Episodes
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Fellow adoptee Lisa Elaine Scott reached out to come back to the podcast to give us all an update on her work on the film "All You Have is Love: Demand, Deception, and the Infant Adoption Industry".
www.allyouhaveislove.com
On June 14th there will be a fundraising event Lisa is hosting through Eventbrite where she will be showing some previously unseen footage, and have general discussion about the film.
You can register to attend through Eventbrite.
Minimum donation to attend is $10, but please give more if you can! She needs the support of our community!
Additional links
All You Have is Love Youtube Channel
Saving Our Sisters Adoption
Family Preservation Project
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Katie is a mother of loss to adoption. When she found out she was pregnant she was doing ok, and a freak accident changed everything in an instant for her and her child.
Listen as we discuss her story, her projects, and get to know each other.
The Family Preservation Project
TFPP on Facebook
TFPP on Instagram
TFPP on TikTok
Saving Our Sisters Adoption
All You Have is Love film project
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Missing episodes?
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**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).
You can watch Brian's film @atghostkingdom here:https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ghostkingdom
He can be found on Facebook as Brian Stanton
And Instagram
@thebrianstanton
@atghostkingdom
If you are interested in being a guest on the podcast, please send me an email to [email protected]
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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
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story [email protected]
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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!
If you want to be on the podcast email me [email protected]
And you can learn a little more about Cynthia at on her profile on Psychology today.
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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:
Tiktok
YouTube
Linktree
The other organizations I was talking about.
https://concernedunitedbirthparents.org
https://naapunited.org
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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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)
Kristal went on a journey to reunite with her indigenous roots and reconnect with her culture and took a film crew along with her resulting in 'Because She's adopted' Trailer
You can find Kristal at the links below!
Social Media:
Instagram @becauseshesadopted
Facebook @BecauseShesAdopted
TikTok @becauseshesadopted
YouTube @becauseshesadopted
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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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
Curt can be found on Facebook and Instagram.
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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Jenny Trudeauis 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!Www.parentspartnership.org
Facebook
LinkedIn page for Parents partnership
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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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.
You can find Brad on Tiktok here. https://www.tiktok.com/@mucifous
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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Happy holidays from me
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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.
In keeping with the theme this month, Lilian is of indigenous roots. She comes from the Quechua people. You can learn more about them here.
You can find her on Tiktok here.
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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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.)
Jenny is a beautiful blend of Korean, Polish, and Puerto Rican which includes the indigenous Taino people. You can learn more about them here and here. For the month of November my plan is to have guests who have indigenous roots in order to uplift their voices and stories.
Jenny has also been extremely passionate and vocal about ICWA on social media and I have learned quite a bit from her.
You can find her content here:
TikTok
Twitter or X
Instagram
YouTube
If you are interested in being a guest on the Conversations About Adoption podcast, email me with a very brief overview of your story â â â â [email protected]â
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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. :/
From the website https://www.ftrmusical.com/
Rich Uhrlaub, M.Ed.Rich is a longtime member of Denver's Lighthouse Writers Workshop and a member of the Musical Writers Academy and New Musicals Inc. The NMI Core Curriculum honed and showcased his skills as a book writer for the 15 Minute Musical "For the Good of Humanity," performed at the Broadwater Main Stage in Hollywood. Rich studied piano under the (then) Denver Symphony Orchestra's Kathleen Joiner and had his first piano lesson at age five when, after washing the dinner dishes, his adoptive mother asked, "Who wants to learn to play the piano?" Relinquished and adopted shortly after birth, Rich has been a volunteer leader in the adoption search, support and advocacy community for over twenty years. This project is born of that passion.
âVocalsMichelle Bort, Angela Parrish, Marcello Vieiraâ
Arrangement and Vocals
Dan Sander Wellsâ
Orchestration and Sound Engineering
Keaton Viavattine
To support this project you can join the Patreon here.
https://www.patreon.com/FTRMusical
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In this conversation I spoke with Rich. He is a fellow baby-scoop adoptee and very involved in advocating for better laws around access to adoption records for adoptees among other things. In this episode we will talk a little about his history, and a lot about adoption in general, as well as talk about his work in advocacy.
Rich serves as president of the Coalition for Truth and Transparency in Adoption (CTTA) and Adoption Search Resource
Connection (ASRC). â https://www.adoptiontruthandtransparency.org/
He is part of an advocacy team that has seen over 15 Colorado bills signed into law since 2014 to the benefit of adult adoptees,
foster youth, birth/first parents, and donor conceived persons. A frequent presenter at digital and in-person conferences, Rich’s interviews and writings
have appeared in various news outlets.
Rich is a contributing author of Finding Our Place: 100 Memorable Adoptees, Fostered Persons and Orphanage Alumni; and Adoption and Mothering. Most recently, Rich is the creator of the new musical For the Record(s) www.ftrmusical.com which we will talk about in the next episode.
My group "I found a grave"
https://m.facebook.com/groups/ifoundagrave -
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.
You can find the video version of this conversation on YouTube.
There maybe adult language so may not be appropriate for all listeners.
If you would like to be a guest on a future episode, please click here.
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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.
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/convosaboutadoption
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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 surmountthe 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 âgood adopted child.â 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 â instead, held Emmacaptive in a psychological nightmare.
Because of these past traumas, itâs Emmaâs 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 looklike. This memoir is Emma Stevensâ second book. Her first was The Gathering Place: An Adopteeâs Story. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism and has completed Masterâs level course work in psychology, specializing in Marriage, Family, and Childcounseling. She has two adult children and two cat children who she adores.
Links to her books:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59417316-the-gathering-place
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/86031724-a-fire-is-coming
socials are: FB, IG, & TikTok -- @EmmaStevensWriter
Twitter: @EmmaStevensWrtr
Leave me a voice message https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/convosaboutadoptionhttps://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/convosaboutadoption
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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.)
Here is the link to her GoFundMe we talked about in the episode in case anyone wants to help her get to meet her family. https://gofund.me/84c55282. She found her family in a way, that I thought was kind of unlikely!
A Facebook group!
Apparently there are a lot of Colombian people looking for each other. You can find it here.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/356415144461053/?ref=share
Natalie also suggested this site as a good resource for Colombian adoptees.
https://www.healingpuentes.com
The following is information she sent me after our conversation, from when she was having trouble thinking of the term.
đ¸ď¸https://www.besean.co.uk/spotlight/trauma-and-language
đ¸ď¸"The interconnection of the experience of trauma and the roleof language within this is not causal and mono-directional but complex andmultilayered. Not only can language be part or cause of traumatic events buttrauma can also, as a consequence, severely impact on a personâs linguisticrepertoire: on his or her inclination to learn languages, to use, retain, orabandon a particular language, or to take refuge in silence (Betten 2010; ThĂźne 2013; Busch2016a). On the other hand, particular, sometimesperipheral components of a personâs communicative repertoire, such as a âthirdâunburdened language or poetic means of expression, can become unexpected, vitalsources for coping and resilience (Busch and Reddemann 2013)." (https://academic.oup.com/applij/article/41/3/323/5821459)
đ¸ď¸https://www.myenglishlanguage.com/2017/01/29/forgotten-first-languages-leave-imprint-on-brain/?fbclid=IwAR1OWw4RLNNqcpkScwT4rUjBdQRbw3-tPBKP3FG5Q49YGe-X9ogsuRqpuT8
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