Ambitious projects build adoption awareness

Juliana Whitney is working to spread the word about the power of adoption.

As someone who is adopted, 25-year-old Whitney hopes to garner awareness through constantly speaking out on the subject.

During National Adoption Month in November, she literally left her mark by hiding thousands of bookmarks across Las Vegas.

“I’ve left them in books at Barnes &Noble, UNLV bookstore and Target,” she says. “The first day I was out hiding them, I was nervous. But then after that, I had no shame.”

In her signature pink and purple colors, each strip gives information about Whitney’s newly created website: thatadoptedgirljulianawhitney.com.

The campaign is all a part of her plan to become an advocate for other children who are adopted.

“I want to give them a voice,” she says. “People think they have a voice, but they don’t really.”

Whitney has an inside perspective on the subject.

Charles Whitney, her father, says the family waited until late in life to have children, so in the late ’80s he and his wife started looking into adoption.

While living in New York, he says a counselor friend approached him about a patient who was considering giving up her yet-to-be-born child for adoption. The one stipulation was the adoption had to be open, meaning there would be a relationship between the child and the birth parent.

“That was fine with us,” the elder Whitney recalls.

They moved to Las Vegas before Juliana was born and drove to Santa Fe, N.M., in the summer of 1989 to await her birth.

As agreed, Juliana knew both her birth parents from the beginning.

“I can’t remember a time where I didn’t know my birth father,” she says.

Charles Whitney says the family learned as it went along.

“There wasn’t any guidance really,” he says. “There were probably other families going through a similar experience, we just didn’t know any.”

He says Juliana would visit her birth father in Los Angeles on occasion and when the family traveled to the East Coast she would spend a night with her birth mother.

“At times, when we would pick Juliana up from being with her father, she would sob,” he says. “She would sit there sobbing for a half an hour.”

He adds it was difficult for Juliana to adjust to her family situation when she was younger.

“She knew she had these other people in her life, and they meant a lot to her,” he says. “But it was hard to take it all in.”

Juliana Whitney still talks with her birth parents, though she says she is closer to her birth dad.

His family came to Las Vegas to celebrate when she graduated from college.

Though her family is open to talk about it, she still went through struggles with being adopted.

“People look at me and think I’m so put together,” Whitney says. “But I went through my identity crisis.”

Her parents responded by finding counseling for their daughter to help her talk out her emotions.

Whitney says her background has probably played a role in her journey in college.

“I majored in sociology at Vassar (College),” she says. “It just fit my personality very well.”

She came back to Las Vegas and is currently working on her master’s in business administration at UNLV.

Her parents say they thought she would use her background in sociology as well as her story to become an adoption counselor.

Earlier this year, Whitney says she realized she wanted to put her feelings into a book.

She is in the process of writing it. The working title is “I Wish I Was Aborted and Other Things Adopted Kids Can’t Say.”

“It’s going to be sarcastic and funny and entertaining,” Whitney says. “My mother is terrified of the title. She is afraid I’m going to get all sorts of crazy death threats.”

The book will talk about what it is like growing up adopted, some of the struggles adopted people face and the fact that there are many people waiting to be adopted.

Though it is edgy and might spark outrage, Whitney says she thinks the title conveys an important message inside the minds of adopted children.

“I wanted to teach about adoption through my story,” she says.

The problem with many academic books, especially about adoption, is they tend to use too much jargon that people get lost in, Whitney says.

“That’s why I like books like ‘Freakonomics,’ ” she says, referring to a book that uses pop culture to teach economics. “I don’t normally understand economics but the book was interesting enough and taught it in a fun way.”

Along with firsthand knowledge, Whitney plans to write about insulting or weird comments people make to children who are adopted.

“I hate when people say, ‘You must be so grateful,’ ” she says. “It comes off like we didn’t deserve to be adopted.”

Another comment she often hears is being given up was a moment of love.

“It’s hard for a child to connect abandonment as a motivation for love,” she says.

Whitney knows many of these comments are because people don’t know any better.

Though the book is witty, she says it is also a chance for her to be vulnerable on the topic.

“There are many times I am writing and crying because I am being so honest,” she says.

Whitney hopes to have the book wrapped up by early next year.

“And then I have to find a publisher,” she says.

She doesn’t know what will happen to her proposed book.

“People say they could see it as an Oprah book,” Whitney says while looking up and issuing a slight prayer. “That would be awesome.”

Whitney is trying to brand herself as a resource to the community regardless of what happens with the book.

In August, she created the website and started branding herself as That Adopted Girl.

With a bigger audience, she hopes to generate awareness about adoption and foster care.

Because of a lack of information, she says many people don’t realize children eventually age out of the system of foster care.

“That easily could have been my story,” she says.

In addition to adoption, she hopes to talk about other overlapping issues such as teen homelessness and mental illness.

She wants to use her voice to be a motivational speaker on the issue.

“I hope to do a TED Talk one day,” she says.

In November, she decided to do a campaign that would create awareness. She says with so many social issues, she feels adoption isn’t one that most people think about.

Whitney had 5,000 bookmarks made up and spent three days going around town secretly placing them in various books. During the process, she enlisted two of her friends to help with hiding them.

She says by hiding the bookmarks, maybe they can serve as a conversation starter.

Jessica Hartwig, who works with the Adoption Exchange in Las Vegas and is a mother of an adopted child, says it’s good to have more awareness for adoption.

“People don’t even realize the number of children who need to be adopted in this country let alone the hundreds in Clark County,” Hartwig says. “There isn’t a lot of awareness in the subject.”

Hartwig, who heard about Whitney’s campaign though she still hasn’t met her, says the idea is genius.

“I love that she thought outside of the box,” she says. “I think this is going to grab a lot of people’s attention.”

She hopes that if people find the bookmarks, they can learn more about adoption and realize there is a lot of information available.

Hartwig adds she confronts a lot of misconceptions about adoptions, such as there aren’t enough resources for children or adoptive parents.

“There are tons of websites and organizations that are there to help,” she says.

While putting bookmarks out, Whitney also made sure to put a few in books by Bill O’Reilly, the conservative Fox News host.

“If he heard the title of my book he would probably hate me,” she says. “But that’s OK. Maybe I can go on his show and talk about it. I’m not doing this so everyone likes me.”

While it’s clear to her what she wants for her career, Whitney is still working out some aspects of her life such as whether she will adopt a child someday — a question that comes up often.

“I’m still deciding that,” she says. “I don’t think I would be a good adoptive parent.”

She doesn’t even know if she has the tools to be a good parent.

“Adopted kids have a thing about wanting to be related to someone,” she says.

She isn’t counting out adoption, though.

“I haven’t figured it out yet,” she adds. “But I have time.”

Contact reporter Michael Lyle at mlyle@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5201. Follow @mjlyle on Twitter.