Adoptees On

276 | Sanjay Pulver Today’s guest is Sanjay Pulver, an Indian adoptee who has become an outspoken adoptee advocate in recent years. We talk about the complexities of being adopted from an orphanage in a country that is not currently safe for him to return to as a queer trans man. We discuss the intersections between being transnationally and transracially adopted with being a trans person and Sanjay also shares about his experience with somatic therapy.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

275 | Sara Docan-Morgan, Ph.D. Today’s guest is Dr. Sara Docan-Morgan, professor of communication studies and author of the book “In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family”. Sara shares some of her personal story, and then we dig into her qualitative research from multiple Korean adoptees who have been in a relationship with their biological family for over a decade. There’s a treasure trove of reunion wisdom in this episode, including a new term that so perfectly encapsulates the weight adoptees carry through the search and reunion experience.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

If you'd like to be involved in the new show, you can email adopteesonadoption(at)gmail(dot)com with your skills pitch. Are you an audio producer? Investigative reporter? Narrative podcaster? I'd love to hear what you've got to bring to the table. Follow updates here: https://www.instagram.com/onadoption

274 | Julian Washio-Collette Today’s guest is Julian Washio-Collette, a writer and monastic spiritual seeker, whose story includes the rarity of being relinquished and adopted twice. Julian shares what he hears when someone says the term “forever family”, how building community was difficult here when seemingly no one else has had the same experience of being a double-adoptee, and we ponder what the spiritual implications of adoption may mean.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

273 | SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.   We are so excited to welcome professor and sociologist Dr. SunAh Laybourn today! Sunah’s brand new book is called Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants and it is definitely one you’re going to want to add into your collection. Today we talk about SunAh’s research, the realization that heritage culture camps are prioritizing adoptive parents’ comfort, and the public’s perception of the still dire issue of adoptee citizenship. Haley finally gets to ask the question she’s wondered about for at least five years: is being an adopted person a distinct culture of its own?     Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

272 | James Cagney Today’s guest is award-winning poet, James Cagney. Author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory and Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James is known for his absolutely dynamic live poetry readings, and we are honoured with a reading in this very episode! We discuss how James came to find out he was adopted, and as usual we’ve got questions about why parents keep these things a secret.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

271 | Healing Series: Ask an Adoptee Therapist with Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC Today’s episode is our last one before our holiday break. We’ll be back with brand-new weekly episodes on January 12, 2024. We wanted to bring you a Healing Series episode to make sure we all had a little extra support before the holiday rush takes over. This year we started a brand new event called Ask an Adoptee therapist, and it has been an absolutely amazing resource for the community. Today’s episode is a compilation of some of the helpful conversations we’ve had together this fall with Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

270 | Sara Easterly Sara Easterly is back with us, she’s the author of Searching for Mom and the founder of Adoptee Voices. Today we’re talking about how Sara became friends with an adoptive mother and a birth mother in order to write a book called Adoption Unfiltered. It’s a hard conversation because when Haley got asked to endorse this book she had to say no, to a friend, who we value and deeply appreciate for her contributions to the adoptee community. So we got together to talk about it. We address the power dynamics when interacting with adoptive parents, we talk about whether or not adoption really is always going to be around, and what adoptive parents need to be doing now that they know they participated in a terrible system.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

269 | Dr. Liz DeBetta Today we welcome back Dr. Liz DeBetta, author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness. Liz shares some reunion updates with us, including some very sad news about her sister. We discuss what lead her to choose to remain childfree. And of course, we talk about how writing, re-writing and examining the stories that have been placed upon us can help reconnect us to ourselves. Today’s episode has mentions of sudden death, abuse and abortion.   Full Show Notes Here   Join our adoptee community on Patreon here   Check out our upcoming live events here! This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.

268 | Kimberly McKee, Ph.D. We are so excited to host critical adoption studies scholar, Dr. Kimberly McKee. She’s the author of the impactful book Disrupting Kinship, and her brand new release is Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood. We talk about Kim’s reunion with her family in Korea, where she’s currently living with her young son, and what it’s like parenting through reunification and reculturation. We talk about adoption in pop culture, and how preserving adoptee history and acknowledging the work of those who’ve come before us is vital to community building. Full Show Notes Here This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice. Please seek out professionals in those fields if you need those services. The views expressed by the hosts of Adoptees On or any guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organization or other person unless otherwise stated.