Thriving Adoptees - Let's Thrive

Many of us share the belief that there's something wrong with us. What would happen if we were to focus on what's right with us? Wouldn't that help us heal, grow and thrive? Yes! Because what we focus on gets bigger - like magnifying glasses enlarge objects. Listen in as transracial adoptee and counsellor Lynn goes deep on seeing ourselves differently.

Here's more about Lynn from her website:

"I use a positive psychology approach, identifying what is right with us in order to support and motivate change away from the areas of our life that no longer serve us. I believe that mental health has to do with our whole self; something that cannot simply be captured in a diagnosis and that traditional Western clinical therapy practices don't always work for everybody. Because of that, it is important that we explore different options and find what does work best for you.

Working with adults on their experience of anxiety and depression, people experiencing addiction or folks who are in recovery, grief and loss, and identity and trauma work with adoptees is what I am most passionate about. Outside of counseling, I also provide clinical supervision for mental health practitioners who are working on hours for licensure."

https://www.sandowellness.com/

https://www.instagram.com/sandowellness/

https://www.facebook.com/sandowellness

https://twitter.com/sandowellness

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

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 want to grow? Listen in as transracial adoptees Cosette and Zoe share what helped - and continues to help them - grow so they can overcome adversity and challenges.

Here's more about today's guests from their website:

My name is Cosette Eisenhauer. I am a 21-year-old transracial adoptee from Guangdong, China. I am going into my senior year at the University of Texas in Arlington. I am studying Social Work and my hope is to work with adoption and foster care or work in the legislative area to help pass and create new laws that might help adoptees, while still advocating for adoptees. My mom and dad are both Caucasian and I have a younger brother who is adopted from Dalian, China. I am also engaged right now and actively planning a wedding! (Lol fun times)

I'm Zoe (she/her) and I am a 22-year-old transracial adoptee from China! I am a senior in college in Ohio and I am studying psychology, math and Chinese. I just finished my year-long research project for my senior year regarding adoption, and hope to do adoption-related work post-college (among some other fun things!). You can find my work at www.overlookedadoptees.org. I also worked on some adoption-related projects in the summer of 2022. I have a single mom and a younger sister who is also adopted. 

https://www.facebook.com/navigatingadoption

https://twitter.com/navigatingadopt

https://www.instagram.com/navigating_adoption/

https://www.navigatingadoption.org/

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 long to belong? To feel loved and loveable? Late discovery adoptee Nancy didn't find out she was adopted until she was 37. She was devastated. She was haunted by a feeling of loss. And yet there was a part of her that she never lost. A part where she felt she belonged, loved and loveable. Listen in and she takes you to that healing place. Deep and profound. Touching and powerful.

Find out more about Nancy here:

http://www.nancymccaughey.com/

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

https://www.facebook.com/nancy.mccaughey.3

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 can you get a stronger sense of your own identity? Whether it's a full blown identity crisis or a vague lack of clarity on who we are, most of us struggle to see who we are at some stage of our lives. Transracial adoptees are, unsurprisingly, particularly conflicted. Listen in as Shelley shares how she's developed a stronger sense of self. Let her insights guide you to clarity.

Here's a link to the poem Shelley reads https://www.shelleyrottenberg.ca/writing

Shelley Rottenberg (she/her) is a transracial and international adoptee. She was born in China at the time of the One Child Policy and adopted to Canada at eight months of age. With a Master of Arts in Human Geography, Shelley has a passion for learning about people’s lived experiences and intersectional identities across space and time. She is currently working in qualitative research and volunteers with a number of adoptee-focused organizations in her spare time.

https://www.shelleyrottenberg.ca

https://www.instagram.com/shelleyrottenberg/

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

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 do we become more than our trauma? Through the epiphanies that help us see, understand and heal. Adoptee and psychotherapist Cristina goes deep on what she's learned to help you heal too.

Here's more about Cristina from her website:

I am a licensed clinical social worker with over ten years of experience in the field of mental health.  I have worked with various populations including children, adolescents, adults, and the chronically mentally ill.  As an adult adoptee, I know the challenges of coping with the primal wound of having been put up for adoption, even if the life with your adoptive family was very happy and loving. 

My primary treatment approach is cognitive-behavioral therapy.  This is a type of therapy where the therapist helps the client identify and change any irrational or unproductive thoughts.  Cognitive-behavioral therapy is scientifically valid and is used in many settings with a high level of efficacy.

I have two daughters, ages 12 and 2 ½.  When I’m not working I like to read, write, jog, and spend time with my girls.

https://www.instagram.com/eclecticsw

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069269746456

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-cristina-uribe-48167815/

https://www.aculcsw.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.

Many of us feel that we've lost our identity. How do we get it back? Listen in a Rod shares how he as constructed and reconstructed his identity to live life on his own terms. A profoundly different and empowering take on being an adoptees.

Here's more about Roderick.

Roderick Edwards (aka RoderickE) is a multi-genre author of over 25 books on topics as wide ranging as an autobiography of his being left for dead at the hospital at birth and his subsequent adoption at age 4 and reunion with his birth family at age 50. Or a series of books on WW2 cargo pilots that served in India with one of the men returning to the USA to develop the satellite program during the space race with the Soviets. RoderickE also has time travel fictions, books on politics, race relations, religion, philosophy, and poetry. Sometimes called the "Bansky of Books" due to his unexpected style that bypasses the cookie-cutter market-driven fare, you'll be certain to find something you will enjoy, or you will dive into a new genre with seamless crossover.

https://www.facebook.com/rodericke
https://twitter.com/roderickedotcom
https://www.instagram.com/roderickeauthor
https://tiktok.com/@roderickedotcom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roderick-edwards-56170a24a
https://www.youtube.com/@roderickeauthor
https://truthsocial.com/@roderickedotcom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Roderick_E
https://www.bookbub.com/profile/roderick-edwards

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 do we process trauma so it no longer hurts so much so often? For many of us this a lifetime's journey. Adoptee from South Korea Shelby shares 35 years of ups, downs and insights. Listen in for your own insights to processing your own trauma.

Shelby Redfield Kilgore is an adoptee from South Korea and has dedicated this channel to all things foster care and adoption. In between freelance work as a TV producer, Shelby's passion project is to spread awareness and education about foster care and adoption through the video lens. The best way to support her work is to subscribe to her channel, share about it with your friends, family and community, purchase the book she co-authored with another adoptee, Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections at BookBaby or Amazon, along with merchandise at veronicashelby.redbubble.com and Etsy. Coming soon you'll be able to book a Rooted Conversation at rootedinadoption.com

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC29mX9k1rO1TXv7ubmZDlg

https://twitter.com/kilgoreredfield

https://www.instagram.com/yoonmeichae

https://www.wearemirrorlight.com/book

https://www.facebook.com/kismetadoptionawareness/

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.

Want a smoother reunion?

Reunion is often an emotional rollercoaster and we can get thrown off the ride. How do we get back on again? Yvonne  placed her son for adoption in 1973 and reunited with him in 2018. She shares a lifetime's personal experience. She also goes deep on expectations and shares what she has learned talking with thousands of birth moms and adoptees.  This episode is all about helping you navigate the tough stuff with grace.

Here's a  link to her incredible story

https://birthmomsrealtalk.com/episodes/0-yvonne-i-felt-like-i-could-breathe-again-2/

More at:

https://birthmomsrealtalk.com/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068148750078

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

https://www.instagram.com/birthmomsrealtalk/

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 your healing was faster?

Did your world fall apart when you came out of the fog? Are you wondering what comes now you're consciously aware of your trauma? Listen in as Becca shares how she came out of the fog after tragedy and what's helping her heal. An incredibly vulnerable and empowering episode.

Becca was born in 1975, adopted at 2 years old and lives in Seattle.

Here's a link to the Kubler Ross curve https://www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/change-curve/

https://www.rebeccawellington.com/

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

https://www.instagram.com/_rebecca_wellington/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085186204263

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.

If your truth has been shattered this episode is one for you. Jack opens up about how we get through the challenges life throws at us adoptees. Jack has a gift for clarity and distills neuroscience from his college days in a way that we can all understand healing. He changed my take on trauma. Listen in and see if he does the same for you.

Jack Rocco is one of the more than two million babies born in the 1960s who were taken away from their birth mothers and sent to live with an adoptive family. He was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage and while he knew the story of his “Gotday,” he didn’t know the story of his “birth day.” His was a closed adoption, and all he knew was that his birth parents were a young couple—an Italian father and a German Irish mother—who couldn’t afford to raise a child.

He was also one of the lucky ones. On the outside, it appeared that Dr. Rocco had weathered the adoption phenomenon with ease: he had a successful career as an orthopedic surgeon, a nice home, a beautiful wife and two children, and he traveled the world helping children in faraway places like Madagascar. But then his marriage broke down and the pandemic hit and he began to question everything.

Turns out he didn’t know the truth.

In Recycled, Dr. Rocco shares his journey of discovering that the birth story he's been told and his belief about closed adoptions—that there's no way to obtain details—might not be true. He devours books about adoption and adoption trauma. He tries to follow the long and twisted tentacles of nurture, nature, and free will—which parts of him were due to genetics? The nurturing environment of his adoptive home? And which parts did he have control over?

As some of the puzzle pieces of his life click into place, others remain disconnected and swirling out of reach. And then, he makes a discovery that shatters his very self-identity.

Here's the link to the video on PTSD and trauma I mention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRS3xiDp6yU

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

https://twitter.com/JRocco34

https://ingeniumbooks.com/recycled/

https://www.facebook.com/jack.rocco.376

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.