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.
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.
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.
Make a Tribute Donation or Start a Fundraiser
Adoptee Remembrance Day is a non-funded, volunteer-led initiative founded and maintained by Pamela A. Karanova. This work is provided freely out of dedication and passion for the adoptee community, not for profit, although there are ongoing costs associated with maintaining the website, resources, education, and year-round advocacy. In 2026, Pamela has personally funded 100% of these expenses while also volunteering her extensive time and labor.
Honorariums for adoptees who share their stories through the Adoptee Remembrance Day Substack are funded by Pamela personally and through paid and founding subscribers. We encourage you to support the organizations listed below and, if you would like to directly support Pamela’s continued work and help compensate adoptees for sharing their lived experiences, consider becoming a paid or founding subscriber to the Adoptee Remembrance Day Substack or her personal publication, The Real Adoptee Moxie. Your support helps keep this work independent, accessible, and moving forward.
Turn remembrance into action by donating, purchasing merchandise, subscribing, fundraising, or supporting adoptee work and family preservation.
Organizations and projects we trust and highly recommend include:
These organizations were not chosen at random; Pamela has spent years building trusted relationships with their founders and confidently recommends their work, leadership, and commitment to the adoptee community.
• Adoptee Remembrance Day merchandise and Substack
• 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.
• The Real Adoptee Moxie by Pamela A. Karanova – Pamela A. Karanova’s independent Substack featuring adoptee advocacy, lived-experience writing, education, and her memoir, Born in the Shadows, Living in the Light: My Adoptee Epiphanies – The Fight of My Life.
• 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.
• True-to-Life Greeting Card Collection – Created by Pamela A. Karanova, featuring adoptee-centered cards that put real adoptee experiences, feelings, and truths into words traditional greeting cards often leave out.
• 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. Donate or create a fundraiser in memory or honor of an adoptee and invite others to participate.
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.
