Our Vision Narrative
Our Mission
Created by adoptees for adoptees, IAMAdoptee seeks to curate an online community of mental health and wellness resources to help navigate the lived experience of being an intercountry adopted person.
Our Vision
IAMAdoptee comes from the knowledge that helping each other helps ourselves, no matter where you are in your discovery of your intercountry adoption identity, IAMAdoptee serves as a guide throughout your journey by creating a roadmap of ways intercountry adoption has impacted over a million adoptees.
IAMAdoptee is an act of service to the adoptee community; a place for an intercountry adopted person to find a way to connect with others through reading or viewing works of adopted people. Knowing that adoption is not an event, we approach being adopted at various intersections of life through our topical campaigns and by taking deep dives into particular areas of life specific to an international adopted person such as “finding and connecting with the adoptee community” or “seeking counsel and support.”
Vision Narrative
IAMAdoptee was co-founded in 2015 by Joy Lieberthal Rho, LSCW who has been working in the field of adoption for more than twenty-five years.
Through conversations with adoptees and their families, community organizing, social work, and counseling, Joy’s vision for IAMAdoptee was created. In particular, the intimacy of the counseling space taught Joy that the desire to understand adoption and be understood through the lens of adoption is lifelong and hits the most sacred spaces of our hearts and consciousness.
We welcome you to IAMAdoptee and invite you to share IAMAdoptee with others as we curate a body of resources for the international adoptee community to help know that: “we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives, we are each of us unique.” (Dr. Oliver Sacks)
