and Q&A, and a private social media group where we can communicate with each other 24/7.
APtitude is FREE to join for a limited time, and we make Patreon available for members who are interested in supporting my work with a small monthly contribution.
Once you sign up to be part of the APtitude family, you will:
- Learn techniques and strategies to support your child around their relinquishment trauma and attachment issues.
- Understand your role as Adoptive Parents in maintaining connection with your child’s birth family (if at all possible).
- Learn how to navigate cultural or racial differences between us parents and our child.
- Walk through reunion challenges with purpose.
- Gain a deeper understanding of addiction, mental health issues, and learning disabilities that might have been caused by the deep pain of relinquishment trauma.
- Become a support for your child’s healing from development trauma or C-PTSD.
- Embrace family preservation as the goal whenever possible.
Who Is Beth Syverson?
I adopted my son Joey from Japan when he was an infant. I had never heard the words "adoption trauma" until after Joey was struggling as an adolescent. At that point, I dug in to educate myself so I could better help Joey.
As a way to cope with all the turmoil, Joey and I created Safe Home Podcast in 2021, to help struggling teens and their families finding their healing path.
In early 2022, I started Safe Home Bookclub. Our first book was The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. This was a game changer. I sent a discussion question to the members almost every day (through the Bookclub app) and helped people process the sometimes challenging and triggering material in that book. The discussion was rich and eye-opening.
This fueled my desire to create a separate space for Adoptive Parents. A place where we could talk about the difficult challenges around the topic of adoption with our unique point of view as APs.
Find out more about our family's work at UnravelingAdoption.com