More About 2021 Sessions & Workshops
Friday, Nov 5th
10:00 PM Keynote - Stephanie Drenka
Origin Story: History and Healing in Adoption
Examining the history and legacy of adoption as well as the critical need for truth telling and reclaiming narratives in order to restore wholeness for adoptees and the larger adoption community.
Friday Afternoon Sessions
Session 1 12:30-2:00 PM
Keynote - Allison Davis Maxon
Seven Core Issues in Adoption & Permanency
The experience of adoption and permanency for children and teens creates lifelong, intergenerational issues, complexities and opportunities for healing. The trauma of forever losing one’s maternal and paternal familial tree, lineage, cultural/ethnic/racial identity, genetic mirroring, relationships, siblings and other important connections will be experienced and grieved throughout the entirety of the child’s life. Relational trauma, neglect and multiple attachment disruptions have a significant negative impact on a child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physiological development. What are children supposed to do with all of the loss, trauma, grief, distress, hurt and pain that lingers in their bodies and minds? The effects of complex trauma, attachment impairments and neglect can last a lifetime, unless the adults, parents and professionals assist the child in the healing process. Learning the complex skills of identifying what we feel, why we feel it and communicating those feelings to someone who cares, are even more important for a child with complex trauma and the losses that come with adoption/permanency.
Objectives:
• Participants will learn the Seven Core Issues in Adoption/Permanency as a way of understanding the lifelong, intergenerational losses, challenges and tasks for the child/youth/ adoptee, foster/kinship/adoptive parents and birth/first parents.
• Participants will learn the Art and Science of Attachment, the tasks and patterns of Attachment, and the benefits of a ‘secure attachment relationship’ as it relates to child/brain development and healing complex (relational) trauma.
• Participants will be able to identify various types and symptoms of traumatic loss for children, as well as ways to intervene to help children identify, express and manage their pain/ grief/anger/distress.
• Participants will recognize the signs of grief and loss in children/youth, especially as it relates to their traumatic losses and developmental stage and develop tools to assist with grief and affect management.
• Participants will learn to use the conceptual framework of emotional intelligence as way to strengthen parents’/caregivers’ ability to read and attune with the emotional cues of their child while strengthening the child’s/youth’s ability to identify and express complex emotions
Session 2 2:15 -3:45 PM
A. Managing the Stress of Adoption & Why it is Essential to Your Children - Brooke Randolph, NCC, LMHC
The adoption process can be one of the most stressful periods of a parent’s life. Adoptive parenting is advanced parenting and can challenge even the most well-trained and best-intentioned parents. Brooke will share practical tips, provide resources, and teach basic techniques during this session. How your ability to manage the stress of adoption impacts your child’s ability to process the issues inherent to adoption will also be introduced. Guaranteed you will leave this session more relaxed than when you were before you entered the room.
B. Adoptee Stories For Life - Shannon Quist
Stories are part of childhood. A heavy dose of fairytales is integral to building children's emotional and psychological inner worlds. Adoptees, however, have more specific needs when often continues throughout an adoptee's adolescence and into adulthood. Adoptees are often subject to clashing narratives throughout their lives. Therefore, I propose that adoptee's stories need to grow with them. They need to hear stories that speak specifically to them and learn to tell their own stories in different ways throughout the stages of maturity
Session 3 4:00 - 5:30 PM
A. The Healing Power of Being on Your Own Side: Mindfulness, Self-Compassion and Parts Work - Lesli Johnson
Lesli will discuss trauma and the body, implicit memory, the brain and the nervous system and the miracle of neuroplasticity: that our brains change throughout our lifespan and we have control over those changes! Participants will acquire useful resources and practical “hacks” to work with difficult thoughts and feelings. Participants will also learn what coping skills from the past continue to be useful and which ones are outdated. We’ll work with the past while firmly rooted in the present. You will have the opportunity to connect with your authentic self as you begin to re-wire your brain for calm, clarity and resilience.
B. Search & Reunion: Preparing for and Considering Realities and Complexities - Patricia Martinez Dorner, MA, LPC
The search and reunion process raises the prospect of joy and the resolution of lifetime needs. While these are certainly attainable, complexities abound. Preparation and support are important ingredients during the vast number of life chapters that occur. This workshop will include a discussion of issues that arise and some management strategies during this process.
6:30 PM Betwixt & Between: Virtual Play Performance - Maggie Gallant
A staged reading of a new play (40 minutes long + talkback) that brings to life the experience and complexities of the ghost kingdom. Seen through the eyes of an adopted person, Lucy, this play sees her confront adoption and start her journey out of the fog. This will be a professional virtual reading by actors and will be followed by a talkback session with the playwright and performers. Synopsis: Set just after legislation gave New York adoptees the right to access their original birth certificate, Betwixt & Between is about the realities of closed adoption and the secrets and lies we are told, and tell ourselves. It explores the concept of the 'ghost kingdom', that spectral place that exists for adopted people. In the liminal space between knowing and unknowing, aka The Gap, Lucy meets Eloise, the fantasy version of herself. The one she would have been if her birth mother had kept her. Eloise misses the days when Lucy’s imagination conjured grand adventures and fun what-if games. Why did things turn so dark? Eloise and the caseworker push Lucy to the brink as they force her to deal with who she is, who she was, and who she might have been.
Saturday, Nov 6th
9:00 "Closure" - Angela Tucker's Documentary Film
10:30 PM Keynote Angela Tucker
Joy Without a Mirror: Entering a Ghost Kingdom & Bridging The Gaps
In this 60-minute-keynote, Angela discusses the nuances of being an adoptee, strategies for reducing implicit bias in adoption. Angela Tucker is an adoptee who is committed to advancing the conversation, not just having one. She is an unabashed truth-teller and a gifted speaker and educator. Angela shares deeply personal experiences in her life that have shaped her sense of identity and belonging. She speaks about her relationship with her birth family members and what that has meant for everyone involved. She examines what it means to live in a "good" neighborhood and go to a "good" school, the inherent implicit biases and racism within those notions. Drawing from her work with youth and adult adoptees she explains how black transracial adoptees enjoy some of the advantages of white privilege, yet may continue to be seen as tokens to white friends. Differentiating between "fitting in" and belonging is a key theme of the keynote. Angela shares with audiences how she eventually realized that, ultimately, it is about accepting oneself.
Through bold ideas, candid stories, innovative solutions and a progressive vision, the keynote hones in on the conjunction of race and power relations. She uses different mediums throughout combining video, voice, podcast clips and photography. She has the unique ability to weave in personal stories with a sense of humor. The experiences and insights of transracial adoptees open new perspectives on so many other issues in our society.
11:30 (Lunch) #OwnVoices Workshop – finding our story and using our voice Suzanne Gilbert, Writer
The #OwnVoices workshop is fun and serious at the same time, whether we want to jumpstart our memoir (and its sequel), or find a quick new way to connect with others in the room. We borrow techniques from NPR’s “The Moth” to build our narrative arcs (what’s a narrative arc? – we’ll get clear on that). I’ll introduce the storytelling toolkit of classic archetypes (adoptees, parents and even professionals/guides who are more famous than us) from religion, literature, and myth. Then we’ll build our stories through five flash memoirs. All of us, adoptees in closed, open and transracial adoptions, donor-conceived people, and parents can resonate with the urge to tell our story. Professionals can apply this with their clients too.
Saturday Afternoon Sessions
Session 1 1:00-2:30 PM
A. This is Us Workshop - Barbara Robertson, Krysia Orlowski
A powerful and insightful interactive workshop Discussion of Adoption issues using the backdrop of popular TV show, "This is Us."
B. Suicidality and Adopted People - Katy Perkins, LCSW-S & JaeHee (Melanie) Chung-Sherman, LCSW-S
People who have experienced adoption and/or foster care are at enhanced risk of experiencing suicidal ideation for a number of reasons. Transracial and international adoptees face additional risk due to racism, xenophobia, and cultural discrimination. Presenters will explore several key indicators of suicidal risk (thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomness, and capability for suicide) and the ways in which attachment disruption can affect how people experience these issues. Appropriate terminology, ways to build connection with clients/individuals who may be suicidal, the limitations of current research, and questions to assess for suicidality will be discussed.
Session 2 2:45 - 4:15 PM
A. Multi-Dimensional Birth/First Mother Experiences - Anne Bingham, Britney Grissom, Sheri Williams
Birth/First mothers frequently hear that they are courageous or brave. Sometimes they hear just the opposite, that they are selfish for relinquishing their child/ren. What these sentiments point toward are deeply embedded ideas about birth/first mothers, often reductive and rarely reflective of the reality of the experience. This panel will explore the experiences of birth/first mothers in different types of adoptions and welcomes a conversation about what it’s like to live with adoption as part of a woman’s lifelong identity with the end goal of breaking down stereotypes and creating a more robust understanding that other birth /first mothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents may find useful in understanding their own experiences.
B. Out Of The Darkness - Rebecca Tillou
This presentation will be about my adoption and reunion story. The methods I used to find my birth family, the aftermath of the find. It will talk about living with FASD and the diagnosis process.
Session 3 4:30 - 6:00
A. Decoding Your DNA - Traci Onders & Amanda Reno
DNA and genealogy are powerful tools to help you fill in the missing pieces in your family tree. Tests such as Ancestry DNA and 23 and me, as well as others, are being used to help solve for unknown parentage and find birth or biological family for individuals who are adopted, donor conceived or have misattributed parentage. Join us for a review of the basics including; how to formulate a testing plan, important terminology to understand, relationship possibilities based on amount of shared DNA, how to make the most of your test results and the powerful tools available at the testing companies, and successfully communicating with DNA matches
B. Language Matters: Transracial Adoption - Stephanie Drenka (Earlier Keynote Speaker)
In the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color and a national reckoning with structural racism, there is an urgent need for anti-racist communication and language. Geared towards transracial adopted parents, this workshop will provide suggestions to develop a racial equity lens when talking about adoption. Focusing on shared definitions of race and racism, harmful messages in adoption, social media, online content, and storytelling.
10:00 PM Keynote - Stephanie Drenka
Origin Story: History and Healing in Adoption
Examining the history and legacy of adoption as well as the critical need for truth telling and reclaiming narratives in order to restore wholeness for adoptees and the larger adoption community.
Friday Afternoon Sessions
Session 1 12:30-2:00 PM
Keynote - Allison Davis Maxon
Seven Core Issues in Adoption & Permanency
The experience of adoption and permanency for children and teens creates lifelong, intergenerational issues, complexities and opportunities for healing. The trauma of forever losing one’s maternal and paternal familial tree, lineage, cultural/ethnic/racial identity, genetic mirroring, relationships, siblings and other important connections will be experienced and grieved throughout the entirety of the child’s life. Relational trauma, neglect and multiple attachment disruptions have a significant negative impact on a child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physiological development. What are children supposed to do with all of the loss, trauma, grief, distress, hurt and pain that lingers in their bodies and minds? The effects of complex trauma, attachment impairments and neglect can last a lifetime, unless the adults, parents and professionals assist the child in the healing process. Learning the complex skills of identifying what we feel, why we feel it and communicating those feelings to someone who cares, are even more important for a child with complex trauma and the losses that come with adoption/permanency.
Objectives:
• Participants will learn the Seven Core Issues in Adoption/Permanency as a way of understanding the lifelong, intergenerational losses, challenges and tasks for the child/youth/ adoptee, foster/kinship/adoptive parents and birth/first parents.
• Participants will learn the Art and Science of Attachment, the tasks and patterns of Attachment, and the benefits of a ‘secure attachment relationship’ as it relates to child/brain development and healing complex (relational) trauma.
• Participants will be able to identify various types and symptoms of traumatic loss for children, as well as ways to intervene to help children identify, express and manage their pain/ grief/anger/distress.
• Participants will recognize the signs of grief and loss in children/youth, especially as it relates to their traumatic losses and developmental stage and develop tools to assist with grief and affect management.
• Participants will learn to use the conceptual framework of emotional intelligence as way to strengthen parents’/caregivers’ ability to read and attune with the emotional cues of their child while strengthening the child’s/youth’s ability to identify and express complex emotions
Session 2 2:15 -3:45 PM
A. Managing the Stress of Adoption & Why it is Essential to Your Children - Brooke Randolph, NCC, LMHC
The adoption process can be one of the most stressful periods of a parent’s life. Adoptive parenting is advanced parenting and can challenge even the most well-trained and best-intentioned parents. Brooke will share practical tips, provide resources, and teach basic techniques during this session. How your ability to manage the stress of adoption impacts your child’s ability to process the issues inherent to adoption will also be introduced. Guaranteed you will leave this session more relaxed than when you were before you entered the room.
B. Adoptee Stories For Life - Shannon Quist
Stories are part of childhood. A heavy dose of fairytales is integral to building children's emotional and psychological inner worlds. Adoptees, however, have more specific needs when often continues throughout an adoptee's adolescence and into adulthood. Adoptees are often subject to clashing narratives throughout their lives. Therefore, I propose that adoptee's stories need to grow with them. They need to hear stories that speak specifically to them and learn to tell their own stories in different ways throughout the stages of maturity
Session 3 4:00 - 5:30 PM
A. The Healing Power of Being on Your Own Side: Mindfulness, Self-Compassion and Parts Work - Lesli Johnson
Lesli will discuss trauma and the body, implicit memory, the brain and the nervous system and the miracle of neuroplasticity: that our brains change throughout our lifespan and we have control over those changes! Participants will acquire useful resources and practical “hacks” to work with difficult thoughts and feelings. Participants will also learn what coping skills from the past continue to be useful and which ones are outdated. We’ll work with the past while firmly rooted in the present. You will have the opportunity to connect with your authentic self as you begin to re-wire your brain for calm, clarity and resilience.
B. Search & Reunion: Preparing for and Considering Realities and Complexities - Patricia Martinez Dorner, MA, LPC
The search and reunion process raises the prospect of joy and the resolution of lifetime needs. While these are certainly attainable, complexities abound. Preparation and support are important ingredients during the vast number of life chapters that occur. This workshop will include a discussion of issues that arise and some management strategies during this process.
6:30 PM Betwixt & Between: Virtual Play Performance - Maggie Gallant
A staged reading of a new play (40 minutes long + talkback) that brings to life the experience and complexities of the ghost kingdom. Seen through the eyes of an adopted person, Lucy, this play sees her confront adoption and start her journey out of the fog. This will be a professional virtual reading by actors and will be followed by a talkback session with the playwright and performers. Synopsis: Set just after legislation gave New York adoptees the right to access their original birth certificate, Betwixt & Between is about the realities of closed adoption and the secrets and lies we are told, and tell ourselves. It explores the concept of the 'ghost kingdom', that spectral place that exists for adopted people. In the liminal space between knowing and unknowing, aka The Gap, Lucy meets Eloise, the fantasy version of herself. The one she would have been if her birth mother had kept her. Eloise misses the days when Lucy’s imagination conjured grand adventures and fun what-if games. Why did things turn so dark? Eloise and the caseworker push Lucy to the brink as they force her to deal with who she is, who she was, and who she might have been.
Saturday, Nov 6th
9:00 "Closure" - Angela Tucker's Documentary Film
10:30 PM Keynote Angela Tucker
Joy Without a Mirror: Entering a Ghost Kingdom & Bridging The Gaps
In this 60-minute-keynote, Angela discusses the nuances of being an adoptee, strategies for reducing implicit bias in adoption. Angela Tucker is an adoptee who is committed to advancing the conversation, not just having one. She is an unabashed truth-teller and a gifted speaker and educator. Angela shares deeply personal experiences in her life that have shaped her sense of identity and belonging. She speaks about her relationship with her birth family members and what that has meant for everyone involved. She examines what it means to live in a "good" neighborhood and go to a "good" school, the inherent implicit biases and racism within those notions. Drawing from her work with youth and adult adoptees she explains how black transracial adoptees enjoy some of the advantages of white privilege, yet may continue to be seen as tokens to white friends. Differentiating between "fitting in" and belonging is a key theme of the keynote. Angela shares with audiences how she eventually realized that, ultimately, it is about accepting oneself.
Through bold ideas, candid stories, innovative solutions and a progressive vision, the keynote hones in on the conjunction of race and power relations. She uses different mediums throughout combining video, voice, podcast clips and photography. She has the unique ability to weave in personal stories with a sense of humor. The experiences and insights of transracial adoptees open new perspectives on so many other issues in our society.
11:30 (Lunch) #OwnVoices Workshop – finding our story and using our voice Suzanne Gilbert, Writer
The #OwnVoices workshop is fun and serious at the same time, whether we want to jumpstart our memoir (and its sequel), or find a quick new way to connect with others in the room. We borrow techniques from NPR’s “The Moth” to build our narrative arcs (what’s a narrative arc? – we’ll get clear on that). I’ll introduce the storytelling toolkit of classic archetypes (adoptees, parents and even professionals/guides who are more famous than us) from religion, literature, and myth. Then we’ll build our stories through five flash memoirs. All of us, adoptees in closed, open and transracial adoptions, donor-conceived people, and parents can resonate with the urge to tell our story. Professionals can apply this with their clients too.
Saturday Afternoon Sessions
Session 1 1:00-2:30 PM
A. This is Us Workshop - Barbara Robertson, Krysia Orlowski
A powerful and insightful interactive workshop Discussion of Adoption issues using the backdrop of popular TV show, "This is Us."
B. Suicidality and Adopted People - Katy Perkins, LCSW-S & JaeHee (Melanie) Chung-Sherman, LCSW-S
People who have experienced adoption and/or foster care are at enhanced risk of experiencing suicidal ideation for a number of reasons. Transracial and international adoptees face additional risk due to racism, xenophobia, and cultural discrimination. Presenters will explore several key indicators of suicidal risk (thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomness, and capability for suicide) and the ways in which attachment disruption can affect how people experience these issues. Appropriate terminology, ways to build connection with clients/individuals who may be suicidal, the limitations of current research, and questions to assess for suicidality will be discussed.
Session 2 2:45 - 4:15 PM
A. Multi-Dimensional Birth/First Mother Experiences - Anne Bingham, Britney Grissom, Sheri Williams
Birth/First mothers frequently hear that they are courageous or brave. Sometimes they hear just the opposite, that they are selfish for relinquishing their child/ren. What these sentiments point toward are deeply embedded ideas about birth/first mothers, often reductive and rarely reflective of the reality of the experience. This panel will explore the experiences of birth/first mothers in different types of adoptions and welcomes a conversation about what it’s like to live with adoption as part of a woman’s lifelong identity with the end goal of breaking down stereotypes and creating a more robust understanding that other birth /first mothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents may find useful in understanding their own experiences.
B. Out Of The Darkness - Rebecca Tillou
This presentation will be about my adoption and reunion story. The methods I used to find my birth family, the aftermath of the find. It will talk about living with FASD and the diagnosis process.
Session 3 4:30 - 6:00
A. Decoding Your DNA - Traci Onders & Amanda Reno
DNA and genealogy are powerful tools to help you fill in the missing pieces in your family tree. Tests such as Ancestry DNA and 23 and me, as well as others, are being used to help solve for unknown parentage and find birth or biological family for individuals who are adopted, donor conceived or have misattributed parentage. Join us for a review of the basics including; how to formulate a testing plan, important terminology to understand, relationship possibilities based on amount of shared DNA, how to make the most of your test results and the powerful tools available at the testing companies, and successfully communicating with DNA matches
B. Language Matters: Transracial Adoption - Stephanie Drenka (Earlier Keynote Speaker)
In the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color and a national reckoning with structural racism, there is an urgent need for anti-racist communication and language. Geared towards transracial adopted parents, this workshop will provide suggestions to develop a racial equity lens when talking about adoption. Focusing on shared definitions of race and racism, harmful messages in adoption, social media, online content, and storytelling.
