All posts by kaomig

A journalist and podcaster.

Season 7, Episode 15: Dr. JaeHee Chung-Sherman – You Don’t Have to Be Resilient

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.

Audio available on Friday, March 29, 2024. Patreon supporters get early access.

Season 7, Episode 14: Leading an Adoptee Organization

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. 

Season 7, Episode 13: Adoptee Consciousness Model

Join me as I learn more about the Adoptee Consciousness Model developed by Dr. Susan Branco (not shown), Dr. Jaeran Kim, 55, and Grace Newton, 29, MSW. We also talk about the beginnings of their notable blogs where Kim and Newton both began writing about the impact of adoption, ‘righteous anger’ and adoptee identity.

Audio available Friday, March 1, 2024.

Dr. JaeRan Kim

Harlow’s Monkey

Journal link https://www.ibpj.org/issues/articles/Susan%20F.%20Branco,%20JaeRan%20Kim,%20Grace%20Newton,%20Stephanie%20Kripa%20Cooper-Lewter,%20Paula%20O’Loughlin%20-%20….pdf

https://harlows-monkey.com/

Instagram @harlows_monkey

LinkedIn jaerankimphd

Grace Newton

Instagram: @redthreadbroken  

Facebook: Red Thread Broken

Twitter or X: @gracepinghua   

Website: www.redthreadbroken.com

Season 7, Episode 12: Thomas Haessly and the Imposter Within

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.

Audio will be available on February 16, 2024.

Season 7, Episode 11: Rachel Forbes, LCSW, and the 4Fs (of Survival and Trauma Responses)

This week, I talk with Rachel Forbes, LCSW, an Korean-American adoptee therapist and educator. We discuss trauma that occurs in the womb and from early parent separation, and emotional disregulation. Forbes, 34, talks about healing techniques and provides a lot of great resources too. 

CW: child molestation/incest/sexual abuse 

Audio available Feb. 2, 2024.

Season 7, Episode 10: Marissa Lichwick and Her Ghosts

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. Her first feature-length film is a semi-autobiographical look at her life and will be distributed widely this fall.

Audio available on Friday, January 19, 2024.

Season 7, Episode 9: Sara Docan-Morgan and Being In-Reunion

Sara Docan-Morgan, PhD, is a Korean adoptee and communications professor in Wisconsin. Docan-Morgan, 47, is also the youngest child in her Korean biological family, with whom she reunited with many years ago. Her research has focussed on experiences of Korean adoptees and their families, and this month she is out with a new book, “In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family” (Temple University Press).

Audio available on Jan. 5, 2024. Patreon supporters receive an early download.

Season 7, Episode 8: Mia Haessly is Coexisting with Biological and Adoptive Family

Mia Haessly, 44, is a 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. 

Audio available on Dec. 22, 2023.

Season 7, Episode 7: Helen Noh, From Adoption Worker to Critic in South Korea

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 that a third of respondents adopted overseas were abused in their adoptive homes

Audio available Dec. 8, 2023.

Season 7, Episode 6: Robert Holloway and Menzeba Hasati are Children of a Korean Adoptee

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. 

Available on Friday, November 24, 2023.