Adoption Through Two Lenses

Julie Etter and her adopted son Isaac Etter provide the closing keynote presentation at the June 2026 Annual Pennsylvania Permanency Conference.

Adoption can hold joy and grief at the same time. For mindset and identity coach Isaac Etter and his adoptive mother, Julie Etter, learning to understand that complexity transformed not only how they viewed adoption, but also how they related to one another.

During the closing keynote of the 2026 Annual Pennsylvania Permanency Conference, Isaac and Julie shared the stage in a fireside-chat-style conversation about transracial adoption, identity, loss and family. By walking through defining moments in Isaac’s childhood and young adulthood, they offered attendees a rare glimpse at the same experiences viewed through the eyes of both an adoptee and an adoptive parent.

Julie recalled that she and her husband always hoped to adopt. After years of infertility and pregnancy loss, adoption became the path that brought Isaac into their family just before his second birthday. Looking back, she admitted they entered transracial adoption with very little preparation.

“We only had one day of education,” Julie shared, explaining that the urgency of Isaac’s placement left little time to prepare for raising a Black son in a white family.

For Isaac, some of the earliest questions centered on why he had been adopted while some of his biological siblings remained with their birth mother. Those questions became deeply personal.

“If you choose to believe that you were unwanted and abandoned, it’s the earliest way to interpret your story as an adoptee,” he said. “Then you try to prove it.”

Julie experienced those same years very differently. She wanted desperately to ease Isaac's pain yet found herself becoming the target of his anger.

One conversation has remained with both of them through the years.

“We have lots of fights,” Julie remembered telling him, “but one that you're never going to win is pushing me away. I’m never going to leave you. I didn’t just adopt you as a child but for your whole life.” What Isaac couldn't fully believe as a child eventually became one of the foundations of their relationship.

As Isaac entered adolescence, another layer of his identity emerged. One day he looked in the mirror and realized, perhaps for the first time, that he looked different from everyone else in his family. He began searching for answers about race and culture online while his parents remained largely unaware of the questions he was carrying.

Julie acknowledged that, like many adoptive parents, her instinct had been to protect her son. With time, she came to recognize that protection without education had left him unprepared to understand his own experiences with race and to advocate for himself.

Healing began when the family changed how they listened.

A mentor encouraged Julie to stop arguing with Isaac about his lived experience and simply believe him. That shift opened the door to honest conversations and heartfelt apologies. Isaac described finally feeling seen, not because every problem had been solved, but because his experiences were acknowledged without being minimized.

The conversation also reminded attendees that adoption-related grief does not end in childhood. Isaac spoke candidly about becoming a father and unexpectedly revisiting questions surrounding his own birth mother.

“You never need to apologize for your story,” Julie told him during that difficult season. Those words became another turning point in their relationship because they gave Isaac permission to hold joy and grief at the same time.

As the keynote ended, Isaac and Julie both offered simple but meaningful advice.

Julie encouraged parents to extend grace to themselves and to their children. Isaac encouraged parents to make room for conversations that may feel uncomfortable. “The gateway to the happy, connected, bonded feeling is making space for those difficult conversations,” he said.

For permanency professionals, their conversation served as a reminder that adoption is not a single event. It is a lifelong relationship shaped through listening, learning and the willingness to keep showing up for one another. Sometimes the most meaningful support a family can offer is not having all the answers. It is creating a space where every part of an adoptee's story is welcome.