Adoptive parent shame, why adopted kids lie, and what co-regulation actually looks like mid-meltdown — trauma therapist and adoptive mom Keli Tondre gets specific.

Last weekend, Keli's19- and 18-year-old spent Friday and Saturday night with her at a music festival — by choice. She doesn't have all the answers. But as a trauma therapist, an adoptive sibling, and an adoptive mom of three, she's got more than most of us.

Her brother was three when he was adopted into her family. For years, she feared someone would take him away — and told no one. Decades later he said, "I won the lottery when I landed in this family." Now she knows what he lost first.

Two adoptions. One Christmas that went way too far. One sentence from a therapist that ended years of shame. You'll know it when you hear it.

About Keli Tondre

Keli Tondre is a trauma therapist and the founder of Tondre Therapeutics, where her entire practice is built around adoptive and foster parents living in survival mode. She's also an adoptive sibling — her parents adopted her older sister, then adopted her younger brother when Keli was almost two — and an adoptive mom of three: a biological daughter, a son adopted domestically, and a daughter adopted from Ethiopia at age four. She works virtually with clients across the U.S. and Canada. https://tondre.org

In this episode, we cover:

• What Keli understood about adoption as a kid — and what only made sense years later, once she was a therapist and an adoptive mom herself
• How her domestic and international adoption journeys asked different things of her
• Why "do your own work first" doesn't mean attachment struggles are proof you failed
• How to respond to lying differently than you were raised to — and what to say instead of "you're lying to me"
• What co-dysregulation is, and how to find your way back to curiosity when your kid has blown up the room
• Why adoptive parent shame is a different animal than ordinary mom guilt
• What Keli's biological daughter needed that she didn't see until years later
• Why "love isn't enough" — and what to hold onto instead

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Resources mentioned:

Polyvagal Institute: https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org