The Anna Jinja Show
The Anna Jinja show focuses on the stories, issues, and questions connected to adoption and foster care experiences. The host is an international adoptee with biological roots in Korea and adopted roots in the United States. As you can imagine, her journey and experiences as a transracial adoptee are multifaceted. Her experiences have been with the pain of discrimination and rejection as well as the joys of self-discovery and learning to embrace all aspects of her identity. Along the way, she has discovered that she is not alone. We’re all – in some ways – adopted into or out of homes, cultures, communities, and relationships as we grow and evolve. This show illuminates the theme of adoption, in all ways, in our lives. And how those experiences create who we are and who we are yet to be. Her hope is that through engaging with the guests and creative content, we are welcomed home in this world, cradled in the belief that we belong, that we are worthy, and that we are loved. So stay tuned, and you may discover your own adoption story.
Episodes
The Athens County Children Services season of The Anna Jinja Show began with the executive director. It ends — in Episode 7, the true season finale — with the board chair. Nancy Schell has served as Chair of the ACCS Board of Directors for over a decade.
She is a volunteer, appointed by the Athens County Commissioners, who shows up to set policy, provide governance, and make sure the agency remains ...
What does it mean to tell the story of an organization that protects the most vulnerable children in your community — without exploiting those children's stories?
That critical question sits at the heart of Matt Starkey's work. As the Public Information Officer and Community Events Coordinator for Athens County Children Services, Matt serves as the bridge between the agency's essential work and the public...
What does it take to earn the trust of a teenager who has been let down by the very systems meant to protect them?
In Episode 5 of The Anna Jinja Show's Athens County Children Services season, host Anna Jinja sits down with Lisa Seitz — a Life Skills Caseworker at ACCS with over twelve years of experience supporting youth in foster care ages 14 to 21. Lisa's work is both practical and profound: she helps ...
What does it look like to truly meet people where they are — not where we think they should be?
In Episode 4 of The Anna Jinja Show's Athens County Children Services season, host Anna Jinja speaks with Dan Fuchs, a school outreach worker with ACCS stationed at Amesville Elementary in the Federal Hocking School District. Dan's path is unconventional: after eight years in full-time pastoral ministry, he fou...
"My darling, you aren't mine."
Those five words opened one of the most tender, honest, and hopeful conversations we've ever had on this show. Episode 3 of our Athens County Children Services season features poet and foster-adoptive mom Becca Lachman and Athens County Children Services (ACCS) caseworker Laura Schaeffer.
They talk about:
💛 What it means to belong to someone — and to let g...
What does it look like to offer sturdiness to someone navigating one of life's most complex systems?
That's the question at the heart of Episode 2 of The Anna Jinja Show's Athens County Children Services Season — and Stephanie Russell answers it beautifully.
Stephanie is an independently licensed clinical mental health counselor (LPCC) and Treatment Foster Care Coordinator with the Southeastern Treatment F...
Something special is happening in Athens County — and it starts today.
The Anna Jinja Show is launching its first season ever, and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you. This season was made in partnership with Athens County Children Services (ACCS) — the agency quietly showing up every single day, often in the hardest moments, to keep children safe and families strong.
In this first...
I just want to know your name."
Five words. An entire life behind them.
For this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, author Emma Stevens and singer-songwriter Jim Pilgrim came together for something rare — a song born from the pages of a memoir. "I Want to Know Your Name" gives voice to the ache that millions of adoptees carry not judgment, not blame, just the need to know where they came from.
Ji...
What does it take to advocate for 400,000 people — over 25 years — to access something as fundamental as their own birth certificate?
For Betsie Norris, it started with her own search. As an adoptee in her mid-twenties, she searched for and found her birth family — and came away with a conviction that adoption is not a single moment, but a lifelong journey that deserves honest conversation, s...
What if a poem could hold every part of you — even the parts you've been afraid to name?
On this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, host Anna Jinja sits down with poet Amba Elieff, a woman who has reinvented herself more times than she can count — wife, daughter, mother, stepmother, massage therapist, corporate survivor, and above all, a poet who gives language to what most of us are too afraid to say ...
Some conversations don't just move you. They find you.
On this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, host Anna Jinja sits down with Linda Pevac — known to readers by her author pen name, Emma Stevens — a domestic adoptee from the baby scoop era, and the author of three unflinching memoirs: The Gathering Place, A Fire Is Coming, and Choosing to Breathe.
Linda describes growing up in a househol...
There is a line in the poem "Stage Gift" — written by Dr. Scott Minar for this special episode — that will have you return to over and over:
"I see kindness radiates in a theater exponentially and the magic blooms in movement and voice."
That is the episode in a single breath.
We sit down with two remarkable Ohio University faculty members whose conversation illuminates the intersection of creative wo...
"Don't overthink it." — The best adoption advice you'll ever hear.
Part 2 of this remarkable conversation on The Anna Jinja Show is here — and it goes even deeper. Bob Pohl and Patrick are back with host Anna Jinja, picking up right where they left off.
This time, they get radically honest: about the fears that almost stopped everything, about the surprises hidden inside Susan Strong's m...
What does it truly mean to say YES to love?
On this deeply moving episode of The Anna Jinja Show, host Anna Jinja sits down with two extraordinary men — Bob Pohl, adoptive father and husband to author Susan Strong, and Patrick, the birth father of their daughter Caitlin. Together they pull back the curtain on what open adoption really looks like from the inside — and it is nothing short of transformative.
...
What does it mean to have two homes, two families, and two lives — and to love both fully?
In the latest episode of The Anna Jinja Show, host Anna Jinja sits down with Kristina Denbow, a transnational adoptee who was adopted from Kazakhstan as a child and raised in Athens, Ohio. After years of questions about her origins, Kristina made the journey back last summer — visiting the orphanage where she spent ...
What does it mean to truly love someone exactly as they are — not as a project to improve, but as a whole and complete person?
That question is at the heart of this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, and the answers from our three guests are ones I believe every professional — in education, healthcare, counseling, or leadership — needs to hear.
Kayla Obenour is a speech-language pathologis...
This episode of The Anna Jinja Show brings together two powerful voices for a conversation that will stay with listeners long after they press pause.
Dr. Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, shares a decade of research revealing the constrained choices and unacknowledged grief of mothers who relinquish children.
Paired with her wo...
Deb Gold is a certified ICF coach who helps globally-focused individuals and organizations take practical pathways to transformation to create purposeful and impactful transformation out in the world. Deb feels that it is important to share her adoption story, of how she entered the world, and how it’s informed her actions ever since and how she encourages others to open to the wisdom of the world.
Full Circle: A Mother, Son, and the Music of Belonging
This week's episode features both Diane and her son Levi Merrill for an intimate conversation about adoption, identity, and what it really means to create family through choice and unconditional love. Levi, a gifted singer-songwriter, producer, and guitar teacher, opens the episode with a performance of Dan Bern's "Jerusalem"—a quirky, vulnerable song...
What does it mean to truly change the world? Sometimes it starts with creating spaces where people belong.
Join us on The Anna Jinja Show as we sit down with Aidan Curran—a video producer, community builder, and passionate advocate for connection. From his work at the University of Dayton to co-advising the Asian American Association and serving on the Virtual Engagement Committee for The Park Adoption Co...
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