BPAR's Voices Unheard Program
Mission of the Voices Unheard Program
The Voices Unheard program at BPAR is designed to empower adult adoptees in expressing their personal stories and to expand public knowledge and awareness around lived adoptee experiences. Program goals are accomplished through adoptee-centered writing workshops, adoptee-created blogs and other online material, use of Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adoptees, a 52-week prompted writing journal published by BPAR in 2022, the "Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart, and Action" video interview series, and Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories, our annual live speaker’s forum designed to educate the Greater Boston community through creative expression and storytelling.
Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories Forum
Mission of the Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories Forum
The annual Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories event is a public forum of expression through storytelling by adult adoptees and those relinquished or removed from their biological families. Voices Unheard offers opportunities through workshops, online blogs, and speaking events for survivors to share their voices, be seen, and be heard—a healing experience for both artist and viewer. All speakers at this event participate because they have made a brave decision to share their experiences with us. While our speakers consist of those raised outside of original home placement, our event is an inclusive one, as it is our hope for those who are not adopted themselves to listen open-heartedly and with curiosity to others who have walked a different path than themselves. Education on this complex experience is badly needed for anyone who loves an adoptee or who plans on adopting, as so often the adoption narratives we hear are created by those who have not experienced relinquishment and the resulting stories are simplified, and our adoptee losses are often minimized.
Our Annual Storytelling Event Changes People and Opens Hearts
Voices Unheard Journal for Adult Adoptees
Our Voices Unheard Journal Is Available
Wherever Books Are Sold!
Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees
Written by BPAR clinician Lisa Coppola, LMHC
Cover artwork by Kelly DiBenedetto (BPAR's Executive Director) and Albie DiBenedetto
“This guided journal is long overdue. It offers an adoptee the opportunity to carefully examine their perspectives and feelings about their life and to clarify what is truth.”
—Sharon Kaplan Roszia, co-author of Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third-Party Reproduction
Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart and Action
At BPAR, we believe that hearing from others and understanding what someone else has experienced helps to build empathy and therefore helps all of us—including our staff and the community in which we live— grow.
That's why BPAR clinician Lisa “LC” Coppola, LMHC, created the "Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart, and Action" video interview series. In each episode, LC asks an adoptee three enlightening questions about the current state of their adoptee journey and how it’s sitting in their mind, heart, and giving new purpose or meaning to their life.
Our hope is that these stories can impact the adoption community and start to open the doors of deeper consciousness for adoptees, as well as their family, friends, partners and therapists!
Voices Unheard Writers Workshops
Our Voices Unheard Writers Workshops offer adult adoptees a chance to connect with personal stories by using writing prompts. Some workshops include an opportunity to practice sharing a piece of writing out loud in a small setting. Participants may choose to continue as a speaker at our Voices Unheard: Real Adoptee Stories forum if they wish though continuing on is purely optional. We are excited to learn that some past attendees have formed their own adoptee peer writing group as an outcome of feeling empowered by these workshops.
BPAR posts upcoming Writers Workshops on our Support Group page.
Want more information? Contact LC Coppola, Voices Unheard Program Director, at VoicesUnheard@bpar.org.
Your donation supports BPAR's mission to
provide specialized trauma-informed individual and group therapeutic care and culturally sensitive support.
We connect people to post adoption resources and educate the public about the impacts of adoption.
Through our services, BPAR invites those touched by adoption to join our community
in an environment that encourages lifelong healing.
BPAR is a 501(c)(3)