Labor of Love: A Podcast for BIPOC Adoptees Navigating Parenthood

Join us for a heartfelt and deeply reflective conversation with Isaac Etter, father of a 22-month-old son (at the time of recording), Black domestic adoptee, activist, and founder of identitylearning.co. Isaac generously shares some of his adoption story with us, his journey into fatherhood, and his reflections on some of the more challenging and even taboo feelings that often come up for adoptees in parenthood, as well as growing compassion for his birth mother at the same time. We touch on the notion of “information poverty” several times throughout the conversation, to expand on the question, “what is the story of value?” in adoption, and how can we continue to challenge conventional adoption narratives as a community to honor our losses, our birth families, and our intergenerational legacies.

Isaac Etter Bio
Isaac Etter is an activist and social entrepreneur. Isaac was transracially adopted at the age of two.  He is the founder of Identity, a startup focused on providing accessible, diverse, and ethical adoption and foster care education. Isaac has used his story of being adopted and growing up in a white world to curate deep conversations about race in America. With his unique insight on racial tensions between the white and black communities, they have been able to curate impactful conversations where everyone learns to value each other and their experience, while learning about systemic racism, privilege and their role in it.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Follow us Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Donate on Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Angela Burlile, Korean adoptee, joins us for a very intimate conversation about her journey from considering adoption to pursuing IVF in Korea. We time travel together to discuss befriending grief, loss, longing and healing, and her courageous process to remove herself as the site for unlearning racism with her husband.

Angela Burlile Bio:
Angela (she/her) is a Korean adoptee currently living in Lynnwood, Washington with her partner Chris, and their dog Penny. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, Angela returned to South Korea and spent six years teaching English. Returning to Washington in 2015, Angela pursued a Masters of Education degree with a concentration in environmental education, focusing on the intersections of identity, social justice, and environment. She currently works as facilitator and coordinator for an undergraduate conservation fellowship program at the University of Washington. 

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Follow us Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Donate on Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Dr. Kit Myers, Hong Kong transracial adoptee, father of two daughters, police abolition activist, and an old adoptee camp counselor friend. Kit would have been your favorite P.E. teacher, but he opted to immerse himself in academic studies, coming out on the other side as current Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. We discuss Kit's process in becoming a professor, teaching his daughters about valuing love, anger and their mixed Hmong and Chinese American identities, the influence that fetal microchimerism had on his desire to continue his birth family search, and his research on the inherent love and violence infused in the the act and industry of adoption. You can find Kit on Twitter @MyersKit and follow his police abolition work at #AbolitionMay. 

Kit Myers Bio
Kit was adopted from Hong Kong to Oregon when he was three years old. He enjoys family time, nature, being active, and eating delicious food. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced. Kit received his doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of California, San Diego in ethnic studies and his bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies and journalism from the University of Oregon. Prior to his current position, he was a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow at UC Merced. His research examines love and violence in adoption, family, and kinship formations specifically in the ways that they intersect with race, gender, sexuality, immigration, citizenship, nation, and indigenous sovereignty. Kit has published articles in Adoption Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Adoption & Culture, and Critical Discourse Studies as well as co-edited a special issue on adoption and pedagogy. He serves as an executive committee member of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption & Culture and served on the steering committee for the Society of Adoptee Professionals of Color in Adoption. He has also worked with the Adoption Museum Project and three summers at a camp for transnational and transracial adoptees. Kit is also passionate about police abolition, publishing online articles and working with faculty to get cops off campus. You can visit his website (ucmerced.academia.edu/KitMyers) for more information on his research. 

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Follow us Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Donate on Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Shannon Gibney is a mother of three, prolific author, activist, educator, runner, and Buddhist transracial adoptee. In this episode, she blesses us with profound reflections. We dive straight into the “structures of feeling”, a place beyond words, where loss and other body wisdom lives, a kinship among adoptees and to loss itself. Shannon connects the losses of adoption to experiences of infant loss and miscarriage, to create a space for recognition and honoring of the, ultimately, impermanent nature of all things. She also gives a first sneak peak into her new book, Botched: A Speculative Memoir on Transracial Adoption, out in early 2023, among many other publications.

Please be on the look out for numerous publications coming out in 2022 and beyond:

     Where We Come From, a co-authored picture book with John Coy, Sun Yung Shin and Diane Wilson, Lerner, October 2022
     Botched: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption, Dutton, early 2023
     Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight, University of MN Press, Spring 2023
     Adoptee to Adoptee, co-edited with Nicole Chung, Harper Teen, Fall 2023
     Middle grade trilogy about tweens taking on Big Oil, 2024?

Shannon Gibney Bio:
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), and Dream Country (Dutton, 2018) young adult novels that won Minnesota Book Awards in 2016 and 2019. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, her new book, Botched, explores themes of transracial adoption through speculative memoir (Dutton, 2022). In October 2019, University of Minnesota Press released What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color, which she co-edited with writer Kao Kalia Yang. 

www.shannongibney.com
Twitter: @GibneyShannon
IG: @shannonelainegibney

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Joy Lieberthal Rho is a powerful Korean adoptee leader, founder, visionary, and community nurturer. Join us for the pleasure of listening to her share some of her personal parenting journey, her keen observations on motherhood milestones, and the importance of seeking prenatal, postpartum, and mental healthcare that centers the unique and specific experience of being a BIPOC adoptee parent. 

Joy Lieberthal Rho Bio
Joy Lieberthal Rho, LCSW-R is a social worker/counselor in private practice and also at the Juilliard School in NY. She has been involved with the international adoptee community for over 25 years, as a founding member and former president of Also-Known-As, as a policy analyst at Donaldson Adoption Institute and as staff at a private adoption agency in NYC. Joy created the original mentorship program for Also-Known-As and also for Spence-Chapin Adoption agency. Dedicated to working within the Asian American and adoptee community, Joy worked as a clinical supervisor at the Korean American Family Service Center, a domestic violence service organization and co-directs Sejong Camp, a culture camp for Korean adoptees and American born Korean children. She is one of the creators of IAMADOPTEE.org, an online mental health and wellness resource for the international adoptee community. Joy is adopted from Korea, was found by her birthmother and has been in reunion with her for over 25 years.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Join us for a beautiful conversation with Korean adoptee, Stephen Johnson, as he shares his journey into new fatherhood and the call to be the best version of himself for his son. He also shares poignant adoptee moments such as when his son became the age as when he was adopted. Stephen discusses reuniting with his birth family, his thoughts on birth fathers and adoptee fathers, and honoring his Korean sister’s legacy through his start-up company, Hyesun House, https://makemakgeolli.com. 

Stephen Johnson Bio
Stephen Johnson is a reunited Korean adoptee and new father to a ten month old son. He studied social work at Baylor University and international development at Eastern University's School of Leadership and Development. Stephen and his partner currently live in Austin, Texas, where he runs a small business and works for a technology company.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Amy HyunAh Pak and Sarah Kim Park, two incredible Korean adoptee mothers, antiracism activists and adoptee community leaders, join us for our very first episode. They generously share their journeys as Korean adoptees, daughters of the diaspora, and community mothers. We traverse deep territory, touching on areas such as ancestral connections, healing through parenting, and the strength and love that it takes to create new and mixed family cultures.

Amy HyunAh Pak Bio
Amy is a Korean American immigrant, transracial adoptee, and a mother with two decades of cultural community work in Seattle organizing around healing centered traditions and anti-racist coalition building with families of color and youth. After 15 years of service with numerous Seattle non-profits, and as a student advisor at UW’s Office of Minority Affairs, in 2013, Amy founded and served as Executive Director of Families of Color Seattle (FOCS). With a collective of new mothers committed to community transformation, Amy built a loving community of 3000+ changemaking parents raising compassionate, powerful children. Over the next eight years, FOCS became a critical family resource, providing BIPOC parent groups and anti-racist consulting to schools and institutions. Seattle Human Services Coalition awarded FOCS The 2016 Ron Chisom Anti-Racism Award. Currently, Amy leads as a Strategic Advisor for Best Starts for Kids with King County Public Health. Amy holds a Master of Social Work from University of Washington, is Dare to Lead (c) trained, and serves on the Board of Directors of Asian Counseling & Referral Services, Global Perinatal Services, and as a Partner with Social Venture Partners. Amy was honored with Seattle University’s 2019 Red Winged Leadership recognition, Female Founders 2019 Unsung Heroes award, and Seattle Storm’s 2019 Ginger Ackerley Community Service award. Amy is a daughter of the diaspora, a community mother, and is deeply committed to the advancement of and building sisterhood with BIPOC women and femme leadership.

Sarah Kim Park Bio
Sarah is a Korean adoptee, mother to two sons, and a community organizer in the Korean adoptee and transracial adoptee community. Since 2001, Sarah has served in leadership roles for various adoptee organizations, including 15 years as a board member and advisory board member of Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington (AAAW) and four years as a board member for International Korean Adoptee Associations (IKAA). Her work includes teaching at adoptee heritage summer camps, organizing adoptee conferences such as the IKAA Gatherings in Seoul, Korea and various Korean adoptee mini-gatherings in the U.S., speaking as a panelist at the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN) conference, consulting on Asian adoptee exhibits at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, WA, and fundraising for adoptee artists and filmmakers. Sarah holds a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Washington and completed her master's internship at Global Overseas Adoptees' Link (G.O.A.'L) in Korea.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify
Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast
Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast

Welcome to Labor of Love, a podcast that centers and amplifies the voices of BIPOC adoptees navigating parenthood. In this space, we connect with and gather the wisdom of contemplating, expecting, new, and experienced adoptee parents of color. We talk fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth and delivery, postpartum and beyond, all from an adoptee perspective. We believe our community needs and deserves more resources for the beautiful and challenging journey of being a BIPOC adoptee parent. This podcast is one of our contributions to our community. Thank you for joining us.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge Editing: Frederico Soler Fernández Artwork: Dalhe Kim

Listen on: iTunes & Spotify | Follow us on Instagram: @laboroflovepodcast | Donations via Venmo: @laboroflovepodcast