Conscious Adoption:

Navigating Estrangement

Tuesday (6 week course): May 7 - Jun 4, 11

Time: 10:00 - 11:30 am (PT) on Zoom

Cost: $800/household (up to 2 people)

Wondering why your relationship with the adoptee in your life has changed? What happened to the happy child you used to know? Conscious Adoption: Navigating Estrangement is a six-session online course for adoptive parents wanting to better understand how to process and manage any level of estrangement with the adoptee in their lives. Course goals include: 

  • Understanding estrangement and the range of its impact.

  • Examining estrangement in the context of adoption

  • Discerning how we have thought of adoption over time

  • Considering how adoptees feel about adoption over time

  • Examining how estrangement feels in isolation and in community

  • Creating strategies for coping and healing

Astrid Castro

Astrid Castro

Founder & CEO

(she/her)

Astrid has a degree in sociology with an emphasis in adoption. Since 1992, she has traveled the country to lead youth groups, present workshops on transracial parenting, how to talk with children about adoption, and various other workshops focusing on adoption. Prior to creating Adoption Mosaic, Astrid worked in both the private and public sectors of various adoption organizations such as the Oregon Post Adoption Resource Center (ORPARC), Holt International and Rocky Mountain Adoption Exchange, and VIDA (while living in Italy).


She has also sat on several boards of directors (North American Council on Adoptable Children, Open Adoption and Family Services, Northwest Adoptive Families Association, Spoon Foundation)​ to support the adoption community.


Astrid has also been featured on many podcasts and contributed a chapter to the anthology, Parenting as Adoptees. She has also helped to develop materials such as Adoption in the Movies, and Adoptive Parent Training: Developing Communication Skills, an innovative, evidence-based, training DVD.


Astrid’s personal experiences as an adoptee, a woman of color, and growing up in a white family and community, fuel her professional path to helping others. She is aware of the benefit of post-adoption services for individuals and their families and seeks to bring these services to the adoption community.


When Astrid is not working she loves training for half marathons, firing up her outdoor pizza oven and sharing homemade pizza with family and friends and biking with her little dogs, Guapo and Baci. Her absolute favorite thing is to enjoy the adventures of life with her amazing daughter.


Becca Flatt

Becca Flatt

Course and Group Facilitator

(she/her)

Becca Flatt (she/her) is a Mixed Race, Black and white, closed, domestic infant, interracial adoptee. Becca’s biological family and adoptive family mirror each other; however, Becca, being mixed race, does not share the racial identity of either set of her parents. Becca identifies as a recovering compliant adoptee.


Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and raised in San Jose, California, Becca was raised in racial diversity while being raised without racial mirrors. Becca was also raised in adoptee isolation. It wasn’t until Becca was 28 that she started the search and reunion process that she recognized the importance of being in a community with other adoptees. Becca has spent her entire adult life trying to understand the human condition and the importance of identity and mental health.


Becca Graduated from The University of Southern California with her Master’s in social work and a concentration in mental health in 2014. Becca provides mental health treatment to transracial, interracial, and same-race adoptees of color. Becca is also an adoptive parent dedicated to discussing and participating in relationally focused adoption.


Over the past 20 years, Becca has gone through estrangement and reconciliation with her adoptive parents. Through her lived experience, she understands how devastating estrangement can be for all parties involved.


She hopes to help adoptees and adoptive parents learn how to navigate the grief, trauma, desperation, shame, and fear that often accompanies estrangement.

Maureen McCauley

Maureen McCauley

Consultant, Course Facilitator

(she/her)

Maureen is the adoptive mom of four now-adult children, two sons born in the U.S. and twin daughters born in Ethiopia, She has lived experience with infant adoption, international adoption, older child adoption, U.S. adoption, and transracial adoption. She also has two granddaughters. Her professional background is in social and educational welfare advocacy, including as former executive director of 3 nonprofits focused on adoption and foster care.


With Adoption Mosaic, she co-facilitates the Conscious Adoption “Seasoned Parents” course, for which she helped develop the curriculum, and was a panelist on “We The Experts: Ally Edition.” She is passionate about understanding and supporting the complexity of adoption, and about partnering with others in the adoption community to support families and individuals.


She has facilitated and presented workshops on adoption in the U.S. and Canada for organizations such as NACAC (now Families Rising), KAAN (Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network), The Barker Foundation, COFFEE (Central Oregon Families and Friends of Ethiopian Ethnicity) camp, East Coast Ethiopian Culture Camp, and more.

She is a writer and editor, including co-editor with two Ethiopian adoptees of “Lions Roaring, Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees.” Her writing has been published in Slate, Catapult, Focus on Adoption, Adoption Today, Adoptive Families of British Columbia, and others. She blogs at Light of Day Stories.

Maureen has been quoted/cited in the New York Times, Seattle Times, Hofstra Law Review, Case Western Journal of Law-Medicine, University of Washington Law Review, Santa Clara University Law Review, Adoptee Rights Law Center, and elsewhere.

She has a B.S. degree from Georgetown University and an M.A. from the University of Maryland. She is a Certified Sage-ing Leader via Sage-ing International, an organization focused on aging consciously and intentionally with joy and contentment. She also has a certificate as an End-of-Life Doula for Companion Pets, partnering with their humans.

Hear from our community!

  • "Adoption Mosaic is a solid rock, in the midst of a sea of information [and] misinformation. When I want information, resources, and learning opportunities I can trust, I turn to Adoption Mosaic."

    ~Rachel Ginnochio, adoptive parent

  • "Adoption Mosaic has been a huge support for us in navigating issues around transracial adoption and reunion with birth family. Adoption Mosaic helps me be a more compassionate parent."

    Karen Orth, adoptive parent

  • "[Adoption Mosaic's] offerings are varied, thoughtful, provocative and powerful in the way they put adoptees first...We are relieved, as parents of young adult adoptees, to have found this resource."

    Sue Unkenholz, adoptive parent

  • Astrid has built a beautiful and much needed resource for adoptive families. If you have been touched by adoption, no matter your role, this is the place for you. I want everyone to know of Adoption Mosaic: if you need support-she's got you.

    ~Robyn Strelitz, adoptive parent

Read more testimonials

Not sure if this course is right for you?

Schedule a free meeting with Astrid.