Helping Adoptive Families Heal With Post-Adoption Support

Adoptive families—with unique transitions, traumas, and needs—can be especially vulnerable.

But by God’s grace, post-adoption support and healing is available.

Meet Wes and Kasey.

Just as they were ready to adopt their first child, their doctor diagnosed them with “unexplained infertility.”

Estimates indicate that anywhere from 15–30% of couples experiencing infertility are diagnosed as having unexplained infertility. If this is part of your story, you’re not alone.

As you might imagine, the news was crushing for Wes and Kasey, but it reaffirmed their decision to adopt.

With relative ease, they brought home their sweet daughter, Priya.

And less than one year later, they applied to adopt again.

Their second adoption was bumpy.

Due to several visits to the ER, their financial safety net was depleted. In a miraculous turn of events, their church gifted them a significant grant through Lifesong—the exact amount of money they had saved but had to use for medical bills.

With help from an adoption grant facilitated by Lifesong from their church, they eventually brought home their second daughter, Hope.

Adoption, at its core, always involves loss. Therefore, adoption always requires some degree of healing. For Wes and Kasey’s family, healing meant years of expensive therapy.

“We began to wonder why everything was so difficult. Why couldn’t attachment just happen? Fatigue didn’t begin to describe it.”

But once again, God provided.

In late 2019, Wes and Kasey were awarded a post-adoption grant facilitated by Lifesong from their church, specifically to help adoptive families access counseling, training, trauma care, and other interventions.

Post-adoption support matters.

Often, when people talk about the “adoption journey,” they’re referring to the process of raising funds and bringing a child home. All very important.

But the post-adoption journey is just as important and can be easily overlooked.

At Lifesong, our goal is for all children who are adopted to thrive. Which means post-adoption care is critically important.

We understand that every adoption includes loss and trauma.

Pastor, adoptive father, and friend of Lifesong, Renaut van der Riet, describes it like this—

“Even if your adoption experience doesn’t unfold violently, it will always involve trauma. There is no version of adoption that doesn’t involve trauma. At some point, the trauma your adoptive child or children have experienced is going to manifest. When it does, it will affect everyone in the family, because the good news—and the terrible news, too—is that you are all in this together.”

We offer post-adoption support.

Specifically, we offer post-adoption care and counseling financial assistance to help families receive:

• counseling (for the adopted child, siblings, or parent(s))
• training
• trauma care, like EMDR therapy
• neurofeedback or other interventions

And by God’s grace, we believe healing is possible. We’ve seen post-adoption support impact over 500 families so far.

You can bring healing to more families.

With the support of a post-adoption grant, four years of therapy, and a few miracles, Wes and Kasey’s family has seen so much restoration.

And in the last few years, God surprised them with two biological sons.

Kasey shared—

“I’m so glad that God didn’t go with my plan. Turns out, He was writing a MUCH bigger, better story than we could have ever imagined.”

Your gifts not only help build families, but they also help adoptive families thrive. When you give to create post-adoption support, families receive the critically important post-adoption care and counseling they need to take the next step forward.