Conversations About Adoption

**Trigger warning** We do talk about some triggering subjects such as sexual assault and child abuse, please be aware of that in case these subjects will trigger you. I had a delightful conversation with Brian an adoptee I met at the Untangling Our Roots Summit in Kentucky last year. He was the emcee at the 2024 summit which just happened in Denver last weekend!

He is an actor and he writes plays. His solo show play "Blank" referred to the space on his original birth certificate where he didn't have a name. He performed it all around the country. Just before the pandemic hit he was supposed to premier his second play @atghostkingdom, but alas that was put to a stop when lock down happened, so he got creative again and turned it into a film he recorded on his iPhone! He showed that film at the summit last year, and I was so moved by it. I believe any adoptee can find something to relate to in it.

I asked him about possibly doing a zoom event where we show the film, and do a Q & A with him after, (TBA).

Lori is a Jewish first mother who relinquished in the 1990s.

Lori is also a speaker and the author of her book 'From Mistakes to Miracles: A Jewish birth mother's story of Redemption, Hope and Healing'

You can find links to her social media, books, and articles on her website: https://loriprashkerthomas.com

Cynthia is a mental health clinician with 10 years of experience and a fellow adoptee. We had a great time talking despite a couple interruptions. Our stories are kind of parallel as we are both Gen X but raised by silent generation parents. Parents that teach you to stuff your emotions away, and definitely do not display the negative ones.

I hope you enjoy this conversation!

Please be advised with this episode there is a trigger warning. Alicia talks about domestic violence, rape, child abuse, infant loss, and more. If you are sensitive to these topics, please be advised and practice self-care when listening. She does jump right into it.

Alicia was already the mother to one son and landed in a horribly abusive relationship. She lost one baby, and a short time later was pregnant again, this time with twins. While in a severe post-partum depression she reached out to an adoption agency thinking that might be the one way to keep her new babies safe.... She ended up being severely coerced. She ended up losing her boys to adoption.

You can find Alicia on:

Welcome to the 40th episode!!!

It's heard to believe!

In this episode I speak with Kristal who is also an adoptee. She lives in Canada with her husband and their three children. Her adoptive parents had sons and always wanted a little girl, and when Kristal was born she filled that space in their family. She has 2 adoptive brothers who are much older than her, she said it was almost like growing up with four parents. Her parents were very supportive regarding reunion, and you will have to watch the film to see exactly how supportive they were, and why. (avoiding spoilers)

Curt is a fellow baby scoop adoptee. We had a great time talking, and I enjoyed hearing his story. Here is a little bit about Curt in his own words.

Quick bio 

I was a very spirited youth.  I started a family at a very young age. I spent the majority of my life in Virginia. I have two daughters and two granddaughters. Currently I live in Las Vegas and have been here for almost nine years. I spend my free time working with a few different charities that I sit on the boards of. I have a love of hot rods and cool cars and I am in a few different clubs. This is my generic story.  

My story is like many others and is very odd for me to even tell knowing what I know now. I feel like the deep voice narrator that knows the entire plot from the beginning. The odd part of that is the memory of not knowing and living with the fog of adoption so to speak.  

 Curt 

Jenny Trudeau is a mother of loss to adoption, having lost her child through standard coercive industry practices with an agency that was later closed for fraudulent adoptions. Jenny is a 23 year veteran to adoption loss and has studied the industry and its effects on mothers and children for 8 years. Jenny's passion for family preservation comes from her loss, the awareness of the loss of so many others, and the understanding of a toxic culture that sets up family failures in this way. The objectives of her organization include supporting children by facilitating partnerships with parents and reducing crisis-based decision-making for women facing unplanned pregnancies.  She currently lives outside of Charleston, SC with her husband, two younger children, and backyard chickens. 
Links!

Welcome to 2024 and the beginning of season 4!

Thank you for your patience while I took a break over the holidays. Hopefully in the coming weeks I will put up episodes with: a first mom starting another family preservation organization, an indigenous adoptee who made a film that should be released this year, a first mom from the UK, and many more.

In this episode I had a conversation with Brad. He is a fellow baby scoop adoptee that I came across on TikTok. He will tell his story, and we talk about relationships, our attachments styles, came up with a fun new nick name for the town he grew up in, substance abuse, mental health and much more.

Liliana is a very valuable voice in indigenous and adoption communities as she has experienced multiple facets of the child-welfare system in the United States.

She was adopted from Ecuador to the America into a white adoptive family as a toddler. Her adoptive father was abusive, and she ended up in foster care... You will have to listen to see how the rest of her story pans out.

It's NAAM, which means I ranted a little in the intro to this episode... I did it in one take, so please be gentle. :)

This episode features Jenny a domestic infant adoptee born in the USA who immigrated to Germany to live with her husband, and raise their family. She is the eldest of 4 adopted kids. (All from different families.) She recently went viral when she shared a beautiful video of meeting her (first) mom for the second time when they took a trip together. (warning I got emotional about that topic.)

In the last episode I spoke with Rich about his story, and his advocacy work, in this episode we will talk about his creative endeavor, his musical "For the Record(s)"

Rich introduced everyone at the summit to this project, and when he played testify, it blew us away.

In this episode we listen to and talk about the songs, and he fills in some context about the songs.

And when I say my episodes are unedited, I am serious... partway during our conversation the national test happened and our devices went off, so that's in here too. :/

Originally published 12/3/2021

**reposted because I realized I had accidentally uploaded the raw podcast with no intro.**

This is a great conversation I had with a fellow baby scoop era adoptee Ruth who I met through TikTok and we had a lot to talk about. This was recorded through zoom and is not edited at all. 

This is the continuation of of the conversation with adoptees about why they chose to cut or extremely limit contact with their adoptive parents.

This conversation was inspired by some conversations happening on TikTok involving a younger adoptive mom who was saying a lot of harmful things to adult adoptees including, that she owns her child. **cringe**

Adult adoptees were saying they imagine she has the type of attitude that causes adoptees to cut ties with the parent.

I made posts on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok asking for adoptees who want to talk about this topic and got a pretty large response. I plan things pretty spontaneously sometimes, and not everyone who wanted to participate was able to. I am going to try to figure out a way to collect the voices of more adoptees in regard to this topic.

We talked for quite a while, so I broke the episode up into 2 parts. The second part will be uploaded next week.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, and make sure you are subscribed so you get notified about the other part.

Emma Stevens is a U.S. domestic adoptee from birth and has survived layers of trauma that have put her on multiple journeys. She developed the inner strength and courage to surmount the many struggles she faced. Her traumas were born from first being relinquished and then becoming an adoptee who struggled with being forced to wear an impossible mask of playing the part of the “good adopted child.” Her childhood upbringing of an authoritative, cult-like family, predisposed Emma to several more struggles. One of them was falling prey to an exploitative therapist where she unknowingly entered a cultic, one-on-one relationship with her psychologist. Someone who was to help, support, and provide healing – instead, held Emma captive in a psychological nightmare. 

Because of these past traumas, it’s Emma’s desire to be part of the movement that is dedicated to help bring forth change to the way our world views the needs and support of adopted individuals, as well as bring awareness of the exploitation that can occur by the hands of counselors, therapists, and other healthcare professionals. By sharing her experience of being exploited by her abusive psychologist/social worker, Emma feels strongly to expose and bring light to what an unethical, boundaryless, professional therapy situation may look like.  This memoir is Emma Stevens’ second book. Her first was The Gathering Place: An Adoptee’s Story. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism and has completed Master’s level course work in psychology, specializing in Marriage, Family, and Child counseling. She has two adult children and two cat children who she adores.

Links to her books: 

Natalie is an adoptee who was born in Colombia and adopted out to Norway when she was 9 months old.

She just went through reunion, and will disclose some interesting details in our conversation. (I don't want to spill the beans.)

Valerie is an adoptee with a LOT of life experience, and I just don't mean age, which is a bit of a mystery.

She's had a lot of adventures and shares some of them in our conversation! We talked about SO much! There was laughter and tears (On my end) and some silliness in this conversation.

She wrote a book called Mystic Masquerade: An adoptee's search for truth, which should be out sometime in August.

Barbara Raymond is the author of one of the most important books (In my opinion) because it kept Georgia Tann from fading into history. If Barbara hadn't stumbled across Georgia's story while working on an article she thought was going to be about an adoption reunion in the 1990s, Georgia could very well have faded into obscurity. Thanks to her diligence and excellent investigative skills, she uncovered the truth behind Georgia Tann and her crimes.

Georgia Tann was born and raised in Hickory, Mississippi. Her father was a judge. She wanted to be a lawyer, they wanted her to become a concert pianist. She learned law, but her father forbade her from attempting to become a lawyer as that wasn't suitable for a woman at the time, so instead she became a social worker. Georgia ran the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children's home society from the 1920s-1950 when she died from cancer.

During that time, she ran a massive black market child trafficking business. She saw wealthy people as above poor people, and decided that if you were poor you could not raise your children properly. She began stealing babies and children from the poor, selling them to the wealthy and famous, and using them to manipulate law-makers. She popularized adoption by running ads for children in papers all across the country. Approximately 500 babies and children died while in her "care". Unfortunately she died before she would face justice.

Georgia Tann is the mother of modern adoption in the United States.

An activist, comedian, director, and middle school theatre teacher, CJ Miller aspires to do everything he can to change the world for the better. A holder of degrees in both Theatre and Aerospace Technology, CJ is also a military veteran, an actor, and an outstanding dramaturg (even though no one knows what that is). 

Today I am reading this article. Families and adoption: the pediatrician's role in supporting communication.

ABSTRACT:
Each year, more children join families through adoption. Pediatricians have an important role in assisting adoptive families in the various challenges they may face with respect to adoption. The acceptance of the differences between families formed through birth and those formed through adoption is essential in promoting positive emotional growth within the family. It is important for pediatricians to be informed about adoption and to share this knowledge with adoptive families. Parents need ongoing advice with respect to adoption issues and need to be supported in their communication with their adopted children.

References

Borchers, D. (2003). Families and adoption: the pediatrician’s role in supporting communication. Pediatrics, 112(6 Pt 1), 1437–1441. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.112.6.1437

Permalink (You may not be able to access it unless you are a student, or have access to the database via subscription. )

Because Mother's day is complex when you are affected by adoption, and people in my groups had started talking about mother's day feels in various groups and other platforms, I decided to open up a zoom room and have a Mother's day chat. I invited people in from all the platforms that I remembered while spontaneously putting this together yesterday. (TikTok, FB groups, Instagram, and twitter.)

I really didn't expect anyone to show up with such short notice, but there were 9 participants, and it was a nice mixture of perspectives from the adoption community.

I may try to make this a yearly thing. We'll see if my ADHD brain remembers next year. (Hint, I might need reminded.)

As always this is an unedited, raw, organic conversation about adoption. And typical to zoom, there were some minor connection issues here and there, and audio issues.

I hope if you listen, you will get something out of this conversation.

If people leave some feed back about this episode, I will do a mini episode where I read them all.

I finally graduated from university, so I am going to be able to produce more episodes in a consistent way. I already have some planned for this week!

I spoke with Isabel a transracial adoptee who has been in reunion with her mother since she was 17. She is an example of another adoptee who acted out due to trauma, and was sent away. She talks about reunion, her siblings, her adoptive family, and how being racially ambiguous while growing up with a lack of genetic mirroring has affected her sense of identity. Hope you give it a listen!

In this conversation I am talking to Chelle, and our conversation hits many different points. She told me how her open started out as open, but her adopters closed it within the first few months of her life, how she was thrust into reunion when she was a teen because of issues at home, and eventually became a pert of the trouble teen industry when her adoptive parents decided they couldn't deal anymore, and she was sent to an all girls center for troubled teens. They were dehumanized, isolated even from each other, and made to work. We also talk about how she asked her birth dad to re-adopt her! 

And she told me how she is involved in the online adoption community today. 

This is a conversation I had with Suzanna, she tells me about her adoption, and the subsequent court battle that happened when her first mom tried to regain custody of her after her revocation period. We also discuss her search and reunion. We have something in common in that we are both Pennsylvania adoptees, and had to go through the same court system to access information about our families. We talk a lot about the awkwardness of reunion and the things we would've done differently knowing what we know now. 

** TRIGGER WARNING** Vin talks briefly about sexual assault in this episode.

Sarah is a baby scoop era adoptee who recently started making tiktoks about her experiences as an adoptee. In this episode she discussed how she felt finding out the only knowledge she had about her first parents was incorrect, including her nationality. Her username on Tiktok is @higher7771 please give her a follow.

In this special series for National Adoption/Adoptee Awareness month (November) I asked adoptees to call in and leave a message answering the question, 

"What is the best advice you could give to an adoptee just learning about the primal wound, and just venturing out of the fog?"

I obviously didn't do a good job with this... I need to start preparing before November.. also I was in school which made it difficult.

I want to thank the people who called in to answer this question! 

In this conversation I talk with the film maker of "Reckoning with the Primal Wound" Rebecca Autumn Samson!

Join us on the Struggle-bus and check out our conversation! 

Thanks for joining us today! 

In this episode I talk with Marc who is an adoptee with quite a few labels. 

He is an international adoptee being born in Colombia. He is a transracial adoptee as his adopters (as he calls them) are mid-western white Americans. And Marc is also transgender. 

This is a special bonus episode where I have a quick chat with Paul Brian Tovey who is a UK adoptee and artist. He is active on some social media and has been working on collecting data about adoption via a survey project. 

This was a totally spontaneous Conversation had with DezaRay who is a transracial adoptee. I have followed her for years on Instagram, but recently she has joined Adopteetok which is to say the adoption community on Tiktok of adoptees, foster care survivors, first parents, and other advocates who spend their time and energy to bring awareness to all the complexities and ethical issues of infant adoption, transracial adoption, foster to adopt, international adoption, kinship adoption, open adoptions, closed adoptions... and so on. 

Hi! 

This is the VERY first episode I ever tried to make, so please bear with the editing job. (This is why I don't edit anymore. I am not an editor.) This was originally published in 2016. 

**Trigger warning she talks about how babies and children were abused, and her brother's abuse.**

This episode is a conversation with Renee Lynn Gellin lost her son through a perfect storm of financial struggles, and adoption coercion. This experience inspired her to want to prevent other mothers from losing their babies to adoption. She is a cofounder of Saving our sisters adoption. If you are unfamiliar with them, they are a family preservation organization. They and their many volunteers around the country work to support mothers in crisis so they do not feel the need to relinquish their baby for adoption. This episode was originally recorded in January of 2019 for my YouTube channel. There was a need for video editing, and I feel inept at editing videos, so it was put on the back burner, and kind of forgotten about. (I know that is crappy) Now that I am releasing episodes as podcast audio again, I reached out to Rene and asked if she would be ok with me releasing it as it is or would she want to rerecord, she said “Run with it!” So I am.

I am very excited to finally present this episode to the public. Please bear in mind the information in this episode is dated because the conversation is 4 years old.

There is no Youtube version of this episode. 

Links

Posted August 2, 2022

Originally published 4/29/2018

This is the conversation I had with Janet a Canadian first mother of the baby-scoop era. She has searched and found her daughter but there is very little contact between them at the time this was recorded.  She has a great story to tell and we talk about a whole variety of adoption issues. This one is very long, but I think very worthwhile.

Halfway through my dog started barking, I apologize, I hope you can tolerate it and get through the whole conversation. 

Originally published 4/21/2018