Online Adoption Therapy for Birth Parents in Los Angeles, CA
Grief counseling for birth parents who placed a child for adoption, whether it happened recently or decades ago. Serving Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Torrance, Long Beach, and throughout LA County.
Everyone told you it would get easier. The agency counselor said so. Your family said so. You told yourself so. And for a while, the business of building a life gave you enough to focus on that you could keep the grief in the background. But it didn’t get easier. It got heavier. And now, ten or fifteen or twenty-five years later, you’re carrying more than you were the year after the placement, not less.
Maybe it was a milestone that cracked it open again. Your child turned eighteen and somewhere out there became a legal adult you’ve never met. Your other daughter started kindergarten and you did the math on what grade your first child would be in. You became a grandparent and the joy came mixed with a grief so specific you couldn’t explain it to anyone. Or maybe nothing in particular happened. The sadness just stopped staying in the background the way it used to, and now it’s in the room with you more days than not.
You’ve built a whole life around this. A career, a marriage, other children. From the outside, you moved on a long time ago. But moving on and healing are two different things, and you know which one you did.
Some birth parents reach out to me when the grief finally becomes too heavy to carry alone. Some come because a reunion is happening or being considered and the feelings that surfaced are bigger than they expected. Some come because they’ve noticed patterns in their life, relationships that don’t work, a tendency to sabotage good things, a difficulty being fully present with their other children, and they’ve started to trace those responses back to the placement.
Learn more about how I work with birth parents here.
When Talking About Adoption Doesn’t Change the Grief
You may have tried therapy before, and it may have helped you understand what you're carrying without changing how your body responds to it. That makes sense, because birth parent grief is different from other kinds of grief. The person you lost is alive. There's no funeral, no social permission to mourn, and no timeline where people expect you to still be hurting years or decades later.
And if you're in reunion, the grief doesn't go away just because you've found each other. It changes shape. The old loss mixes with new fears, new disappointments, and the complicated reality of trying to build a relationship with someone who is both your child and a stranger.
The approaches I use (I explain what these feel like in the FAQ below) work directly with how grief and stress are stored in your body rather than asking you to talk your way through them. The goal is to loosen the hold these responses have on your daily life so you can make decisions about reunion, contact, and your own future from clarity instead of from fear.
What Changes After Therapy for Birth Parents
Your child’s birthday comes and you feel the sadness, but you don’t lose the week. You mark the day however you need to, and the next morning you go to work, you’re present in your meetings, you pick up your other kids and help with homework, and the rest of the week looks like a normal week instead of something you have to white-knuckle through.
You tell your partner what you’ve been carrying, and instead of the conversation you’ve rehearsed and dreaded for years, you say it simply. You get through the rest of the evening, you wake up the next morning and nothing has collapsed. You stop spending energy on keeping the secret, and you notice how much room that frees up, energy you start putting toward a class you’d been thinking about, a friendship you’d let go quiet, plans that used to feel like too much.
Your teenager asks a question that gets close to the topic, and instead of deflecting or shutting down, you find words that are honest and age-appropriate and your voice holds steady while you say them. The next time it comes up, you don’t dread it the same way, and you stop bracing every time your kid asks something that borders on the subject.
The promotion comes and you let yourself enjoy it instead of finding reasons to turn it down. You plan a weekend away with a friend and you follow through instead of canceling because you couldn’t explain why you felt heavy that week. You start saying yes to things you want and noticing that you’re allowed to have a life that feels good, that having a good life doesn’t erase what happened or mean you’ve forgotten.
Intimacy with your partner stops being complicated in the way it was before, where sex and pregnancy and loss were all tangled together in your body. You can be close to someone without grief showing up uninvited, and you stop bracing for it every time, which means you’re present in a way you haven’t been in years.
I spent nine years working in child welfare and adoption before private practice.
During that time I supported birth parents through the placement process and saw firsthand how little follow-up support exists after the paperwork is signed. The agencies move on, the adoptive family’s needs take priority, and the birth parent is expected to go back to regular life as if something fundamental hasn’t changed.
That experience is why birth parents are a central part of my practice now. I am C.A.S.E. certified in adoption competency, which is a post-graduate training program that prepares clinicians to work with the lifelong effects of adoption on adoptive parents, birth parents, and adult adoptees.
Meet Summer
Online Adoption Therapy for Birth Parents Across Los Angeles & Southern California
All sessions are conducted through secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth. You can meet with me from a private room in your home, your car, or any quiet space with a stable internet connection. For birth parents who haven’t told anyone in their current life about the placement, the privacy of online sessions means you don’t have to explain where you’re going or who you’re seeing.
I work with birth parents throughout Los Angeles County, including Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Burbank, Glendale, Torrance, West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Studio City, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Calabasas, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and surrounding communities.
Because sessions are online, I work with California residents statewide.
Logistics
50-minute Sessions are $250.
I also offer 90-minute sessions for $375 and intensive sessions (2-4 hours) ranging from $500 to $1000 for people who want to work intensively.
I don't take insurance directly, but I can provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement if your plan covers that.
I am available early mornings, evenings, and weekends. I provide services online only.
Self-Schedule or Contact Me Below
For the quickest and most confidential option, you’re encouraged to book directly into my calendar by clicking the Self-Schedule Here button below. That button will take you to my HIPAA-compliant calendar where you may request an appointment. Once I confirm your appointment request (typically within 24 hours), I will email you the new client forms to digitally sign. Then, we will meet on your scheduled day.
If you have questions prior to scheduling, you can also use the contact form below, and I’ll reply within 48 business hours. If you don’t see a reply, please check your junk/spam folder.
I look forward to hearing from you!
— Summer Verhines, LCSW
Contact Summer
Frequently Asked Questions
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The first session is a chance for me to hear what brought you here and for you to decide whether working together feels right. I’ll ask about your adoption experience, what’s been hardest, and what you want to be different. We won’t jump into the heavy stuff right away. For many birth parents, the first session is the first time they’ve talked about this with someone who already understands the weight of it, and that alone can bring some relief.
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All three involve focusing on a specific memory or experience while your brain works through it in a new way. In EMDR, I guide your eyes back and forth while you hold a memory in mind. Brainspotting uses a fixed eye position to find where stress is stuck in your body. Accelerated Resolution Therapy uses guided imagery and eye movements and is designed to work in fewer sessions. None of these require you to describe painful experiences in detail out loud. Most clients say the experience is intense but manageable, and many notice a shift after just a few sessions. The memory is still there, but it doesn’t take over the way it used to.
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No. Many of the birth parents I work with placed their child ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Research shows that for many birth parents, the grief gets heavier over time rather than fading. Milestones like your child’s 18th birthday, becoming a grandparent, or your own health changing can bring the grief back to the surface with full force. There is no expiration date on this kind of work.
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Yes. Open adoption was supposed to reduce birth parent grief by maintaining contact, but the reality is more complicated. Visits can be wonderful and devastating at the same time. Adoptive families sometimes pull back on contact over time. And seeing your child call someone else Mom or Dad, even when you expected it, can hit harder than you prepared for. Having contact doesn’t mean the grief goes away, it just changes.
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Sessions are $250, private pay only. I do not accept insurance directly, but I provide superbills you can submit to your insurance company for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Many PPO plans reimburse a portion of the session fee. I recommend calling the number on your insurance card and asking about out-of-network mental health benefits before your first session.