How to Love a Transracially Adopted Person – Part 10: Loving Protection

About this episode

April Dinwoodie explores the complexities of love and protection in the context of transracial adoption.

In this powerful tenth installment of How to Love a Transracially Adopted Person , host April Dinwoodie marks ten years of writing at the intersection of Valentine's Day and Black History Month with a clear and urgent message: love without protection is no longer enough. What began as a reflection on romantic love and adoption has evolved into something deeper — a reckoning with identity, loss, belonging, race, safety, and responsibility. In this episode of Born in June, Raised in April , April examines the incomplete love narrative often attached to adoption and challenges the cultural myth that adoption is a simple, tidy love story. Drawing from her lived experience as a Black woman raised in a white family, she explores how love without truth creates fragility — and how love without protection creates harm. April shares personal reflections on growing up deeply loved, yet not always protected from racial harm. She unpacks the emotional tension between gratitude and grief, belonging and rupture, and calls parents, professionals, and institutions into a more courageous understanding of what real love requires. This episode is both personal and universal — a call-in to anyone who…

People in this episode

Hosts: April Dinwoodie, April

Topics covered

• transracial adoption
• identity
• race
• love
• protection

Keywords

• adoption
• transracial adoption
• protective love

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: How to Love a Transracially Adopted Person, Born in June, Raised in April, The Incomplete Love Narrative of Adoption, The Responsibility of Transracial Adoption

More episodes of Born In June Raised In April: What Adoption Can Teach the World

• April Showers, May Flowers, and the Adoption Rain Wall (with Bryan Post) · April 22, 2026 · 40 min
• Exploring the Complexities of Adoption: Luck, Lore, and Pop Culture with Sullivan Summer · March 13, 2026 · 1h 3m
• Running Towards the Burning Building: 10 Years of Adoption Insight · January 20, 2026 · 29 min
• Reimagining Traditions: Adoption, Identity & Belonging with Dr. Anthony Hynes · December 17, 2025 · 53 min
• Setting Our Holiday and Community Tables with Melissa Guida-Richards · December 1, 2025 · 43 min
• Behind the Mask: Belonging, Identity, and Community with Melissa Guida-Richards · October 22, 2025 · 29 min