Education

Spirit Baby Energy and the Adoption Connection

Apr 15, 2026
By, Donna Pope

Kelly Ann Meehan did not plan to become the person parents call when they want to feel connected to a child who has not yet arrived. She was a teenager on the East Coast who felt trees talking to her, who wrote down grocery items her father was buying before he walked through the door, and who spent most of high school so overwhelmed by other people's emotions that classmates remember her as the quiet girl who kept to herself. She did not have language for what she was experiencing. She did not have a community. What she had was an ability to sense energy that she spent decades learning to trust, regulate, and eventually build a clinical practice around. Today, Kelly holds a master's degree in clinical psychology with a somatic psychology emphasis, and she works with parents across the globe through conception, pregnancy, birth loss, surrogacy, and adoption as a spirit baby medium, medical intuitive, and mentor.

In this episode of Voices of Adoption with host Donna Pope, Kelly describes spirit baby communication as a language of energy that connects parents with children before birth, no matter the path those children take to arrive. She walks through her own journey of discovering intuitive abilities, the years she spent learning to regulate her nervous system so those abilities did not consume her, and the client stories that convinced her adoption is one of the most spiritually significant ways a family can be built. For anyone on the adoption path who has ever been told to "just trust the process" without being given tools for what that actually looks like in the body, this conversation delivers something concrete.

The Struggle to Receive Your Child Is an Awakening

Kelly works primarily with women and couples navigating infertility, miscarriage, and the emotional weight of family building when the path forward is unclear. Many of her clients arrive after failed fertility interventions, carrying grief, confusion, and a sense that their bodies have betrayed them. Some have considered adoption but feel resistance, either from themselves or from a partner. Kelly does not push them toward any particular path. Instead, she helps them examine the resistance itself, unpacking old mental patterns and traumas that may be blocking their receptivity to however their child is meant to come. She describes seeing "adoption energy" show up in clients' energy fields and gently naming it, only to hear responses like "I don't want that" or "my husband doesn't." Her response is always the same: don't be scared to think about it, because openness to adoption can shift the entire energetic landscape of family building in ways that logic alone cannot predict.

Kelly illustrates this with the story of a solo mother living overseas who came to her after fertility interventions had failed and her body had stopped cooperating. This woman made the decision to explore fostering with the goal of adoption, and a little boy was placed with her on the exact date she had previously experienced a birth loss. She did her inner work, stayed in what Kelly calls "heart communication," and eventually adopted him fully. Then something unexpected happened: a separate family reached out to offer her a second child. Kelly emphasizes that this woman had been told she was "number a million on the list" and that adoption would never happen. What changed was not her circumstances but her energy. Research from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute confirms that approximately 95% of domestic infant adoptions today involve some level of openness, with the overwhelming majority of expectant parents actively choosing the adoptive family for their child (Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute). Kelly's work suggests that the emotional and energetic preparation adoptive parents bring to that process matters more than most people realize.

The Body Knows Before the Mind Does

Kelly's graduate training in somatic psychology gave her a clinical framework for what she had always experienced intuitively. She describes the program as transformational, noting that half the students dropped out during the first year because the work required them to feel what was happening in their bodies rather than analyze it intellectually. For Kelly, this was exactly what she needed. She had spent her life sensing and feeling energy without understanding the physical mechanisms behind it, and the somatic approach gave her a vocabulary for the connection between emotional states and bodily experience. She uses the word "embodiment" frequently, referring to the practice of being fully present in the body rather than living primarily in the thinking mind. Her sessions combine meditation, energy work, and guided practices designed to help clients release the mental patterns that create blocks around receiving their children.

This has direct application for families navigating adoption. The waiting period can be intensely activating for the nervous system, filled with cycles of hope, fear, and uncertainty that have no predictable timeline. Kelly recommends that waiting families prioritize nervous system regulation through quiet time, nature exposure, meditation, and self-care practices that bring them back into their bodies. She tells clients to complete their paperwork, follow the legal processes, and take action where action is needed, but then to come back to themselves, anchor in their hearts, and feel the connection to the child who is coming. A 2024 meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing found that nature exposure produced significant positive effects across measures of anxiety, depression, mood, and stress in adults experiencing mental health symptoms (International Journal of Mental Health Nursing). Research reported by Mayo Clinic Press found that nature exposure can begin regulating the sympathetic nervous system in as few as five minutes, offering near-immediate benefit for people under chronic stress (Mayo Clinic Press). For families in the waiting season of adoption, these are not abstract wellness tips. They are survival tools.

This Baby Has Two Mothers

The conversation between Kelly and Donna takes its most emotionally significant turn when Donna describes the bond she has witnessed between birth mothers and adoptive mothers in open adoption arrangements. Donna speaks from her own experience as an adoptive mother whose oldest child has a relationship with his biological mother and biological brother. She describes the joy she feels knowing another woman can offer her son something she cannot, and the mutual healing that happens when both families stay connected. Kelly responds with a line that stops the conversation: "This baby on some level has two mothers. And we don't say that, but I'm like, what's wrong with that to say that?" She adds that she believes this kind of openness and recognition accelerates healing for the birth mother, because it validates her ongoing connection to the child she placed.

Research supports what both women describe. The Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) found that adolescents with ongoing contact with birth parents reported greater satisfaction with their adoption arrangements and possessed more factual and personal knowledge about their origins, supporting healthier identity formation (MTARP, University of Massachusetts). A study cited by the Adoption Support Alliance found that 90% of adoptive parents were content with the level of birth parent contact at 18 months post-placement, and that contact gave adoptive parents a more positive view of birth parents (Adoption Support Alliance). Kelly also references the work of Dr. Bruce Lipton, an epigenetics researcher and author of "The Biology of Belief," who has documented cases of adopted children developing traits, health patterns, and characteristics that mirror their adoptive families rather than their biological ones. A study published in Nature's Cell Death & Discovery confirmed that children raised by adoptive caregivers who experienced depression showed increased vulnerability to depression themselves despite no genetic link, underscoring the role of the caregiving environment in shaping development (Cell Death & Discovery, Nature). The science and Kelly's intuitive work point in the same direction: the environment a family creates is not secondary to biology. It is foundational.

Definitions

Spirit Baby Medium: A practitioner who communicates with the energy or spirit of babies before conception, during pregnancy, or after birth loss, relaying messages and intuitive information to parents or future parents.

Somatic Psychology: A branch of psychology that focuses on the connection between the body and the mind, using body-centered techniques to process emotions, trauma, and stress held in the physical body.

Epigenetics: The study of changes in gene expression caused by environmental factors rather than alterations to the DNA sequence itself, including how early experiences and caregiving environments can chemically modify which genes are activated or silenced.

Nervous System Regulation: The process of bringing the autonomic nervous system into a balanced state, often through practices like breathwork, meditation, nature exposure, and body awareness, reducing chronic activation of the stress response.

Vanishing Twin Syndrome: A condition in which one of a set of twin embryos detected early in pregnancy does not survive, with the tissue being absorbed by the other twin, the placenta, or the mother's body.

Open Adoption: An adoption arrangement in which birth parents and adoptive families maintain some form of ongoing contact, ranging from the exchange of letters and photos to regular in-person visits. Approximately 95% of domestic infant adoptions in the United States today involve some level of openness.

If you are an adoptive family in the waiting season, a birth parent processing grief, or an adoptee exploring the energetic dimensions of your own story, this episode offers a framework for staying grounded, connected, and open to what comes next.

Listen to Kelly Ann Meehan's full conversation with Donna Pope on Voices of Adoption. Download Your FREE Guide to Adoption at VoicesofAdoption.org.

And if you know someone navigating the path to parenthood through adoption, surrogacy, or any route that does not follow the expected script, share this episode. The message that every path to family is valid needs to reach the people still doubting theirs.

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