Simone Pajo was born in Auckland New Zealand in 1968, the baby scoop era.  She was the middle child between two bio children and was adopted after the death of the middle bio daughter.  She grew up knowing her adoption was the result of a baby's death and this greatly affected the way she saw the world and her place in it.  It has taken decades for Simone to form a coherent worldview where her right to her identity does not depend on the needs of others. She has lived in the UK for over 30...

Ryan Anderson is a foundling and a transnational, transracial, and late discovery adoptee (LDA). Found on the street in El Jadida, Morocco he was adopted at age 3 months and then brought to Scotland at age 6 months, in between this time he was fostered by a Moroccan family. He first found out he was adopted at age 18. Since 2020 he has been focused on personal development, to then became open to sharing his story at age 31. To skip ahead to the interview go to timestamp: 14:21 Relinquished:...

Jessica is a 1970 baby scoop-era adoptee, who started discovering her roots at age 50. After more than 80 years of closed records in NYS, she was able to obtain her original birth certificate in 2020. Two DNA tests and one secret after another uncovered a history of relinquishment, trauma, and family ties nearby of where she resides in upstate New York.  At 54, Jessica is learning to live her truth on her terms and allowing herself to heal from the lifelong effects of being adopted. A retired...

Valerie Naiman is an adoptee, singer, story-songwriter, eco-village founder, ontologist, and author. Her #1 bestseller book, Mystic Masquerade, an Adoptee's Search for Truth, was based on five decades of a search that took her around the world as she unraveled the mystery of her stolen identity.  Valerie holds a master's degree in Art and worked as a costume designer and actress in film and theatre in NY, Miami & LA. She’s the President of the Spirit Foundation, a non-profit that supports...

Chris Valdheims is a domestic adoptee born in the late 1970s and adopted in the early 1980s after spending years of his early childhood in foster care. Growing up, he knew very little about his birth family other than his mother and father had met while she worked as a librarian at MIT. He also knew his father was Black, and his mother had immigrated to the United States from Latvia. He spent years searching for answers about his family of origin, and in 2009, he stumbled upon a complex story...

After being an only child all her life, Margaret Jane’s adoptive parents adopted four more children through the foster care system. This experience of witnessing adoption through foster care, and being the oldest sister of a group of adoptees, has given her a unique perspective and experience with adoption.  Margaret Jane is married to her high school sweetheart, who she shares 3 kiddos with. She is an avid gardener, houseplant collector, and sourdough enthusiast. She also enjoys playing...

Susan Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, published by the Ohio State University Press in November 2023. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere.  Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater. She is a...

Stacie is a Canadian born and an adoptee to same race and religion parents in 1991-1992. She is part of a mixed family of adopted and “home-made” siblings, all boys, and is the second oldest. She grew up mostly outdoors in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. Traveling to Canada every summer fostered loving bonds with both of her grandmas and many cousins. Living further away from them, though, meant she had to create her group of “family” as she grew up. She’s maintained supportive friendships...

Ken DeStefano is a domestic adoptee born in the late 1960's and raised in a caring and loving home.  As an adoptee, he has had a largely happy life, but always wondered about the unknown.  That curiosity led to a search for his birth mother and a reunification with her.  His debut novel, "I Will See You Again...Hearts Will Sing," tells the story of two people whose past, present, and future lives are inexplicably linked. Update: We are not able to attend Chicago Foglift - to attend: Foglift...

Victoria Rich never expected to search for her biological family. Always curious about her origins, she did a photography project at the infant home where she was born but did not pursue any personal searching. Then she read The Girls Who Went Away and was struck that so many of the women interviewed said they thought about and worried about their babies all the time. She had grown up hearing the message that you should never look because it would be too painful to open up the old wounds for...

John Frey was born in Vietnam and brought to the United States as part of Operation Babylift when he was a year-and-a-half old.  John often struggled with his identity, having been adopted and raised by a White American family while not having any connection to his birth country or culture. I Would Meet You Anywhere by Susan Kiyo Ito. Use Discount  MAKINGOF  for 30% off. Thank you S12F for our past support and support of Adoptees 501c3 organizations. Gregory Luce and Adoptees Rights Law Joe...

Kristal Parke is a talented Cree filmmaker, producer, podcast host, and adoptee, whose personal journey has driven her to explore themes of identity, belonging, and family in her work. Born and raised on the West Coast of Canada, Kristal was adopted into a non-indigenous family as an infant. This experience profoundly shaped her perspective on life, and she has used her creative prowess to shed light on the complexities of adoption and its impact on individuals and communities. In her highly...

Lorah Gerald is a same race, domestic, Baby Scoop Era, preRoe adoptee. She posts as The Adopted Chameleon on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Patreon, and Pinterest. She co-facilitates Adoptees Connect Tulsa and has a private Facebook group for adoptees and all MPEs called The Adopted Chameleons. She started her social media pages after her reunion with her biological family. She was raised as an only child in her adoptive family.  This was the first time in her life she had ever seen or...

Sarah D. Shearer is a writer, wife, and mother. She was adopted from Russia as a baby but has spent her life in Thomasville, Georgia. She is passionate about encouraging people to overcome and maintain a positive perspective. Sarah is married with two beautiful children. She and her family live on a sprawling rural farm, which gives her, as L.M. Montgomery says in Sarah’s favorite childhood novel Anne of Green Gables, great “scope for the imagination.” Sarah also enjoys writing for local...

Born in Edinburgh in 1963, Roy grew up an only child and always knew he was adopted, or as his adoptive mother, Mollie, would tell him, “chosen”. Whilst loved unconditionally by Mollie and her husband Peter, the stigma of being an adopted teenager in 1970s Scotland resulted in Roy being bullied and spat on in school.  At sixteen, he left Mollie a note asking if she had any information about his blood parents. She supplied a form his birth mother had filled in at the adoption agency that gave...

Pam Uzzell is a documentary filmmaker and podcaster currently living in Oakland, CA. She is the director and producer of four independent documentaries and the host and producer of the podcast, Art Heals All Wounds.  Her adoptive parents were loving but saw her as the “oddball” of her family, resulting in a profound sense of loneliness. She turned to reading as a way to find a sense of belonging, which led her to gravitate towards storytelling as a career. She’d often been curious about both...

Sally King is an adult adoptee from the foster system. Growing up she knew she did not seem to fit anywhere and just accepted that that was who she was. After marrying and having two biological children a little girl came to her and her husband through the foster care system. This had her embark on a journey of self-discovery and acknowledgment and through the later adoption of her daughter and dealing with social services once again she realized the impact her foster and adoption had on...

Jane is a baby scoop-era adoptee born in 1963 in Delaware to a 14 yr. old mother. After being in foster care for the first 10 months she was adopted and raised by two wonderful parents in Pennsylvania. Shortly after her 2nd birthday, her parents gave birth to a biological son.  Jane always knew she was adopted and wondered where she came from but never wanted or needed to search. But, at the age of 58, after both adoptive parents passed, she did a DNA test as well as some other searching. She...

Born in 1970, Sean Broderick was adopted at birth and always knew he was adopted as long as he can remember.  The fact that he was adopted never seemed to bother him or cause any type of turmoil in his life.  Sean seemingly had a happy and healthy childhood although alcoholism existed within one of his adoptive parents, his parents ultimately divorced and he had a lack of discipline and guidance due to being alone often. Growing up, Sean’s adopted mother would remind him from time to time...

Katherine Sanford is yet another adoptee caught up in the Baby Scoop Era of U.S. closed adoptions and the restrictive laws that prevent access to birth records. It wasn’t until 2017, with the help of two spit-in-a-tube ancestry kits, that she could finally answer the one crucial question she longed to answer: “Who am I?” Katherine writes about her experience in the award-winning book, Storked! You can follow her at www.kcsanford.com I Would Meet You Anywhere by Susan Kiyo Ito. Use...

Join us for a deep dive into 'loss' with David Benjamin (guest:Season Two) and Moses Farrow (guest:Season Five). To find David Benjamin To find Moses Farrow Magic Mind - The World’s First Productivity Shot™ Use code: ADOPTION20 to save on your subscription. Available in all Sprouts in January 2024 To find NPE Stories Thank you to our sponsor S12F. Gregory Luce and Adoptees Rights Law Joe Soll & other adoptee resources Fireside Adoptees Facebook Group Reckoning with the Primal Wound...

Nikole Shaw also known as "Koko" in the online community was born in Hawaiian Gardens, California, growing up in the suburbs of Orange County.  Adopted as an infant, she is a black domestic adoptee who spent much of her life in a small town called Brea. Koko received her Bachelors of Science from San Jose State University and is currently working for the Department of Public Health San Francisco as a mental health professional.  Koko is mostly known in the adoptee community as...

Shelley Jean is a baby scoop-era domestic adoptee born in 1970. She was in foster care for about 2 months before being adopted. She always knew she was adopted but didn’t think about it very often until her adoptive mother passed away. At the age of 48, Shelley started on her journey of self-discovery. She now has a hard time imagining her life before searching. The journey has had many ups and downs, but Shelley is content to finally know her own story. Also in this episode, Sarah and Louise...

Kevin Barhydt is a YouTube creator and the author of Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother. His YouTube channel creates a safe space for survivors of addiction, abandonment, adoption, and child sexual abuse, to explore the healing process. Abandoned by his mother at birth, Kevin was enveloped in a labyrinth of adoption, addiction, and child sexual abuse. By age 20, a shell of the boy he once was, Kevin succumbed completely to a suicidal lifestyle of drug dealing and prostitution. At 45, after many...