Secrets to Your Successful Domestic Adoption: Insider Advice to Create Your Forever Family Faster
Jennifer Joyce Pedley, MJ, is a birthmother and social worker who has been helping people build their families through adoption since 1995.  It was her own personal experience of placing her son in an open adoption, following his birth in 1990, which prompted her to become a social worker and make the field of adoption her primary professional focus.  Pedley is a founding board member of the On Your Feet Foundation; the first of its kind, a not-for-profit organization established in 2001 to provide ongoing support to birthparents after making an adoption plan for their child.  Support is in the form of both monetary scholarships as well as in the establishment of a formal support network for women who previously would have kept their adoption choice a secret.  In 2003 she established and began co-facilitating therapeutic weekend retreats for birthmothers.  Today,  "On Your Feet For Life," retreats continue to be held biannually and, to date, have engaged hundreds of birthmothers from all over the United States.   Pedley lives in Michigan with her husband and two young sons.  She continues to maintain close ties to her birth son as well as with his adoptive family.