We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Guida-Richards a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Melissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. So, we’d appreciate if you could open up about your growth story and the nitty, gritty details that went into scaling up.
Many authors and creators think that a huge viral moment will set you up for success. But for me, it was simply a way to open doors, that helped set building blocks for my business. My Huffpost personal essay about finding out my adoption went mega viral all around the world, and led to more opportunities than I dreamed of, and yet, only profited a few hundred dollars from it. When your platform takes off to that degree it can be extremely overwhelming, especially if you do not know how to properly take advantage of these moments to build your brand. Thankfully, I learned from the first time and was better prepared when other stories went viral on platforms like TikTok, that allowed me to direct my audience to a call to action to purchase my books and take classes on adoption that I teach.
I went from a few hundred people that followed me on Instagram, to over 13k, to a new TikTok page to 20k followers, and a podcast with over 25,000 downloads all thanks to my determination to keep sharing Adoptee Thoughts. Creating this vast community has allowed me to connect with bigger opportunities as well as smaller ones with a significant impact that have inspired me to learn different ways to educate. I went from writing, to becoming a content creator who films, edits, and produces weekly content that has reached millions, and most importantly– helped thousands of adoptive families and their children.
Melissa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Hi, I’m Melissa Guida-Richards and I am an adoptee advocate, an educator, and the author of “What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption” and its accompanying Workbook. I founded the popular @Adoptee_Thoughts Instagram, Tiktok, and Podcast to help elevate adoptee voices and educate adoptive parents on the nuances and complexity of adoption (they have a combined reach of millions). I often share personal stories, as well as my expert opinion on the latest adoption news, media, and research to raise awareness for the need for more education in this space. This past year, I have also focused in on the exploitation of adoptive children on social media, and how popular family vloggers often curate a beautiful picture of adoption that does not help prepare families for all that it entails.
When I first started my business, I originally began writing adoption books because there was a huge need for adoptee written resources, and after shooting my shot with a tweet, I ended up connecting with an amazing publisher that supported my vision. Many adoptive families do not feel comfortable discussing topics like race/ethnicity, white privilege and fragility, as well as internalized bias, and I aim to normalize the conversation by modeling the work my parents and I have done to heal our relationship. On my platform, I show that it is important to get comfortable being uncomfortable and for parents to dedicate time and effort to do the work so they can better support the children in their care, because despite what adoption agencies often say… love is not enough in adoption.
I am very proud that my first book on adoption was traditionally published and has earned out its advance. Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey 2023 showed that Latinos make up less than 5% of publishing and only about 25 to 30% of authors earn out their advance and go on to get royalties. This is because many books sell less than 1000 copies over its lifetime, so it is wild to me that my little book has gone so far. But what makes me most happy in my work, are the private messages by adoptees, foster youth, parents/caregivers, and professionals who have directly told me how my story and resources have helped them.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When I was nineteen years old, I discovered a family secret that changed everything–I was adopted from Colombia. This meant that my whole life turned upside down, after being raised to believe that I was white or rather, Italian and Portuguese like my immigrant parents. Despite the amount of love, there were various challenges in my childhood, but now I finally had answers to why I never felt at home, and instead felt different from those in my family that I desperately wanted to nurture relationships. But with the answers, came more questions and I was confused as to how my family could adopt two Latino children and yet have many prejudices against people of color. On the one hand they taught me race doesn’t matter, but on the other they ingrained in me that I wasn’t “one of those” people.
After many, many, conversations with my adoptive parents about the choices they made, and why they chose to keep my adoption a secret, I reached out to the adoption community and discovered that even though my story was a little more complicated than most… many adoptees went through similar identity struggles and mental health problems. This inspired me to find resources to help families like mine, and unfortunately, this is when I saw how few books, podcasts, documentaries, elevate adoptee and foster youth voices. So, with my parents’ blessing, I began writing personal essays and then my first adoption book, “What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption,” that was star reviewed by Publishers Weekly. It eventually earned out after much praise, and I was asked to write the follow-up workbook, teach classes, give Keynote speeches and participate in dozens of panels on adoption over the next few years.
Since the discovery of my adoption, I’ve since reconnected with two sisters that were adopted before me, and found and reunited with my birth mom in Colombia. I’ve since been featured in documentaries, interviews on the Tamron Hall Show, Washington Post, Univision, Good Day LA, NBC, and many more. I share personal stories, and adoption education on my social media @adoptee_thoughts and podcast, and have grown my community to over 20,000 people.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The biggest lesson I had to unlearn, was that race/ethnicity doesn’t matter. Being raised by a conservative adoptive family, that emphasized the beauty of the American Dream, I thought everyone had an equal opportunity in this country. That if people only worked hard enough, like my father, they could move from a dishwasher in a restaurant, to head chef and owner. But when I learned I was adopted, I was able to learn about racial identity, prejudice, and much more in college in multicultural counseling classes, and by immersing myself in a diverse community of friends.
This allowed me to open my eyes to the various systemic issues in America, and later inspired me to educate adoptive parents on the nuances of transracial identity as well as the many ethical and coercive practices that are still prevalent in the multibillion dollar adoption industry. Having gone through such a deep change, I have sympathy for parents and caregivers who are in the fog, and don’t yet realize how complex adoption is and how discrimination affects the high number of families of color who are separated when family preservation (when safe to do so) has been proven healthier for the child.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://AdopteeThoughts.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adoptee_thoughts/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adopteethoughts/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adoptee_thoughts
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@adoptee_thoughts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adoptee-thoughts/id1514056644
Image Credits
Melissa Guida-Richards