Adoption Uncovered

Anne Moody did not start her career with a focus on adoption. She grew up in an age when orphan stories were common and superficial. As she got more involved with adoption, facilitating connections between mothers and adoptive families, she saw the trauma, stress, as well as corruption and mishandling of this fragile process. Anne did her best to understand the needs of the mothers who came to her...

Dr. Adam Anthony began life as an adoptee from foster care. After getting his education, he centered on the importance he saw in the relationship of a mentor. He had benefitted from being connected to mentors over the course of his life. Now, armed with his own experience and all he has learned, he seeks to bring that support to other young men in foster care. He hopes that with the system of ment...

The world that seemed normal to Angela Legg as she grew up didn't look normal to the society that surrounded her. She didn't realize this until she was much older. In her life, she had two loving female caregivers and two brothers who gave her the appropriate hard time for being their little sis. She knew she was a different race from her family and even much of her community, but she didn...

In this episode, I introduce you to who I am and what my adoption and foster care journey has been like. It has taken me quite a while to reach the point where I was ready to put my background in the spotlight for a few reasons. I was incredibly eager in the early days of Adoption Uncovered to learn from others and start creative discussions about ways to make foster care and adoption better for e...

As adoptive parents, we often try our best to do our research to find a program to adopt through that seems ethical. Sometimes we find out later that the situation our adopted children were in was far more complicated than we initially thought. Marjie Alonso adopted two young boys from Paraguay. The boys were not related, but were four months apart in age. As the boys grew, Marjie found herself se...

Parenting is not an easy task. Bryan Post, an adoptee and Therapist, used his own experience as well as research and training to develop a technique that involves what he calls a love-based approach to parenting. This technique considers the attachment children have toward their caregivers, but even more so, centers on the bonding experienced by parents toward the children in their care. Rather th...

When Lynelle Long wanted to connect with other international adoptees like herself as an adult, she had a hard time finding them. She decided that there should be a better way for adoptees to connect, so she built it. Now her organization, Inter Country Adoptee Voices, offers a refuge for adoptees all over the world seeking community. Not only does Lynelle seek to connect adoptees so they can supp...

There is a lot of debate that centers around women who relinquish their children. We talk about who they might be and why they might be making the decisions they are, often without any insight into the reality of their experience. One of the reasons we guess is that there isn't a lot of readily available scientific research to shed light on who these women are beyond anecdotes and assumptions....

Jean Widner's adoptee story doesn't start dramatically. She was raised in a stable home with adoptive parents who offered her the basic support that children need to have. As she grew and learned more about her own story and the stories of others in the adoption community, she started to understand how complex adoption can truly be for everyone involved. Eventually, she decided to embark o...

One population of foster children that often doesn't get the right kind of attention is those who age out of foster care. This cliff that youth often fall off of exists due to many factors. Some of the problems are due to the system they are leaving and the resources that are drying up. Some of it is the trauma they have lived through and the instability that has left so many of them lacking b...

Marianne Novy was an adoptee who was encouraged to hide that fact and obliged the people around her by keeping quiet about it until she became a college student. Over time she chose to seek out members of her birth family and develop some relationships with some of them. When she became a college professor, adoption became a part of her teaching life, and she also wrote on the topic. Her most rece...

Edward Di Gangi didn't feel the pull to search out his first family until later in life. He felt content with the life he was living and it took a series of events to put in his mind the determination to start his search. Once he did start his search he connected with numerous people who were friendly, and generous and helped him along the way. Even though he was too late to meet his first parents...

Isaac Etter grew up as a black boy surrounded by a loving but also primarily white family. It took him a long time to understand his full identity and how his race affected his place in the world. Over time, Isaac educated not only his adoptive family about race and adoption but also sought to inform other adoptive families. Isaac regularly speaks on topics of race and adoption and offers resource...

Katie Rose Noto always knew she wanted to adopt a child at some point in her life. She imagined a house full of children and dogs. As her life progressed she made the choice to dive into being a foster parent whether she felt fully ready or not. Little did she know that the boys she welcomed into her home had suffered abuse and neglect to the point where they exhibited severe behaviors that she ha...

When Susan Fedorko was growing up she was content with her life and felt secure and cared for. In the back of her mind, however, this adoptee always wondered about the family that had allowed her to be adopted and who they might be. When Susan reached adulthood she put out her information in the hopes that she would discover her first family. It wasn't until she was 40 that she received a phone ca...

Beth Syverson and her adopted son Joey Nakao have been on a difficult journey for a number of years. They have been facing the issues of addiction and suicidality. In light of these intense topics, some of you may prefer to pass on this episode and listen to a different one for today. If you find you are struggling with suicidal thoughts please dial 988 to talk to someone ready to listen. On this...

There are many Christians in the world of adoption and many of them do wonderful work supporting foster families, and foster children, and making sure children outside of the country who need homes can access them. Some families within Evangelical Christianity have developed adoption practices that attracted the interest of investigative journalist and author Kathryn Joyce. Her book “The Child Cat...

Most of us have heard bits and pieces about how poorly America has treated the Native Tribes that have lived on this land. We may not understand fully how adoption was weaponized against tribes to raise children who were brought up without a memory of their heritage and culture. As journalist Trace Lara Hentz began to look into her own past as a Native American Adoptee she began to realize how man...

Lynn Grubb felt fairly comfortable growing up as an adoptee. Then, when she became an adult she got curious and decided she wanted to find her birth family. The process wasn't smooth for her and she learned a lot along the way. Now that she has discovered where she came from she offers advice to others seeking their past. Lynn also gives back to children in foster care by volunteering as a Guardia...

Patricia Knight Meyer's story seems foreign compared to the happy renditions of adoptive families brought together for happy holiday photos. She was adopted quietly, without proper paperwork. This left her in a state of limbo for a good portion of her life, worried that if anyone looked hard enough she would not be able to prove her identity or her citizenship. Over the course of her life she soug...

When Carlynne Hershberger found out she was pregnant at 19 she could never have known then how that experience would shape the rest of her life. Many women don't. In Carlynne's case she became a victim of the baby scoop era when young pregnant women were hidden away and their babies were taken from them with little consideration for their feelings on the matter and given to other families...

Adoption is changing. Technology now makes it possible to adopt the embryos left over from couples who have attempted or succeeded in IVF treatments. Oversight and regulation of this transaction is in its infancy. The people adopting these embryos and those encouraging the idea of the personhood of these embryos are a select group. Where is this practice headed and what does it mean for the childr...

Nick Adam's King and his husband began their adoption journey years ago with the adoption of their son. Later they adopted again and their daughter joined the family. Nick helps me understand how adoptions in the UK differ from those in the US. We learn about the ups and downs of their journey and how Nick learned to find his place among the school "Mommy Mafia".

The orphan trains were an early experiment in American history in which well meaning adults in large East Coast cities put children that didn't appear to be in the care of an adult on a train out west to be adopted by farm families . For some children this meant they traded a life of scrounging on the street for food and living out in the elements for a warm bed and regular meals. Other children w...

JeNae Goodrich was adopted into her own family as a child.  Growing up surrounded by adopted siblings helped prepare her for her life of social work, but she couldn’t have predicted that she would have gotten involved with one of the toughest, most stressful and even controversial sides of adoption. JeNae heads up the KidTeen program at Wasatch International adoption agency. Wasatch has one o...