February: Bringing a Higher Love
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
Release Date: 02/19/2024
Setting the Holiday Table in Complex Times: Nourishing Family Narratives
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this November episode of Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents, host April Dinwoodie invites listeners to reflect on what it means to set the holiday table with intention in complex times. Thanksgiving is often framed as a celebration of gratitude and togetherness—but for many, including adoptive and transracial families, it also stirs deeper emotions and difficult truths. April explores how this tension mirrors the complexity of adoption itself: the beauty of connection intertwined with loss, absence, and identity. With honesty and heart, April offers practical ways to...
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October: Behind the Mask — The Truth About Belonging, Identity, and the Narratives We Navigate
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
This October, host April Dinwoodie explores the masks we wear — the ones we put on to belong, to stay safe, or to make others comfortable — and what happens when we start to take them off. Through the lens of adoption and identity, April reflects on how masking often begins as a form of protection and survival, especially for adopted persons navigating complex narratives about family and belonging. She also invites adoptive parents to look at their own patterns of masking and how curiosity, honesty, and empathy can help everyone in the family feel seen and safe enough to be real. With a...
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Belonging in the Messy Middle
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this September episode of Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents, April Dinwoodie reflects on what’s surfacing for children a few weeks into the school year—feelings of belonging, othering, and the silent weight many carry. April shares why parents must do their own work around belonging, avoid the pitfall of assuming silence means “everything’s fine,” and lean into the messy middle of conversations about adoption, identity, and friendship. This episode sets the stage for October’s theme: The Masks We Wear.
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Back to School in a Changing Climate: Always Learning, Always Growing
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this August episode of Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents, April Dinwoodie reflects on the realities of back-to-school season today versus her own childhood. While her school days were filled with questions of identity and belonging as a transracially adopted person, she never had to face active shooter drills or the fears that weigh on students now. Against the backdrop of political rollbacks in DEI, curriculum bans, and underfunded support systems, April shares how these shifts impact children—especially those navigating adoption and complex identities. She also lifts...
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Exploring Freedom & Confronting Hard Truths in Adoption
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this July episode, host April Dinwoodie explores what freedom really means in adoption - personally, politically, and emotionally. Through four powerful lessons, she unpacks the complexitites of identity access, parental responsibility, grief, and the impact of systemic injustice. As July's national celebrations unfold, this episode challenges listeners to think beyond fireworks and flags - and instead, reflect on how freedom is experienced, denied, and protected in the lives of adopted people and the families who love them.
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Celebrating the Many Hands and Hearts That Hold Us (Part Two): Honoring Fatherhood in All Its Forms
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this heartfelt June episode of Calendar Conversations, host April Dinwoodie continues her two-part series exploring expansive definitions of family. With Father’s Day as our guidepost, we honor the many forms of fathering that show up in the lives of adopted persons — from fathers of origin and adoptive dads to mentors, uncles, grandfathers, and beyond. April shares personal reflections on the joy and ache of Father’s Day, shines a light on the systemic erasure of fathers (especially Black fathers), and offers tangible ways adoptive parents and caregivers can foster healing, identity,...
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Celebrating the Many Hands and Hearts That Hold Us: Part One - Honoring Motherhood in its Many Forms
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
This May, we are beginning a special two-part series: Celebrating the Many Hands and Hearts That Hold Us - an exploration of what it means to honor family expansively, through the lens of adoption. In this first part of the series, we focus on Mothers’ Day - the emotions it carries, the opportunities it presents, and how adoptive parents can hold space for the many hands and hearts that are part of a child’s life. This Mother’s Day, I invite you to celebrate expansively. Hold space for complexity. Honor the many hands and hearts that shape your child's life - including your own.
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Naming the Truth: Adoption, Identity & Belonging
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this episode, host April Dinwoodie unpacks the power of names—those given at birth, changed by adoption, or chosen later in life—and the deep emotional weight they carry. For adopted people, names are often tied to complex layers of identity, loss, and belonging. April shares a personal story that illuminates these truths and invites adoptive parents to reflect on what their child’s name might hold, and how to honor the full journey behind it.
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March: Luck and Adoption, Blessing and Burdens
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
March is often associated with luck. For many adopted persons, we hear this word a lot, You are so lucky to be adopted.” But is adoption really about luck? Or is it about something much deeper - an experience shaped by love loss gain, and grief all at once? Join host, April Dinwoodie to uncover how luck plays a role in adoption.
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February: The Intersection of Love and Loss
Calendar Conversations: A Guide for Adoptive Parents
In this February episode, host April Dinwoodie invites parents of adopted children to acknowledge the reality of loss and its impact on identity. April also allows listeners to reflect together to find a quiet yet powerful place to create space for healing the deep complexities of adoption.
info_outlineThe month of February brings us to the intersection of St. Valentine’s Day and Black History Month. A time when we can pay special attention to the themes of love and racial identity. Love is a vital ingredient for all families but adoption and difference of culture and race make it imperative that love moves beyond the transactional and into the transformational.