Transracial Adoption Seminar - Building Healthy Identities

Building Healthy Identities: Self-identity and Family Identity in a Transracial Adoptive Family

Adoption and race have long been taboo topics to discuss in society, yet transracial adoptive families often have little choice but to discuss them openly and often. But finding the right words and focus, understanding the shifting landscape and complexity of these dialogues, and feeling comfortable speaking to your children about race and adoption can be complicated. Moreover, we often don’t know what we don’t know until we broaden our base of knowledge.

Participants in this conference will discuss:

- microaggressions both in race and adoption,
- the narrative burden,
- the pitfalls of the colorblind theory,
- the controversial “white privilege,”
- accessing racial mirrors
- perhaps most importantly, the richness of being a person of color and being a member of those communities.

Agenda:

8:30: Registration, Continental Breakfast

9:00: Seminar begins

11:30: Working Lunch

1:00: Wrap Up

Michelle M. Hughes specializes in interactive diversity training, with an emphasis on transracial, international, and general adoption education. She is a frequent speaker at adoption conferences and adoption camps. Ms. Hughes is a fellow of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA), a member of the Chicago Bar Association Adoption Committee (Chair 2011-2012), and former Vice Chair of Cook County Bar Association Adoption Committee. She is also the former Co-Chair of the CI (Confidential Intermediate) advisory committee with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and a current member of the subsequent adoption advisory & CI committee.

Learn more at bridgecommunications.org.