Leader Yukyeong Kim and her group of neighbors and friends in Korea have been quietly and determinedly helping adoptees search for their biological family since 2018. I sit down with Kim to find out more about how the group got started and how their willingness to make a simple phone call has often times had surprising results.  ..read more

Dr. JaeHee Chung-Sherman, DSW, LCSW, has centered her practice and research on decolonizing adoption and mental health for transracial and international adoptees. A transracial, transnational adoptee herself, Chung-Sherman, 47, has been among the first co-hort of TRIA therapists to do this work. She talks about narcissistic colonial adopt systems, and why she ultimately has decided to move on from private practice ..read more

Mia Quade Kristensen, 46, and Jannie Jung Westermann, 45, are on the board of the 34-year old Danish Korean adoptee organization, Korea Klubben. They will share about their own search and reunion stories, including one of them being in reunion with her Korean family for more than two decades. The women will also share about their community in Denmark and what is needed for the future. Besides the US and Korea, Denmark is the third most-downloaded country for the podcast.  Audio is available on Friday, March 15, 2024.  ..read more

I talk with Dr. JaeRan Kim and PhD student Grace Newton about the Adoptee Consciousness Model - a framework for understanding adoptee awareness of the impact of adoption. Together with Dr. Susan Branco (not featured), the model is now being discussed and critiqued in academic and adoptee communities. Kim, 55, and Newton, 29, also talk about their earlier years when helming their own anonymous blogs about adoptee identity, 'righteous anger' and the impact of adoption.  Dr. JaeRan Kim:  Harlow's Monkey https://harlows-monkey.com/2022/06/23/coming-to-consciousness/    Journal ..read more

Thomas Haessly, 40, has felt like an outsider ever since he can remember. Adopted from Korea by a Danish mother and American father to Racine, Wisconsin, Haessly recalls feeling like an imposter within his family, of not quite fitting in, and again as an adult at Korean grocery stores and parenting his own children. Haessly’s sister, Mia, also an adopted Korean, is featured on Season 7, Episode 8 of this podcast. This interview is the first for the podcast where adopted siblings who grew up together open up about their lived experiences, and illustrate their differences ..read more

Rachel Forbes, LCSW, is a Korean-American adoptee with a psychotherapy practice in Connecticut where she specializes in transracial adoption and trauma-informed care. She is also an educator who speaks about trauma, attachment and healing within the adoption constellation. Forbes, 34, talks about the 4Fs regarding emotion disregulation and provides some good resources too.    **CW: child sexual assault/ incest/ adoptive parent abuse  ..read more

Marissa Lichwick, 46, is a Korean adoptee and filmmaker, playwright and actor. She is using her past pain and trauma surrounding her family separation, abuse in the orphanage and in her father and stepmother's home and the haunting loss of a half-sister she's never met in her art, to process the events of her life and to encourage healing and community with others.  ..read more

Mia Haessly, 44, is a working mother and adopted Korean-American who has reunited with her Korean biological father. And while introducing her family to him and seeing her children connect with Korea in a way she never had has been meaningful, the reunion has presented new challenges. Besides the language and cultural barriers, there is the physical distance between Wisconsin (USA) and Korea.  And Haessly's adoptive parents have at times struggled with accepting that her Korean father is back in the picture, especially her Danish mother.  ..read more

Helen Noh, PhD., is retiring next year after four decades working in child welfare in Korea, first as an adoption social worker to now a professor of social work, training generations of students to make an imprint on improving the lives of children and families. Noh, 64, has become a leading academic voice in Korea on changing policies regarding adoption in Korea. She talks with Adapted Podcast about her career, some observations working at Holt Korea, the problem with proxy adoptions as well as results of a study she and others conducted for the Korean Human Rights Commission, which found th ..read more

Robert Holloway, 34, and Menzeba Hasati, 40, are siblings who are adult children of a Black Korean adoptee. Their mother is a first-wave adoptee, whose mother was Korean and father an American G.I. She was adopted to Alaska in the 1960s by a Black couple. Her children forged their own identities; one in spite of their mother's strong influence towards Korean culture, and the other, embraced it.  Now as adults, Robert and Menzeba talk about the intergenerational trauma in their family, and how separation, abandonment, longing and love all embody their lives and experience with adoption.&nb ..read more