Thriving Adoptees - Let's Thrive

Trauma can seem like a terrifying predator stalking us... Our world is scary and dark. This podcast is fundamentally different because it brings lightness to this darkness.

· So you can see a dramatically different, friendlier world. And when you see better, you do better for yourself and loved ones.

 · So you can forge a peaceful relationship with trauma. Because you see the light of hope as well as the lightness of understanding.

· So you can see a brighter way to a better life. Because there’s less fear, grief, shame and anger. Or of any of the other powerful feelings that come with trauma. · 

So you have the tools to help you along your way. Your wisdom wins out over the tiger. And the tiger becomes a cute and cuddly cub that just wants to play. 

· So you can restore your connection with yourself and others. Because you’re mastering the trauma that’s been keeping you apart. 

Click here to find out more about The  THRIVE Course that goes deeper into Taming The Tiger and covers 5 more topics:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1054946014929

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Do adoptees want to heal? Is healing even possible? Listen in as Joyce and I explore rarely asked questions about trauma. Why?  To catalyse fresh insights for you on trauma's impact. I learned lots of from this and hope you do too.

Here's the link to Joyce's previous interviews:

https://thriving-adoptees.simplecast.com/episodes/joyce

https://thriving-adoptees.simplecast.com/episodes/theres-nothing-wrong-with-us-with-joyce-maguire-pavao

https://thriving-adoptees.simplecast.com/episodes/joyce-advocacy

Here's a link to a replay of Advancing Your Advocacy For Adoptees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y-8Id3NajI

Dr. Pavao has done extensive training, both nationally and internationally.  She is a lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and she has consulted to various public and private child welfare agencies, adoption agencies, schools, and community groups, as well as probate and family court judges, lawyers, and clergy.  Additionally, she has worked closely with individuals and families touched by adoption, foster care, and other complex blended family constructions.

She has developed models for treatment and for training using her systemic, intergenerational, and developmental framework, The Normative Crises in the Development of the Adoptive Family, and her book, The Family of Adoption (Beacon Press), has received high acclaim.

Dr. Pavao has received many awards and honors, including the Children’s Bureau/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Adoption Excellence Award for Family Contribution (2003) and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption award for Angels in Adoption (2000).

http://www.pavaoconsulting.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Dr.JoyceMaguirePavao

https://twitter.com/GetKinnected

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kinnect/

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Thriving is about who we are as well as how we feel. Listen in as Sherrie and I go deep into identity and healing. Sherrie is a christian - and I'm not  - so there's some different views and mutual respect. A particularly powerful episode.

For well over two decades, Sherrie Eldridge has offered her unique voice within the adoption community, as an established author and international speaker. An adoptee herself, Eldridge has the ability to see life through the eyes of an adopted child. In her seven published titles, she has shared her passion for validating adoptees’ life experiences and her desire to help adoptive parents better understand and meet their adopted children’s emotional needs. Her best-selling work, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, is considered required reading by many US adoption agencies. In 2010, she was named Indiana’s Congressional Angel of Adoption by the Honorable Dan Burton, Indiana Congressional Representative. Eldridge is widely recognized and respected as a compassionate advocate for adoptees, cultivating understanding about adoption’s challenges and opportunities for all those whose lives have been touched by it.

https//:Sherrieeldridgeadoption.blog

https://www.facebook.com/AdoptionAuthor.SherrieEldridge

https://x.com/sherrieeldridge

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Has being adopted boxed you in? Do you want to feel free-er? Free? Listen in as Fiona shares her insights on what she's learning about freedom, seeing through imposter syndrome, shaking inadequacy off and more.

Find out more about Fiona and her advocacy at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-wells-patch-9064071a5/?originalSubdomain=uk

https://www.ourpatch.org.uk/

https://x.com/PATCH_AdoptCris

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

How clear are you on who you are? Identity can confuse the hell out of us. Listen in as Samantha dives deep into finding herself. It may help you on your journey to finding your trues self or living from authenticity.

https://www.drsamanthabrooks.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-b-4763a94a/

https://x.com/DrSjBrooks

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Who doesn't want a loving, happy and fulfilling life? Do I hear the HOW question? Listen in as Ken shares his learnings for catalyst ideas to help you along your journey.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethdestefano/

https://www.facebook.com/ken.destefano.1

https://www.amazon.com/Will-See-You-Again-Hearts/dp/B0C63YSMWH

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Do you wish you were carrying less emotional baggage? Listen in as Craig shares the things that have helped and are helping lighten his load from meeting Nancy Verrier and Ram Dass and much, much more.

Find out more about Craig at:

https://www.facebook.com/insideoutadoption

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

What if there's an inherent health within us that drives us? A Self that's untouched by trauma? How would knowing that make a difference to how we feel about ourselves? Listen in as Liam dives into his experience to reveal a finding overflowing with hope.

Liam O Mahony is an adoptee, an accredited Psychotherapist and Addiction Counsellor with over nine years of experience working with adults and adolescents. He is associated with the Centre for Self-Leadership Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), a member of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) and Addiction Counsellors of Ireland (ACI). He is a graduate of University College Cork and the Cork Institute of Technology with particular expertise in areas such as Trauma and Addiction.

His main interest is the related fields of Attachment, Neuroscience and Trauma and he is particular passionate about how research from these areas can be integrated into the work of psychotherapists and addiction counsellors.

More at:

https://pcpsi.ie/our-founders/

The book Liam mentioned on generational trauma is The Heart of Trauma by Dr. Bonnie Badenoch

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Have you felt separate? Alone? Elizabeth felt so separate that she thought she was an alien. So how did she get to that visceral feeling of wholeness? A deep dive into healing. Because that's where the gems are.

Note from Elizabeth – I want to apologize for the incorrect usage of the phrase trauma bonding near the very end of the episode. I was looking for a way to describe adoptees commiserating with one another about a shared traumatic experience. Simon’s term of validation is more appropriate in this instance.

Here's a bit about Elizabeth from her website:

I’m an adult adoptee living in reunion with my birth family. Since 1999, I’ve known my birth mom, my birth dad and my eleven (!!!) brothers and sisters. And, in 2011, I adopted our daughter Riley. She is the love of my life.

I’m Elizabeth Barbour, M.Ed, Life & Business Coach, Shamanic Practitioner, Speaker, Retreat Leader, Author and Mom.

I see what’s possible for you when you can’t see it for yourself. I see your strengths, your beauty, your gifts, your talents and all that you can possibly be… and I help you step more fully into the truest version of you.

As a life and business coach, I help entrepreneurial and professional women find work/life balance–and sanity–in the chaos of daily living. It’s not unusual for clients to cry in their first sessions with me because they are just so relieved to find support.

As a shamanic practitioner, I utilize the power of shamanic journey work to access messages and information from the spiritual realms (sometimes referred to as non-ordinary reality) to help my clients cut through the stuck places and gain clarity fast. I’m passionate about helping my clients to design rituals and celebrations when big transitions are afoot (life and death, weddings and divorces, moves, etc.) My first book is tentatively titled Sacred Celebrations.

When teaching and speaking, I’m multi-passionate. I’m equally comfortable facilitating a teambuilding session in an corporate environment, inspiring a room full of entrepreneurs to become authentic networkers, preaching the value of self-care to a room full of overworked realtors or leading an intimate women’s retreat through a fire ceremony ritual to release their stress and to reclaim their balance.

https://elizabethbarbour.com/

https://www.facebook.com/elizabethbarbour

https://www.instagram.com/elizabthbarbour/

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.

Trauma sits frozen in time within the part of us that experienced the trauma. For those relinquished at birth it's newborn who's lost their mother. Parts work (also known as Internal Family Systems IFS) heals those parts. Our Self is untouched by trauma. Our Self heals our parts. It does that by accepting, loving and giving them the recognition that they've never had before. Listen in as adoptee and IFS therapist Kathy shares how we heal all our parts.

Here's a bit about Kathy from her website:

Long before I became a therapist, I was adopted. My parents had two biological sons and were unable to have a third child and wanted a girl, so they adopted me. Even before then, though, I was relinquished. 

I make the distinction between relinquishment and adoption, because those are two separate events, and I believe the root of many “adoption issues" lies with relinquishment and the experience of having been separated from one’s original parents, especially one’s first mom/birthmom. I was relinquished at birth, placed in foster care and then placed with my adoptive family when I was 10 weeks old. Even those of us who were relinquished at birth, before we developed conscious memory, lived through the experience, and our bodies remember, which often lead us to respond as though it is happening again—a post-traumatic response.

My personal experiences led me to become a therapist who specializes in helping other adoptees, and the people close to them. I work with adult adoptees, adopted children/teens, adoptive parents, first/birth parents, prospective adoptive parents and the partners of adoptees, as well as others who have had similar experiences for other reasons. 

https://www.instagram.com/adopteetherapy

https://www.adopteetherapy.com/

Guests and the host are not (unless mentioned) licensed pscyho-therapists and speak from their own opinion only. Seek qualified advice if you need help.