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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

71:07

Ann Fessler: The Girls Who Went Away. S8, Finale.

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

2024/11/12

Ann Fessler is an author, filmmaker, and installation artist. Her work addresses the gap between the authoritative history one learns in history books, and that same history as understood by those who lived it. She has spent more than thirty years bringing stories of ordinary people, and the first-person narratives of adoption, into the public sphere through her visual works and Writing.Fessler traveled the country to interview more than 100 women who lost children to adoption during the 28 y...

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66:09

Julie: For this Adoptee, Belonging Comes from Within

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

2024/11/05

Julie Brumley is a trauma-informed adoptee coach who has been coaching men and women for more than 15 years to overcome addictive behaviors and heal the primal trauma of abandonment. She is also the CEO of Coming Home to Self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal. After her own birth mother tried to abort her twice, she found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades until she found the power of somatic trauma healing. Now, she uses somatics, nervous system regulati...

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99:16

Ann: For This Adoptee, A Long Wait for Answers

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

2024/10/29

Ann Haralambie is an award-winning author and a trial and appellate attorney (a Certified Family Law Specialist and a Certified Child Welfare Law Specialist). She has a BA in Creative Writing, an MA in English Literature, and a JD in law. Her first book was a poetry chapbook published in 1976 by Desert First Works while she was in law school. Her three-volume Thomson Reuters legal treatise, "Handling Child Custody, Abuse and Adoption Cases 3d" is supplemented annually. Her three other major l...

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52:28

Lena: For This Adoptee, Reunion is Complicated

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

2024/10/22

Lena Rosenbloom is a domestic, closed-adopted person from New Jersey. She was adopted in the 80s and raised as an only child in an adoptive family that could not have children. She entered reunion in 2002 with her paternal biological family. Lena discovered her biological family through the adoption.com website and message boards in 2002. She has three half-siblings on her paternal side. Lena has reached out to her biological mother two times in the past 20 years and has been rejected. Lena i...

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63:59

Stephen: For This Adoptee, Reunion Led to Surprises

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

2024/10/15

Stephen Grochol is a Financial Planner in San Mateo, CA. He and his wifejust celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary and they have two daughters.He is a post-Baby Scoop and post-Roe v. Wade adoptee. Born in Oakland,CA in 1974 he is the oldest of three. One brother was adopted and theyoungest was not.Stephen’s adoptive parents went through a private doctor for this process.He was relinquished immediately after birth and whisked home to Pacificawhere he grew up. A stroke of luck occurred when...

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66:04

Jennifer: An Adoptee Investigator Turns to Herself

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

2024/10/08

Jennifer Dyan Ghoston is a same-race domestic foster alum and adoptee in reunion with both sides of her biological family. After a 27-year career in law enforcement with the Chicago Police Department, she retired in 2014 as a police detective. In 2015, she self-published her memoir, "The Truth So Far...a detective's journey to reunite with her birth family". She credits her spiritual journey that started over forty years ago for allowing her path to unfold in unexpected and meaningful ways. I...

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64:35

Kelly: A Late Discovery Adoptee Digs for the Truth

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

2024/10/01

Kelly was born in 1970 and grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her parents divorced before she could remember and she had no contact with her dad. Second oldest of five children, she blended in well enough but noticed some differences. She had reason to believe she was adopted and asked when she was a teenager. Her mother continually said she was not adopted. The physical differences were dismissed as traits that might have come from her absent dad.Kelly is happily married and has three sons. She is ...

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77:01

Liz: Migrating Toward Wholeness

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

2024/09/24

Dr. Liz DeBetta, creator of Migrating Toward Wholeness© is an adoptee and independent scholar-artist-activist committed to changing systems and helping people navigate trauma through creative processes. She believes that stories are powerful change agents and when we write them and share them we connect and heal. Liz is a proud member of Actor's Equity, SAG-AFTRA, Affiliate Faculty at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and part of the Diversity Scholars Network at the National Ce...

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62:43

Michael: Beckett's Children: A Literary Memoir - Live...

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

2024/09/17

Born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village on Nov. 11, 1954, Michael was adopted five weeks later by John and Eleanor Coffey, a corrections officer and an RN, respectively. The adoption was handled by the New York Foundling Hospital. John and Eleanor had been unable to have children.He was raised as an only child in a small town in the Adirondacks. By the time his parents told him overtly that he was adopted, at age 8, he already knew. Following the Foundling’s reco...

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54:33

Lea: Late Reunion Brings Love and Connection

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

2024/09/10

Lea is an adoptee born at the end of the Baby Scoop era, 1970. She was born and raised in the city where she currently lives with her family. She knew from a young age that she was an adopted, a "chosen baby". She was always proud to say she was adopted and would challenge classmates when asked about her "real parents". Lea believes that she was raised by her "real" parents and does not refer to them as her adoptive parents. Lea stood out from her family at an ea...

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62:36

Patti: The Girl With Three Birthdays

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

2024/09/03

Patti Eddington is a newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal-obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance. Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell. Today, the mid-century modern design e...

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69:51

Kathleen: A Reunion Full of Surprises

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

2024/08/27

Kathleen was born in 1968 in Northern California. Her birth mother relinquished her for adoption immediately upon birth, and Kathleen was then adopted by a loving family who already had a 3-year-old adopted son. When Kathleen was 22 years old she found her birth mother. Thirty years later she learned that her birth father was an enforcer for the Hells Angels and was shot and killed when Kathleen was seven years old.She also learned that she has at least seven sisters and one brother on h...

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50:17

Gaynor: An Adoptee Finds Resilience

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

2024/08/20

Gaynor was born in a mother-and-baby home and spent the first six weeks of life there before being adopted in the same town of birth. Despite a challenging childhood with an adoptive mother who exhibited narcissistic tendencies, Gaynor persevered through an unhappy adoption experience. At the age of 31, after becoming a parent, Gaynor reconnected with their birth family. This reunion, spanning over 30 years, has been a remarkable success, with Gaynor finding a true sense of belonging and love...

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88:15

Aje: Finding Her Voice and Facing Hard Truths

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

2024/08/13

Adopted at birth, Ajé loved sharing her adoption story throughout her childhood. She always had a feeling that she had been wanted by her birth parents, and was a tad obsessed with discovering where, and who, she came from. Around age 9, good, old-fashioned snooping led her to a document with clues about her birth parents and the person she would have been if they had kept her. She had no way of knowing that document would later lead to an unexpected, serendipitous, [absolutely impossible] re...

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59:20

Angela: An Early Reunion Led to Belonging

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

2024/08/06

Angela was born in Nebraska in 1979 and adopted at 3 days old. She grew up in a family that came with many complexities and issues, and she struggled to feel content with not knowing and being with her first family. At 16, she was able to reunite with her birth mother and half-siblings in person and has been in reunion ever since. Throughout the years, she's met more of her first family and has gone through the many challenges of reunion and the search for her birth father. Angela now resides...

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61:39

Magali: A Stranger in Two Countries

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

2024/07/30

Magali was born in Sri Lanka in 1992 and adopted by French parents when she was 2 months old. She grew up in a small town in France, a mostly white area, and struggled to identify with both the French and Sri Lankan cultures. She found her birth family during her first visit to Sri Lanka when she was 16 years old. She has 4 older siblings that stay in the family. The language was a real barrier and she had to communicate with the help of a guide. Because learning Sinhalese at that ...

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73:07

Jeff: The Problem and the Solution

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

2024/07/23

Jeff is an adoptee born in 1964 in Salt Lake City Utah. He is the middle of 4 children (an older sister and younger twins, a boy and a girl) who were also adopted. He grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and always knew that he was adopted. He has been able to experience living in the Middle East and working in a variety of cultures in countries throughout the Middle East as well as Mexico and the United States.Jeff is the founder of a non-profit organization that has helped homeless and unders...

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57:14

Julie: Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity

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

2024/07/16

Julie Ryan McGue is an American writer, a domestic adoptee, and an identical twin. In her books, essays, and blogs, she explores the topics of finding out who you are, and 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 third book, Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood releases in February 2025.https://www.julie...

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63:58

Stephen: A Story of Adoption and Destiny

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

2024/07/09

Stephen Rowley, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist practicing on Bainbridge Island,Washington. He is an adoptee and the father of an adopted son. Born in 1949 to anunwed mother, he was adopted at six months and enjoyed the benefits of growing up in a loving and affluent home. At age 13 he became deeply curious about his parentage. Not until college did he have the means to begin a lifelong quest to find his birth mother and his true identity. After years of investigation, he finally found his birth ...

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71:09

Carolyn: Healing through Poetry

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

2024/07/02

Carolyn Hill-Bjerke is an adoptee born in 1967, during the Baby Scoop Era.She was born to 20-year-old students at the University of Connecticut.Carolyn’s biological mother was put into a maternity home. Her fathermoved to New York City and became a lawyer. He worked in theentertainment business.Carolyn was in foster care for the first five months of her life as herbiological mother resisted relinquishment until she no longer could.Carolyn grew up in the Washington, DC area as the daughter of ...

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200 results

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