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If you’re struggling, you’re not alone. In the U.S., call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line). Outside the U.S., please contact your local crisis line. Summary “Kids are resilient.” Most adoptees grew up hearing some version of it. In this solo episode, released the day before Adoptee Remembrance Day and two days before her adoption day and the podcast’s one-year anniversary, Julie takes a hard, honest look at the word her podcast is named for. Drawing on Jean Kelly Widner’s The Adoption Paradox, Paul Sunderland’s idea that adoption should really be called “adaption,” and her own somatic training, Julie explores the difference between adaptation and true resilience. What looks like resilience in an adopted child is often a nervous system doing what it had to do to survive. Real resilience, she says, isn’t automatic. It’s built, in the body, over time, and no one should have to build it alone. Julie also pauses to honor the adoptees we’ve lost, shares openly about her own hard season, and leads a short pendulation practice you can come back to anytime. In This Episode Why Julie launched the podcast on her adoption day“Kids are resilient,” and what that phrase actually asks of adopted childrenPaul Sunderland on why adoption should be called “adaption”The Bruce Perry line that stopped Julie: separation as the single most traumatic event a human can surviveA moment of silence for Adoptee Remembrance Day, and why the adoptees we’ve lost were not less resilient than the rest of usWhy “Resilience is earned. It’s not automatic.” is good newsHow resilience lives in the body, and its link to Capacity from the 5 Conditions of Self-BelongingJulie’s own season: three moves, a divorce, five losses, and four cancer diagnoses in her family, and what’s helping her stay with herself through it“Survival wearing resilience’s clothes”: when old adoptee patterns come back firstAnger as an early sign of resilience, not a failure of itTaking back the pen: agency and authoring your own storyA guided pendulation practiceOne year of The Resilience ProjectResources & Links Mentioned Bring Your Burden, a free live gathering for adult adoptees on Zoom, 6:30 PM Mountain / 8:30 PM Eastern. Replay available to everyone who registers -  https://www.cominghometoself.co/Bring-Your-Burden-GatheringThe Refuge, a monthly community for adult adoptees - https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refugeThe Adoption Paradox by Jean Kelly Widner - https://a.co/d/0eDMtOrgPaul Sunderland’s lecture on adoption and addiction -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0-SsmOUJI&t=211sAdoptee Remembrance Day, observed every October 30. It was founded by Pamela Karanova of Adoptees Connect - https://www.facebook.com/adopteeremembrancedayThe 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging series, including the Capacity episode -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-adoptees-abandon-themselves-and-how-to-finally-stay/id1849822021?i=1000772206976Call to Action If this one stirred something in you, don’t rush past it. If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe there for a moment. If this podcast has meant something to you this past year, a five-star review, or even a few written words, helps more adoptees and the people who love them find their way here. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

For many adoptees, our earliest experience of touch was tangled up with separation. So what does it look like to let the body be held again, with care, consent, and choice? In this episode, Dr. Liz DeBetta and I introduce the newest member of the Un-M-Othered retreat team: Diane Maury, LMT, adoptee, licensed massage therapist, reiki practitioner, and founder of Rooted River Wellness. Diane shares her adoption story: foster care, a confidential intermediary search, DNA discoveries, and the secondary rejection so many of us know. She also shares how twenty years of bodywork became part of her own healing. We talk about why the adoptee body needs to settle, not just open. We explain how Liz’s words, Julie’s sensing, and Diane’s settling braid together over one weekend, and why nobody at this retreat is ever put on a table they didn’t choose. In this episode: 03:01 Diane’s adoption story, search, and reunion12:10 How she found massage and reiki15:00 The meaning behind Rooted River Wellness (and a tree with no roots)20:40 How Liz and Diane met, and why she belongs in this room29:00 Building capacity for safe touch35:30 What Diane notices when an adoptee gets on her table38:37 Reiki in plain language42:11 When emotions come up during bodywork44:19 How the one-on-one sessions work at the Red Poppy58:52 For the person on the fenceUn-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing December 4–6, 2026 · Red Poppy Center for Renewal · Highland, Michigan Everything but travel is included: two nights on site, all meals, the film, the workshops, and a one-on-one session with Liz, Julie, or Diane. Only 9 spots left, and space for men is limited. Deposit and payment plans are available. 🔗 Reserve your spot: https://www.lizdebetta.com/un-m-othered-adoptee-healing-retreat 🔗 Diane Maury, Rooted River Wellness: https://www.instagram.com/diane.maury.lmt/ 🔗 Bring Your Burden Gathering - Register here: https://www.cominghometoself.co/Bring-Your-Burden-Gathering Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

In 1970, outside a Houston hospital, a couple pulled up to a curb and drove away with a newborn. No agency. No judge. No paperwork. That baby was Patricia Knight Meyer. Julie and Patricia met in person at Adoption: The Making of Me in Austin this April, squealing and hugging like old friends after years of finding each other online. Patricia’s memoir, Wonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption, is Julie’s favorite adoptee memoir she has ever read. In this conversation, they go underneath the story Patricia has told in so many places. They talk about growing up with a birthday nobody could confirm, and the recurring nightmares of “The Dark Man” that stopped only when a piece of paper finally said who she belonged to. They talk about feeling grateful and misplaced at the same time, and why Patricia sees her parents as victims of a system built on secrecy. And they talk about what it means to finally write yourself home: the grief that still surfaces after the book is written, the gift of genetic mirroring she found with her late birth father, and why every adoptee deserves the truth about where they came from. In This Episode Walking into her first adoptee conference and realizing, for the first time, what it feels like to fully belongWhy she named the book Wonderland, and the Lewis Carroll quotes that open many of its chaptersLiving with a birthday she can’t confirm, and the daily reminder of not knowing her own truth“The Dark Man” nightmares, and what changed when her delayed certificate of birth arrivedHow trauma memory works, and why she wrote certain scenes before beginning EMDRThe “Brown Babies” chapter: feeling like she had to make up for her adoptive mother’s lossesBeing grateful and misplaced at the same time, and the secrets she learned to keep as a childWhy her parents, a mixed-race couple in 1960s Texas, likely turned to a private adoption, and how she understands their choices nowWhere adoption trauma has lived in her body, and the grief that surfaced years after she thought she’d processed itWhy adoption should be the last option, not the firstFinding a biological cousin placed by the same attorneyWhat she wishes she’d known before reunion, and why reunion has to move at the pace of the slowest personThe genetic mirroring she found with her late birth father, and releasing Wonderland on the anniversary of his deathWhat she hopes people across the constellation take from the bookThe “Down the Rabbit Hole” launch event in AustinResources & Links Mentioned The Refuge, Julie’s monthly community for adult adopteesWonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption (Unsolicited Press, November 3, 2026)Down the Rabbit Hole: The Fight for Texas Adoptee Rights Then and Now. Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, 6:30 p.m. Central, Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin. Free in person and free livestream, with a recording sent to everyone who registers. Benefits the National Association of Adoptees and Parents, Saving Our Sisters, and Adoption Knowledge Affiliates.Patricia’s blogUn-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing, with Julie and Dr. Liz DeBetta. December 4–6, Highland, MichiganCall to Action If something in this conversation stirred something in you, don’t rush past it. If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe there for a moment. If this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review, or even a few written words, helps more adoptees and the people who love them find their way here. Belonging was never something you were supposed to go out and find in someone else’s approval. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Paige Strickland was born in Ohio in 1961 and adopted as a baby, at a time when records were sealed and adoptees were expected to be grateful and never look back. She loved her adoptive family. She also grew up feeling like being adopted was a Scarlet Letter A, a secret she didn't tell her college friends, her coworkers, or anyone but the man she was about to marry. Then in 1987, a morning talk show changed everything. Paige learned her Ohio records were open, sent in two forms of ID and $20, and spent a summer going back and forth between the courthouse and the public library with microfiche and crisscross directories, "beating the system one record at a time." Julie and Paige talk about what that search took and what it gave back. They talk about a birth mother she never got to meet, a birth father who sat with her for three hours at a Denny's and then backed away, and what she learned after his death that helped her understand why. And they talk about her third book, Born Adopted: And Finding My Truth, a memoir in verse written for middle schoolers and up, so the next generation of adoptees doesn't have to search as long to find the words. In This Episode Paige's work as a special education aide, and the synchronicity of finding sisters who do the same workThe wave of adoptee voices between 2010 and 2015, and marching with newly searching adoptees to Ohio's Vital Statistics building in the pouring rainGrowing up with adoption as a Scarlet Letter A, and why "you're so lucky" comes from lack of knowledge"I don't believe my adoptive parents lied. I believe they got lied to."The 1987 talk show, the VHS tape, and the envelope from ColumbusSearching before the internet: courthouses, libraries, northern Kentucky records, and the energy of finally getting answersHer adoptive mom's support and her adoptive dad's own struggles during the searchHer birth mother's story, the Appalachian migration north for factory work, and grieving someone she never metMeeting her birth father, his pulling away, and the understanding that came laterSisters, "girl power," and a 30th reunion anniversary trip to DisneylandWhy she rewrote her story as a book in verse, and what she hopes adopted and non-adopted kids each take from itAdoption, middle school, and the fear of being bullied for itResources & Links Mentioned The Refuge, Julie's monthly community for adult adoptees. This episode's thread is already open.Born Adopted: And Finding My Truth by Paige Strickland (Kindle out now; paperback released October 5)Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity and After the Truth by Paige Strickland Paige's SubstackThe Adoptee Survival Guide, the anthology edited by Lynn Grubb that includes Paige's writingUn-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing, Julie and Dr. Liz DeBetta's in-person retreat, December 4–6, 2026, Highland, MichiganCall to Action If something in this conversation stirred something in you, don't rush past it. If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe for a moment. Then come talk about it with us in The Refuge, where this episode's thread is already open. You don't have to carry it alone. If this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review, or even a few written words, helps more adoptees and the people who love them find their way here. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Resources & Links Mentioned Adopted Connor on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. He answers DMs, not comments.PatreonThe Primal Wound by Nancy VerrierYou Don't Look Adopted by Anne Heffron (Connor's favorite adoption book)Poverty, by America by Matthew DesmondGretchen Sisson's book RelinquishedSchedule a call with Julie Register for the Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing retreatJoin The Refuge Membership Community hereJulie sits down with Connor Howe, known online as Adopted Connor, a former marketer turned adoptee advocate whose bio says it plainly: "Adoption is what happens when governments choose not to take care of their people. 'Open' adoption is a marketing tactic." Connor was one of the first kids to grow up in an open adoption. He got to see his mom. He had a loving family. On paper, he was the best-case scenario. And still, the grief showed up. Julie is honest about her own first reaction to Connor's content, and about what she found when she met him in person at Adoption: The Making of Me in Minneapolis. Together they talk about what "open" actually meant for Connor as a kid, why equal treatment wasn't what he needed, and the hospital room where his first child's birth cracked everything open. They also talk about his painful search for his Irish birth father, and how Gaelic football became a way home: a common language beyond DNA. This isn't a revenge tour. It's a man who wants adoptees to feel what they feel without being told they're crazy. In This Episode Why Connor uses his marketing background to "play the adoption agency's own game"Being in a room full of adopted people, and why it felt so surrealGrowing up "open": seeing his mom once every year or two, and why he calls those visits "proof of life"Why the confusing part was never "who's my real mom," but why he couldn't see her moreEqual treatment vs. equity, and refusing to smile in picturesControl, rule-following, and why he's never had a drinkThe birth of his first child, finding his adoption file, and reading The Primal WoundHow he and his adoptive family came through the conflict, and the most meaningful thing his adoptive mom ever said to himWhat searching really costs, and why he'd take a thousand hate comments over family who won't acknowledge himGaelic football, a customs agent who asked "you're one of us, aren't you?", and belonging beyond DNAWhy he sees adoption as a child welfare failure, not a family-building serviceThe memoir he's holding for now, and why his online anger is a strategy, not the whole manCall to Action If this one stirred something in you, don't rush past it. If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe for a moment. You don't have to carry what surfaced by yourself. You can schedule a call with Julie anytime. And if this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review, or even a few written words, helps more adoptees and the people who love them find these conversations. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Resources & Links Mentioned - Who Am I Really? podcast - On all platforms - Who Am I Really?: An Adoptee Memoir - Updates on Damon's two forthcoming books - Adoption: The Making of Me - live event series Damon MCs; next stop Los Angeles, created by Sarah Reinhardt and Louise Brown - Big Happiness Documentary by Dahee Kim here Schedule a chat with Julie here Join The Refuge Membership Community here Julie sits down with Damon Davis - creator and host of the Who Am I Really? podcast, author of the memoir by the same name, and the MC behind the Adoption: The Making of Me live event series. Damon brings a rare vantage point to this conversation: he's a same-race domestic adoptee, a father through kinship adoption to two of his children, and a biological father to his son, Seth. Rather than retracing his own well-told story, Julie and Damon go underneath it - into what nine years and 279 interviews have taught him about the parts of adoption that stay unseen. They talk about "mirroring" and what it means to grow up in a family that looks like you but still doesn't reflect you back. They talk about the layered, sometimes contested nature of adoption trauma, and the soundboard of "sliders" Damon uses to describe just how different every adoptee's experience can be. And they talk about the two books Damon is now writing out of his interviews - one on growing up in adoption, one on the reunion journey - and what he hopes each one gives back to the adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents who read it. In This Episode - Who Damon is, and how Who Am I Really? grew into 279 episodes over nine years - What "mirroring" means for a same-race adoptee, and the assumptions people make when an adoption "doesn't show" - Becoming a father through kinship adoption to two of his children, alongside the arrival of his biological son, Seth - Why he sees adoption trauma as layered rather than singular, and the "soundboard of sliders" he uses to describe the adoptee experience - The deepest unseen impact he's heard across almost 300 interviews: disconnection, and the quiet ache for acknowledgment even without full reunion - The two books being written from those interviews, who he most wants them to reach, and what he's still wrestling with as he writes - MCing Adoption: The Making of Me live events across the country, and what shifts when a room full of adoptees processes a story together Call to Action If this one landed for you, sit with it for a minute before you move on to whatever's next in your day. And if this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review - or even a few written words - helps this work reach more adoptees, and more of the people who love them. Belonging is never something you were supposed to go find in someone else's approval. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it. Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Resources & Links Mentioned - Get *Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom* (available on Amazon and as a digital download) - here - Melissa on Instagram - Melissa's website (therapy services in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and Minnesota) Register for Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing retreat here AND register to attend the NAAP Happy Hour where we will talk all about it here Register for the 4th iteration of Revelation LIVE here Connect with Julie here Melissa LaCour has what she calls a wonderful adoption story - an incredible relationship with her birth mother, parents she describes as role models, and a family she loves deeply. And she still carries the identity issues, the abandonment fears, and the quiet drive to be so accomplished, so easy, so good that her parents would never for one second regret adopting her. In this episode, Julie sits down with Melissa, a licensed professional counselor and adopted therapist who works specifically with adoptees and adoptive parents. They talk about "oldest daughter adoptee energy" and the layered weight of being the responsible one and the adopted one at the same time, what it was like growing up as one of two adopted children in a family that went on to have four biological siblings, and a season in her twenties when she lost an entire faith and friendship community almost overnight - a loss she didn't connect to adoption at the time, but that became one of her biggest adoption triggers. Melissa also opens up about her decision this year to stop hiding behind the "no self-disclosure" rule from her clinical training, choosing instead to tell clients - and now the internet - that she's adopted too, after market research told her that's exactly what people wanted to know from a therapist doing this work. She just released a workbook for adult adoptees called *Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom*, and has applied to speak at the NAAP conference next year. This is a conversation about permission - permission to be grateful and still hurt, to have a good story and still grieve, and to finally stop pretending gratitude is the whole truth. In This Episode - Welcoming Melissa and what her day-to-day work looks like now - Growing up on a rice, crawfish, and soybean farm in South Louisiana - Her winding path to therapy - broadcasting and TV news, youth and music ministry, teaching high school - Deciding at 28 to become a therapist, and only in the past year choosing to niche specifically into adoption work - A lighter detour into sports (die-hard New Orleans Saints fan), tennis, and the "nature vs. nurture" story behind being a classically trained pianist - What it's like being married to another therapist - Her birth mother's story, the local adoption agency, and the "God's Adoptive Kids" support group she grew up in - An unexpected reunion at a wedding in Iowa with a childhood friend from that same support group — and the guilt she feels for having a "good story" - Asking her mom directly this past June whether adoption had been a "band-aid" for infertility, and the answer she got - Growing up as one of two adopted children in a family that later had four biological children - Navigating comments like "which of these are homemade?" and what it's like when your younger siblings look like your parents and you don't - "Oldest daughter adoptee energy" — the layered weight of being the responsible one and the adopted one at once, and the family's "ringleader" role that comes with aging parents - What she'd say to someone who assumes a good adoption story means there's nothing to work through - Her sister's more complicated adoption story, and the grief of watching two very different outcomes unfold in the same family - Losing her faith and friendship community in her twenties, and what she came to understand later about why that loss hit an adoption nerve so hard - Where her faith and spirituality live now - Why she started pushing back on "no self-disclosure," and what her market research with adoptive parents and adoptees told her they actually wanted - Writing *Belonging: A Guided Journey Through Adoption Wounds & Wisdom*, grounded in the seven core issues of adoption - Stepping into social media professionally after years of staying away from it Call to Action If this episode landed for you, sit with it for a minute before you move on to whatever's next in your day. And if The Resilience Project Podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review - or even a few written words - helps this work reach more adoptees, more families, and more people who need to hear that they are not alone. Remember: you are never alone in this. Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Resources & Links Mentioned Get Courtney's self-regulation tool for foster/adoptive parents hereCourtney on Instagram Parenting Different websiteChat with Julie here Join The Refuge Membership Community here Foster and adoptive parents are so often set up to fail their kids - not because they don't love them, but because no one ever taught them how to regulate themselves first. In this episode, Julie sits down with Courtney White, an adoptive mom who, alongside her husband, welcomed three siblings (ages 7, 9, and 11) into their family after the children's parents were incarcerated. Courtney and her husband made the choice to stay closely connected to the kids' extended birth family rather than create distance - all while navigating a layoff and two parental leaves at once. Out of that season, Courtney - a technical writer by trade with no background in child psychology or marketing - built Phrasewell, a research-based tool that gives foster and adoptive parents the right words to say in hard, high-stress parenting moments, so they can stay regulated and help their kids feel safe. Julie and Courtney talk honestly about the cultural "rescue narrative" around adoption and fostering, why kids shouldn't have to perform gratitude to feel safe and loved, what it looks like to hold space for a child's grief while parenting them day to day, and why supporting every side of the adoption triad - the adoptee, the birth family, and the adoptive family - matters. This is a conversation about honesty: one that doesn't flatten adoption into a feel-good story, and doesn't flatten foster parents into saints or villains either. In This Episode How being a technical writer shapes the way Courtney approaches parenting and problem-solvingThe gap Courtney saw in state-provided foster/adoptive trainingAn update: the three siblings' adoption finalized in DecemberChoosing to stay close with the kids' birth siblings and extended family rather than create distanceNavigating a new blended family alongside her husband's layoff and two parental leavesWhat surprised Courtney most about the day-to-day reality of fosteringWhy she and her husband sought their own therapy and supportThe cultural "rescue narrative" - kids expected to be grateful - and why it's harmful"Performing gratitude" for safety and belonging, and how to recognize itJulie shares her own adoption story and the difference between physical and emotional safetyWhere the idea for her self-regulation tool actually came fromA hard, honest conversation with her adopted daughter about feeling treated differentlyWhat "self-regulation" really means in practice for a foster or adoptive parentFrom a free AI job-search tool (built after her husband's layoff) to building PhrasewellHow Phrasewell works - research-based, no AI, no stored personal dataFrom a 2018 e-commerce podcast to this conversation - why this one feels differentPhrasewell's free trial and pricing modelThe resource Courtney still wishes existed: local, in-person foster/adoptive parent communityWhat she'd say to a parent in the middle of a hard moment right nowWhat's next - including a new study app she built for her daughterCall to Action If this episode landed for you, sit with it for a minute before you move on to whatever's next in your day. And if the podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review - or even a few written words - helps this work reach more adoptees, more families, and more people who need to hear that they are not alone. Remember: you are never alone in this. Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Resources mentioned: Twice Delivered by Isaac MelberConnect with Isaac: WebsiteInstagramFacebookConnect with Julie: DM me on any of the socials, or schedule a conversation - I'd love to hear where you areJoin The Refuge Membership Community hereRegister for Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing hereIsaac Melber was four years old when his grandfather, uncle, and sister looked him in the eyes and told him he had to go - because staying in his Ethiopian village meant he would not survive. At five, he was adopted into a white American family. At seven, he became a Christian. And at twenty, he wrote a book about it: Twice Delivered - Two Families, Two Worlds, One Redeeming Love. Isaac and I do not come at adoption from the same angle. My work lives in the body. His lives in his faith. And that's exactly why I wanted him here. In this conversation, we talk about what it's like to be a Black man raised in a white family - the "whitewashed" comments, the grocery store stares, and how he turned "best of both worlds" from a burden into something he's proud of. We talk about the grief his adoptive parents made room for, including a mother who said the words every adoptee needs to hear: "I don't know how you feel - but I can help you if we talk about it." We talk about what churches get wrong when "chosen" and "God's plan" language covers adoptee grief instead of holding it. And then, near the end, I ask Isaac a question no one has ever asked him: Where do you feel your adoption story in your body? His honest answer - that he's never thought about it - became one of the most real moments this podcast has ever captured. Because that is the adoptee experience: we can know our story, tell our story, even build a ministry on our story… while it still lives, unexplored, in our bodies. This is two adopted people sitting in genuine difference with respect and curiosity. Wherever you are with faith - refuge, wound, or both - you belong in this conversation. In this episode:  - Village, orphanage, America: the story Isaac tells when he speaks  - Growing up Black in a white family: what people ask, what they get wrong  - Why "Twice Delivered": delivered from physical death at five, spiritual death at seven  - Being told "you have to go" at age four, and what a four-year-old remembers  - Julie asks: where does grief live in your framework - and was there room for yours?  - The parenting moment: "You can be in my arms. Come to my arms."  - "Chosen" and "God's plan": how churches can hold grief instead of covering it  - What Isaac tells adoptive parents about nurturing kids emotionally, not just spiritually  - What shifted after reading adoptee-centered work  - The question Isaac had never been asked: where do you feel it in your body?  - Isaac's hope for the next generation of adoptees If this episode meant something to you, a five-star review or a few written words helps this work reach more adoptees and the people who love themStop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Connect with Jennifer: Instagram Free 30-minute consultation here Connect with Julie: Register for the Bring Your Burden Gathering tonight!!! - here DM me on any of the socials, or schedule a conversation - I'd love to hear where you are and how I can support you. Many of us as adoptees confuse who we are with who we became to survive. In this episode, I sit down with Certified Enneagram Coach and fellow adoptee Jennifer G. Hiltebeitel to explore how the Enneagram - held gently, not as a label or a party trick - becomes a map for seeing our survival strategies with compassion instead of shame. Jennifer was adopted through the Pennsylvania county foster care system in the early 1970s. She was told she'd been taken in "on a trial basis" - language she carried for decades. She met her biological mother at seventeen, her biological father at twenty-one, and only claimed her original birth certificate in 2023, when another adoptee told her Pennsylvania had opened records. Her response: "It's mine. It belongs to me." In this conversation, we explore: Jennifer's adoption story - abandonment at age two and a half, the foster system, and growing up in a home where adoption was tabooWhy meeting biological family at seventeen didn't fill the hole she thought it would - and what that taught her about where belonging actually livesWhat it meant to finally hold her original birth certificate, and why she claimed it "for all adoptees"How the Enneagram found her in 2018 through her relationship with her daughters - and how it merged with her adoptee journey when she found adoptee community during the pandemicThe difference between type and trauma - and why Jennifer always refers fresh trauma to therapy before typingWhy adoptees so often mistype, especially under stressThe pause: how the Enneagram stretches the space between stimulus and responseReparenting our inner child with the language the Enneagram providesThe secondary rejection Jennifer was prepared for - and the love from extended biological family she wasn'tThe question that changes everything: not "what's wrong with me?" but "what happened to me?"Key moments: "Self-awareness without self-compassion is just self-judgment."  "Many of us as adoptees confuse who we are with who we became to survive what happened to us."  "I was prepared for the secondary rejection. I wasn't prepared for the love."  Resources mentioned: Around the Circles podcast - "Start Here" series The Aligned Soul Company Enneagram type deep-dive toolkit If this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review or a few written words helps this work reach more adoptees and the people who love them. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Register for The Long Game here CONNECT WITH ELIZABETH & LESLIE Elizabeth Barbour: Instagram, website Leslie Pate Mackinnon: website Register for Bring Your Burden Gathering here Reunion is not an event. It's not the airport hug or the tearful montage. It's a whole web of relationships your nervous system has to learn how to live inside of - and nobody hands you a map for that. Until now. The accidental retreat series continues with Elizabeth Barbour and Leslie Pate Mackinnon, co-facilitators of The Long Game: Navigating the Reunion Rollercoaster with Grace - a weekend retreat happening November 6–8, 2026 at Quietude in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just outside Asheville. Elizabeth is a reunited adoptee - 27 years in reunion with her birthmom, birthdad, and eleven (!) siblings - a reunion coach, speaker, and author currently writing her third book on building healthy relationships in adoption reunion. Leslie is a psychotherapist and birthmother with four decades in private practice, specializing in adoption and third-party reproduction, and a nationally known trainer of therapists and agencies. Between them: 50+ years of living in reunion. In this conversation: Elizabeth's reunion story - searching for one mother and finding out she's the oldest of twelveWhy "wounded healers" with lived experience are changing what adoption-competent therapy looks likeGrowing up without a "ghost kingdom" - and hiding inside other people's stories insteadThe both/and of reunion: loving your people AND grieving that you didn't get to grow up with them"We were all duped by adoption. There are no bad guys in the constellation."  Leslie on releasing the search for an enemyThe rollercoaster map: the honeymoon phase, why it feels exactly like falling in love, and the depression and grief that so often followPacing: why Elizabeth, Leslie, and Julie all say slow down - and what going too fast can cost a reunionReunion in the body: hypervigilance, dissociation, and Leslie's stunning account of reclaiming her body at 78The GRACE Methodology - Genesis, Reconnection (self, others, spirit), Authenticity, Communication, Evolution & ExpansionWhat actually predicts whether a reunion lasts (hint: it's each person's commitment to their own work)Repair after rupture and secondary rejection: Leslie's letter to her son after ten years of silence - sending it with love, then detachingWho The Long Game is for: adoptees, birth/first parents, adoptive parents, partners, siblings, grandparents - and NPE/MPE and donor-conceived people reconnecting with genetic relativesWhat they hope you carry home in your body: felt community, the capacity to hold grief and gratitude side by side, and the knowledge that you are not aloneCONTENT NOTE: This episode includes discussion of relinquishment, secondary rejection and closed reunions, dissociation and trauma responses, genetic sexual attraction, and plant medicine as one adjunct healing path. Please listen with care and tend to your nervous system. THE LONG GAME RETREAT November 6–8, 2026 | Quietude, Black Mountain, NC (20 minutes east of Asheville) Capped at 20 people. Includes the full program, three shared meals, and two bonus group coaching calls - one before and one after the weekend. Lodging and travel on your own. If something came up for you in this episode, DM me on any of the socials or schedule a conversation with me. I'd love to hear where you are in your own long game. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

🌿 Learn more + reserve your spot here Connect with Our Guests: Becky Aste Bridget Covill Schedule a call with me here Join The Refuge Membership Community here You've regulated. You've journaled. You've done more inner work than most people you know. And yet there's still a quiet place inside that can't fully exhale. This week, I'm joined by two women who have become true co-laborers in this work with me - Becky Aste, trauma-informed somatic marriage coach, and Bridget Covill, RESET Breathwork facilitator. Together, the three of us are co-hosting our second Wild + Rooted retreat this November, and this conversation is a living example of why we built it: because healing happens relationally, and some layers of this journey simply can't be softened in isolation. We go deep into where shame hides in high-functioning, self-aware women - the perfectionism, the hyper-achieving, the "I'm fine" exterior - and where it actually lives in the body. Becky shares vulnerably about looking successful on the outside while her marriage was quietly falling apart, and about the grief she's carrying right now. Bridget talks about religious conditioning, learning to trust her body again, and why breathwork is one of the only things that truly quiets the mind. And I share my own adoptee story - the survival patterns that formed before I ever had language, and what it's taken to come home to myself. Then we tell stories from our first retreat that still give us chills: the northern lights appearing over the beach, a game of tag that brought a 60-year-old woman's childlike self back online, and the night a birth mother, an adoptive mother, and an adoptee ended up side by side at the same dinner table. If your body leans in at any point during this episode - don't ignore it. Just be curious about it. What arises belongs. In This Episode, We Explore: Why high-functioning, self-aware women still carry a subtle undercurrent of shame - and where it hidesShame as a "severed sense of love and belonging" (and how it shows up in perfectionism, control, and people-pleasing)Where shame lives in the body - and why noticing it is the beginning of the workWhat breathwork reveals that the mind keeps hidden, and why you don't need a story or explanation for what comes upGrief, brain fog, and giving the prefrontal cortex a breakWhat happens in a room of women that can't happen on Zoom or in a journal - co-regulation, eye contact, and being truly witnessedSacred sisterhood vs. surface-level friendship - and why so many of us have never experienced the formerRupture and repair, in real time, at our own retreatInside Wild + Rooted: what we've created for the woman who's already done the work and senses a deeper layer calling herAbout Wild + Rooted: A 3-day immersive retreat, November 6–8, 2026, at a private home on the Eastern Shore of Delaware. Trauma release breathwork, inner child and parts work, shame-dissolving sessions, art therapy, yoga on the water, at-home massages, and a sacred sisterhood that holds - with pre-retreat preparation and 90 days of integration support afterward. For the woman who's already done the work and wants the deeper layers. Spots are limited, and we're already over halfway full. Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

Important Links: Hear directly from the pilot participants here Register for Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing retreat here Red Poppy Website Catch Julie and Liz in person at the Making of Me event in September Join The Refuge Membership Community here The retreat is back. In this special announcement episode, Julie is joined by her co-facilitator, colleague, and friend Dr. Liz DeBetta to share that Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing returns December 4–6, 2026 - this time at the Red Poppy Center for Renewal in Highland, Michigan, with everything under one roof. Dr. Liz DeBetta is a narrative healing practitioner, creator of the Migrating Toward Wholeness process, and the writer and performer behind Un-M-Othered - the work this entire retreat is built around. Together, Julie and Liz look back at what happened in that first sacred room in Idaho, what they learned, and how the second iteration is genuinely a different animal. In this episode: Content note: This conversation includes discussion of adoption trauma, grief, and relinquishment. Please listen with care and tend to your nervous system as needed. What actually happened at the pilot retreat in May - five adoptees, many of them in a room with other adopted people for the very first timeThe biggest lessons carried forward: keeping everything in one place, protecting integration time, and the power of smallInside the Red Poppy Center for Renewal - a woman-owned sacred healing space with gardens, a lake, a fire pit, and a heated indoor pool and hot tub (December in Michigan, y'all)Why the film screens Friday night, so nervous systems can sleep on it before the deep work beginsTwo intimate circles of seven, with both groups experiencing Liz's narrative writing track and Julie's Belonging Blueprint somatic trackBrand new: private one-on-one sessions - every participant chooses narrative session, somatic work, or bodywork and reiki - and why choice matters at a retreat built on bodily autonomyHow Liz's four N's (Notice, Name, Nurture, Next Step) and Julie's five C's move together: feeling it in the body, then finding language for itWho this retreat is for - whether you're just beginning or you've been stuck in the same therapy chair for a decadeWhy December: solstice stillness, and a pause between the holidays that can be so hard for adopted peopleA hint about what's coming in June…The details:  Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing  Friday, December 4 – Sunday, December 6, 2026  Red Poppy Center for Renewal - Highland, Michigan  14 spots total. One all-in price covers your room, every meal, all programming, and your private one-on-one session. No hotel bill, no dinners out, no surprises. Connect with Dr. Liz DeBetta here Questions about whether this retreat is right for where you are? DM Julie or Liz on the socials, or schedule a conversation with Julie here. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

A note on content: this episode includes direct discussion of childhood sexual exploitation/grooming, teen pregnancy, foster care system failures, and religious trauma. Please take care while listening, and feel free to pause or come back to this one when it feels right for you. Links - Brielle's resources Brielle's Books Brielle's Social Handles - TikTok & Insta - @briinthemaking; YouTube - @Bri_MFTintern; Facebook - Bri W, MFT Intern Connect with Julie Join The Refuge Membership Community In this episode, I sit down with Brielle Wilson - an adoptee, teen mother, wife, and mother of eight who is currently pursuing her MFT licensure after completing her degree. Brielle's story touches nearly every part of the adoption constellation: kinship care, foster care, gaslighting, religious trauma, and what it looks like to be a teenager navigating systems that were supposed to protect her and didn't. She's already published two books, with more resources on the way, and she's building a future where she gets to be the therapist she wishes she'd had. This conversation covers a lot of ground, and Brielle shares it with a level of honesty that I think will land in your body before it lands anywhere else. In this episode, we talk about: - Being raised by her maternal grandparents from infancy after both biological parents struggled with addiction, and what "home" did and didn't feel like growing up - Becoming pregnant at 13 after being groomed online by a predator, and the pressure she faced from Bethany Christian Services and her guardians to relinquish her daughter - Her determination to parent despite having no model for what healthy parenting looked like - Being placed in an emergency shelter while pregnant, and commuting to high school with her belongings in a garbage bag - A foster placement that started out supportive and became restrictive - including a foster family later found to be exaggerating her behavior for additional stipend money - Her eventual adoption alongside a sibling set, and how adoption legally severed relationships with siblings she still saw walking past her house every day - Carrying her adoptive mother's unresolved adoption trauma, being treated as a caretaker in the home, and having her worth tied to productivity - Therapists appointed by her adoptive family who reported information back to them - and what that did to her ability to trust anyone meant to help her - The role religion played in both pressuring her toward adoption and, later, in the surveillance and performance she felt inside her adoptive family's church community - Marrying her husband and leaving her adoptive home at 18 - and the slow, honest work of realizing how entangled she still was in that family system even after she left - Why she chose to pursue an MFT, and what it means to become the clinician she needed as a teenager - How she's parenting her own eight kids with transparency instead of silence - Her belief - and the research behind it - that adoption trauma exists in every adoption scenario, even the "good" ones, and why two things (grief and gratitude) can be true at the same time - Her two books: Writing Over the Lines and Consumed, and what led her to write each one Stop outsourcing belonging, insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley

LINKS & RESOURCES About the Adoptee Mentoring Society: founded by Angela Tucker (author of "You Should Be Grateful"), AMS offers mentoring, lounges, and community that is by adoptees, for adoptees - a place where you never have to over-explain yourself. Connect with Adam here Connect with Julie: DM on any of the socials (links below), or schedule a conversation. Some adoption stories get told over and over. Others stay in the dark. In this episode, Julie sits down with Adam Esparza - transracial, transnational adoptee from Guadalajara, Mexico, advocate and ambassador with the Adoptee Mentoring Society - for a conversation about the layers of adoption that society doesn't seem to want to name. Adam shares what it was like growing up visibly different from his adoptive family, making up stories in kindergarten show-and-tell to survive, and legally changing his name back to his birth surnames so the person in the mirror finally made sense. He opens up about the reunion that found him when he had all but given up - a message from a cousin, a birth mother who once hid him from the authorities who came to take him, and a full brother, Israel, who looked exactly like him and painted roses, just like Adam always had. Together, Julie and Adam explore: Why some adoptee stories get visibility while others - like Mexican adoptees - remain largely unseen The dark underbelly of adoptions in Guadalajara, black market realities, and why we can't be afraid to name what really happened What reunion felt like in the body - Adam describes stepping out of survival mode for the first time in his life The grief of cultural disconnection: language, mirrors, food, art, and the homeland that stays in you no matter what Returning to Mexico for Dia de los Muertos to say goodbye to the brother he never got to meet Being a male adoptee in spaces where men are underrepresented, and why analyzing your emotions to help others is its own kind of strength How siblings adopted into the same family can cope in completely different ways - and how compassion keeps the door open What every parent of a transnational adoptee needs to accept: one day, that child will want to go back Adam's message to any adoptee feeling culturally untethered is simple: stay curious. You are not contractually bound to one side of yourself or the other. Don't neglect either one. A note of care: this conversation includes honest discussion of suicide statistics among adoptees, alcohol dependency, and an abusive relationship. Please listen with support around you if these topics are tender for you. You are not alone in this.  If this episode meant something to you, a five-star review helps this work reach more adoptees who need to hear they are not alone. Stop outsourcing belonging, insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley