Hightower Post-Adoptive Coaching & Consulting

 

Hightower Coaching and Consulting Services is comprised of independent consultants who bring a diversity of skills, training, personal experience, insight and wisdom to this very important work.

 

 

 

Andrea is an adult adoptee of the closed adoption era and birth mom who placed her first born in an open adoption situation in 1990. She has been in full reunion with her biological daughter for the past 11 years and enjoys a healthy and reciprocal relationship with the adoptive family. Andrea has two additional children whom she is parenting and can speak to sibling relationships in open adoption.

 

Born in 1969, Andrea was placed through an agency into a supportive adoptive home where she thrived in an environment that by all accounts would be considered cutting edge for the adoption practices and theory of that time. She understands the issues adoptees placed in closed adoptions may face (both while they are growing and when they are adults). When she herself faced an unexpected pregnancy at the age of 19, Andrea made the difficult decision to place her firstborn in a semi-open adoption in 1990.

 

Andrea is the owner and administrator of two online support groups focused on adoption.  One group is aimed at the broadest spectrum of adoption experiences and enjoys a membership of over 200 adoptees, birth moms, adoptive moms, prospective adoptive moms, and expectant moms considering adoption. The other group is aimed at providing a safe and supportive environment for birth moms and enjoys a membership of over 800.

 

Andrea's professional background includes over 17 years of work within public and not-for-profit child welfare organizations at both the statewide and national levels. She holds a B.S. in Human Services Administration and has served on a variety of boards for organizations focused on children and family support.   

amy@postadoptioncoach.com 

 

Amy is an adult adoptee of the semi-open adoption era. Her birth mother selected her adoptive family and they communicated via the placement agency by letters and photos for approximately the first two years of her life.

 

Amy's birth mother pulled away and discontinued contact through the agency, much to the dismay of her adoptive parents and there was no contact from her for the next several years (although her parents continued to send periodic updates to the adoption agency).

 

At the age of 6, Amy's adoptive parents adopted another child into their family who had contact and visits with his biological family. Needless to say, Amy did not find this fair (yes, sibling rivalry is allive and well in adoptive families too) and implored her adoptive parents to find her birth mother. Amy wrote her birth mother a letter and her adoptive parents mailed it off to the agency hoping there would be some response after so many years.

 

It took a year, but at the age of 7 Amy got her wish and met her birth mother, and biological siblings. Amy has been in full reunion with her biological mother and siblings, maternal grandparents, paternal grandmother and paternal aunt from a very young age. Growing up she enjoyed visits and extended vacations with her biological family who also welcomed her brother by adoption as an extended family member.

 

Amy recently became a mother herself, and appreciates in a new way the importance of parent/child bonds both in biological families and adoptive families.