Adoptees On

279 | Reshma McClintock Oh it is such a delight to get to share this interview with you. Reshma McClintock, the producer and subject of the film Calcutta is My Mother is back with us today. Reshma is a transracial adoptee from Calcutta, India, and this incredible film documents her return to Calcutta for the first time since her adoption, and she would tell you that it also depicts a portion of he...

278 | Adrian Wills Today's guest is fellow Canadian, award-winning director and filmmaker, Adrian Wills. Adrian has a brand new documentary out called A Quiet Girl where get to follow his journey of a public search for his birth mother, and experience every new discovery along with him. Today we talk with Adrian about how his friends prompted his search and what he's discovered about the people of...

277 | John Gallaher, Ph. D. You're in for a treat today, we have award-winning poet John Gallaher with us! John's newest poetry collection, My Life in Brutalist Architecture releases this month and it's his first collection focused in on his experience as an adopted person. Even though he was a kinship adoptee, he still had to take a DNA test to find the family he was searching for. We talk about...

276 | Sanjay Pulver Today's guest is Sanjay Pulver, an Indian adoptee who has become an outspoken adoptee advocate in recent years. We talk about the complexities of being adopted from an orphanage in a country that is not currently safe for him to return to as a queer trans man. We discuss the intersections between being transnationally and transracially adopted with being a trans person and Sanj...

275 | Sara Docan-Morgan, Ph. D. Today's guest is Dr. Sara Docan-Morgan, professor of communication studies and author of the book "In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family". Sara shares some of her personal story, and then we dig into her qualitative research from multiple Korean adoptees who have been in a relationship with their biological family for over a decad...

If you'd like to be involved in the new show, you can email adopteesonadoption(at)gmail(dot)com with your skills pitch. Are you an audio producer? Investigative reporter? Narrative podcaster? I'd love to hear what you've got to bring to the table. Follow updates here: https://www.instagram.com/onadoption

274 | Julian Washio-Collette Today's guest is Julian Washio-Collette, a writer and monastic spiritual seeker, whose story includes the rarity of being relinquished and adopted twice. Julian shares what he hears when someone says the term "forever family", how building community was difficult here when seemingly no one else has had the same experience of being a double-adoptee, and we ponder what t...

273 | SunAh Laybourn, Ph. D.   We are so excited to welcome professor and sociologist Dr. SunAh Laybourn today! Sunah's brand new book is called Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants and it is definitely one you're going to want to add into your collection. Today we talk about SunAh's research, the realization that heritage culture camps are prioritizing adoptive parents' comfort, a...

272 | James Cagney Today's guest is award-winning poet, James Cagney. Author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory and Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James is known for his absolutely dynamic live poetry readings, and we are honoured with a reading in this very episode! We discuss how James came to find out he was adopted, and as usual we've got questions about why parents keep t...

271 | Healing Series: Ask an Adoptee Therapist with Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC Today's episode is our last one before our holiday break. We'll be back with brand-new weekly episodes on January 12, 2024. We wanted to bring you a Healing Series episode to make sure we all had a little extra support before the holiday rush takes over. This year we started a brand new event called Ask an Adoptee ther...

270 | Sara Easterly Sara Easterly is back with us, she's the author of Searching for Mom and the founder of Adoptee Voices. Today we're talking about how Sara became friends with an adoptive mother and a birth mother in order to write a book called Adoption Unfiltered. It's a hard conversation because when Haley got asked to endorse this book she had to say no, to a friend, who we value and deeply...

269 | Dr. Liz DeBetta Today we welcome back Dr. Liz DeBetta, author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness. Liz shares some reunion updates with us, including some very sad news about her sister. We discuss what lead her to choose to remain childfree. And of course, we talk about how writing, re-writing and examining the stories that have been placed upon us can help rec...

268 | Kimberly McKee, Ph. D. We are so excited to host critical adoption studies scholar, Dr. Kimberly McKee. She's the author of the impactful book Disrupting Kinship, and her brand new release is Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood. We talk about Kim's reunion with her family in Korea, where she's currently living with her young son, and what it's l...

267 | Jessica Hairston Today our guest is poet Jessica Hairston, author of Power of Our Wombs. Jessica shares her complex origin story, where both of her biological parents were struggling with addiction when she was born, apprehended and adopted soon after. We talk about "the traveling trauma" that has impacted her family system and the power of the word womb which features prominently in her poe...

266 | Susan Kiyo Ito Today's guest is the indomitable Susan Kiyo Ito. She has been writing, advocating, and leading in the adoptee community for decades and we are all the richer for it. Susan's brand new memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, has just been released and it is fantastic. We talk about how Susan first discovered an adoptee memoir at her local library at age 13, and how that changed the...

265 | Louise & Sarah You might know today's guests and recognize their voices from their podcast, Adoption: The Making of Me. Louise Browne and Sarah Reinhardt are here! Today we hear about how their friendship started, they dish about some of the fights they've had and how they've sustained their close friendship. We also talk about all the books they've read in community with their audience, and...

264 | Healing Series: Adoptee Remembrance Day Adoptee Remembrance Day was first commemorated on October 30, 2020. We've done a variety of episodes over the last few years beginning in 2020 with an interview with the founder of Adoptee Remembrance Day, Pamela Karanova. We've had listeners submit recordings of their thoughts, their poetry and prose. In deciding what to do this year, we were consider...

263 | Stefany Valentine - When We Become Ours Today's episode is a celebration for When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology which releases on October 24, 2023. The first of its kind, edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung, with fifteen adoptee authors is cause for celebration. We're going to hear from an emerging author, Stefany Valentine, who shares her story of being adopted at age twelve,...

262 Healing Series: Difficult Relationships This is a special episode in our healing series where we talk to adoptees who are also therapists. We're going to call this episode a sort of "tune-up" for anyone who is in a period of estrangement or separation from a close relationship, whether it's adoptive parents, bio parents, somebody close in your life. We're talking through some of the things peo...

261 | Lanise Antoine Shelley Today's guest is actor, director, playwright and podcaster, Lanise Antoine Shelley. Lanise shares about being adopted from a Haitian orphanage at age 4 by her single white adoptive mother and how exploring the impact of adoption over the last three years has challenged her connections with her adoptive family. Lanise also tells us about when she realized that her remov...

260 Mike Hoyt Today's guest is Mike Hoyt, a remarkable artist and author of the graphic memoir of Hanabata Days. We discuss his reunion and subsequent reunification process with his first father. Mike also shares how reunification has impacted his own identity and that of his daughters'. Full Show Notes Here This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, eit...

Welcome back! Our first episode of Fall 2023 is a sampling of great advice from some of our favourite adoptee therapists about planning a first meeting with biological family, grieving the loss of an adoptive parent, and some relationship topics. Pam Cordano, MFT, Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC, and Lesli A. Johnson, MFT are some of the therapists we've hosted on Ask an Adoptee Therapist events for P...

258 | Nicole Chung We are so thrilled to welcome Nicole Chung back to the podcast. Nicole's new memoir, A Living Remedy, is a heartbreaking pilgrimage where we walk with her through her grief in losing both of her adoptive parents within a few short years of each other. We talk a lot about grieving today: depression, avoidance, grief rituals, how our loved ones can show up for us, the joy pets can...

257 | Sarah Myer We are so excited to introduce you to Sarah Myer, author of the forthcoming graphic memoir, Monstrous. Today Sarah and I talk about their love of comics, anime, and cosplay and how it lead them to explore their own identity as a Korean adoptee and comic artist. We also talk about anger and violence and how it can be incredibly scary when it's erupting out of ourselves.   Full Show...

256 Kira Omans We are so thrilled to talk with actor, audiobook narrator, and adoptee advocate, Kira Omans today. Kira shares how looking deeply at adoption over the past decade has changed her perspective. We talk about what it's like to audition as an adoptee and to embody a new character and identity during a performance. Of course, we get to chat about adoptee representation in Hollywood and t...