Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th Agenda:
Find a detailed breakdown of our Agenda 2026 here: A Sacred Invitation to Empathy: The Launch of the Adoptee Remembrance Day Manifesto, Global Pledge, and Official Agenda
Ways to participate in Adoptee Remembrance Day. Whether you are an adoptee, family member, friend, professional, advocate, or ally, every act of remembrance helps honor adoptee lives, educate others, and bring visibility to experiences too often overlooked.
Support Adoptee Remembrance Day
Adoptee Remembrance Day is an independent, founder-led, volunteer initiative sustained through community support. Financial contributions help cover the year-round costs of maintaining the website and Wall of Remembrance, publishing adoptee stories, providing contributor honorariums, developing resources, and expanding awareness and outreach. You can also make a tribute contribution in memory or honor of an adoptee, loved one, or someone who has impacted your life. If you believe in this work and want to help carry it forward, contribute securely through PayPal.
Make a Tribute Donation
Honor, remember, or celebrate an adoptee who matters to you by making a tribute through Adoptee Remembrance Day. Tributes can recognize an adoptee we have lost, honor an adoptee who is still here, or be made in support of the adoptee community and the ongoing mission of Adoptee Remembrance Day. Visit our Make a Tribute page to learn more.
Wear Yellow
Yellow is the official color of Adoptee Remembrance Day. On October 30th, wear a yellow shirt, ribbon, bracelet, scarf, flower, or another meaningful symbol of remembrance, solidarity, and hope. If someone asks why you are wearing yellow, tell them about Adoptee Remembrance Day. One simple conversation can help make the invisible visible.
Share Your Story
Adoptee Remembrance Day continues year-round through our dedicated Substack, where adoptees share first-person experiences with suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, grief, loss, trauma, institutionalization, incarceration, homelessness, addiction, the Troubled Teen Industry, abuse, and survival. Adoptees 18 and older may join our contributor waiting list and can choose to share publicly or anonymously. Submission does not guarantee publication.
JOIN THE WAITING LIST: Adoptee Remembrance Day Substack Publication Waiting List
Use Our Hashtags
Help spread awareness by sharing your stories, photographs, artwork, videos, articles, poems, tributes, and reflections using #AdopteeRemembranceDay, #AdopteesWeRemember, and #ARD2026. Tag our Facebook and Instagram pages so we can find and help amplify your participation.
Sign the ARD Manifesto Empathy Pledge
The Adoptee Remembrance Day Manifesto Empathy Pledge is a personal or organizational commitment to honor adoptees we have lost, acknowledge separation trauma, listen to adoptee voices without judgment, and lead with empathy and understanding. You can find our official blank signature graphics on our Substack and social media platforms to add your name, take the pledge, and share your commitment with the world.
Shop the Adoptee Remembrance Day Collection
Wear and share the message through official Adoptee Remembrance Day merchandise from The Real Adoptee Moxie Emporium, including shirts, hoodies, mugs, tote bags, and more. Purchases help support the website and ongoing work of Adoptee Remembrance Day.
Send an Adoptee-Centered Greeting Card
Choose a true-to-life greeting card created from the adoptee perspective and send it to an adoptee, friend, family member, or someone who needs to know they are seen. On October 30th, consider sharing the card you chose and why it spoke to you.
Four Minutes of Silence
At 12:00 PM Eastern Time on October 30th, pause for four minutes of silence in remembrance of adoptees who are no longer with us. The four minutes symbolize research finding adoptees approximately four times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopted peers. Wherever you are in the world, pause, reflect, grieve, and remember.
Organizations, Projects, and People We Trust and Recommend:
These recommendations are intentional. Pamela has spent years building trusted relationships with the people, founders, organizations, and projects featured here. Each is included because of an established relationship and a demonstrated commitment to supporting, uplifting, and advocating alongside the adoptee community. Adoptee Remembrance Day is proud to recommend their work and encourages you to learn more about what they offer.
• InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) – Lynelle Long, Founder/Director. International adoptee-led advocacy, education, resources, and support amplifying intercountry adoptee voices worldwide.
Adoptee Mentoring Society (AMS) – Angela Tucker, Founder. AMS provides adoptee-led mentorship and supportive spaces for adoptees ages 13 and older.
• Themis Youth Law & Advocacy – Dawn J. Post, Esq. Legal advocacy supporting adoptees impacted by homelessness, abandonment, rehoming, institutionalization, and the Troubled Teen Industry.
• Adoptee’s On – By Haley Radke | A weekly podcast hosted and created by Haley Radke that centers adult adoptee voices, raw lived experiences, and therapeutic insights rather than traditional adoption narratives
• Adoption Mosaic – Astrid Castro, Founder and CEO. Adoptee-led education, programming, and community spaces centered on the lifelong complexities of adoption.
• Unfolding App – Zoë Hansen-DiBello, PhD, Founder and CEO, with Ellie Robinson, MPA, Co-Founder. An adoptee-created app supporting adoptee identity, belonging, reflection, and emotional well-being.
• Lorah Gerald – Adoptee and creator of The Adopted Chameleon. Adoptee-centered, trauma-sensitive embodiment and somatic support focused on nervous system regulation, healing, and lived experience.
• BIPOC Adoptees – A BIPOC adoptee-led nonprofit creating accessible resources, education, storytelling, events, and spaces where BIPOC adoptee voices are centered.
• Saving Our Sisters – Renee Gelin, Founder and President. Family-preservation work providing expectant parents and families with education, advocacy, resources, and practical support to help prevent unnecessary family separation.
You can also support another adoptee-led organization, writer, advocate, project, or family-preservation organization whose work aligns with your values.
Create a Memorial Graphic or Video
Design a memorial graphic, social media image, or video honoring an adoptee or recognizing adoption loss. Include a photograph, name, quote, artwork, memory, personal message, or your hopes for meaningful change. Share it on October 30th and tag our social media pages.
Create Through Music, Art, or Writing
Write a song, poem, article, essay, reflection, or another original work honoring adoptees and exploring adoption loss, remembrance, survival, or your own experience. Share your creation on October 30th and tag us so we can help amplify it.
Create a Living Memorial
Plant a tree, flower, garden, or another living tribute in honor of an adoptee. Yellow flowers can also be placed in your home or remembrance space as a symbol of hope, remembrance, and the lives we continue to carry with us.
Blow Bubbles or Float Flowers
Gather with others and blow bubbles as a peaceful, uplifting remembrance. You may also float locally grown flowers on a lake, river, or stream, using environmentally responsible materials. If adding a written message, use biodegradable, quick-dissolve paper and eco-friendly ink.
Read Adoptee-Centered Books
Center adoptee voices by reading books written by adoptees, including The Adoptee Survival Guide, Parallel Universes, and You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Explore even more adoptee authors through Adoptee Reading. Share what you are reading on October 30th, post a quote or review, or recommend an adoptee author to someone else.
Keep Their Memory Alive
Create a tribute to an adoptee who has died, is missing, incarcerated, deported, or whose life has been profoundly impacted by adoption. Write a letter, poem, story, or reflection. Share a photograph or memory. Paint a remembrance rock with their name, favorite color, quote, or symbol and place it somewhere meaningful. Remember them for who they were, not simply for what happened to them.
Share a Tribute
If you are an adoptee, share a photograph of yourself with a reflection about the adoptees we have lost, someone you loved, the losses you carry, or what October 30th means to you. Tag Adoptee Remembrance Day so we can remember alongside you.
Light a Candle or Hold a Ceremonial Bonfire
At sunset, light a candle or gather safely around a ceremonial bonfire with adoptees, family, friends, and allies. Share stories, sit in silence, or write names, memories, prayers, poems, or reflections to release into the fire. There is no right or wrong way to participate. Let the light represent remembrance, truth, love, and the lives we refuse to forget.
Host a Community Event
Gather on October 30th for a walk, hike, picnic, meal, coffee gathering, candlelight vigil, park meetup, time in nature, or another community event. Visit somewhere meaningful, share memories, read poetry, or simply sit together in remembrance.
Write in the Sand
At a lake, river, or ocean, write a name, message, poem, or words of remembrance in wet sand. As the water washes the words away, allow the moment to symbolize remembrance, love, grief, and release.
Create Your Own Act of Remembrance
Start a tradition that feels meaningful to you. Create artwork, organize a book club, host a community conversation, plant a memorial garden, volunteer, donate adoptee-centered books to a library, create a scholarship, visit a meaningful place, spend time in nature, advocate for family preservation and meaningful reform, or simply sit quietly and remember. Invite your family, workplace, faith community, friends, or local organizations to participate.
These ideas are only a beginning. Combine them, change them, or create something entirely your own. We encourage environmentally responsible acts of remembrance whenever possible. If honoring someone who died by suicide, please do not share the method of death so we can help protect our community.
You do not have to be an adoptee to participate.
Everyone impacted by adoption is welcome to stand with us. Follow Adoptee Remembrance Day on Facebook, Instagram, and Substack, share our articles and resources, invite others to participate, and use our official hashtags.
However you choose to participate on October 30th, we ask you to remember, listen to adoptees, learn from our lived experiences, and above all, be a heart with ears.
Please help spread the word by sharing these slides with your network!
Every year, Adoptee Remembrance Day grows because we continue to uncover the deep, systemic harms embedded throughout adoption: harms that mainstream society routinely ignores, invalidates, or erases.
What started as a day of mourning has expanded into a global movement because the realities of adoption trauma run so deep. From relinquishment loss and severed biological family networks to the complete absence of adoptee-centric mental health resources, institutionalization, international and transracial harms, citizenship loss, coerced surrenders, and adult adoptee suicide, the list of systemic failures keeps growing.
This 20-slide overview covers just a portion of what Adoptee Remembrance Day stands for and why October 30th exists.
While we may have missed certain aspects in this brief overview, our commitment to uncovering and confronting these truths remains constant.
How You Can Get Involved:
Read through these slides, reflect on these realities, and help us break the silence. As we approach Adoptee Remembrance Day, we invite you to share these slides and our website in your articles and on your online platforms.
Please share this post widely. Every share helps reach an adoptee who needs to know they are not alone.
