ANCHOR Connect

Framework

The ROOTS Model

Recognizing Loss, Oscillating Between Grief and Living, Owning Parent Identity, Transforming Meaning, and Sustaining Lifelong Bonds — the evidence-informed frame every ANCHOR service, training, and evaluation tool is organized around.

R

Recognizing Loss

Ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, and adoption-specific loss are named and validated. Participants learn to identify their experiences and locate them in an evidence-informed frame.

O

Oscillating Between Grief and Living

Grief is not linear. This domain honors the movement between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented experience, supporting participants as they build capacity to hold both.

O

Owning Parent Identity

Birth parenthood is a lifelong identity. This domain supports parenthood after placement, motherhood and fatherhood identity, and the rebuilding of a coherent sense of self.

T

Transforming Meaning

Meaning-making work — narrative repair, shame reduction, integration — moves participants toward stories that hold what happened while making space for what is possible.

S

Sustaining Lifelong Bonds

Open adoption relationships, continuing bonds, and long-term connection are supported across the lifespan through communication skills, boundaries, and expectations work.