Becca Flatt is a Mixed Race, Black and white, closed, domestic infant, interracial adoptee. Becca’s biological family and adoptive family mirror each other; however, Becca, being mixed race, does not share the racial identity of either set of her parents. Becca Graduated from The University of Southern California with her Master’s in social work and a concentration in mental health in 2014. Becca provides mental health treatment to transracial, interracial, and same-race adoptees of color in Ore...
May 28, 2024•46 min
Rebecca Wellington currently teaches in the School of Education at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. She holds a doctorate in education history from the University of Washington. Rebecca’s career in education started 26 years ago on the ocean, sailing around the world on a traditionally rigged tall ship. Through this two-year global circumnavigation Rebecca trained for a US Coast guard captain’s license and went on to work in outdoor education, which sparked her love of teachi...
May 21, 2024•47 min
Louise Browne is a baby scoop-era adoptee from the United States living in California. She Co-Hosts a podcast, Adoption: The Making of Me, that helps to get adoptees' stories out in the world to help change the narrative around adoption. Hosting Adoption: the Making of Me has brought questions and past feelings to the surface about why she had always felt the way she did. Sharing this journey of discovery with the adopted community has proven to be a life-changing experience. Louise enjoys spend...
May 14, 2024•49 min
Jennifer Poole was adopted as an infant in a closed adoption. She holds a Masters Degree in Interfaith Pastoral Counseling, where she wrote her thesis on “Openness in Adoption as an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth”. It was during this time, in 2001, that she initiated her reunion with her birth mother and later with her birth father. Passionate about supporting families, she is certified in Hand in Hand Parenting, Redirecting Children’s Behavior, the Enneagram, and Whole Person Design Life Coac...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 9 min
Edward Di Gangi is a returning guest. Adopted at birth, Edward Di Gangi was born and raised in New York City. Although he knew for most of his life that he was adopted, it wasn’t until he approached his 70th birthday that he began to search for the identity of his birth mother. His journey and the many surprising discoveries he made as he searched are recounted in his memoir, The Gift Best Given . Edward and his wife now live in Hillsborough, North Carolina. He is a popular book club presenter a...
Apr 30, 2024•39 min
Heather G. Marshall is an adoptee, author, speaker, teacher, and traveler. Her short fiction has been published in a variety of journals, including Black Middens: New Writing Scotland, and Quarried, an anthology of the best of three decades of Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel. Her first novel, The Thorn Tree , released in 2014 (MP Publishing). When the Ocean Flies, Heather’s second novel (Vine Leaves Press), released in February 2024. Her TED talk, “Letting Go of Expectations,” centers around her a...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 14 min
Michael Knox is a returning guest, and after four years of listening to podcasts and interacting with his biological family, he has a different view on adoption. Coming out of the fog, he thinks is a real thing. Nobody can really define it, but there are things that he discovered that might help explain it for some people. The fact that after 25 years of sobriety, his way of handling it was going back to drinking was the wrong way to deal with it. Michael was adopted in 1961 in Illinois. He grew...
Apr 16, 2024•44 min
Valerie Naiman is a returning guest and the author of the newly released book Mystic Masquerade: An Adoptee's Search for Truth. Her memoir was compiled from decades of diaries and journals she wrote during her biological & spiritual search. Valerie is also a singer, story-song writer and is working on an album of her adoptee story songs. Besides that, she's a founder of the first permaculture designed eco-village in North America called Earthaven Eco-Village. As an onotologist studying the a...
Apr 09, 2024•49 min
Eva Asprakis was raised in South London by her American mother and Cypriot stepfather, who subsequently adopted her. She now lives in Nicosia with her partner, and is the author of two contemporary fiction novels. https://www.eva-asprakis.com https://www.instagram.com/eva.asprakis Music by Corey Quinn
Apr 02, 2024•31 min
Leslie Pate Mackinnon, L.C.S.W. resides in North Carolina and presents nationally and internationally on issues that impact families conceived through adoption and third party reproduction. She trains therapists, agencies, and universities across the U.S. on the complex issues that accompany adoption and ART. She offers individual consultation and supervision groups for therapists and provides more intensive training seminars and workshops for professionals looking to become adoption and MPE com...
Apr 02, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Monica Hall was born in Canada, adopted by American parents, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Growing up in a house filled with dysfunction, Monica rebelled against her strict Catholic parents in a downward spiral of delinquency. After being raped and finding out she was pregnant, her parents pushed her to up give her daughter–her only known blood relative– for adoption. Her experiences as an adoptee and a mother who relinquished a child for adoption kicked off a decades-long search for family a...
Mar 26, 2024•46 min
Marilyn Mendenhall Waugh is the Director of Adoption Concerns Triangle of Topeka, a search and support group serving those in Northeastern Kansas, and past president of the American Adoption Congress. She is a frequent conference presenter on ethical search and reunion techniques. For the past 28 years, Marilyn has volunteered in the Post Adoption Services of the Kansas Division for Children and Families and was presented their 2014 Kansas Service Award. "Four Birthmothers-For Mothers", a film b...
Mar 19, 2024•54 min
Melissa Brunetti is a domestic adoptee from the baby scoop era and even though she had what she calls a 'good adoption with great adoptive parents' that doesn't mean she doesn't still have scars from her relinquishment. She says that she sees her healing journey as a gift that has shown her hidden treasures among the trauma. Melissa is the podcast host of Mind Your Own Karma The Adoption Chronicles and is a Somatic Mindful Guided Imagery Practitioner which is a newly emerging and highly effectiv...
Mar 12, 2024•47 min
Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard is a birth mother who has spent several years working in the adoption field—both as a paralegal on the West Coast and in adoption agencies in the Midwest and East Coast. Kelsey is the fourth generation in her family to relinquish a child for adoption and her whole life has been uniquely impacted by adoption as a result. She earned her undergraduate degree from South Dakota State University and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration from the University...
Mar 05, 2024•45 min
Tara Griffith is an adoptee, adopted at the age of 13, through an open kinship adoption. She is a birth mother of almost 18 years in an open adoption. Tara is a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Florida who has spent the last 14 years working in the field of adoptions. She opened a DCF licensed adoption home study agency in 2021 in hopes that she could better be able to educate adoptive families pre and post adoption regarding the importance of always remaining adoptee centered and...
Feb 27, 2024•40 min
Sara Easterly is a returning guest. Sara is an award-winning author and essayist. Her latest book, Adoption Unfiltered (Rowman & Littlefield, Dec 2023), is a collaboration with birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Her spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom, won a 2020 Illumination Book Award gold medal, among many others. Sara’s adoption-focused articles and essays have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Feminine Collective, Her View from Hom...
Feb 20, 2024•57 min
David Bynum is a returning guest. David was born and adopted at birth in Columbus, Oh. He began his search in 2018 and is currently in reunion with both sides of his biological family. He is a married father of three and grandfather of six. He is a U.S. Army Veteran and Retired Correctional Officer. David Recently retired from coaching High School Football at Reynoldsburg High School due to the Coved – 19 pandemic. David and his wife Marie own ByDam Multimedia, which is the parent company to Sta...
Feb 13, 2024•46 min
Original Air Date: May 11, 2021 Barbara Robertson is affiliated with NAAP (National Association of Adoptees and Parents) and co-facilitates a virtual support group Adoption Network Cleveland once a month. She is a contributor to "Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space" (The An-Ya Project) https://www.amazon.com/s?k=adult+adoptees+claim+their+space&crid=3MHVR2DDF70GC&sprefix=adult+adoptees+claim+their+space%2Caps%2C248&ref=nb_sb_noss Co-editing by Charles Yingling at The Bl...
Feb 06, 2024•44 min
Angie Giles is an international adoptee, orphan, sister, daughter, wife, mother, friend and craft entrepreneur. In the beginning, the only thing she knew was her biological mother's name, Isabel Gamez. Angie was given up at 6 days old to the Rosa Virginia Peletier orphanage on June 22, 1978. She was given the name Rutilia De Los Angeles Gamez at birth. Angie was born in El Salvador, Central America and at the age of three adopted by Tom and Charlene Smith. She is the youngest of eight, but grew ...
Jan 30, 2024•32 min
Iris P. Bryant is a recent widow and mom of two young adults. She is passionate about helping women find purpose on the other side (or smack dab in the middle) of pain. She has served an online community at irispbryant.com for several years. She is also an adult adoptee and she created The Adoptees in Arms community to help adult adoptees find hope and peace in God’s word. In addition to these ministries, Iris faithfully serves as a worship leader in her local church. When she is not writing or ...
Jan 23, 2024•43 min
Dr. Sara Docan-Morgan is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. She earned her PhD from the University of Washington. Her research has been published in Adoption Quarterly, the Journal of Family Communication, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Communication Quarterly, Family Relations , and the Journal of Korean Adoption Studies , as well as in edited volumes. Her research focuses on how personal identity and family identity are formed, main...
Jan 16, 2024•54 min
Original Air Date: October 12, 2021 Ridghaus relinquished a son at 19 and then later, at the age of 35, learned that he had been relinquished and adopted. Ridghaus is the co-creator of the 6WAM (Six Word Adoption Memoir). He has spent the last 20 years teaching as a professor in English, Communication, Media, and Law from his graduate degrees in English (MA), Communication (MA), and Jurisprudence (JD). He recommends for LDAs the Private Facebook Late Discovery Adoptee Group https://www.facebook....
Jan 09, 2024•51 min
Original Air Date: November 23, 2021 Jean A. S. Strauss is an adoptee who located her birth family in 1988, a life-changing experience which she continues to learn from today, thirty-three years later. She is the author of five books (three about adoption search and reunion) and over 80 films, 55 of which are focused on the need for adoptee access to records. These works are all streamed online, for free, including two features which aired on PBS (one in which YOU are a star!) Worn a lot of hats...
Jan 02, 2024•32 min
Julie Ryan McGue is a returning guest. This episode is lovingly dedicated to Stephen McGue (Julie Ryan McGue's husband) who made his earthly transition on 02/12/22. Julie is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. She explores the topics of finding out who you are, where you belong and making sense of it. She is the author of two books: Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging, and Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship. Her...
Dec 26, 2023•39 min
Sariah Baker is a Chinese American adopted by a White American Mormon family. She recently left the Mormon faith to find herself and her birth family. She believes in having your "backpack of truths". Music by Corey Quinn
Dec 19, 2023•41 min
Kate Murphy, LCSW is a returning guest. We discuss when making a difficult decision can ultimately serve to self-care and honor oneself. Kate is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a psychotherapy practice in Atlanta, GA. She specializes in working with members of the adoption constellation with a focus on adoptees. She knows that processing the loss and grief caused by relinquishment is challenging to do alone. Kate believes it's possible to understand yourself better, take charge, and live ...
Dec 12, 2023•29 min
Michelle Madrid is the author of Let Us Be Greater : A Gentle, Guided Path to Healing for Adoptees and host of the Electricity of You Podcast . She is an international adoptee, former foster child in the UK, and an adoptee empowerment life coach who has been recognized as an Angels in Adoption® Honoree by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) and inducted into the New Mexico Women’s Hall of Fame for her work in adoption. She lives in Los Angeles and you can visit her online at...
Dec 12, 2023•54 min
Sandria Washington asks the question: How did I go from writing my first short story in crayon to living inside the biggest plot twist of my life (and trust me, God has written me into some BIG ones these first 40 years of life)? She knew from an early age that books, words and stories would always be her saving grace. She remembered when her parents separated and the lights got turned off and her father moving out. Sandria and my mother would walk to the library and she’d let her check out...
Dec 05, 2023•56 min
This episode is lovingly dedicated to Jane . Lorraine Dusky is an award-winning journalist, editor and author who prefers to write stories that will make a difference. Her controversial memoir, BIRTHMARK, published in 1979, was the first from a mother to write about the grief of giving up a child to adoption. Lorraine soon became a lightning rod for controversies surrounding adoption. An advocate for adoptees’ rights, she fought for legislation that would unseal original birth certificates. But ...
Nov 28, 2023•50 min
Constance Nicole Frierson grew up on the Southside of Chicago after spending the first 5 years of her life in Mobile, Alabama with her grandmother. She was born into a legacy of secrets and has fought to heal her heart and be an agent of truth, change, and art for her children, grandchildren, and community. Throughout her employment history, human services have been at the core. Some of the industries she’s worked in include higher education, financial services, corporate healthcare, and media m...
Nov 21, 2023•50 min
