Chat LIVE today with Beth Hall, Wed with Pat Johnston and January 5th with
attachment therapist Deborah Gray -- all at 1:00 PM ET.

Beth Hall helps to get us to the place where it feels almost "fun" to let
people wonder how you and your kids could CLEARLY belong together yet look
so different. She is the adoptive mom of two school-aged children: Sofia,
who is Latina, and James, who is African American. She grew up a member of
an adoptive family--her sister, Barbara, adopted by (and Beth having been
born to) their parents. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband
and children.


Beth is a co-director of Pact, An Adoption Alliance ---
http://www.pactadopt.org/. An author of numerous articles, she lectures
across the country and is committed to serving children first. Their book
from Perspectives Press is Inside Transracial Adoption. ---
http://www.perspectivespress.com/product.asp?code=0-944934-24-2&pagestyle=default

Chat with Beth today (Dec. 9, 2003 at 1:00 PM ET)

Link for audience entrance to Beth's chat is:
http://www.inciid.org/vcclient/events/

You'll need to be an INCIID registered member to chat:
https://www.inciid.org/register.htm

Registration is secure and free.



And Tomorrow (Wed. Dec. 10th) - our adoption chats continue with Patricia
Irwin Johnston

Pat Johnston is Perspective Press' publisher ---
http://www.perspectivespress.com. She has been writing and speaking and
advocating about infertility and adoption issues for 20 years, beginning as
a long-term volunteer in Indiana coalition building and with RESOLVE (for
which she chaired the national board of directors for three years) and
including several years on the national board of Adoptive Families of
America.

An innovative thinker, in 1979 Pat and two partners (Carol Hallenbeck and
Dr. William R. Keye, Jr.) conceived of and planned what they later
discovered had been the first consumer symposium on infertility held
anywhere in the world! It became the model for the RESOLVE/Serono symposia
series. A regular columnist ("Growing Up Adopted: 0-2") for Adoptive
Families magazine for over five years (ending in 2000), Pat is an on-line
expert for INCIID's Exploring Adoption
http://www.inciid.org/forums/adoption_exploring/index.html and Expecting by
Adoption --- http://www.inciid.org/forums/adoption_waiting/index.html
bulletin boards. As well, she is a frequent contributor to many other
magazines and newsletters.



And on January 5th, 2004 Deborah Gray will be here to chat at 1:00 PM ET

Author of the 2002 book Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's
Parents:
http://www.perspectivespress.com/product.asp?code=0-944934-29-3&pagestyle=default

Deborah Gray is a clinical social worker specializing in attachment, grief,
and trauma. She enjoys helping children and their parents in situations
where deprivation or attachment losses make attachment formation
challenging. In her private practice with the Attachment Center Northwest,
parents are usually present in the therapy sessions to provide comfort and
safety for their children's trauma work, or to work with their children on
attachment-related issues. Her philosophy empowers parents with information,
offering new skills and techniques to meet the needs of their children.
Deborah's professional interests and direction were piqued by having grown
up in an extended family with many adopted members. Watching their unfolding
stories, which showed successes in forming close relationships as well as
how painful losses impeded them, she observed clear passages as well as
barriers to forming confident identity. She saw, too, that sometimes
problems come into focus at the same time that the window of opportunity for
prevention or help is closing. Since receiving her M.S.W. and M.P.A. from
Syracuse University in a program involving internships and research
emphasizing early bonding with high-risk infants and toddlers at the
Regional Perinatal Center at Upstate New York's Medical Center, Deborah has
worked for 19 years in children's therapy, child placement, and foster and
adoption counseling. She has also been a therapeutic foster parent. Over the
last decade she has spent over 10,000 hours counseling adopted children and
their families.

Because of her practical approaches to promoting attachment and reducing the
effects of trauma and grief, Deborah is a popular presenter at conference
workshops for professionals and parents. Attaching in Adoption is one more
step in her personal and professional life journey with adoption. It
represents her "next generation" attempt to equip today's adoptive parents
with the tools necessary to form close relationships with their children. It
gives avenues for parents to follow in getting early, effective help for
their children's needs. Deborah Gray lives in Washington state with her
husband and their three children.

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