Once Upon A Time...In Adopteeland

Diego Vitelli is a dedicated adoptee-focused therapist, relationship expert, and advocate for racial diversity and LGBTQ+ inclusion. An international adoptee from Colombia, Diego was adopted at approximately five years old by an Irish-Italian family outside of Boston. His lived experience as an adoptee fuels his deep passion for amplifying adoptee voices and fostering spaces where identity, belong...

Paul Kimball is an active musician in Stockton California. He conducts Musicals, The Zion Chamber Orchestra and Pops Choir and recently retired after 36 years as a music teacher with the Lincoln Unified School District. He is French Horn player. As a baby, Paul lived in Foster Care after being relinquished by his first mother, a concert cellist, at 5 days old. He was adopted on his first birthday...

Jennifer Hiltebeitel (HILL-ta-bite-el) is a returning guest. Jennifer is an adopted person on a lifelong healing journey. She was adopted through the county foster care system in Pennsylvania in the early 70s and just obtained her original birth certificate in 2023. She met her biological mother at 17 and father at 21 before the internet existed and has ongoing relationships with extende...

Astrid Castro is a returning guest. Astrid is the founder and CEO of Adoption Mosaic , an adoptee-led, BIPOC woman-owned business that creates for and connects our adoption constellation community through adoptee-centered events, education courses, and consultations. For over three decades, Astrid has served the adoption constellation through a variety of innovative programing designed to highligh...

Sharon Butler-Obazee, an adoptee, attended Cal State Hayward. She worked in human services and tenured with the insurance industry as a medical sales rep. After retirement, she became certified under the International Coaching Federation after attending Professional Christian Coaching before starting her coaching practice.   Her handle on social media was @adoptionclarity, where she enco...

We encourage you to go to https://www.onceuponatimeinadopteeland.com/ and search the individuals mentioned in this episode to find their contributions/links. OBC to California Born Adoptees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erHylYLHqXg Music by Corey Quinn

Original air date: November 1, 2022 Jennifer Hiltebeitel (HILL - ta - bite - el) was adopted from foster care as a preschooler and grew up to be a fourth-grade teacher with a Master's degree in Multicultural Education.  She met members of her biological family between the ages of 17-21 and is honored to understand pieces of her story that were once missing.  She has been marrie...

Natasha Tripplett, a Jewish-Jamaican American author, lives in Northern California where she writes from a tree house perched in a sycamore tree. As a baby, Natasha was adopted into a Dutch, Christian family. Growing up on Vancouver Island in Canada, she was acutely aware that she was different from her family; this did not keep her from integrating all the pieces of her identity. Natasha’s multic...

Lisa MM Butler is a Black (biracial), US domestic, transracial adoptee and former foster youth. She is an artist, writer, advocate, community organizer, and library lover. Lisa is known, online, as the Adoptee Clown and shares her experiences as an adoptee both on her Instagram @theadopteeclown and on Substack as The Adoptee Clown Diaries. She serves on the Board of VOICES, a BIPOC Adoptee Communi...

Original Air Date: 11/22/22 Anita is a passionate, creative, transracial adoptee. Adopted with her identical twin sister, she grew up on a chicken farm with five siblings and considers her faith and family to be most important to her. She has a bachelor's degree in Social Work and is presently pursuing her Master's degree in Social work and a Certificate in Expressive Arts. When she isn't eng...

Jill Mann is a transracial, transnational Korean adoptee. She is an artist, musician, and writer, and a member of the BIPOC Adoptees team. She also works on the BIPOC Adoptees documentary project as editor, animator, and producer. She is also on the board of Asian Heritage Association, a local organization based in McMinnville, Oregon. Website: https://www.bipocadoptees.org/ IG: @pandamonium25 Mus...

Sandi Caesar is a returning guest. Sandi is an international adoptee from Panama, adopted by a Black US Air Force family stationed in Panama at the time. Most of her life has been in the midwest but she moved to Virginia in 2020. She is a social worker whose 30-year career has included time in mental health & child welfare. She has been in reunion with her first mother and maternal family sinc...

Simon Benn is the host of https://www.thrivingadoptees.com/podcast Music by Corey Quinn

Original Air Date: 07/12/2022 Sandi C. is an international adoptee from Panama. Most of her life has been in the midwest but she returned to the DMV area about a year & a half ago. She is a social worker whose 30-year career has included time in mental health, adoption, and foster care. She has been in reunion with her birthmother and maternal family for 18 years. Music by Corey...

Julie Brumley is a trauma-informed adoptee coach who has been coaching men and women for more than 15 years to overcome addictive behaviors and heal the primal trauma of abandonment. She is also the CEO of Coming Home to Self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal. After her own birth mother tried to abort her twice, she found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades unt...

Julie Brumley is a trauma-informed adoptee coach who has been coaching men and women for more than 15 years to overcome addictive behaviors and heal the primal trauma of abandonment. She is also the CEO of Coming Home to Self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal. After her own birth mother tried to abort her twice, she found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades unt...

Molly/Mavka is an early 80's Catholic Charities, closed, same-race adoptee. She has been in on-again-off-again reunion with her birth mother for 20 years, and is leisurely navigating reunion inklings with her birth father. Her adopters' choice to estrange themselves from her has offered an often-troubling-but-still-freeing expanse in which to explore her post-placement options, she guesses. In the...

Kim Stevens was adopted in Korea along with her bio brother into the same family. They were stationed in South Korea and immigrated to the US after their adoption. Kim was raised in Central Texas in a predominantly white community with few racial mirrors and even less cultural socializations. Being in that environment, she was taught to ignore the racism and micro-aggressions which caused her to d...

Dana Ozak  is a full-time preschool teacher, passionate adoptee advocate whenever she has time, part-time college student, part time water color artist, part time author, and whatever other free time she has is spent going on long walks with her sweet husband and hanging out with him and their college aged offspring. Website: https://girland4families.com/ Music by Corey Quinn

Liana Soifer (she/her) is a transracial, transnational adoptee from South Korea, raised in Oregon, and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of BIPOC Adoptees VOICES, a Portland-based nonprofit leading initiatives for BIPOC adoptee communities. With a BA in Human Services, Liana has experience as a Project Manager in software and web applications. She previously ran a web design and digital brandi...

Amanda Robinson is a Korean adoptee. She was adopted with her twin sister and raised in Washington. Though she's wanted to be many things, currently she is a retired dental hygienist who homeschools her two kids, and is an aspiring children's lit writer in her free time. She aims to encourage kids through her future children's books. Music by Corey Quinn

Grace Yung Foster is the Founder and CEO of The Inclusion Initiative. They are elevating the future of work for Adoptees of Color and Foster Care Alumni.  Grace is both an Adoptee and a Foster Alum. She’s committed to creating more equity, inclusion, and opportunity for our communities, especially within our workplaces and careers. She is a former nonprofit executive with 15 years of experien...

Kathleen Shea Kirstein is a Late Discovery Adoptee and NPE (Non-Expected Parent Event), as well a mother of two sons, retired Registered Nurse, and illustrator of three children's books with author D Ann Hollon. She has published two essays in Severance magazine: "Dear Mother" and "Blown off Course.” https://severancemag.com/dear-mother/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r4LJkJJ6aI https://www.amaz...

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, and activist. The author of several books, including  The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption,  which received a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Minnesota Book Award;  See No Color  and  Dream Country,  both winners of Minnesota Book Awards; and  Sam and the Incredible African and Ame...

Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet. Ryan’s work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from their lived experience and perspective as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Ryan is the host of The Adoptee Open Mic, and hosts virtual letter writing classes to support their activism and creative work. Links: https://li...