Xpress Yourself: A fun and helpful group for international adoptees ages 9 – 12

Whether or not your daughter feels comfortable opening up to you about her fears, questions, and frustrations about her experience as an international adoptee, wouldn’t it be nice to know she has a place she can go where she’s not singled out because she’s adopted, but fits right in?

Where she can breathe a sigh of relief and know she’s in the company of others who also have to answer well-meaning but sometimes hurtful questions about their adoption stories? 

Where she can ask difficult questions about her birth family and know she’s not alone in wondering? 

And finally, where she can integrate her unique adoption story into her identity in a positive and empowering way?

The Xpress Yourself program offers just such a space.  Through a combination of art and play therapy activities, your daughter will have the opportunity to address the often difficult concerns all internationally adopted children face on  some level, in a way that is fun, non-threatening, and doesn’t feel like “therapy” at all, but rather a fun and creative group that’s just for her.

Core topics the Xpress Yourself program addresses include how to:

    * Cope with the questions that come from looking different
* Respond to prejudice, racism, and teasing
* Process grief and loss issues related to her birth culture and birth parents
* Weave her adoption story into her identity in a healthy and positive way
* Have fun with other adoptees that have had similar experiences

Taught over two Saturdays, your daughter will have the opportunity to develop friendships with and find support from peers who know exactly what it feels like to grow up as an international adoptee and can together feel proud to call this unique experience their own. Please click here to register.   Each session is limited to eight participants. Please feel free to call 303-8509998 or email mail@chinesechildren.org with your questions.

Summer Session

Saturday, July 23 9:00 am to 2:00 pm and Saturday, July 30 9:00 am to 2:00 pm
Location: CCAI, 6920 S Holly Circle, Centennial, CO 80112
Cost: $90/participant    
Snacks will be provided but please be sure and bring a lunch

About the Facilitator

Susan Merten, MA, Xpress Yourself facilitator, has a Masters degree in Child, Family, and School Psychology and has been leading Xpress Yourself groups since the program began four years ago. A CCAI social worker, Susan has experience working with both adoptive parents and young adoptees between the ages of seven and thirteen years.  She had the opportunity to present the Xpress Yourself curriculum and train social workers in Georgia, so adoptees in other parts of the country can benefit from the program’s success.  In her personal life, she and her husband, himself an adoptee, are the parents of a vibrant and very active twenty-three month old baby girl.