All In the Family: A Systems View of Adoption

Family ties get twisty when another enters the family. Much has been said about the effects and needs of adopted kids and parents, but what about the rest of the family?

Seven adopted siblings joined Jana’s family after she turned 16. This big life transition opened her heart and grew her compassion. But Jana also learned a lot about effects of adoption on the whole family system. Her own unaddressed needs and struggles led her to finding better tools and interventions to keep adoptive and foster families connected and healthy.

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Dr. Jana Hunsley is the Executive Director of Project 1025 LLC, an organization devoted to equipping and supporting adoptive and foster families, where she offers consulting, training, coaching, and counseling for families and professionals. She is also co-founder of Camp Together, a nonprofit offering therapeutic family camps for families impacted by trauma. Jana received her doctorate in experimental psychology from the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University where her research focused on understanding and meeting the needs of every member of adoptive and foster families through post-adoption supportive services. Over the years, Jana has worked in various clinical settings as a therapist with children and youth who have experienced trauma, including residential treatment, institutional care, schools, child welfare, and juvenile detention. Jana credits her passion for this work to her siblings who were adopted when she was a teenager.

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Project 1025: Services and Resources to Create Connected Foster and Adoptive Families

Connected Family Series: An online, self-paced post-adoption family intervention aimed at seeing and meeting the needs of all members of adoptive families.

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Produced by Zach Van Dyke

Transcribed by Ryan Van Dyke

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David: Welcome to With U Podcast. I'm David. 

Tara: And I'm Tara. And we explore relationships and life transitions. 

David: And this next series is going to be on adoption. We have a very special set of people, four episodes, two experts, two families talking about adoption. 

Tara: Yeah. I'd say they're all experts. 

David: They all are experts, yeah. 

Tara: Yeah. And today we're kicking it off, uh, with an interview with an adoption expert, Dr. Jana Hunsley. And she'll be joining us to talk about lots of really great resources for the entire family.

 Alright, welcome. Thank you so much for coming. We would love for you to introduce yourself first, so we know who we're talking to, and then we'll kind of get into more of what you do. 

Jana: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Um, my name is Dr. Jana Hunsley and I am currently in private practice in Nashville, Tennessee. Just made a major life transition little less than a year ago. Um, and, uh, so doing that, and then also I moved here to help start a nonprofit called Camp Together, um, that does therapeutic family camps for families impacted by trauma. Yeah, so, that is the reason why I relocated and doing kind of both things at the same time, but all of my work is in really specifically connected to trauma and in families, most often related to adoption and foster care. So really looking at the needs of families post placement. I have a PhD in experimental psychology, and that focus of that work was really on creating clinical interventions to help families post placement in adoption or foster care. And really from there, I became a professor for a little while and then came back into private practice full time again, really just wanting to be back into the clinical space, helping families. Um, so yeah, that's a little about me. 

Tara: That is incredible. And that's why we called you, because we needed to talk to an expert. Because we, we are talking, we're doing this series on adoption and, um, you know, a lot of people have their personal story. And most people, when they're doing this kind of work, it stems from some personal experience.

So we'd love to hear a little bit about your family story too, and just kind of what drove you towards this kind of work. 

Jana: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah, so my parents adopted three little boys when I was 16 years old. I had two older sisters at the time and a younger brother, um, all bio siblings. We had done foster care when I was really little, but I was like, I don't know, maybe three or four years old. It wasn't anything, it just felt normal to me. Um, but we adopted three little boys internationally when I was 16. Um, they were six year old twins and a five year olds. And that experience completely changed everything for me. 

I, uh, I actually got to go to Taiwan with my parents and my younger brother to meet them and bring my, bring my three brothers home. And that was absolutely a pivotal time in my life. Um, I, I really, one became aware of just the brokenness in the world and the histories that in stories that some people live out that they don't deserve. And I remember as a 16 year old just thinking, "I didn't do anything to deserve the story that I have and the life that I have, and then I get to live and be with my biological family, and I didn't have all these horrendous things happen to me as a child, and these three little boys who are so precious experienced a life and a story that they didn't deserve and they had no control over." And that compassion for that and that empathy for their experience just really shifted so much for me, and it was something that I couldn't really turn away from, and really became, I think it happened for me at a pivotal time because I was at the end of high school where I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, um, and so really started to recognize I had a special understanding and unique lens of these experiences because my brothers would, they had a lot of needs, because of the trauma they had experienced, and we lived in, uh, middle of nowhere, Indiana, where there were not a lot of resources. I mean, back then there weren't any resources anywhere, but especially

in areas of Indiana where there's just, it's not a major city by any means. Um, and trying to find professional support, doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, anyone who could understand their needs. No one did. And they would treat my brothers like they were bad kids who just had behavior issues or treat my parents like they weren't good parents, they just needed to improve their parenting, and nobody understood what was really going on. And I remember as a teenager, I would go to some of those appointments. You can hear parentification happening, and I would sit there and I would think, "how do they not get this? Like, how do they not see that it's these kids histories?"

It's what they experienced before they ever became part of our family. Um, and so that really I think for me solidified like this, I think is what I want to do with my life. I think this is what's mine to do. And then when I was 18, I was a senior in high school, and I had three more siblings come home from Ethiopia, um, a six year old girl, a five year old boy, and a two year old boy. Um, and they brought their own trauma and their own histories and their own behaviors that were really unique to them. Um, and again, just really solidified like, gosh, there's nothing I care about more than kids who have stories and histories like this. And then, uh, so I went, so I went to school, um, wanted to become a post adoption therapist, although I didn't know if that was really a thing, but that's what I wanted to do. Um, my seventh sibling through adoption came home when I was in college. I actually got to, I actually finished a semester early to go to Ghana to meet my brother for the first time, he was six years old at the time, with my dad, um, for one of our visits, and that was my last sibling coming through adoption. So seven siblings came home from the time between my ages of 16 and 20 years old. So my family drastically shifted. 

David: Can I, can I ask you, with that, like, how did your parents... I mean, I have so many questions, uh, but like, how did your parents kind of go, this is, this is, how did we get to the story where they're wanting to kind of have, uh, the, the response of there's these kids with stories that need love, and that they had enough love for biological kids and then seven more adopted. Can I, how did, how did that become part of their story or focus? Cause it seems like it's imprinted on you and giving you an understanding of context and how context shapes stories and people's lives. How did, how did your parents decide to step into that?

Jana: Yeah, for them, what they would say is that they definitely felt called to it. They felt like this was theirs to do. Um, they had, and for them, they modeled really well what it means to live a pretty radical life for Christ. And in terms of, what does that look like, not to just live the comfortable life, but actually what He calls us to do and be obedient and follow after Him. And so, for them, each one of the adoptions, for them it felt like this was what God had called them to do. My dad would say, He felt like it was kind of their mission field. Like they weren't called to go be missionary somewhere else, but they were, they were called to make their family a safe space. Um, and at the same time, I will say now, um, all of these years later that it was also some ignorance in that too, right? They, like, they went into it with this space of, "we have the space, we have the resources, we have the ability to parent kids, we've successfully parented four kids so we can do this," and had no idea what that meant that. Just having the finances, and the time, and the availability, and the space, does, does not mean that you've got this.

Tara: That you're 100 percent ready. 

Jana: Yeah, because trauma is a whole different bear. And so, they definitely didn't, they, what, it kind of ended up being a perfect storm, because my siblings, the ages at which they were adopted, by the time all seven of them were adopted, it was really when they started to get to that really hard developmental age, um, of like upper middle childhood, um, to start into adolescence. And that's when, I mean there were always really intense needs, like my family lived in crisis for over 10 years just constantly, and also it got much worse when they hit that developmental stage and, but by that time the seven kids were all adopted. This is permanent. They're here. And so it was just, this is what, this is ours now to do. 

David: Yeah. So that, that really then informed you kind of the, uh, the lack of knowing what you're getting into had a ripple effect through the family. And you kind of got excited about working, working with families this way. Cause it happened when you were 16? And so identity formation, I know my life, what happened to me at 14 led to me being the profession I'm at as well. Uh, and so you, you lean into all the chaos and, and being part of a large family. Uh, how did, how did it move from that to this okay, post adoption therapist. How do you find that? Cause I still don't know if that's a, is, is that a thing? You've made it a thing. 

Jana: Kind of, yeah, some people. Yeah. So, and it's actually really interesting. So when I went to go do my undergrad, my master's and, and thinking about what I really wanted to do. My heart and my focus was purely on the adopted child, because I had so much compassion for their stories and their histories and how it affected them and seeing so many caregivers and professionals who didn't understand these children's needs.

And so I realized at an early age that I had this kind of, I think I would say I can translate for them. Like I kind of can interpret their language that often is in behavior to help the parents of the professionals understand what their needs are. So that was really my focus of, “I'm going to go and really work with these kids.” Um, but I did become a post adoption therapist. I actually, after my master's degree, um, I moved to Philadelphia and became a post adoption therapist with Bethany Christian services. Um, So definitely like it, it kind of, I just, I didn't know if that's what I was going to end up doing. It kind of just fell and ended up being exactly what I was called to do.

Um, but during that work, I actually did a lot of home visits with families. And so my focus was, "I'm going in to help the child," but because I was with the family in their home, I started to see the patterns. I started to see, oh, this is not just about the adopted child, and my experience that I had in my family as a sibling, the experience my family had as a whole system, is not unique to my family. And for a long time I thought it was, because no one talks about it, no one would even ask me how I was doing or ever even acknowledge that I was affected by it. And so for me, I thought, oh, it's just because like seven kids were adopted in four years. There's a huge age gap. There's a massive family, lots of trauma, like all these things. That's why people didn't know that it affected me. But then I was going into these families' homes every day of the week and seeing they're having the same experiences and same challenges that my family had, but their family looks entirely different than mine. And yet nobody's addressing their needs. We're still just focused on the adopted child. 

Tara: Yeah, and what did some of those family system changes look like? Some of those common things that you guys experienced that you saw in these other families. What, what are some of those stories, like how it shifted your family functioning? 

Jana: Yeah, I mean, I can speak on behalf, like as a sibling, and this is what my research really started this in my doctorate program, um, was really on, like, what is the experience of an, of an adoptive sibling. Um, and for me, I, a lot of it is so much of, there's a shift in everything, everything changes, there's, there's grief and loss in the process, um, there is, I mean, if you really think about it from a family systems lens, it's really the best way to look at it, which is really that everyone is affected by this, it is not simply that you are just bringing a child into your family and the family is going to continue to exist as is.

I remember my family thought that, like, and at 16 I also thought, Oh, I'm just getting three little brothers who are adorable. Like, it's all rainbows and unicorns. I had no idea that those three little humans coming into my family was going to change everything about how we functioned. It changed my relationship with my parents. It changed my relationship with my other siblings. It changed the way that I viewed the world. It changed my perspective of myself. It changed so much, and, but it's an immediate shift. And, and then for my family and for so many families, the need level is so high, and so few people understand these needs, but then you become so alone in it too, and you become isolated. People don't understand. And I know for my family, and again, so many families that I work with that I have worked with over the years, people don't know what happens in the four walls of their home. They don't understand it. And there can be a lot of judgment. There can be a lot of criticism. There can also be a lot of minimizing of experiences of saying like, "oh, that's just typical teenage behavior, toddler behavior," and having no idea the severity of what that behavior is. And so it just isolates the family system in so many ways. And we know, from a family systems lens, that when that family gets isolated and doesn't have that support, all of that stress and pressure is just, I mean, it just creates this like implosion in the family system. And everyone responds and reacts to that stress in their own ways.

David: Yeah. And in a lot of ways that you learn generationally, not necessarily around adoption, but just how do we navigate conflict? How do we navigate asking for our needs or being close? All those, all those patterns become sharp focus when there's crises that happen, and trauma, and kids, kids navigating trauma kind of heightens that.

So you, you, you did this work, you're in the homes, you realize, "oh, I'm going to get my doctorate to really understand this, as we all do. I'm going to partly understand myself and, uh, and understand this area to be helpful." So you, you complete your, your work in your experimental psychology. And that was down at Texas Christian University, and what was your, what was your area specifically? So it's working with siblings. 

Jana: Yeah. Well, yeah. So it kind of expanded. Like I, I decided really through my work as a therapist, realizing that there is-- so in, so in that work, basically what happened was a lot of families started coming to me saying that "I know there are resources to help my adopted child, but I don't know what to do for my biological children. There are no resources. They are struggling so much and I have no idea how to help them." And I realized again that, oh, this isn't, I wasn't the only one that struggled with this. Like, this is a thing that no one's talking about. And so I really decided to go get my doctorate really to start the conversation around the sibling experience and adoption.

And so I, I went and did that at the Care and Purpose Institute of Child Development, which for those who are listening to this that know adoption, well, it's TBRI or Trust Based Relational Intervention. Like that's where it was created and founded. Um, and so I went there to do my work. And I really, in that, had the blessing of a huge platform because they are very well known in the adoption foster care space. And so, um, really just started with like, what's the experience of siblings? Because I don't want to take my experience of sibling and generalize it to be this is everybody's experience. I really wanted to know, like, what does research say? And so I started out just with a survey of-- and had several hundred adults who were adoptive siblings, so biological children and adoptive families, um, just share their experiences. And really from that like, and that's a whole other, but like from that really learned so much about, oh, here's the patterns and here's the, here's the experiences of siblings. And I really rooted that in family systems theory when I did all my papers and stuff, 

David: That makes my heart so happy. I can't even tell you, uh, that experimental psychology and family systems fits so well together. Anyway, sorry for interrupting. I just had to fanboy you a little bit there. Cause I love, I just love systems because it fits well, right? 

Jana: Yes. Yeah. And rooting my work and family systems theory changed everything for me because I realized that, oh, the siblings are the missing puzzle piece that we're not talking about. And when we put that puzzle piece into this family system, what we realize is there's needs that the adopted child has, there's needs that the siblings have, there's needs that the parents have, and there is dynamics between all of those different dyadic relationships, and there's also stuff happening in the whole family system, and yet, as the adoption foster care community, we've put so much emphasis on the adopted child, and all of our resources are poured into them. And that's good and important and necessary work, because they have, they have a lot of needs because of the histories they have. And also, in doing that, we also unintentionally shame and blame them, kind of scapegoat them, as the reason why adoptive and foster families are so stressed is because of this child's behavior. But what I realized in my work is the reason they're so stressed is because it's a systemic issue. They don't have the resources. There's not the knowledge and information and the support needed for families to be able to manage this level of stress because every member of that family is experiencing that stress and they need additional support outside of that family to be equipped and prepared for this. And we just don't do that well at this point. 

David: Yeah. And so that leads you to starting, is that when you started Camp Together or got the idea for Camp Together? Or is that further down the line? 

Jana: That's further down the line. 

Tara: Well I wanna hear, too. Yeah, and what would have been... uh, because there's a lot of things you're doing now, I think, that are, like, that have come out of that, that stuff you learned in your, in your training, but what do you think would have been helpful? Maybe this is what leads to what you're doing now, but your, for your family, um, before your siblings came into the family, what do you think specifically would have really helped that be, help your parents be more well informed or just more well prepared for what they were about to embark on? 

Jana: Yeah. When I'm asked that question, I simply say that they would have just been, they just would have known that this was going to affect every member of the family.

I think there is, there's training and there, the quality of training varies based off of where you are for all of the pre placement support, um, what type of placement you're doing, things like that. But all of that training is so focused on the needs that that adopted child might have. That training does not focus on, but here's how it, how it's going to disrupt your family in both positive and negative ways, in good and hard ways, and here's how to prepare for that. And I think that when you bring a child into your home, so much of the emphasis and focus is on that child, but then you are forgetting about the rest of the system and how they're impacted. And I remember, and this is actually really what led me to go and get my doctorate degree, is that I was actually at a TBRI practitioner training, which is where like therapists, professionals go and get trained in the TBRI model, um, and it can kind of like say that they are, they've been trained in it. And I, and I was sitting there listening to all of the speakers and all of the training, and I was thinking, in my family, like, I'm one of 12 kids, and I thought, there is no way that my family could implement this, because there's 12 kids, like, there's not like, and yet everything they're talking about is, one on one, parent child, and I'm like, there are seven kids with intense trauma here. There's no way that they can do this. And, and so for me realizing that, oh, like thinking, also having compassion for the parents and saying, like, we can't just focus on the parent child relationship. What if we try to engage and intervene at the systemic level? Can we make change happen? 

And so for me, my doctorate work then really, and using family systems theory rooted in my sibling work, I also got the opportunity to do clinical intervention, and so we created Hope Connection 2.0, which is a therapeutic family camp. That's what now Camp Together is, it's a non profit. Um, but they still run them once or twice a year at the Care and Purpose Institute at TCU. But if they're, like, doing, so basically, a little backstory, with Care and Purpose Institute, they, TBRI, the intervention, came from camps for adopted children in the late '90s and early 2000s. Like, that's where the intervention came from. And so they're really rooted in this summer camp model. And in 2018, they decided to bring the camps back. And I happened to just get to be part of those early conversations. And I said, "what if we make it a family camp? Can we try to intervene at the whole family level?" And so I really designed these weekends for families to come post adoption and really intervene with each member of the family and the whole system systemically, holistically, to see can we have these same outcomes happen? And it worked. And it was this like, the intervention was two weekends versus three full weeks of intervention and yet we saw such incredible change happen at the systemic level. And then a little bit further on, I, then my dissertation was I created an online course that was, that's actually the connected family series, what I had sent to you guys, um, where I basically took what we do at camp, the intervention at camp, and in terms of the family system model for post adoption families, and just did an online course where it's for four weeks, it's like 20 minute videos for the parents, 10 minute videos for the kids, and a connection and communication activity. So very minimal intervention, and look to see, can we see this change happen in the improvement of well being for each member of the family and communication and connection overall in the closeness of the parent and child relationship? Like can we see behavior change, improvement in like parenting, stress and competence, all these things from some type of minor intervention like this?

And I did this study in the summer of 2020 when life was insane. The pandemic. And family like, and there was, while the whole world is imploding, these families who went through this little minimal intervention experienced such success and improvement in all, like, both an individual being in the dyadic relationships, and the entire family system. And from that I really realized we can do this from a systemic lens, like we can, we can intervene with these families and not make it the parents' burden of like, here's what this kid needs and this kid needs. Here's what you need. Here's how to do self care. Here's all these things. But there's ways to actually intervene at the whole family level that leads to improvements and improve quality of life for the whole system. 

David: Yeah. Can, can you kind of give, uh, give people listening, what would be one intervention that would work towards that, towards that whole systemic change from the, from the online class and from the camp?

Jana: Yeah. Well, I, I can just go through it really quickly. So the first, it really is about, the foundation of it is understanding and self awareness. So a big piece of things is that when families are so stressed, we know, I mean, really just neurobiologically, we know that when we're stressed we can't access that higher order thinking. We're just in our downstairs brain, just in survival. And so part of it is being able to step outside of that stress response and be able to understand here's what's really going on. I've been blaming or putting the onus in a certain, maybe on a certain behavior or a certain member of the family or something and yet I have, I've not been viewing this stress and this chaos in my family correctly and accurately. And so the first step really is that, like, understanding, at just a foundational level, here's how each member of the family is affected by this experience. Here's what the research shows, and here's what might be happening in your family. And I will tell you, I do a lot of speaking around this too, so it's not just the online course. And every time I speak on this, I have people come up to me afterward and say, "it's like you have been in my living room." Like, it's just like, they're like, "no one ever has talked about this in such a real way and it's like you, this is exactly what's happening in my family."

And so really talking, breaking it down as to here's what's happening with each member of the family, here's how they're each responding and reacting to each other, and, and here's what's going on, that families can, really especially the caregivers, can just have some compassion and some better understanding of what's really going on because once we have understanding of what the real issue is, we can better tackle it. But if we just live in that stress and don't understand what's really going on and why it's so hard, then we just are floundering. 

Tara: We're just playing Whack-a-Mole. 

Jana: So that's really the foundation. 

Tara: Just trying to hit all the problems on the head until the next one pops up. 

David: And it just jumps around if you don't do systemic changes. That's a really good picture. 

Jana: Yeah. So it starts with that. And then the two interventions I really focus around are communication and connection. So the biggest thing that I found in my work was really, and this actually came from a research study I did, I was, I looked at, because the siblings had, in my first study I did with siblings, I found there are such a varied experience, like some had these incredible positive experiences, some had really hard experiences, and I wanted to look to see, are there any factors that predict this, and like what the outcomes are? And so I did a study just looking at that, and I looked at a lot of the ones that we talk about in that kind of mainstream adoption foster care of like birth order changes, the number of children adopted, the number of bio children, the age of adoption, the age of the siblings, like all of these different things, seeing like, does any of this matter in terms of the outcomes? Can this predict positive or negative outcomes? None of it did. The only thing that did was the type of communication the family had. And I thought like this makes so much sense because it was in families who were able to talk openly and honestly about their thoughts and feelings without fear of how that would be received, those families had the most success overall. The siblings felt the most connected to their families, they were the most satisfied in their families, they had the closest relationships with their adopted siblings, they had the most positive views of adoption and foster care overall. Those also were the families who had, and this wasn't my research, this was just as I was doing my, um, literature reviews, they, these also were the families where the adopted children had the least behavioral issues, had the best adjustment to the family system. And, and that type of communication makes a lot of sense because it really, that kind of comes back to attachment and comes back to a healthy attachment where I can come to you and I feel safe talking about my feelings, sharing my struggles, sharing what my thoughts are, asking questions about things. And I know that that's a safe space to do that in. And so, cultivating that in a family is often one of, like, what I call an anchor for a family to really work to develop even before placement happens. Because that communication habit is really going to serve that family so well once the family is in crisis and once that family is in stress. 

David: Yeah, I really see how you're partnering those things together. The awareness of that attachment and communication and awareness of I could be reaching out, you know, in your family, maybe your parents reach out to you. You're going to respond because of the different attachment in a different way and I have to understand and read that. Versus maybe one of the kids that were, came to the family through adoption and has trauma and is going to respond differently. It's not worse or better. It's different. And if I understand that, then I can build an attachment there too, um, that then frees up, everybody doesn't have to act the same way. And it gives you as a sibling, uh, an understanding and a sense of belonging and still connection to the family. It's, it's a beautiful picture that your research is kind of painted. I hope I summed it right.

Jana: Yeah. Yeah, no, you're good. Yeah. And with the communication, one of the things that I think has been really fascinating is that what we found and how the different members of the family tend to respond to the stress of adoption or foster care, um, is that, so for siblings, for example, we tend to stop expressing our needs. We tend to get really invisible, um, for a lot of different reasons. One of them is because we see, because we are attached to our parents, we see how overwhelmed they are and how stressed they are, and we don't want to add anything to their plate. I've had so many siblings who have talked to me about like, "if I share my struggles, if I share my feelings, if I share how much I'm struggling with my parents, it's going to break them. And so I'm going to keep it to myself and deal with it myself so that I don't, I'm not the reason why they break." And so we find that these kids, who are not at a developmental stage where they should be taking on all of their challenges and struggles on their own, are work, are striving to be so independent and perfectionistic and to have no need so that they don't add to their parents burdens. But what we know about parenting is the parents see their kids are not doing well, but their kids aren't willing to talk to them about these things. The parents also are so burdened and overwhelmed by the adopted children or foster children's needs. And so they're at capacity. They're trying to figure out how to do everything. And if we just learn how to communicate, then it, then those needs can be so easily expressed, and then we're dealing with the, the conversations, not the behaviors that come out because those conversations never even happen.

Tara: What kinds of communication practice do you, do you use with a family? Like before they're about to start the process of adoption, what do you find to be the most helpful? 

Jana: Um, I always say to start with the foundation of mindfulness, so like self working really with self awareness and attunement. And so I have spent a lot of time focusing on, and that's right, right, right, where so much of my work is on that foundation of understanding. So understanding what each person's bringing a table, what their needs might be, how they might be affected so that we can play detective better so that we can understand why people might be doing certain things in the family instead of just looking at the behavior at face value. Trying to understand here's why why they might be responding this way or reacting this way. And also for the parents to also be aware of their own stuff as to why they might respond to react a certain way.

Tara: That's huge. 

Jana: So like I can I tell this story all the time. My parents are probably like, "Jana you could stop now," but years ago I asked permission to share this story and they said yes. I don't think they realize how much I would speak. But, uh, I share the story of when I, things were really, really hard for my family, and I, uh, and I knew how much my parents were struggling. And I would, there was a couple of times I went to my mom and I said, mom, this is really hard, and I am really struggling. And she would respond with: "but you don't want them to go back to the orphanage, do you?" 

David: Oh! Sorry. We didn't mean to respond like that, but ouch. 

Tara: Yeah. Oh, that's hard. That's pressure on you, right? That's, it puts it back. 

Jana: Yeah. And what I experienced as like a 17 year old was, was like, like so discouraged because I was like, "I'm hurting and this is really hard." And I wanted to come to my mom who's the only other person in my life who understands how hard this is because nobody else sees it. They're just like, "just be connected." But for her, she went into her stress response because she didn't know how much my brother and I were going to be affected by adoption, because no one talked about it. And so it was so hard for her to reconcile what this had done to us. And so when I go to her saying, "hey, this is really hard and I'm seeking connection," she unintentionally shamed me when like, my siblings are my favorite people in the entire world. Like I would do anything for them. And she knew that, like she knew that at the time. And yet it was like, it's, so what she was communicating to me unintentionally was I can't struggle and I can't, and, and my struggles are so minimal compared to theirs because they came from the histories and experiences that they did, and there wasn't space for me to also struggle. And so opening up that communication and that space to know we're all going to respond and react to these these transitions in a different way and that's okay. And we can talk about them and understand them and have compassion. That's so important because it invites that conversation. 

Tara: I have to say too, we don't have a window into your family or how it operates. And I know that sounds like a hard moment between you and your mom, but I, I have been thinking since you started talking that I know your parents showed you their love really well because of how you've turned a hard thing into love and action and how much you love your family. So whatever happened in your family, however hard it was, I know they did a great job. 

Jana: Yeah. 

David: And, and the best of the resources. 

Jana: One bad moment. Yeah. 

Tara: Yeah. And there are, you know, in anybody's parenting journey, it's not all sunshine. You know, there's a lot of hard moments and it's what we learn from that. And it's how we reconnect after that that really makes the difference. 

David: Yeah, we often, we often talk about the ruptures aren't the problem, the lack of repair is. And like, if you think about lifting weights, which I don't do, you can realize, but hypothetically, if we, if we lift weights, there's little micro tears that happen as we do the exercise. That's not great, ripping your muscles, but it's the repair that makes you stronger. And I think like you and your mom, I'm sure had other communications. And now that she lets you share that story, um, you've had those that, that have led to something different. And I think for families sometimes that can be freeing too, of realizing, uh, oh yeah, there's going to be hard times, you're going to make mistakes, there's going to be this miscommunication and not reading the attachment right, not to freak out about it, but that there's opportunities to, uh, reconnect and go back and attend to it. That actually fosters strength and is then those, those moments, those mistakes or painful moments can actually be looked at as moments that fostered greater connection that is evident in your life and your profession. And, uh, you know, like Tara was saying, it's pretty cool. 

Jana: Yeah, yeah. And I will, to that point too, one of the things I thought in my research was that siblings, like I am not a unique adoptive sibling. But we have what we actually find is that so many siblings who go through these experiences do come out with so much greater emotional maturity, compassion, empathy, perspective, trust, all of these really positive things because they are navigating this life. And so it's not I don't want anyone to listen to this here like, "oh my gosh this is terrible, like why would you want to do this?" Because there also is so much good that comes from it too in some very obvious ways but also these other ways that like we see these kids and and these really formative years of their life experiencing these things that really shape them to be these really incredible people who go on often to do these careers like I have where they are serving and helping and giving back in ways because they've experienced what they have. So, there's a lot of positive that comes from it, too, because of that repair work, because of what they, they navigate. 

Tara: You're building resiliency, you know, when you, when you get through things like that. And that's, that's like the top thing that we need to survive and thrive in the harder things that we face later down the road.

So, thank you for shining a light on that. And it's, it's for me shining a light, too. I mean, just, I have, I told you before too, I've got two adopted siblings and I was an older sibling when they arrived and well, much younger than 16, but, um, it affected me in certain, in similar ways. And I'm even thinking about new ways it's making sense to me about why I am the way I am now, just hearing your story. 

David: So I, I am a big camp guy. I love camp. So I've, I, some of my most important spiritual and relational formations happened at, at camp and have been involved my whole life. So that you started a camp together and it's a family camp doing experiential things just gets me so excited. 

Tara: You're speaking all his favorite languages. 

David: You're my new favorite person. Uh, so I, I really want to hear about this Camp Together that's down in Tennessee that you've started that kind of, how is it experiential? What, what happens? 

Tara: What happens there? What do the families do?

Jana: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it really came from the work at the Care and Purpose Institute where we did Hope Connection 2.0. We found that so many families wanted to come, but we, because we were limited by being a university, we would do one or two a year and that was it. And it's, it's intensive. So you have somewhere between like six to eight families that come. Like you don't have a lot of families come at one time because of the level of intensity of intervention that's happening. Um, and so you just can't serve a lot of families that way. So the idea really was, um, myself along with several other people, um, really came together to look at what if we created a non profit where this is what we did full time? Where we create a model where these camps were happening year round, that any families impacted by trauma could come to the camps, and it wasn't only, because a lot of post placement interventions are really focused on like, you know, people adopted from this county or from this country, or you have like all of these different restrictions around the resources you can access, but wanting to create a nonprofit where like, no, we just exist here to meet the needs of families impacted by this trauma, and any family can come from anywhere to be here. And so, um, we just, so we've, I mean, these camps we've done since 2018 at the Care and Purpose Institute, but we just, and moving here this last year, just did our first one in the fall, as our pilot. Um, and, and what it is, it's really just a weekend, where the entire family system comes, and we do intervention with everybody, um, in a, so we really call it like a family intensive. It's at a camp, so it's really fun, and, the parents get a lot of caregiver training and a lot of time for relief. So it's kind of a mix of that of like, we recognize that a lot of these parents don't have access to babysitters and people who can come and take care of their kids that they can get a few hours away. And so part of the weekend is really giving parents that space to just breathe and be. Um, and then, but also doing a lot of equipping because we know that if we were just to come and have a fun weekend together that they're not going to leave with, like, they're going to go home and things are going to get crazy and they're not going to have anything to do to like take that. And so, so the weekend is really about intensive equipping for every member of the family. So we do a lot of training with the parents and even one on one coaching with licensed therapists to really help them problem solve their needs. And with the kids, we do a lot of intervention that's all play, all focused on emotional regulation and developing social skills. And so they're paired with buddies. And this is all what is, if people like know TBRI who are listening, this is all rooted in, like, this is a TBRI camp. Like, that's what this is, essentially. Um, and so it's, it's all from the work that we did at the Institute, where it is, they're paired with a buddy and then with another camper. And basically having that, like, really unique one on one support all weekend to develop social skills with a camper who's similar in age, similar in needs. And also with this adult who's the college kid or young adult, um, who's their buddy that just gets to play with them and have fun and really intervene with them. So do a lot of like kind of that immediate behavior, um, change, but also doing a lot of just like playing detective, seeing what their needs are, how to like sensory processing, like how to help them meet their sensory needs. What are their needs? How do they need to get regulated? All of that happens in a really intensive, but really fun and playful way all weekend. And then we also do work with, I mean, we do sibling processing groups as well and, and work to really help meet their needs and do really group therapy with them. And then we also do family intervention, uh, where they're doing some intensive family therapy type of work, um, but from like a play, uh, perspective, through doing like art activities and things like that, and just giving them like quality family time together.

So, it's a very intensive weekend. Um, but a lot of families walk away with it, I mean, what our goal always every time is that families walk away and every member of the family loved it and wants to come back because a lot of times families will come be like, "my teenagers do not want to come to this or like people will have been skeptical about it." And we're like, "oh, don't worry. Like they're gonna, they're gonna walk away and they're going to have loved it." And so far in the years we've done this, that has been successful every time. Um, but also we want to make sure that they're walking away being equipped and every time the parents walk away, just feeling like, like we have parents every time say like, "this was life changing for us." And in no way do we think that this is the game changer and this is going to change everything for that family because we know that it's going to, they're going to get home and things are going to get hard. But what our goal is in those weekends at camp is really to help kind of almost serve as, as a, as a launching point for them of we're going to do intensive equipping and support so that one, you know you're not alone, but two, that you're going to be given the skills and the understanding and the strategies that you can go home and you have the things that you need to keep going, um, that you just can't get in weekly therapy.

Tara: Yeah. And what about when they go home? Is there any kind of connection or follow up for them once they leave camp? 

Jana: Yeah. So, um, what our model is at this point is that every family that when they're at camp they are paired with a coach, which is a licensed therapist. And so when they go home, um, the nonprofit pays for a few sessions for them to continue to work with that therapist because we know that things are going to come up and they're going to still have needs. 

Tara: When you get back in your own context, right? Like it all goes back to the way it was. 

Jana: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, so we give them that, like the people they've already been working with at camp to be able to still give them those resources. And they can continue on beyond the sessions that we paid for at the nonprofit, but we we do offer that. And then also really kind of creating that community support for them. And so that really, that group really becomes a cohort together, that uh, that have lived through a really special experience together in that weekend, and they tend to really connect, and so keeping them connected beyond that weekend so that they can still be a support to each other.

Tara: The peer support, and, yeah. 

David: So with, uh, this is just a nerdy question on my part is, uh, part of the, part of the, uh, the family camp, do you do multiple group? Is it working separate with the families or do you do the family group work that they can learn from each other that way, in addition to the buddy part with the individuals. I wonder about multiple family group intervention to learn from each other.

Jana: Yes, um, we do all of it. 

David: Okay. Wow. You guys are busy. 

Jana: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. Uh, yeah. Yeah, it is. It's a little too intense for me, like for the providers... I started like 7 a.m. and then it's like, I don't have a minute to myself until like 10 p.m. But, um, but you prepared, you know, that's what's coming that weekend. So yeah, it's, we do really a little bit of everything to give them the dosing of each of those things. 

Tara: So, and that's what that online class is modeled after then too, right? So that's kind of, 

Jana: Yeah. 

Tara: Some of the same concepts, but in a more accessible thing. If people can't come to camp, they can. They could take this class as at least a jumping off point.

Jana: Right, right. Yeah, it really is. I say that the course was not created for like, "help me with my child's behavior, like my adopted child's behavior," like that's not what this course is created for. It's really, "my family post placement is really struggling," or even like, actually somebody else, um, another PhD student used the research actually did it as a, um, pre placement intervention as well and found success with it, um, with foster care. Here's both like ways of intervening with communication and connection strategies and really practical ways. Um, and so that's really what the, what that, that intervention really is focused on. 

David: We love that you are kind of a counselor or therapist and also an educator. And I, I think about all the, the focus that you have on both insight and communication and systemic change. Are there resources that we can help people have access to? If they are siblings in adopted families, if they're families, both pre or post, uh, where, where can we, uh, direct people to? What resources do you have? 

Jana: Yeah. Um, I try to keep a lot of things just on my website, project1025.org. Um, that's the, like, really where I do my private practice work. But I also, I do a lot of speaking and training, and so it's all kind of underneath that. So I try to link a lot of things there that people can find access to. Like I've done, um... i, yeah, I'm trying to think of like, there's, because there's a lot of different things. There's articles I've written that are linked there. There's other podcasts I've been on, other trainings, things like that. The online course, the Connected Family Series is also linked there that people can have access to. Um, so it's all, they should, that's probably the hub. 

Tara: So one stop shop. Yeah, we will link to that. So if people are interested in all these things you've been saying, which I know is going to be so helpful, we'll just direct them to our website and your links will be there and they can find a list.

David: You know what? I was shocked: there's other podcasts that she's been on! Wait, what? 

Tara: Yeah. We're so glad. We're so glad you're talking about this and getting the word out because I, I think it is unique. I think it's unique to think about everybody involved in such a big thing that happens in a family. Um, and I know not everybody feel, I know we've been talking a lot about trauma and stuff and I know some families, um, aren't feeling as much like trauma is a huge part of it, but there's always this, there's always the expected loss and things that come along with displacement. And so I think it applies to anybody who's been, you know, who's part of an adoptive story. 

David: Yeah. So we're really thankful that you're able to give us a little time today and share with us. So thank you for, for giving us all this good information and resources. We're appreciative. 

Tara: We'll be going and clicking and finding some new things to read. So thank you, Jana. 

Jana: Yeah, of course. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.