Meet Katelyn (our guest AND cohost!)

I'm an international adoptee from ZhuZhou, Hunan Province, China, and I'm both the same race and interracial adoptee. I identify as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, and I'm also a follower of Jesus and Christian and I currently work at USF as a college counselor. When I'm not doing that I'm thinking about adoption, talking about adoption, journaling, and running to the beach.

"I think when white parents or any parents adopt outside of their race, you are not only adopting that singular child, but actually in an ideal world you're actually kind of adopting that community and you are choosing to care about the plight of that community."

"I would love to invite adoptive parents to take a critical and conscious lens when adopting, especially from other countries."

Here's some of what we talked about:

• The narrative that adoptees are "lucky"
• How race and racism impacted her growing up
• The white savior narrative (and some ways to resist it)
• Talking about adoption growing up
• Finding an adoptee community as an adult
• Not having information about her birth family
• The opportunity for racial reconciliation in transracial adoption
• How her Christian faith has helped her navigate this process

Annie's take-aways:

• Bring a critical and nuanced lens to the adoption industry.
• Learn and ask questions, and where adoption practices are unjust, call out those injustices.

Katelyn's take-aways:

• Talk about the hard things in adoption.
• Step into the discomfort for the sake of your child.

Shownotes at https://www.listeningtoadoptees.com/episodes/4