Amy Geller

Amy Geller is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in New Jersey where she has maintained a solo private practice since 2011.  She is also the Clinical Director of the NJ Chapter of A Home Within, a non-profit organization that aims to make psychotherapy accessible to people who have experienced foster care. Amy earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from The George Washington University (1992) and a Masters in Social Work from NYU Silver School of Social Work (1994).  Amy has extensive experience providing social services in a variety of settings, including hospital and community based health programs.  Amy discovered a passion for  hospice as a holistic approach to end-of-life care early in her career and spent many years providing palliative social work services to patients and families. Amy began her private practice specializing in family therapy and issues related to illness, grief and loss. She soon recognized a need in her local community to address the psychosocial needs of adolescent adoptees. Amy has spent the past 10 years advancing her clinical skills towards the support and education of  all members of the Adoption Kinship Network (AKN), including completion of the Certificate in Adoption program at Rutgers School of Social Work.  An adoptee herself, Amy brings her unique combination of lived experience, clinical practice, and academic scholarship to the adoption community.  Amy is pursuing a DSW to engage in qualitative research and advance clinical education that will amplify the voices of adoptees in social work theory and practice.  As a doctoral student, Amy has presented on “Adolescent Adoptive Relationships: Addressing Loss & Building Attachment” for AFFC/NY and Adoption Network Cleveland and is currently an instructor for the Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work. 

Adoption has become a popular topic in the media with a recent surge of adult adoptees telling their stories and being depicted in the media. There are scores of adult adoptees who meet in online and in-person groups to discuss their adoption experiences. Adoptees are over-represented in mental health settings, yet few clinicians receive education and training for working with this population. We tend to think of adoption as a fixed event that occurs in childhood. But what happens when adoptees grow up? A common experience for adult adoptees is the phenomenon of “coming out of the fog” or an emerging awareness about the impact, and potential trauma, of being adopted.