Adoptees On

255 Sarah Audsley We are thrilled to introduce you to Sarah Audsley today! Sarah's debut poetry collection Landlock X is our June Adoptees On(ly) Book Club pick. Today Sarah shares about how a reunion with genetic family in Korea only opened up more questions for her. We talk about cultural differences, context that can be lost in translation, and how she may be an anomaly with accurate records fr...

254 [Healing Series] Adoptee Superpowers Today we are talking with Dr. Chaitra Wirta-Leiker about adoptee superpowers. Don't worry, we're not going to express gratitude for a traumatic experience over here, it's more about understanding what are some common traits we hold and how can we embrace and make use of them to our advantage. We talk about perfectionism, empathy, people-pleasing, control, a...

253 Dr. Sam and Sandria We are thrilled to bring you two fellow podcasters today! Dr. Samantha Coleman and Sandria Washington are our guests from Black to the Beginning. They share their stories of being friends who just coincidentally found out a few years apart in adulthood that they also were both adopted. We talk about the lack of resources for same race black adoptees and how Dr. Sam and Sand...

252 Anne Elise Today's guest is our friend, Anne Elise. Anne lives abroad and we talk about some of the intersections she sees between living as an American expat and being an adopted person. Anne shares what it's like growing up with an adopted brother who was keen to live out the defiant "acting out" adoptee stereotype. We also talk about our love of reading adoptee-authored work and rejection f...

251 Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC Full Show Notes Here This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not repres...

250 | [Healing Series] Pet Loss and Grief If you've been around the show for a while, you may remember that almost exactly one year ago Haley said goodbye to her dog, Lucy. We had so many people reach out during that time who had also lost a pet companion and so we started this conversation as a community about how especially weighty the grief can be for an adopted person. Today's guest is Laura S...

249 Angela Tucker Today's guest is Angela Tucker, one of the most well-known adopted people in our community, subject of the documentary Closure, now turned author of You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. Angela shares about her time as a caseworker in private adoption, and about the difficulties of balancing the tightrope act of critiquing adoption and still...

248 Jeff Nyhuis & Amy Geller, LCSW If you are someone who is looking to have a relationship but have struggled to connect with past partners, or you are feeling misunderstood in your current relationship whenever you start talking about adoption, I think this conversation will be extremely helpful for you. Today we are joined by Amy Geller, LCSW, an adoptee and therapist, and her husband Jeff Nyhu...

247 | Katie Bozek, Ph. D., LMFT  Today's guest is Dr. Katie Bozek, a therapist and the Executive Director of KAAN, the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network. We talk about the complexity of what being asked for our story brings. Katie shares how the birth of her first child was what set her on the journey of looking closely of what being adopted truly meant to her, and we touch on ways w...

246 Dorothy Ellen Palmer Today's guest is author and accessibility consultant Dorothy Ellen Palmer. Dorothy is a fellow Canadian adoptee whose story has some remarkable coincidences. We talk about the indescribable lure back to the places of our biological ancestors, why mainstream adoption humour is so problematic, and ableism in the adoptee community.  This episode requires a trigger warning as...

245 Mary Gauthier What can we say about today's guest? She is an iconic songwriter, Grammy-nominated folk artist, and outspoken adoptee advocate, Mary Gauthier. Mary's first book Saved By A Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting is a nurturing exploration of how sharing our stories can be a healing experience. Her 2010 album The Foundling has become a soundtrack for many of us as we've gri...

244 Deanna Shrodes, D.Min. We are back with part two of our interview with Dr. Deanna Shrodes. Last week Deanna shared with us how her father Gus Nicholas was found in May 2022 at the age of 92 after a first cousin DNA match. Deanna was his only daughter and they had several precious months together in reunion before he passed away in December 2022. Their story is so unbelievable that it's been fe...

243 Deanna Shrodes, D.Min. Our guest is Dr. Deanna Shrodes, a minister and well-known writer of the Adoptee Restoration blog and multiple books. Back in 2019 Deanna and I discussed the challenges of searching for her father and coming up with false leads and dead ends for years. Well today, she is back to share her heartwarming and heartbreaking story of finding her father Gus Nicholas after a len...

242 Andie Coston, LCSWA Today we are talking about something that may feel triggering to many of us. Indeed, both me and my guest had a hard time at different points during this conversation. We are talking with an adoptee who is also an adoptive parent. Andie Coston, LCSWA, is here, and we're talking about how to live in the grey world of both advocating for adoption abolition and/or reform, and...

241 Kirsta Bowman Today's guest is Kirsta Bowman, also known as Karpoozy to much of the internet. Kirsta is an adoptee advocate who has alerted millions of TikTok viewers about unethical adoption rehoming practices. She shares some of her personal search reunion story with us today, and we chat about the complexities of reunion when your biological family lives on another continent. And of course...

240 Sandra Steingraber, Ph. D. Today's guest is Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a public health biologist and climate crisis expert. Sandra shares some of her personal story with us, and then the importance of knowing the interactions of both our biology and our adoptive environments on our health. As a gay woman who came out later in life, Sandra now helps facilitate a Queer Adoptee support group and we...

239 Adoptees On(ly) Book Club   We're inviting you to join our Adoptees On(ly) Book Club discussion today! Sullivan Summer interviews Rebecca Carroll, author of Surviving the White Gaze, at a live Zoom event with fellow adoptees. This was recorded in October of 2022. Like Rebecca, Sullivan is a Black, domestic, transracial adoptee raised in New Hampshire. She is a regular contributor to Adoptees O...

238 | Lora K. Joy returns to the podcast today to share about the process of legally changing her name and being adopted back by her biological mother. We talk about all the healing work and therapy she's persisted in to find acceptance of herself and about how it feels to own the truth around her story. Full Show Notes Here This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing...

237 | [Healing Series] Identity Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC returns to discuss a model of attachment that is so helpful for adopted people to consider. Instead of attachment styles being seen as a spectrum, Marta teaches us about the Nested Model and understanding the layers of complexity that can add to adoptees' experience of attachment. We even do a role play of how to have some challenging con...

Shannon Gibney, an award-winning author of multiple books, and her brand new release, The Girl I Am, Was, & Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption, returns to the podcast! Today Shannon shares some of her reunion story with us, how her long-time friends supported her through some pivotal life events, and how her relationship with her adoptive family has evolved over the years....

235 | Happy 2023! What a way for us to begin the new year! One of the people we most highly esteem in the adoptee community is here, JaeRan Kim Ph. D.. JaeRan is an adoptee scholar, community leader, and author of the prolific blog, Harlow's Monkey. Today she shares some of her personal story and how she landed in critical adoption studies. She also teaches us about the brilliant new model she's d...

234 | [Healing Series] Positive Racial Identity Abby Hasberry, LMFT-A join us to talk about the importance of adult adoptees developing a positive racial identity. We can't develop that as children (nor as adults) when racial mirrors and cultural experiences are nonexistent. Abby shares some tools and strategies we can use to do this work of racial reclamation, and she addresses a common fear and...

233 | Patrick Armstrong We are so excited to welcome Patrick Armstrong to the podcast! Patrick is a fellow adoptee community builder and today he shares his experiences growing up as a Korean adoptee in all-white spaces. He's moved from rejecting his Asian identity, to a period of reclamation of identity, language and culture, and now feels that he's in a place of fully accepting himself. We hope...

232 | [Healing Series] Identity We're excited to have Marta Sierra, LMHC back on the podcast, one of our favourite adoptee therapists! Today Marta talks with us about identity development as adult adoptees. We talk through some of the ways adoption trauma can mean delayed development, and that finding out who we really are is possible in adulthood. Marta also advises us that sometimes doing healin...

Thank you to each one of you who has listened to an episode of Adoptees On! Each adoptee who listens is an integral part of our community, and we are feeling especially grateful for you making this possible today. Haley Radke and Carrie Cahill Mulligan are celebrating 1,000,000 downloads of the Adoptees On podcast! Join us as we take a look back at our first episode together and talk through some...