Adopted Therapist Melissa LaCour on Why a "Good Adoption Story" Still Needs Healing

Melissa LaCour has what she calls a wonderful adoption story - an incredible relationship with her birth mother, parents she describes as role models, and a family she loves deeply. And she still carries the identity issues, the abandonment fears, and the quiet drive to be so accomplished, so easy, so good that her parents would never for one second regret adopting her.

In this episode, Julie sits down with Melissa, a licensed professional counselor and adopted therapist who works specifically with adoptees and adoptive parents. They talk about "oldest daughter adoptee energy" and the layered weight of being the responsible one and the adopted one at the same time, what it was like growing up as one of two adopted children in a family that went on to have four biological siblings, and a season in her twenties when she lost an entire faith and friendship community almost overnight - a loss she didn't connect to adoption at the time, but that became one of her biggest adoption triggers.

Melissa also opens up about her decision this year to stop hiding behind the "no self-disclosure" rule from her clinical training, choosing instead to tell clients - and now the internet - that she's adopted too, after market research told her that's exactly what people wanted to know from a therapist doing this work. She just released a workbook for adult adoptees called Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom, and has applied to speak at the NAAP conference next year.

This is a conversation about permission - permission to be grateful and still hurt, to have a good story and still grieve, and to finally stop pretending gratitude is the whole truth.

In This Episode

- Welcoming Melissa and what her day-to-day work looks like now

- Growing up on a rice, crawfish, and soybean farm in South Louisiana

- Her winding path to therapy - broadcasting and TV news, youth and music ministry, teaching high school

- Deciding at 28 to become a therapist, and only in the past year choosing to niche specifically into adoption work

- A lighter detour into sports (die-hard New Orleans Saints fan), tennis, and the "nature vs. nurture" story behind being a classically trained pianist

- What it's like being married to another therapist

- Her birth mother's story, the local adoption agency, and the "God's Adoptive Kids" support group she grew up in

- An unexpected reunion at a wedding in Iowa with a childhood friend from that same support group - and the guilt she feels for having a "good story"

- Asking her mom directly this past June whether adoption had been a "band-aid" for infertility, and the answer she got

- Growing up as one of two adopted children in a family that later had four biological children

- Navigating comments like "which of these are homemade?" and what it's like when your younger siblings look like your parents and you don't

- "Oldest daughter adoptee energy" - the layered weight of being the responsible one and the adopted one at once, and the family's "ringleader" role that comes with aging parents

- What she'd say to someone who assumes a good adoption story means there's nothing to work through

- Her sister's more complicated adoption story, and the grief of watching two very different outcomes unfold in the same family

- Losing her faith and friendship community in her twenties, and what she came to understand later about why that loss hit an adoption nerve so hard

- Where her faith and spirituality live now

- Why she started pushing back on "no self-disclosure," and what her market research with adoptive parents and adoptees told her they actually wanted

- Writing Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom, grounded in the seven core issues of adoption

- Stepping into social media professionally after years of staying away from it

Call to action

If this episode landed for you, sit with it for a minute before you move on to whatever's next in your day. And if The Resilience Project Podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review - or even a few written words - helps this work reach more adoptees, more families, and more people who need to hear that they are not alone.

Remember: you are never alone in this.

Resources & Links Mentioned

- Get Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom (available on Amazon and as a digital download) - here

- Melissa on Instagram

- Melissa's website (therapy services in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and Minnesota)

Register for Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing retreat here AND register to attend the NAAP Happy Hour where we will talk all about it here

Register for the 4th iteration of Revelation LIVE here

Connect with Julie here

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