NAME IT FIRST

Workbook

For Adoptees

A Workbook on Identity, Origin, and Building a Self Between Two Families

You belong to two families. You fully belong to neither. That needs a document.

This is for:

For the adoptee navigating the identity questions adoption creates who wants a self-authored account of who they are between two families.

You'll produce:your Your Identity and Origin Document

The Name It First Experience

You carry two origin stories — or one, or fragments. You have been told that being chosen should be enough. Your Identity and Origin Manifesto names who you are across both families, in your own words, without either family's approval. The work is yours. The output is not a family history. It is a self-authored identity document.

You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.

Sample questions

  1. What questions about your origin have shaped who you understand yourself to be?
  2. How do you hold the two families — or the spaces between them — in your sense of self?
  3. What does building your own identity, distinct from where you came from or where you landed, look like for you?

Research basis

Brodzinsky (Being Adopted, lifelong search for self) / Von Korff, Grotevant and McRoy (adoptee identity development) / Cross (Nigrescence Model for transracial adoptees) / Boss (ambiguous loss applied to adoption) / Trenka, Oparah and Shin (Outsiders Within)

Choose your format.

Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.

Print Paperbackpersonalize

A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.

$22.99

eBook + journal

The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.

Not available

Audiobook

We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.

Not available

Hardcoverpersonalize

The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.

Not available

Digital Fill + membership+membership

Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.

$12.99

Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership

Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.

Not available

Everything packages

The Paperback Everything Package

[personalize]

Not available

The Hardcover Everything Package

[personalize]

Not available

The Premium Hardcover Everything Package

[personalize]

Not available

Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.

Choose your pace.

The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.

Essential path

Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.

Full depth

Every question. Every scenario, every angle.

Paper doesn’t change its mind.

Thoughts change. Documents don’t. The answers you write are there when you return — unchanged by memory or mood.

You won’t just feel clearer — you’ll have written proof of what you decided.

Writing is the mechanism by which internal clarity becomes external evidence. Evidence you can return to, share, and hold someone — including yourself — accountable to.

Every question is answerable by everyone.

Every question in every title is answerable by the person for whom the assumed experience is true and by the person for whom it is not. No reader is excluded by how a question is built.

Already own this title? Add any other format from your account.

Buy it for yourself.

Choose your format above.

Buy it for someone you love.

Send it anonymously — the book says what you cannot.

Send a gift

Need 5+ copies?

Volume pricing for organizations, classrooms, and institutions.

Enterprise pricing
Still have questions? See the FAQ →