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PODCAST

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of Adoptee Stories

Louise Browne & Sarah Reinhardt

Two adult adoptees, Sarah Reinhardt and Louise Browne, delve into all things adoption - from their perspectives as adult adoptees. Each season Sarah and Louise recap a chapter from a book centered on adoption and then interview a guest. Sarah and Louise come out of the "fog" in real-time through Seasons One and Two and are advocating for change in the adoption industry. They want to give voice to all adoptees. Adoptee stories are needed to reframe the narrative around adoption.Sarah and Louise, two

kids & family parenting

All Episodes

57:42

Becky: Shifting Perspectives of Adoption

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/04/01

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 l...

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50:35

Chris: Recorded Live Podcast Episode

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/03/25

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 evolv...

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69:30

Christine: A Bittersweet Reunion

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/03/18

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 ...

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50:10

Angela: You Should Be Grateful. Season 9 Finale

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/03/11

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 T...

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58:46

Santo: The Journey to Belong

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/03/04

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 hi...

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80:03

Sharla: For This Adoptee, the Truth Came Later

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/02/25

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 wa...

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39:27

Rebeccah: From Self-Discovery to Healing.

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/02/18

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 pu...

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60:06

Jill: DNA Pushed This Adoptee Out of the Fog

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/02/11

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 ...

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53:34

Mike: Finding Strength in Connection

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/02/04

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 com...

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88:14

Ann: Sleuthing and DNA Led to Answers

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/01/28

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 cogn...

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70:02

Melanie: A Health Scare Spurs a Search

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/01/21

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 ...

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66:23

Andrea: A Journey to Uncover the Truth

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/01/14

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...

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74:27

Shawn: Born Without a Race

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2025/01/07

"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 cause...

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58:19

Lisa: From Chosen to Belonging

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/12/31

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 are...

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73:24

Matt: Birth, Adoption, Reunion: The Fog Lifts

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/12/24

In 1983, Matt’s mother delivered him in a metro Detroit hospital. Within a week hewas relinquished to Catholic Social Services, and moved into foster care to spendthe first three months of his life.A married couple, unable to have a natural child themselves, adopted and raisedhim lovingly as their first child. While growing up, Matt always knew he wasadopted, but besides this knowledge, his family rarely discussed the topic ofadoption.Matt has been in reunion since 2009 with members of his bi...

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47:32

Jennifer: With Pain Came Acceptance

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/12/17

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 brothe...

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65:02

Adam: The Road Back to Oneself

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/12/10

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, h...

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77:29

Melissa: A Long Road for Answers

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/12/03

Melissa was adopted at birth in 1965 in Little Rock, AR. Her adoptive parents were able to take her home at five days old straight from the hospital since it was a private adoption facilitated by the doctors and lawyer. Understanding the signs of the times as she grew, she never felt rejected by her birth mother. Her life has been full and blessed from the beginning. For most of her life, she declared there wasn’t a desire to search when asked. However, searching for familiar faces in a crowd...

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57:21

Michelle: A Mohawk Adoptee Advocates for All

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/11/26

Michelle Rice-Gauvreau is a native Mohawk woman born in 1969 in Canada and raised in Connecticut via an illegal adoption, which was commonplace for many Indian babies throughout many years across North America. She is the author of Who Am I? Native American Child Taken From A Reservation And Raised In White America. Michelle is a compassionate advocate for all adoptees looking for their own truth, peace, and hope. She hopes to instill her strength to any adoptee struggling to find their...

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61:36

Rebecca: Who Is a Worthy Mother?

Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of... ·

2024/11/19

Rebecca is an adoptee, mother, teacher, historian, and award-winning author of the recently published ‘Who Is a Worthy Mother'? An Intimate History of Adoption.’ Rebecca was driven to write a history of adoption in the United States from the perspective of an adoptee and to honor the memory of her older sister and the truth of brave women everywhere. Rebecca teaches in the School of Education at the University of Puget Sound and lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters. To find Be...

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200 results

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