Adoption Unfiltered™

By Adoption Unfiltered™Education

Adoption Unfiltered™ episodes

January 06, 2024Pamela Karanova of Adoptees Connect
This season we are shining a light on the work done by Adoption Advocates and Activists!
“If I was allowed to grieve from the minute I found out I was adopted, my whole life trajectory would have been different. If only I had been allowed to feel sad.” — Pamela Karanova in ep22
Pamela is a beacon of light in the adoption community. Her own difficult circumstances led her to launch Adoptees Connect, communities of in-person support that exist around the US and Canada so that adoptees know they are not alone in their experiences.
She also originated Adoptee Remembrance Day, which aims, among other things, to provide awareness on the too-often linked phenomenon of adoptees and suicide.
What does all of this mean for adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents. and allies? Sara, Kelsey, and Lori talk with Pamela about her activism efforts in creating spaces of connection and healing for adoptees.
Show Notes:
Pamela Karanova:
⁠Pamela’s Website⁠

⁠Adoptees Connect⁠

⁠Adoptee Remembrance Day
53 min
November 08, 2023Adoption Constellation Round Table Fall 2023
“What is the hard part about adoption? ADOPTION is the hard part of adoption.”
—A guest in Episode 21
Several adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and allies gather around the table to suss out the question, “What is hard about adoption?”
Is it relinquishment vs adoption? Abandonment vs assimilation?

Is it severance of family and cultural ties?

Is it having to forage for information?

Is it ignorance coming into the adoption process for both expectant parents and adoptive parents?

Is it later feelings of guilt and regret for all we did not know?

Is it separation that’s felt all through the years?

Is it unexpected and unacknowledged grief?

Is it the gratitude that is expected?

Is it the imbalance in power dynamics?

Is it powerlessness over how the story is told?

Is it any number of other aspects brought on by the institutionalization of adoption?

Thanks to each of our guests—each of whom we interviewed for our book, Adoption Unfiltered—for sharing their personal experience, professional insights, and hard-won wisdom about the hard parts of adoption.
1 hr 3 min
October 18, 2023Attachment, Adoption, and the Connection Between Food and Caring
What are the deeper layers of the connection between attachment and food? This is a fascinating conversation with Deborah MacNamara, PhD, author of Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for Our Kids (and everyone else we love), for anyone dealing with digestive or attachment issues—which is, likely, all of us.
“If food is not served in the context of togetherness, then it serves emotional distress and can’t be digested well. The whole system isn’t primed and ready to focus on nutrition; it’s focused on solving an emotional problem. This doesn’t mean parents aren’t trying; it’s what the child is experiencing.”
Our conversation covers:
How we can show our caring through food, to help our children depend on us and show that they’re on our radar.

Why the developmental approach is so important to our understanding of adoption, to look at dependence and vulnerability rather than behaviors.

What Maslow’s hierarchy missed and why Maslow missed it.

How both adoptive parents and birth parents can nourish the adoptee through relational radar.

Kelsey’s connection to Grandma Peggy’s carrot cake.
43 min
October 10, 2023 Book Discussion of Lois Lowry's The Giver
What would it be like to live in a community that protects you from pain, grief, loss, and other difficult feelings? How would it be to have so much sameness among community members that envy was eradicated? What if individuals were prevented from making bad choices?
What would happen in a community that completely downplays genetic connections, a community in which everyone is an adoptee?
Newbery Medalist Lois Lowry envisioned such a community in her 1993 young adult novel The Giver, which is on many banned books lists, and was also adapted into a 2014 film starring Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep. Over the years, many of us in the adoption community have read The Giver without a backdrop of adoption, but when we re-read it with adoption in mind, the story pops in a completely new way.
Watch here as adoptees, birth parents, and an adoptive parent discuss a dystopia in which emotions are suppressed, Birth Mother is a job assignment, and everyone lives in the fog—except for protagonist Jonas and title character, The Giver.
Special thanks to panelists Julian Washio-Collette and Muthoni Gaciku Kittredge for sharing their observations as an adoptee and birth parent, respectively.

Note: If you are interested in discussing The Giver in your own book club and would like access to our free discussion guide, please write to [email protected] with your request.
The Giver book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver
The Giver film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giv...)
One Child Nation film (mentioned): https://www.onechildnation.com/
Want more Sara? Visit https://saraeasterly.com/
Want more Kelsey? Visit https://www.instagram.com/fromanotham...
Want more Lori? Visit https://LavenderLuz.com/
Adoption Unfiltered: https://www.adoptionunfiltered.com/
28 min
October 02, 2023 The Past, Present, and Future of Adoption as Seen Through Sage Eyes
Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao has been living adoption for more than 75 years as an adoptee—and professionally connected to adoption for 55 years in various roles, including as a psychologist and lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of The Family of Adoption, and we three authors are incredibly fortunate that Dr. Joyce has written the foreword to our book, Adoption Unfiltered.
Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) get to talk with Dr. Joyce about the history—and future—of adoption. Sara, Kelsey, and Lori thank our lucky stars for the opportunity to talk with this national treasure in the world of adoption to glean some of her immense wisdom and perspective.
49 min
September 19, 2023 Late Discovery and Transracial Adoptee Perspectives on Adoption
“Adoption seems simple from the outside. But when you’re in the thick of it, you see things in ways you never expected.”
Author Melissa Guida-Richards (What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption) joins us to talk about discovering at age 19 that she had been adopted, and that her ethnicity didn’t match her parents. What was it like to experience such a shifting in fundamental truths about herself?
And how could such a breach of trust end up bringing her and her parents closer together?
Melissa is currently on the cusp of meeting her birth mom in Colombia for the very first time. You can follow along that journey on social media at this handle: @adoptee_thoughts
48 min
September 07, 2023 Problematic Adoption Narratives
Adoption tropes make for blockbuster films and viral news stories, but, as we do here on Adoption Unfiltered, let's dive deeper. Why do such tropes exist and perpetuate? Why do we harbor cultural biases such as: adoptive parents being unquestioningly unselfish and amazing; birth parents being undeserving of raising their kids; adoptees being ungrateful if they speak up and share a fuller story about adoption.
Novelist and book reviewer Alice Stephens joins us to talk about why common adoption tropes are problematic. Alice is also an editor, writing coach, and Korean adoptee.
One recent example in the news has to do with the film The Blind Side, which told the story of Michael Oher and the Tuohy family. People drink up these simplistic stories ... and then draw conclusions about all adoptions, all adoptive families, all birth parents, and all adoptees. Who owns these adoption stories? Who should own these adoption stories? What do we all need to know to be better consumers and creators of these stories? We have thoughts on all that!
Adoption Unfiltered⁠ is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation. We are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.
To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVEvMpPAloE
Adoption Unfiltered: ⁠https://www.adoptionunfiltered.com/⁠
Alice Stephens' book Famous Adopted People: ⁠https://www.famousadoptedpeople.com/⁠
Want more Sara? Visit ⁠https://saraeasterly.com/⁠
Want more Kelsey? Visit ⁠https://www.instagram.com/fromanotham...⁠.
Want more Lori? Visit ⁠https://LavenderLuz.com⁠

41 min
May 02, 2023 How to Engage with Other Constellation Members
There’s a difference between listening to and taking from. People enjoy being heard but not being depleted.
What are the unspoken rules of engagement in adoption spaces? On the one hand, it’s great to have our safe spaces for adoptees only, birth parents only, adoptive parents only. Yet we also benefit from having cross-triad conversations, too. Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) talk about how and how not to approach each other about adoption issues and topics.
Listen in for the rules of engagement that will help make adoption spaces feel safe and those in it feel respected.

Adoption Unfiltered⁠ is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation. We are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: ⁠https://youtu.be/-3a7eEyqOpE
34 min
May 02, 2023 National Adoption Awareness Month
It’s November, which means National Adoption Awareness Month. Adoption talk, adoption talk, everywhere you go! We’ve described it as overwhelming, emotional laboring, and metamorphosing.
What was the original intent of NAAM? In what ways has the original intent expanded and shifted? Who has benefitted from NAAM, and who hasn’t? Who has historically owned the narrative, and how is that shifting?

Adoption Unfiltered is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation, and we are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/-3a7eEyqOpE
27 min
May 02, 2023 Adoption Constellation Round Table
Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth mom) and Lori Holden (adoptive mom) kick of Season 2 with a special Adoption Constellation Round Table, for which we invited adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and others who have something to say about adoption to talk together around this question: What is the biggest ah-ha you’ve had about adoption?
We also make a special announcement! Our book, Adoption Unfiltered, will be published in December 2023 by Rowman & Littlefield! It will include the journeys and stories of the people in this round table, among others. You can pre-order on Amazon or Bookshop!

Adoption Unfiltered is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring 75 years of lived experience relating to adoption, and we span the Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial generations. We understand the history, challenges, and trends experienced by people living in adoption and the broader adoption constellation, and we are recognized throughout the adoption community as thought leaders, influencers, and bridge-builders.

To watch this episode on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/xn6MkQgDYpY
1 hr 20 min

About Adoption Unfiltered™

From the publisher's feed

Adoption Unfiltered™ is presented by adoptee Sara Easterly, birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and adoptive parent Lori Holden. Collectively, we bring more than 75 years of lived experience…