Meet Elizabeth

I’m an adoptee. An adoptive mom. An advocate & educator.

My name is Elizabeth Barbour and adoption has shaped my life from multiple directions.

I am an adoptee living in reunion for 27 years now with my birthmom, birthdad and 11(!) siblings. I am also an adoptive mother, raising a teenager who’s been in reunion with her birthdad and his family for six years. There are four generations of adoption in my maternal lineage. My adoptive mom grew up in an orphanage and was unofficially adopted by her foster parents in her 20s. And her mom was born in Nova Scotia and adopted into Connecticut in the US around 1900. I don’t have the luxury of theorizing about this work from the outside. I live inside it — as a daughter, as a mother, and as a professional who has spent 25 years helping people navigate the hardest, most human transitions in their lives.

That combination — lived experience plus trained skill — is what I bring to every client, every audience, and every retreat circle.