Navigating Identity: Anna's Journey Through Adoption

A heartfelt exploration of belonging and acceptance in adoption.

In this episode, Janet Munro sits down with Anna Jinja, who shares her profound journey of being adopted from Korea into a Norwegian-American family. Through a candid conversation, Anna reflects on the complexities and challenges of her identity, revealing the emotions tied to her adoption.

The Early Years

"I just wanted to know that I belonged and that was never questioned. And it always felt like from the moment I could understand that my belonging in that family was always questioned."

The Weight of Questions

"I just wanted to not talk about it, which wasn't easy because people were always interested."

The Struggle with Acceptance

"For a 15-year-old, that is something that just generates a lot of resentment..."

The Complexity of Adoption

"They think of adoption as the end event... and that's just not the case because that's not how human life is either."

Anna shares how she eventually embraced her name and her story, turning her journey into a platform that advocates for understanding adoption and foster care.

Reflection

For more of Anna's insights and to hear her full story, tune into the episode. It’s a heartfelt exploration that sheds light on the realities of adoption and the search for identity.

Janet Munro

Janet Munro

Janet Munro

Janet Munro

In this heartfelt episode of Roots and Branches: Adoption Stories, host Janet Munro welcomes author, adoptive mother, former foster parent, and podcast host Kim Patton for an honest conversation about infertility, adoption, foster care, trauma, marriage, and faith.

Kim shares how years of infertility challenged everything she believed about her future and how she and her husband Kevin eventually chose private infant adoption instead of IVF. Their journey led them to an open adoption relationship that continues today, allowing their daughters to know and maintain a loving connection with their birth mother.

Together, Janet and Kim explore one of adoption's most important topics—open adoption. Kim explains why openness, when it is safe and healthy, helps children develop a stronger sense of identity while respecting both birth families and adoptive families. The discussion also highlights the importance of honesty, age-appropriate conversations, and always putting the child's needs first.

The conversation then turns to Kim's remarkable experience serving as a foster parent in residential group homes for teenage girls. Living alongside youth who had experienced significant trauma changed her understanding of child development, behavior, relationships, and healing. She shares what trauma taught her about compassion, why many behaviors are rooted in survival rather than defiance, and why every foster child deserves understanding, patience, and hope.

Kim also discusses her book Nothing Wasted: Struggling Well Through Difficult Seasons, explaining how life's hardest experiences became the foundation for personal growth instead of despair. Rather than pretending difficult seasons don't hurt, she encourages listeners to discover purpose, resilience, and deeper dependence on God while walking through them.

Whether you're a birth parent, adoptee, adoptive parent, foster parent, or someone simply navigating a difficult season, this episode offers encouragement, practical insight, and hope. Kim's vulnerability reminds us that even when life doesn't follow the path we expected, our struggles can shape us, strengthen us, and prepare us to help others.

This is a conversation about family, healing, perseverance, and the truth that no season of life—no matter how painful—is ever truly wasted.

Janet Munro

While Roots shares the lived experiences of birth parents, adoptees, adoptive parents, foster families, and everyone touched by adoption, The Branches explores the understanding that grows from those stories. Together, we'll talk with professionals, researchers, therapists, and advocates who help us better understand the emotions, trauma, relationships, healing, and hope found throughout the adoption journey.

Our very first Branches episode asks a question that is rarely explored:

What happens to the fathers?

Jim Pehkonen thought he would never become a father. Then a DNA test revealed he had a 40-year-old son he never knew existed. In this honest and emotional conversation, Jim shares the excitement of learning he was a father, the anger of discovering he had never been told, the hope of building a relationship with his son, and the heartbreak of realizing that relationship would not continue. He also reflects on his own childhood trauma and how healing allowed him to find acceptance rather than bitterness.

Joining the conversation is psychologist Gloria Vanderhorst, whose life's work has focused on helping men understand and express emotions that society often teaches them to suppress. Together, Jim and Gloria explore why boys learn to hide painful feelings, how early trauma shapes adult relationships, why biological connections matter, and what healing can look like for men.

Throughout the episode, host Janet Munro adds her own perspective as a birth mother, reminding listeners that every adoption story is unique and that understanding begins with listening to the whole story before making judgments.

Whether you're an adoptee, birth parent, adoptive parent, or simply someone interested in understanding human relationships, this conversation offers compassion, honesty, and hope.

I'd love your feedback. This is the very first episode of Roots and Branches – The Branches. Should this series continue? Your comments and suggestions will help shape future episodes.

Thank you for supporting Roots and Branches during our first year. Here's to many more conversations that help us understand not only the roots of adoption—but the branches that continue to grow from every story.

Janet Munro

Janet Munro

Roots and Branches

Nancy went on to build a life, marrying young and raising children, while also experiencing deep loss, including the heartbreaking death of a young daughter. Years later, at age 21, the child she placed for adoption reached out. What followed was a reunion filled with emotion, healing, and understanding.

This episode explores the lasting impact of those experiences, the silence many women still carry, and the message that it was never just their fault.

Janet Munro