Alejandra was adopted at five years old into a Mexican-American family. She had never sought her family of origin, but when they arrived unexpectedly, her inner strength was tested, and her spiritual growth began. I Just Can't Make This Sh!t Up: Overcoming Fear and Accepting My Spiritual Gifts by Alejandra G. Brady Season 11: Adoptee Memoirs - books in order: Practically Still a Virgin by Monica Hall You Can't Get Rid of Me by Jesse Scott and Keri Ault Unspoken by Liz Harvie Sign up for our mail...
Jul 01, 2025•46 min•Season 11Ep. 4
Jacqueline, now 63 and living in Cape Town, South Africa, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1962, following a relationship between her English-born biological mother, a professional actress on contract to a theatre company in Nairobi, and her Welsh and Irish biological father, a radio announcer in Nairobi. Following Jacqueline's birth, and the abandonment of her and her biological mother by her biological father, her biological mother followed him to Zimbabwe, but he refused involvement or responsi...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 11Ep. 3
Sariah is a Chinese Adoptee adopted by a White American Mormon family and recently left the Mormon faith to find herself and to find her birth family. Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation, which may be distressing for some listeners. Season 11: Adoptee Memoirs - books in order: Practically Still a Virgin by Monica Hall You Can't Get Rid of Me by Jesse Scott and Keri Ault Unspoken by Liz Harvie Sign up for our mailing list to get updates and the Eventbrite for ou...
Jun 17, 2025•52 min•Season 11Ep. 2
Carol was born in Washington, DC, relinquished at birth in 1960, subsequently adopted in 1961 by a family who had adopted another daughter the year before. She began her reunion in 2017 by finding out she was the baby sister of 3 half sisters, 2 full sisters, and her father by DNA. Season 11: Adoptee Memoirs - books in order: Practically Still a Virgin by Monica Hall You Can't Get Rid of Me by Jesse Scott and Keri Ault Unspoken by Liz Harvie Sign up for our mailing list to get updates and the Ev...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 11Ep. 1
Cameron Lee Small, MS, LPCC, is a licensed clinical counselor, transracial adoptee, and mental health advocate based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was born in Korea and was relinquished into foster care at age three. He was then adopted in 1984 by a family in the United States. His private practice, Therapy Redeemed, specializes in the mental health needs of adoptees and their families wherever they may be in their adoption journey. His work has been featured in Christianity Today , the National...
Jun 03, 2025•55 min•Season 10Ep. 12
Sandi Morgan Caesar is a transnational adoptee. She was born Cristina Rodriguez in Panamá to a 14-year-old girl who parented her for most of her 1st year. Ultimately, she was placed for adoption by her maternal grandmother without the knowledge or consent of her first mother. Sandi was adopted by a Black US Air Force family stationed in Panamá at the time. She was naturalized as a US citizen and then brought to the US at 3 years old. It was about this time that she asked her mom why they didn't ...
May 27, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 10Ep. 11
Carol Hoeksema was born at the Salvation Army Evangeline Home for unwed mothers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1957, where she stayed the first 13 days of her life before going to an unknown foster family arranged by Bethany Christian Services. At 3 months, she was given to her adoptive parents and raised in the Dutch immigrant community of Pella, Iowa. She always knew that she was adopted and was curious about her roots. At age 19, she started her search by going to the adoption agency, and over...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 10Ep. 10
Born in 1963, Stephen Payne was five weeks old when his parents adopted him through the Volunteers of America. He grew up an only child in a loving family. At age three, he overheard his parents discussing his adoption with friends. His mother explained it to him in age-appropriate terms, which mostly satisfied his curiosity, yet occasionally left nagging questions. That inner conflict may have affected his earliest days in school, where he struggled. A diagnosis of ADHD confirmed some of this i...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Season 10Ep. 9
Mary, a seventh-generation Tennessean born in Memphis in 1986, was adopted and raised in Jackson, Tennessee, by a supportive family who encouraged her search for her biological relatives. In 2007, she connected with her birth mother, who had mistakenly identified the wrong man as Mary's father. Then, in 2019, a "search angel" and a DNA match through Ancestry.com unexpectedly revealed her actual biological father and a previously unknown family. She has since developed relationships with these ne...
May 06, 2025•53 min•Season 10Ep. 8
Heather G. Marshall is an adoptee, author, speaker, and workshop facilitator. Her TED talk, “Letting Go of Expectations,” centers around her adoption and reunion. Her second novel, When the Ocean Flies, released in February 2024 (Vine Leaves Press). The novel is an adoptee-focused exploration of love and longing, of identity and belonging, and of healing from trauma. Heather was born in Leith, Scotland, in 1967, relinquished at birth, sent to foster care, and subsequently adopted in Scotland. Sh...
Apr 29, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 10Ep. 7
Kate was born at a Florence Crittenton home in Kansas City, MO, in 1970 and placed with her adoptive family at 9 days old. She always knew she was adopted and has always wanted to find her family of origin. This was finally made possible when Missouri changed its laws allowing adopted people access to their original birth certificates. She has been in reunion with her mother since 2018, meeting her in person and getting a life-changing hug in 2019. That hug was the first time she had a feeling o...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 10Ep. 6
Mike Brettmann was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1958 and adopted a few days later. He grew up on a small farm in Iowa with a brother who was adopted from another family. They were always told they were adopted, but it was never discussed. Mike joined the army after high school and served nearly 28 years on active duty. His uncle asked him to find the Brettmann family history while stationed in Germany. After tracing the Brettmann family in 1987, he wanted to find his roots. In 1999, he found his...
Apr 15, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Season 10Ep. 5
Ellianna was born prematurely in a county hospital in Portland, OR, in 1968. She had been relinquished at birth, so she stayed in the hospital alone for several weeks. Foster care stepped in for a week, and then she went to her adopted family, where there was another adopted child that was 2 years older. Ellianna moved around a lot as a child, and as an adopted child, this added to the feeling of not belonging anywhere. Adoption was not something talked about much in the home, but both children ...
Apr 08, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 10Ep. 4
Becky is a scientist, mother, wife, and baby scoop era adoptee who lives with her husband and biological daughter in Oregon. She was born in California, separated from her very young mother at birth, and adopted at 6 weeks by a married couple struggling to have their second biological child. Comfortably raised, she always knew she was adopted, special, and “chosen”. Her adoption was closed, and the birth certificate remains sealed. In 1993, with the help of her adopted sister and a document list...
Apr 01, 2025•58 min•Season 10Ep. 3
Chris Williams was born in Downtown Los Angeles at Queen of Angels Hospital and adopted when he was just a few months old. His journey has been anything but conventional, marked by resilience, reinvention, and a pursuit of purpose. In 2020, Chris moved to Santa Barbara to earn his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, which he proudly achieved at age 35. While in Santa Barbara, Chris pursued a lifelong dream: stand-up comedy. What began as a passion project evolved ...
Mar 25, 2025•51 min•Season 10Ep. 2
Christine is an adoptee born in January of 1972, at the tail end of the baby scoop era. She was adopted in March of that year through Catholic Family Charities. Her mother had bought a book that explained how a family adopts a child in a very simplistic way. In fact, until the age of seven, she thought that all children were adopted. It wasn’t until a friend’s mother got pregnant that she realized there was another way to have a baby. Her mother explained to her that she was special—that she was...
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 10Ep. 1
Angela Tucker is a Black transracial adoptee and the author of "You Should Be Grateful:" Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption, published in April 2023 by Beacon Press. Her search for her biological family was featured in the documentary CLOSURE, which premiered on Netflix in 2015. In 2022, Angela founded the non-profit Adoptee Mentoring Society, offering virtual mentorship for adoptees worldwide. With 15 years of experience in child welfare, she has appeared on CNN, Red Table Talk...
Mar 11, 2025•50 min•Season 9Ep. 17
Dr. Santo D. Marabella, born in a Catholic orphanage in Aosta, Italy, and flown to the United States just one week shy of his first birthday, was one of over 3700 Italian-born children adopted by Italian American parents between 1951 and 1969. Known as the “Baby Scoop” era, tens of thousands of Italian unwed mothers were forced to give their children up for adoption, leaving behind generations of children devastated by their perceived abandonment. Though he was the treasured only child of his ad...
Mar 04, 2025•59 min•Season 9Ep. 16
Placed for adoption through a West Texas county children’s home, Sharla is a “Baby Scoop”-era adoptee. Sharla’s biological mother moved across the state to live with her older sister and family until the time of Sharla’s birth. On the day Sharla was born, a married couple who applied to adopt was contacted. Several days later, with their 9-year-old son in tow, they drove an hour to come for her at the children’s home. She grew up in a fairly typical family and home. Always having known she was a...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 20 min
Rebeccah Carlson is a transracial adoptee born in Georgia and raised in the Midwest. Growing up, she often felt a sense of disenfranchised grief and longed for information about her origins. In her late twenties, Rebeccah began a journey of self-discovery which led to reunion with her birth family. This experience helped start the process of mending her fractured identity and deepened her understanding of the broader realities of adoption. Since then, Rebeccah has found greater healing by public...
Feb 18, 2025•39 min•Season 9Ep. 14
Jill was conceived in Washington and born in Texas, adopted at birth during the Baby Scoop era, in a closed-file adoption through Home of the Holy Infancy to a same-race couple who was infertile. They had adopted a baby boy but he wasn’t as promised. Before they could return to the well to get the baby girl they always wanted, the nuns miraculously placed her with her new parents on Christmas Eve! The nuns who decided her fate believed in genetic mirroring matching her to people with similar dem...
Feb 11, 2025•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 13
Born in 1970 in Iowa, Mike was adopted at just 10 days old. His adoptive father passed away in 1972, leaving Mike and his family to navigate life without him. From an early age, Mike felt a profound curiosity about his biological roots and has spent much of his life searching for answers. The journey to uncover his origins has been full of unexpected twists and turns, leading to the discovery of many biological family members—some of whom have been an incredible blessing and others a more comple...
Feb 04, 2025•54 min•Season 9Ep. 12
Ann is a Baby Scoop-era adoptee. Born to teenage parents in the early 1960s, she was adopted when she was not quite two weeks old. She’s always known she was adopted. Her adoptive mother told her against the wishes of her adoptive father when she was very young. Knowing caused her a great deal of angst growing up because she felt her adoptive parents were withholding information from her and that coupled with feeling and looking different from her adoptive family was a constant source of cogniti...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 9Ep. 11
Melanie Green is an infant adoptee from a private domestic adoption in the 1980s. Her adoption was facilitated by a lawyer known for high-dollar adoptions of babies with blonde hair and blue eyes, and for putting financial pressures on birth parents so they wouldn't be able to change their minds. Estranged from much of her adoptive family, she was hesitant to find her birth family. After facing some scary medical news, she started her search for her personal medical history in 2021. She wanted h...
Jan 21, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 9Ep. 10
Born in 1976, Andrea is a same-race, domestic adoptee with international roots. Andrea's birth mother was from Greece and traveled to Sacramento, California, where she gave birth to and relinquished Andrea before promptly leaving the U.S. Raised as an only child in her adoptive family, Andrea spent most of her life understanding her adoption story as a single narrative about how a couple who couldn't have a child of their own "chose" her. It wasn't until the birth of her daughter in 2010 that An...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 9Ep. 9
"Just a quick note - this episode contains language some listeners might find offensive -- regarding experiences involving racism." In 1963, Shawn was placed for adoption because his white mother's family didn't want a biracial grandson. As an infant, he passed for white, and he was adopted by a racist, rural Indiana family who didn't realize that he was black. Ashamed of his ethnicity, his mother concocted lies to hide his race from everyone, including Shawn. This lack of racial identity caused...
Jan 07, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 9Ep. 8
Lisa was born in 1958 and grew up in Franklin, Indiana. She was the youngest of two, both of whom were adopted. As far back as she can remember, she always knew she was “chosen.” With no real information to go on, after submitting her DNA and no close family hits, her husband put together a family tree in which they were able to identify her biological father. They think they have her biological mother identified, but have yet to make contact. Lisa now lives in the St. Louis, Missouri area and h...
Dec 31, 2024•58 min•Season 9Ep. 7
In 1983, Matt’s mother delivered him in a metro Detroit hospital. Within a week he was relinquished to Catholic Social Services, and moved into foster care to spend the first three months of his life. A married couple, unable to have a natural child themselves, adopted and raised him lovingly as their first child. While growing up, Matt always knew he was adopted, but besides this knowledge, his family rarely discussed the topic of adoption. Matt has been in reunion since 2009 with members of hi...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 9Ep. 6
Jennifer is an adoptee born in Orange County, California, in 1963. The first six weeks of her life remain a mystery. Although she was adopted by a loving family, her journey has not been easy. As part of the Baby Scoop Era, she was relinquished at birth and spent her early weeks in foster care. Her adoptive family, led by the daughter of a well-known artist and former model, provided a stable home, but Jennifer always felt like she wasn’t enough. She grew up as the middle child with two brothers...
Dec 17, 2024•48 min•Season 9Ep. 5
Adam was adopted from Huentitán el Alto, in Jalisco, Mexico. Ron and Wendy had already adopted a son so they planned on adopting a girl as their second child to be named Amy but she suddenly passed away and out of distraught they told the lawyer to give them the next baby available, me. They changed names from Amy to Adam. Adam always felt different, like from another world. He exhibited signs of abandonment issues early on never allowing his mother to leave him without crying. In hindsight, he ...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 9Ep. 4
