Julie Brumley is a trauma-informed adoptee coach who has been coaching men and women for more than 15 years to overcome addictive behaviors and heal the primal trauma of abandonment. She is also the CEO of Coming Home to Self, a company dedicated to helping adoptees heal. After her own birth mother tried to abort her twice, she found herself frozen in an unconscious trauma response for decades until she found the power of somatic trauma healing. Now she uses somatics, nervous system regulation, personal experience and her masters in counseling to help other adult adoptees find their way out of their own trauma and into a life of radical self-belonging.

Website: https://cominghometoself.co/.

Links: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees

https://tinyurl.com/Rheti-Assessment

https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/

Music by Corey Quinn

Molly/Mavka is an early 80's Catholic Charities, closed, same-race adoptee. She has been in on-again-off-again reunion with her birth mother for 20 years, and is leisurely navigating reunion inklings with her birth father. Her adopters' choice to estrange themselves from her has offered an often-troubling-but-still-freeing expanse in which to explore her post-placement options, she guesses. In the interest of efficiency, her hobbies are her coping mechanisms and include pitch-black humor, elaborate culinary undertakings, surrendering to the wilderness with little more than a knife and a snack, and giving driving advice to her Instagram followers during her morning commute. Really, she doesn't know who she is, she only knows who she has failed to be for her adopters.

Music by Corey Quinn

Kim Stevens was adopted in Korea along with her bio brother into the same family. They were stationed in South Korea and immigrated to the US after their adoption. Kim was raised in Central Texas in a predominantly white community with few racial mirrors and even less cultural socializations. Being in that environment, she was taught to ignore the racism and micro-aggressions which caused her to deny a lot of her identity and curiosity until much later in life. Kim has two biracial children, a husband and a dog.

Music by Corey Quinn

Dana Ozak  is a full-time preschool teacher, passionate adoptee advocate whenever she has time, part-time college student, part time water color artist, part time author, and whatever other free time she has is spent going on long walks with her sweet husband and hanging out with him and their college aged offspring.

Website: https://girland4families.com/

Music by Corey Quinn

Liana Soifer (she/her) is a transracial, transnational adoptee from South Korea, raised in Oregon, and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of BIPOC Adoptees VOICES, a Portland-based nonprofit leading initiatives for BIPOC adoptee communities. With a BA in Human Services, Liana has experience as a Project Manager in software and web applications. She previously ran a web design and digital branding business and is dedicated to building community and making a positive impact through her professional and personal work.

Website: bipocadoptees.org

Music by Corey Quinn

Amanda Robinson is a Korean adoptee. She was adopted with her twin sister and raised in Washington. Though she's wanted to be many things, currently she is a retired dental hygienist who homeschools her two kids, and is an aspiring children's lit writer in her free time. She aims to encourage kids through her future children's books.

Music by Corey Quinn

Grace Yung Foster is the Founder and CEO of The Inclusion Initiative. They are elevating the future of work for Adoptees of Color and Foster Care Alumni. 

Grace is both an Adoptee and a Foster Alum. She’s committed to creating more equity, inclusion, and opportunity for our communities, especially within our workplaces and careers. She is a former nonprofit executive with 15 years of experience in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors and holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. 

Website: https://www.theinclusioninitiative.com/

Music by Corey Quinn

Kathleen Shea Kirstein is a Late Discovery Adoptee and NPE (Non-Expected Parent Event), as well a mother of two sons, retired Registered Nurse, and illustrator of three children's books with author D Ann Hollon. She has published two essays in Severance magazine: "Dear Mother" and "Blown off Course.”

https://severancemag.com/dear-mother/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r4LJkJJ6aI

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1480979724?ref=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_VEQD3XYGHN0MX43XVFC8&ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_VEQD3XYGHN0MX43XVFC8&social_share=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_VEQD3XYGHN0MX43XVFC8&language=en_US&skipTwisterOG=1

A contributing published author to the Adoptee Voices Writing Group created by Sara Easterly; the e-Zine https://adoptee-voices.com/ezine-root-morning-coffee-at-wits-end/

Music by Corey Quinn

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, and activist. The author of several books, including The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption, which received a Michael L. Printz Honor and a Minnesota Book Award; See No Color and Dream Country, both winners of Minnesota Book Awards; and Sam and the Incredible African and American Food Fight, a children’s picture book about a cross-cultural family also published by the University of Minnesota Press. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, Gibney teaches at Minneapolis College, where she was named Educator of the Year in 2023. She lives with her two children in Minneapolis.

Website: https://www.shannongibney.com/

Music by Corey Quinn

Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet. Ryan’s work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from their lived experience and perspective as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Ryan is the host of The Adoptee Open Mic, and hosts virtual letter writing classes to support their activism and creative work.

Links: https://linktr.ee/ryanartes

https://upendmovement.org/dream/

Music by Corey Quinn