Adoption can shape a life in ways that are not always visible.
Adoption-competent therapy for adopted adults
What is adoption-competent therapy?
Adoption-competent therapy recognizes that adoption is not a single event or a simple family structure. It can shape identity, attachment, grief, loyalty, culture, race, records, reunion, secrecy, belonging, and the stories people are allowed — or not allowed — to tell about themselves.
As a transracial Latina adopted person, artist, LMFT, and Board Certified Art Therapist, I bring both lived experience and clinical training to this work. My story is not your story, and I will not assume that adoption means the same thing for every adoptee. But I do understand that adoption can involve layers of absence, adaptation, longing, loyalty, anger, gratitude pressure, cultural displacement, and questions that may not have clean answers.
You do not need to have a complete adoption story to begin.
adoption, identity, grief, and belonging
There may be more to make room for.
For some adoptees, adoption is connected to trauma. For others, the word “trauma” does not quite fit, or does not tell the whole story. You may be carrying grief, confusion, numbness, anger, loyalty, curiosity, relief, shame, gratitude, or a sense that parts of your life were decided before you had language or choice.
Adoption can create a life lived between many kinds of truth: legal truth and emotional truth, adoptive family and biological family, known history and missing records, gratitude and grief, belonging and unbelonging, the story others tell and the one your body may still be trying to understand.
In therapy, we can move at a pace your system can tolerate. We may talk, make images, write, notice body sensations, work with records or family narratives, explore relationships, or sit with what is still unknown. The goal is not to force resolution or turn your life into one coherent story. The goal is to help you relate to your experience with more clarity, capacity, and choice.
You do not have to be grateful, angry, searching, reunited, certain, or “over it” to begin. Adoption-competent therapy makes room for complexity without requiring you to perform the right adoptee narrative.
Adoption-competent therapy may support you in exploring…
Belonging, unbelonging, and feeling “in between”
Grief, anger, loyalty, gratitude pressure, or emotional numbness
Identity questions that shift across adulthood, reunion, parenting, loss, or life transitions
Attachment, intimacy, boundaries, and the fear of needing too much or asking too little
Patterns that may have protected you before but no longer fit the life you are trying to live
Why art therapy can be useful for adoptees
Some adoption experiences begin before memory, language, or choice. Others live in documents, photographs, family stories, missing information, body sensations, or questions that return at different stages of life. Art therapy can give these experiences a form we can look at together without requiring everything to be explained in words first.
Through art therapy, we might:
Notice sensations, images, metaphors, or fragments that are difficult to explain directly
Give shape to grief, anger, longing, loyalty, uncertainty, or contradiction
Work with records, timelines, family narratives, photographs, maps, symbols, or missing pieces
Approach painful material indirectly, with enough structure and containment to stay connected
Explore culture, race, language, belonging, and inheritance without forcing certainty or performance
My art therapy training and art practice help me listen for what shows up in image, material, silence, repetition, absence, and the body. Art therapy does not require you to know the whole story. It can help us stay with what is partial, contradictory, or still forming.
Race, culture, and adoption
Transracial and transcultural adoption can add layers that are often minimized or misunderstood: race, language, culture, racism, appearance, access, family narratives, and the experience of being read by the world in ways your adoptive family may not share or fully understand.
As a transracial Latine adopted person, I know that cultural identity is not always something you can simply “reclaim.” Sometimes access was interrupted. Sometimes language, family history, records, or community connection are partial. Therapy can make room for what was lost, what was adapted, what was protected, and what may still be possible now.
This work may include grief, anger, curiosity, tenderness, ambivalence, or the fatigue of being asked to explain yourself. It may also include building a relationship to culture that is real enough to support you, even when it is incomplete, delayed, or still changing.
Cultural identity work may include…
Cultural displacement, disconnection, or delayed access
Racial and ethnic identity formation across different stages of life
The impact of racism, colorism, microaggressions, and being misread
Ways of connecting with heritage that feel grounded rather than performative
Biological-family relationships across language, culture, class, geography, and expectation
Grief for what was interrupted, alongside attention to what remains, grows, or becomes possible
Art-based groups for adult adoptees
I periodically offer art-based groups created specifically for adopted adults. These gatherings make room for experiences that can be difficult to hold alone — including identity, grief, belonging, family relationships, reunion, cultural disconnection, anger, ambiguity, and the many ways adoption can change meaning across a lifetime.
Art-making offers a way to be in conversation with those experiences without requiring disclosure or a complete explanation. Participants may make, write, reflect, share, or simply listen. No art experience is needed, and sharing is always optional.
These groups are facilitated by me as an adopted person, Board Certified Art Therapist, and LMFT. They are not psychotherapy or a replacement for therapy; they are structured, art-based spaces for reflection and connection among adopted adults.
Frequently asked questions about adoption-competent art therapy
FAQs
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For some adoptees, adoption is connected to trauma. For others, the word “trauma” does not quite fit, or does not tell the whole story.
Adoption can involve separation, grief, disrupted attachment, missing information, cultural or racial displacement, secrecy, changes in identity, or experiences that began before memory or language. It can also involve love, connection, relief, curiosity, loyalty, gratitude, anger, ambivalence, and contradiction.
Adoption-competent therapy does not assume that adoption affected everyone in the same way. We can pay attention to what your experience actually holds and how it is showing up in your life now.
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Yes. Art therapy can be especially useful when parts of an adoption experience are difficult to explain directly or do not exist as a complete verbal story.
We might work with images, materials, photographs, records, maps, timelines, objects, writing, metaphor, or body sensations. Making something gives us a form we can look at together, question, return to, or approach indirectly.
You do not need artistic experience, and you will never be required to make art. Art-making is one of several ways we can work, depending on what is useful to you.
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Therapy can help you develop a less overwhelming and more workable relationship to what you carry — whether that involves grief, identity, attachment, family relationships, reunion, cultural displacement, missing information, anger, loyalty, or experiences that remain unresolved.
The goal is not to make adoption disappear, arrive at the “right” interpretation of it, or turn your life into one coherent story. We can work toward greater clarity, capacity, choice, and room for complexity as your relationship to adoption continues to change.
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Groups and workshops are offered periodically rather than on a fixed schedule. The best way to hear about the next one is to join my adoptee mailing list.
You can also follow @arttherapywithnicole on Instagram for occasional updates.