Albany Times Union: Francine Apy seeks to guide others, erase stigma with SoulFilling Adoption

Thank you to Times Union reporter, Wendy Liberatore, for interviewing me during National Adoption Month and highlighting SoulFilling's mission to make adoption more mainstream at home, at school, and in the community. Here is a snippet of the article below, and you can read the full story on the Time Union website.

“I always tell them they didn’t grow in my belly, they grew in my heart,” she said of her sons. “And that their birth moms chose us to be their parents. Being fully transparent is the best way to go.”

While Apy does not run an agency that can connect parents and children, nor is she a search angel who can connect DNA profiles to find lost birth family members, she can guide anyone through the complex adoption landscape. More importantly, the Saratoga Springs-based adoptive mother of three said she wants to promote adoption as a gesture of love, not as a thing to fear.

“I want to help people work through the fear and have faith,” said Apy. “There is a stigma of adoption, the way the media portrays it, the sadness, the trauma, the difficulty. Birth mothers changing their minds and having challenges. … Families are complex. Whether you adopted your children or didn’t, being a mom and raising a family has its pros and cons. It’s no different with adoption. … What stirred me to want to do this is I don’t think there has been enough media and general information around the positive stories that have happened around adoption. There is a voice that needs to be brought forth.”

Read the full article here.