Labor of Love: A Podcast for BIPOC Adoptees Navigating Parenthood

In this episode, Jenna Corriveau takes us on her journey out of the fog of internalized white supremacy, adoptee “fawn response”, isolation, and harmful familial relationships, and into personal authenticity, self love, adoptee community, and empowerment as a BIPOC adoptee mother. She generously shares her belief in brain science, learning nervous system regulation, and giving oneself daily grace, especially as an adoptee parent. Jenna is un-schooling and eclectic homeschooling her three children, and is deep in the process of de-schooling herself, as an extension of reclaiming her identity around her intelligence and personal autonomy.   

https://synergeticplaytherapy.com/
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Join us for a beautiful conversation with adoptee mother, Astrid Castro and daughter, Maya Papaya Castro Dabbeni. They generously share about their tremendous love and bond, and shed light on how intergenerational trauma and painful legacies of adoption have affected their relationship, perspectives, and behaviors. We also discuss the importance of mirroring and how unique it is for adoptees and children of adoptees; their unique birth family reunion story; birth language acquisition within adoptee families; creating adoption fluency; and moving from isolation as adoptees into community together with our children.   

https://www.adoptionmosaic.com/

Astrid Ca...

Dr. Kimberly McKee joins us in a lively conversation that touches on her experiences with her blended family through the pandemic, relationship with her birth family, and upcoming research on API adoptee women and girls in the media. Kim generously shares her perspectives on the challenges and privileges of being a working mom, an adoptee in reunion, and in partnership with a fellow Korean adoptee. She is a fierce advocate for Asian Americans and adoptees through her academic work and teaching, the philosophy of “fed is best”, and taking the time and space to be very intentional about cultivating her...

Jessica M. Luciere, Colombian adoptee in reunion, generously shares her unique perspective as a long-time professional adoptee mentor/advocate and mother of two young children. An only child with adoptive parents who passed away, Jessica has the complex experience of witnessing her children forge life-long relationships with her Colombian family and not the Italian American parents who raised her. She reminds us of the importance of letting our kids have their own experiences outside of our losses, projections, and grief from adoption, and that the lines of healing across and through relationships are often not linear or exactly reciprocal...

Today we sit down with Dr. JaeRan Kim, a fierce advocate, researcher, social worker, blogger and needle savvy knitter. Over many years, JaeRan has been very influential in the adoptee community through her academic publications and well-known blog, Harlow’s Monkey, where she connects transracial adoption to the larger forces of white supremacy, racism and colonization. She continues to be a vast resource for adoptees and adoptive parents alike. In this episode, JaeRan generously shares how she helped build her children's racial and cultural identities, critical thinking skills, and sensitivity to the lives and experiences of adoptees. She sheds li...

Join us for a heartfelt and deeply reflective conversation with Isaac Etter, father of a 22-month-old son (at the time of recording), Black domestic adoptee, activist, and founder of identitylearning.co. Isaac generously shares some of his adoption story with us, his journey into fatherhood, and his reflections on some of the more challenging and even taboo feelings that often come up for adoptees in parenthood, as well as growing compassion for his birth mother at the same time. We touch on the notion of “information poverty” several times throughout the conversation, to expand on the question, “what is the st...

Angela Burlile, Korean adoptee, joins us for a very intimate conversation about her journey from considering adoption to pursuing IVF in Korea. We time travel together to discuss befriending grief, loss, longing and healing, and her courageous process to remove herself as the site for unlearning racism with her husband.

Angela Burlile Bio:
Angela (she/her) is a Korean adoptee currently living in Lynnwood, Washington with her partner Chris, and their dog Penny. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, Angela returned to South Korea and spent six years teaching English. Returning to Washington in 2015, Angela pursued a...

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Dr. Kit Myers, Hong Kong transracial adoptee, father of two daughters, police abolition activist, and an old adoptee camp counselor friend. Kit would have been your favorite P.E. teacher, but he opted to immerse himself in academic studies, coming out on the other side as current Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. We discuss Kit's process in becoming a professor, teaching his daughters about valuing love, anger and their mixed Hmong and Chinese American identities, the influence that fetal microchimerism had on his desire to continue...

Shannon Gibney is a mother of three, prolific author, activist, educator, runner, and Buddhist transracial adoptee. In this episode, she blesses us with profound reflections. We dive straight into the “structures of feeling”, a place beyond words, where loss and other body wisdom lives, a kinship among adoptees and to loss itself. Shannon connects the losses of adoption to experiences of infant loss and miscarriage, to create a space for recognition and honoring of the, ultimately, impermanent nature of all things. She also gives a first sneak peak into her new book, Botched: A Speculative Memoir on Transracial Adoption, out...

Joy Lieberthal Rho is a powerful Korean adoptee leader, founder, visionary, and community nurturer. Join us for the pleasure of listening to her share some of her personal parenting journey, her keen observations on motherhood milestones, and the importance of seeking prenatal, postpartum, and mental healthcare that centers the unique and specific experience of being a BIPOC adoptee parent. 

Joy Lieberthal Rho Bio
Joy Lieberthal Rho, LCSW-R is a social worker/counselor in private practice and also at the Juilliard School in NY. She has been involved with the international adoptee community for over 25 years, as a...

Join us for a beautiful conversation with Korean adoptee, Stephen Johnson, as he shares his journey into new fatherhood and the call to be the best version of himself for his son. He also shares poignant adoptee moments such as when his son became the age as when he was adopted. Stephen discusses reuniting with his birth family, his thoughts on birth fathers and adoptee fathers, and honoring his Korean sister’s legacy through his start-up company, Hyesun House, https://makemakgeolli.com. 

Stephen Johnson Bio
Stephen Johnson is a reunited Korean adoptee and new father to a t...

Amy HyunAh Pak and Sarah Kim Park, two incredible Korean adoptee mothers, antiracism activists and adoptee community leaders, join us for our very first episode. They generously share their journeys as Korean adoptees, daughters of the diaspora, and community mothers. We traverse deep territory, touching on areas such as ancestral connections, healing through parenting, and the strength and love that it takes to create new and mixed family cultures.

Amy HyunAh Pak Bio
Amy is a Korean American immigrant, transracial adoptee, and a mother with two decades of cultural community work in Seattle organizing around healing...

Welcome to Labor of Love, a podcast that centers and amplifies the voices of BIPOC adoptees navigating parenthood. In this space, we connect with and gather the wisdom of contemplating, expecting, new, and experienced adoptee parents of color. We talk fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth and delivery, postpartum and beyond, all from an adoptee perspective. We believe our community needs and deserves more resources for the beautiful and challenging journey of being a BIPOC adoptee parent. This podcast is one of our contributions to our community. Thank you for joining us.

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park Music: Mike...