Adoptees On

317 | Kailee Pedersen

Today's guest is the multifaceted Kailee Pedersen: from software engineer to opera singer to novelist! Kailee shares about being adopted from China, growing up in Nebraska, navigating racial isolation and the complexities of searching for family across borders and systems. We also talk about her debut gothic horror novel Sacrificial Animals—how family legacy and intergenerational trauma show up on the page—and...

316 | Jennifer Lauck

Today we are honoured to have with us New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Lauck, whose memoirs have shaped how so many understand the adoptee experience. Her landmark book Blackbird is celebrating its 25th-anniversary edition this year. In our conversation we talk about Jennifer's childhood, how she first met Nancy Verrier, and her synchronicities in her reunion with her birthmother, Catherine Diane. We ...

315 | Alé Cardinalle, MSW

Today's guest is Alé Cardinalle, an adoptee advocate who has taught millions of people on TikTok about the complexities of adoption. We talk about what reunion is like when it's international and everyone speaks a different language. One of my favourite things about Alé is how much she loves her adoptive parents, she will loudly say how she had a privileged, love-filled life and even with all of those posi...

314 | Nik Chang Hoon

Today's guest is memoirist and poet, Nik Chang Hoon. Nik shares his journey of identity and language reclamation, including returning to Korea and reuniting with his birth mother in secret. We also talk about estrangement, healing, and his powerful writing that invites us to look deeper at the pain and resilience of finding one's place between families and cultures.

Full Show Notes and Transcript Here

313 | Molly Gaudry

Today's guest is Molly Gaudry, author of Fit Into Me: A Novel A Memoir. This interview is one of the first ever Molly has given surrounding her adoptee identity. Relatable to anyone who has contradictory or missing narratives in their origin stories, Molly shares the complexities of using literary defense mechanisms in her writing to push readers away from her personal truth. We also talk about her brain injury a...

Bonus | Adoptees for Family Preservation

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312 | Lynelle Long

Lynelle Long has been an adoptee advocate for nearly thirty years. The founder of Inter-Country Adoptee Voices (ICAV) Lynelle has built a network of thousands of adoptees around the world to both connect with each other and to effect change at each level of government, as high up as the United Nations. Today we get to hear some of her personal story, including her choice to have her adoption discharged in 2022, a...

311 | Sasha Hom

Sasha Hom lives an extraordinarily unconventional life. I'm so excited to introduce her to you. She's a writer, goat farmer, mother, and her new book Sidework is incredible. Today we talk about her experiences as a Korean adoptee, adopted to a Chinese American couple in California. Sasha tells us about her trips to Korea and China, we talk motherhood as adoptees, and how important writing is in her life.

Full ...

310 | Mirella Stoyanova

Mirella Stoyanova is our guest today, and I don't normally say this, but this was one of my favourite conversations in recent memory. Mirella is a therapist and writer, and her insights dazzled me. We talk about her experience being adopted at age 5, and what coming to America from Bulgaria was like. We discussed the what-ifs of kinship adoption, living in the both/and of grief and gratitude, and she shares ...

309 | Megan Hunter, MBA

It's such an honour to bring you today's guest, Megan Hunter, MBA. Megan is known as the Conflict Influencer, and is the co-founder of the High Conflict Institute. We get to know Megan's personal story today, including her reunion story. Megan shares about how she first connected with her birthmother, about a gut-wrenching experience with her biological father that resurfaced an adoptee wound, and she offers...

308 | Alexandra Mann

Who among us doesn't love a good movie? And how many times have you been watching a film and, jump scare, some terrible adoptee trope comes out of nowhere. Today's guest, Alexandra Mann had that happen one too many times and what grew out of that all too common adoptee misrepresentation in the media, was the Adoptee Film Fest which is now in it's second year (spotlighting adoptee filmmakers, telling adoptee sto...

307 | [Healing Series] The Nothing Place with Pam Cordano, MFT

I'm so glad to be back with you after our summer break! Today's episode is a special episode in our Healing Series that truthfully I've been scared to do and I've intentionally been waiting to do because of this fear. This concept has been on my show topic list for several years, ever since I heard the words, "The Nothing Place", for the first time. I believe that namin...

306 | [Healing Series] Money and Worth with Marta Isabella Sierra Cifuentes, LMHC

For our last episode before our summer break, we're talking about adoptees and money! Marta Isabella Sierra Cifuentes, LMHC is back and teaching us all about money, worthiness, the obvious commodification of children, the basics. Marta said it best in this episode, "if you're adopted, it's not even about the money. It's about belonging, respect, feeli...

305 | Maria Diemar and Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom

We have two incredible adoptee activists with us today. Maria Diemar and Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, both adopted in Sweden, joined up to elevate adoptee causes in some very impactful ways. Maria is the subject of Lisa's latest graphic novel, The Excavated Earth, which exposes a horrific story of how thousands of Chilean babies were literally kidnapped and stolen to be sold for adoption to Sw...

304 | Dr. Michele Merritt

Today's guest is Dr. Michele Merritt - a philosophy professor who's coined the new term Adoptism to describe the ways adoptees are marginalized. Michele shares some of her personal story, including the curiosity she always had about where she came from. We discuss what led her to start critiquing adoption publicly and the barriers to publishing these critiques that some academic journals put in place, like...

303 | Craig Mod

Craig Mod the author of Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir joins us to share his story. We deep dive into Craig's recent reunion with his birthmother including the complexities of searching in the digital age when so much of our information is publicly available. Being fairly new to adoptee-land, Craig also gave Haley a chance to talk through some of the things that complicate the usual sunshine and rainbo...

302 | greiby medina

Today we're pleased to introduce you to greiby medina, author of The One Who Loves You the Most. greiby was adopted from Honduras at age two-and-a-half to a single white mother. We discuss changing names, why greiby is not a fan of the term "coming out of the fog", and being afraid people won't like us because we're adopted.

Full Show Notes and Transcript Here

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301 | [Healing Series] Wounds of Childhood with Anna Linde, Sexologist

This is a special episode in our Healing Series where we bring on adoptee experts to tackle issues that may impact our mental health. Most often we're talking with therapists but today I invited Anna Linde, a sexologist, to talk with us about the impacts of childhood sexual abuse on adopted people. This issue is so prevalent in our community and yet hardly anyon...

300 | Haley's Sisters

We've reached our 300th episode! I found my paternal side of my family 14 years ago, and I discovered that I had three younger siblings. So even though I'm the only adoptee on today's show, I thought you'd enjoy this peek behind the curtain, exploring what was it like for my young sisters when they were told at age 9 and 12, that they had a surprise older sister.

Full Show Notes and Transcript Here

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