Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Yazz shares her experience as an Indian adoptee adopted into an Australian family and raised abroad. Growing up across different places, she struggled to fit in and understand where she belonged. She reflects on how those experiences shaped her identity and contributed to anxiety that followed her into adulthood.

Yazz discusses finding support through Australia’s Benevolent Society, where counseling helped her explore her adoption experiences and their lasting impact. We also talk about her work as a social worker helping reunite families, and how she often sees parts of her own story reflected in the people she supports.

This conversation explores identity, belonging, and the connection between an adoptee’s lived experience and the work she does to help families stay connected.

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

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If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

What does it mean to grow up loved, yet still struggle to see yourself reflected in the people around you?

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Nathan welcomes Erik, a Black transracial adoptee raised by a white family in Massachusetts and author of Stranger in My Own Story. His journey brings forward the complicated relationship between family, race, and belonging—and the questions that can follow adoptees long into adulthood.

Erik’s story touches on the isolation of growing up without racial mirrors and the search for connection to a culture beyond the world he knew at home. Through hip-hop and his experience at Howard University, he found opportunities to explore his Black identity and develop a deeper understanding of himself. His experiences offer a personal look at how being loved and feeling understood can be different parts of an adoptee’s life.

At the heart of this episode is the ongoing process of making sense of your own story: finding words for experiences you may have struggled to explain, allowing room for complicated feelings, and discovering connection along the way. Erik’s journey invites listeners to consider what it means for adoptees to define themselves and tell their stories in their own voices.

YouTube for Color Shift!!!!

Erik Mohn Instagram!!!

Order Erik's Book Stranger in my own Story!

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, I sit down with Benjamin, a Brazilian adoptee raised in Australia, to talk about identity, family, fatherhood, and the power of finding community.

Benjamin shares what it was like growing up without seeing many people who looked like him and how being adopted has shaped the way he approaches being a father. He also tells the remarkable story of how a simple bowl of cereal unexpectedly led him to finding members of his biological family.

We talk about the complicated emotions that came with learning that his birth mother had already passed away and what it means to find answers when some questions can no longer be asked.

We close by discussing the importance of adoptee community and how Benjamin’s life changed after connecting with ICAV (InterCountry Adoptee Voices)—finally finding spaces where others understood experiences he had carried for years.

ICAV facebook group

Men's group for Adoptees of South America

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift, Nathan sits down with Rose, a Chinese adoptee who grew up in Alaska and Canada, to talk about identity, isolation, belonging, and what can change when you finally find yourself in a place where you don't stand out.

Rose reflects on growing up in predominantly white environments and how that shaped her experience as a transracial adoptee. She shares what it was like to later move to the San Francisco Bay Area and, for the first time, experience being surrounded by people who looked like her. That shift—from feeling isolated and visibly different to being part of the majority—became an unexpectedly healing part of her adoptee journey.

She also talks about the role music has played throughout her life, beginning with violin lessons that sometimes required 10-hour round trips and eventually leading to an opportunity few musicians ever experience: performing with Bad Bunny during the Super Bowl. Rose shares what it was like keeping that experience secret and finally being able to reveal that she had been part of one of the world's biggest performances.

Rose's story explores something many transracial adoptees understand: how much our surroundings can influence the way we see ourselves, and what can happen when we finally experience a sense of cultural and racial belonging we didn't have growing up.

Rose's Instagram

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Nathan sits down with Sun Mee, a Korean adoptee raised in a white German family in a small town in southern Germany.

Adopted from South Korea at 3½ years old with little information about her biological family, Sun Mee learned early how to adapt. She disconnected from her Korean roots, pushed down difficult emotions, and embraced the role of the “grateful” and well-adjusted adoptee. But beneath the surface was a deeper sense of disconnection and questions about identity and belonging that eventually became impossible to ignore.

Sun Mee shares the identity rupture she experienced at 18, her decision to begin searching for her biological family, and the complicated emotions surrounding DNA testing and her return trips to Korea—experiences that brought moments of recognition alongside feelings of alienation.

We also explore a different side of adoptee healing: the body. Sun Mee discusses how somatic healing helped her reconnect with emotions she had spent years suppressing and ultimately changed the way she understood belonging—not simply as something to find in a country, culture, family, or community, but as something that can also be cultivated within ourselves.

That journey eventually led Sun Mee to found NUMARU, a holistic emotional wellbeing platform and international community for BIPOC adoptees. Through NUMARU, she works to create spaces where adoptees can process their emotions, make peace with the complexity of their stories, and explore what it means to belong on their own terms.

This is a conversation about adaptation, identity, the body, returning to Korea, and the complicated work of finding home—both within ourselves and with one another.

Link to Sun Mee's website: Numaru

Follow Sun Mee's work on Instagram

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Nathan sits down with Sara G., a Mexican adoptee whose story began within the foster care system.

Sara shares what it was like navigating foster care and adoption while also growing up separated from parts of her culture and identity. Her experiences eventually helped shape the path she chose as an adult: becoming a social worker and working within a system she once experienced from the other side.

Together, Nathan and Sara explore the complicated intersection of lived experience and professional work. What does it mean to support children and families when you know firsthand what it feels like to be the child in the system? And how does being an adoptee influence the way you see the work differently from those who only know it professionally?

Sara's story offers a perspective that is both personal and professional—one that challenges us to think about foster care and adoption not simply as systems designed to help children, but through the eyes of the people who actually lived through them.

Follow Sara on her Instagram!

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Nathan sits down with August, a Chinese adoptee raised in rural Central Pennsylvania, for an honest conversation about identity, belonging, and what it means to finally begin seeing your adoption story through a new lens.

August shares how the COVID-19 pandemic became a turning point in his life—his own "coming out of the fog" moment—as he began unpacking the ways adoption, race, and identity had shaped him. He also reflects on his journey as a queer adoptee, exploring how different parts of his identity intersect and influence one another.

The conversation also highlights August's involvement with Through a Different Lens (TADL), where he has helped create space for adoptee voices, community, and authentic storytelling.

This episode is a thoughtful exploration of identity, self-discovery, and the power of finding community with others who understand the adoptee experience.

August's adoption related Instagram: Here

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

What happens when DNA uncovers a story that feels almost too incredible to be real?

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Sara shares her journey as a mixed-race adoptee raised in a white family, navigating questions of identity, belonging, and race that followed her throughout her life. Her path to discovering her biological father through DNA testing led to what can only be described as a Cinderella moment—an emotional reunion that gave her a glimpse of the connection she had always wondered about.

As this episode is released nearly one year after her father's passing, Sara reflects on the joy of finding him, the grief of losing him, and the lasting impact that relationship continues to have on her life.

Sara also opens up about the moment that brought her out of the adoption fog. Following the murder of George Floyd, she experienced grief and pain that she expected those closest to her to understand. Instead, her adoptive family's response forced her to confront difficult truths about race, identity, and what it meant to be a mixed-race adoptee in a family that could not fully see or understand her experience.

This conversation explores racial identity, late discovery, reunion, profound loss, and the complicated reality of loving the family that raised you while acknowledging the ways they may have fallen short. Sara's story is one of heartbreak, healing, and ultimately finding pieces of herself that had been missing for far too long. 

Sara's Instagram

Her tiktok is down but hopefully up soon!

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

For much of his life, Patrick Armstrong believed he had a fairly positive adoption experience. Raised in Indianapolis after being adopted from Korea, he spent decades navigating racial isolation while completely rejecting an important part of his identity—without fully realizing the impact it was having on him.

After dropping out of college, Patrick spent years traveling in search of purpose and trying to figure out who he was. But it wasn't until the convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in anti-Asian hate, and the Black Lives Matter movement that something shifted. Those events became the catalyst for what Patrick describes as his "rupture"—a moment of awakening that forced him to confront his adoption, race, and identity in ways he never had before.

Over the past five years, Patrick has been unpacking the complexities of transracial adoption, embracing his Korean identity, and working toward becoming his most authentic and whole self. Along the way, he has discovered that healing isn't a destination but an ongoing practice.

Patrick also shares one of the most painful chapters of his journey: the possibility that he missed an opportunity to reconnect with his biological mother after waiting too long to respond to a letter she sent him. He reflects on the grief, regret, and hope that continue to shape his search and why he hasn't completely given up on the possibility of finding her again.

This conversation explores racial isolation, identity rejection, late-discovery adoptee consciousness, the lifelong process of healing, and the courage it takes to rediscover yourself after decades of living disconnected from who you truly are.

Hear more from Patrick on his own podcast Conversation Piece.

Patrick's socials: Instagram, Podcast

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected] 

In this episode of Color Shift, we sit down with Lily, a Thai adoptee whose journey spans continents, recovery, and self-discovery. Born in Bangkok and spending her early years in foster care, Lily was adopted at age four by a white American family in Pennsylvania. Growing up in a home where she never felt a true sense of connection, she spent years searching for belonging and understanding her place in the world.

As a young adult, that search led her through addiction, loss, and some of the darkest chapters of her life. But through music, Lily found something powerful: a way to process her pain, reclaim her voice, and begin healing. What started as a lifeline became a purpose.

Today, Lily is an artist, recovery advocate, and co-founder of Adoptees & Addiction, a peer-led support community created specifically for adoptees navigating addiction and recovery. She has also spent years working in treatment, helping others find hope in their own recovery journeys. Along the way, she returned to Thailand to search for her birth mother and reconnect with the culture and identity that had been separated from her through adoption.

This conversation explores resilience, identity, addiction, healing, and the lifelong journey of belonging. Lily's story is a powerful reminder that even after years of feeling disconnected, it is possible to rediscover your roots, your voice, and yourself.

To learn more about the peer support group Lily co-founded, visit Adoptees & Addiction

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Merch: Color Shift 1.0 by Nathan Choi – Adoptive Threads

If you are interested in supporting this podcast please go to the listener support page: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2502012/support

If you are a transracial adoptee and want to share your story email me at:  [email protected]