Adapted Podcast

I sit down with Alicia Soon Hershey , 41, a Korean transnational adoptee now living in Barcelona. Soon Hershey was the very first adoptee interviewed on the podcast back in 2016 and our conversation book-ends the podcast in the 165th episode (!). We get a chance to hear how she has evolved in the past eight years and her outlook for life now that she is a mother herself.

Korean-American cultural anthropologist Eleana Kim talks about her research that went into the seminal imprint "Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging," Duke University Press, 2010. 

Geoffrey Winder (born Jong Ke-Bin) (he/him), 42, of Oakland, CA, shares some of his story as a queer Black Korean transnational and transracial adopted man and about his activism in queer advocacy, adoptee community, and leadership spaces.

Mirae Kate-hers Rhee , 48, is a transnational, transcultural artist and adopted Korean who uses her socio-political artwork and performance to investigate concepts like identity and belonging.

Korean mixed-race adoptee Sarah Harris , 54, of Los Angeles, shares her story of visiting Korea and finding the place where she felt truly rooted.

Korean adoptee Delight Roberts , 52, talks about marrying into a Korean-American family and the challenges and benefits that provided her. Some were surprising – like table eating etiquette – but all of Roberts' experiences from childhood bullying to having future in-laws who didn't approve of her because she is adopted, have strengthened Roberts' resolve to live the life of her choice.

Wyatt Tuell , 45, is a Korean-American adoptee who was raised outside Omaha, Nebraska with a Korean immigrant adoptive mother and a white American adoptive father who was much older than his mother. Growing up in the 80s, Wyatt often felt different from his white school peers around him and was sometimes teased for being Korean. At home, his family was very close and loving, which he credits today...

Kit Myers , 42, is a transracial Hong Kong adoptee and assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. In this interview, we talk about Myers' search for his birth mother and feelings he's had of having a 'ghostly' or ambiguous kinship with someone he doesn't know. We also talk about his upcoming imprint, " Violence of Love, Race, Adoption and Fami...

I continue the conversation with Nik Nadeau, 36, a Korean adoptee who is in reunion with his Korean birth mother. He is a secret, unable to meet his half-siblings who are also in their 30s, or be acknowledged by his mother, publicly. His relationship with his mother is qualified by language barriers, time and mutual grief, and love. We start off this episode with Nadeau recalling the experience of...

Nik Nadeau, 36, met his Korean birth mother 14 years ago. In this episode, he talks about his creative writing process and about how he's unlocked feelings about the reunion and his own identity as a transnational adopted person. 

Leader Yukyeong Kim and her group of neighbors and friends in Korea have been quietly and determinedly helping adoptees search for their biological family since 2018. I sit down with Kim to find out more about how the group got started and how their willingness to make a simple phone call has often times had surprising results. 

Dr. JaeHee Chung-Sherman, DSW, LCSW, has centered her practice and research on decolonizing adoption and mental health for transracial and international adoptees. A transracial, transnational adoptee herself, Chung-Sherman, 47, has been among the first co-hort of TRIA therapists to do this work. She talks about narcissistic colonial adopt systems, and why she ultimately has decided to move on from...

Mia Quade Kristensen, 46, and Jannie Jung Westermann , 45, are on the board of the 34-year old Danish Korean adoptee organization, Korea Klubben. They will share about their own search and reunion stories, including one of them being in reunion with her Korean family for more than two decades. The women will also share about their community in Denmark and what is needed for the future. Besides the...

I talk with Dr. JaeRan Kim and PhD student Grace Newton about the Adoptee Consciousness Model - a framework for understanding adoptee awareness of the impact of adoption. Together with Dr. Susan Branco (not featured), the model is now being discussed and critiqued in academic and adoptee communities. Kim, 55, and Newton, 29, also talk about their earlier years when helming their own anonymous blog...

Thomas Haessly , 40, has felt like an outsider ever since he can remember. Adopted from Korea by a Danish mother and American father to Racine, Wisconsin, Haessly recalls feeling like an imposter within his family, of not quite fitting in, and again as an adult at Korean grocery stores and parenting his own children. Haessly's sister, Mia, also an adopted Korean, is featured on Season 7, Episode 8...

Rachel Forbes , LCSW, is a Korean-American adoptee with a psychotherapy practice in Connecticut where she specializes in transracial adoption and trauma-informed care. She is also an educator who speaks about trauma, attachment and healing within the adoption constellation. Forbes, 34, talks about the 4Fs regarding emotion disregulation and provides some good resources too.    **CW: child sexual a...

Marissa Lichwick , 46, is a Korean adoptee and filmmaker, playwright and actor. She is using her past pain and trauma surrounding her family separation, abuse in the orphanage and in her father and stepmother's home and the haunting loss of a half-sister she's never met in her art, to process the events of her life and to encourage healing and community with others. 

  Sara Docan-Morgan , PhD, 44, is a Korean adoptee and communications professor in Wisconsin . She's also the youngest child in her Korean biological family, with whom she reunited with many years ago. Her research has focussed on experiences of Korean adoptees and their families, and this month she is out with a new book, "In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family"...

Mia Haessly , 44, is a working mother and adopted Korean-American who has reunited with her Korean biological father. And while introducing her family to him and seeing her children connect with Korea in a way she never had has been meaningful, the reunion has presented new challenges. Besides the language and cultural barriers, there is the physical distance between Wisconsin (USA) and Korea.  An...

Helen Noh , PhD., is retiring next year after four decades working in child welfare in Korea, first as an adoption social worker to now a professor of social work, training generations of students to make an imprint on improving the lives of children and families. Noh, 64, has become a leading academic voice in Korea on changing policies regarding adoption in Korea. She talks with Adapted Podcast...

Robert Holloway , 34, and Menzeba Hasati , 40, are siblings who are adult children of a Black Korean adoptee. Their mother is a first-wave adoptee, whose mother was Korean and father an American G.I. She was adopted to Alaska in the 1960s by a Black couple. Her children forged their own identities; one in spite of their mother's strong influence towards Korean culture, and the other, embraced it. ...

Korean adoptee Matthew Rodriguez , 43, is trying to make sense of his adoption story. For years, it's been clouded by stories told to him and those he told himself, even if they weren't accurate. It was a means to survive. But Rodriguez, whose adoptive parents are white and Mexican American, has his own memories. And now in his 40s, he's learning how to feel comfortable being himself and with the...

Korean adoptee Jenna Antoniewicz , 40, has been on a whirlwind over the past 24 months since beginning to reckon her adoption history and adoptee identity. While a mayor of a town in Pennsylvania , she found herself speaking for Asian America during the coronavirus pandemic about anti-Asian hate. But it triggered an imposter syndrome for Antoniewicz, who hadn't previously reflected much on her ado...

Hollee McGinnis, 51, is a Korean adoptee and founder of Also Known As, one of the longest continuously running international adoptee community organization and based in the New York Tri-State area. In this episode, she discusses her new project, Mapping the Life Course of Adoption , and provides some insights from some of the preliminary findings. 

Lee Herrick , 52, is a poet, author, educator and adoptee. He was adopted from South Korea to the San Francisco Bay area in 1971.  Herrick  discusses how he uses his lens as an adoptee to observe and write verse about life. He also reads from his 2019 acclaimed collection of poems,  "Sc ar and Flower . "