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Praise

What people are saying:

  • An instant classic in the parenting genre.
  • This is the book I wish my parents had had when they adopted me and my two brothers.
  • The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption is receiving rave reviews. Now I know why.

The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole is Lori’s first book, born from listening to hundreds of people living in adoption — adult adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents and adoption professionals.

open adoption advocateThere are many resources on why to do open adoption, but what about how? Open adoption isn’t just something parents do when they exchange photos, send emails, share a visit. It’s a lifestyle that may feel intrusive at times, be difficult or inconvenient at other times. Tensions can arise even in the best of circumstances. But knowing how to handle these situations and how to continue to make arrangements work for the child involved is paramount. This book offers readers the tools and the insight to do just that. It covers common open-adoption situations and how real families have navigated typical issues successfully. Like all useful parenting books, it provides parents with the tools to come to answers on their own, and answers questions that might not yet have come up.

Through their own stories and those of other families of open adoption, Lori and Crystal review the secrets to success, the pitfalls and challenges, the joys and triumphs. By putting the adopted child at the center, families can come to enjoy the benefits of open adoption and mitigate the challenges that may arise.

More than a how-to, this book shares a mindset, a heartset, that can be learned and internalized, so parents can choose to act out of love and honesty throughout their child’s growing up years, helping that child to grow up whole.

An acknowledged thought leader in the area of open adoption.

Lori Holden was named a Top 10 Must-Read Mom by Parenting magazine and was honored at the annual BlogHer Conference in 2010. She also had an article published in Parenting and in Conceive magazines at that time. Her blog, LavenderLuz.com, has been listed by Adoptive Families magazine, Circle of Moms and by Grown in My Heart to be one of the top adoption blogs.

Besides Parenting, Conceive and Adoptive Families magazines, Lori has written for The American Fertility Association, RESOLVE.org and Kaiser Permanente’s Partners in Health magazine. With Crystal, her daughter’s birth mom, she teaches classes on building a child-centered open adoption.

Increasingly recognized as an expert in the field, Lori has spoken at BlogHer conferences about Adoption/Loss/Infertility (ALI) issues about authenticity in writing. She is a regular columnist for Mile High Mamas, a Denver Post site. She received the 2013 Commitment to Excellence Award and keynoted at the Parenthood For Me Gala in Rochester, NY.

Lori has lived in Japan and in the Middle East, and currently lives in Denver with her husband, Roger, and two children. Her daughter, Tessa, and her son, Reed, continue to teach her every day.

Parenting magazineAdoptive Families June 2010
Top 25 Adoption Blogsa Denver Post site

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