What if love isn’t enough? One adoptive mom’s truth about trauma, healing, and parenting a child no one prepared her for.

Adoption, trauma-informed parenting, and midlife motherhood collide in this powerful episode with Brighid O’Shaughnessy—licensed social worker, adoptive mom, and longtime mental health advocate. If you’re parenting through trauma, over 40 and navigating adoption, or working with vulnerable families, this conversation is a must.

Brighid shares her story of adopting a toddler from Haiti as a single woman and the unforeseen journey that followed: parenting a child with fetal alcohol exposure, complex trauma, and deep attachment wounds. Her hard-earned insights dismantle the fairy tale of adoption as a simple fix and reveal what true healing takes—for children, families, and systems.

"I have a boat that doesn’t have a bottom," she says, quoting adoptees. "You can pour all the love in… but it still sinks."
That truth drives her mission: to educate, to advocate, and to break the silence around what adoptive families really face.

🎧 In this episode:

• The reality of older adoptive parenting
• What schools and therapists get wrong about adopted children
• The myth of “love heals everything”
• How Brighid’s new book and theater project are reshaping professional training on adoption

This isn’t just about parenting. It’s about telling hard truths, creating better systems and supporting with compassion and clarity.

For similar episodes on reinventing your life over 50 check out stories on healing and trauma check out episodes 127 and 131 of Aging with Purpose and Passion and you may enjoy "Older Women & Friends" with award-winning host Jane Leder. She takes a deep dive into the joys and challenges of being an older woman. "Older Women & Friends" sets the record straight, dispels the myths, and explores the contributions and the wisdom women are anxious to share. janeleder.net.

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Brighid O’Shaughnessy

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Beverley Glazer

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