From Teen Dad to Adoption Advocate: Tyler Baltierra's Raw Conversation on Grief and Resilience

EPISODE 10: Healing After Adoption — with Tyler Baltierra

In this episode, I sat down with Tyler Baltierra, who you might remember as MTV’s original Teen Mom birth dad, to talk about what it’s really like to heal after placing a child for adoption. Tyler opened up about the pain, guilt, and the long road of making sense of it all, especially while doing it in the public eye.

We talked about:

• The raw realities of being a birth father as a teenager

• How fear and lack of resources pushed him and Catelynn toward adoption

• The emotional manipulation that can happen in adoption systems

• Grief, regret, and learning to sit with pain without minimizing it

• Why adoption is more complicated than the stories we usually hear

Tyler’s honesty is a reminder that adoption isn’t just about babies, it’s about birth parents, adoptive families, and the work we still need to do to make sure families are supported first.

If you take one thing away from this episode, let it be this: your healing is yours, and giving yourself permission to be honest about it is one of the bravest things you can do.

 

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