Jennifer Hiltebeitel (HILL-ta-bite-el) is a returning guest.

Jennifer is an adopted person on a lifelong healing journey. As an Enneagram Coach, she loves talking with other adoptees about how this tool for growth builds understanding and compassion for our whole selves. She believes healing happens in community and through the telling of our stories. You can connect with Jennifer on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/throughyourlensenneagram/, through email: jhiltebeitel@outlook.com or set up a free 30-minute Enneagram Coaching consultation with her at https://calendly.com/jhiltebeitel

Music by Corey Quinn

Original air date: October 25, 2022

During times in this episode, there is sensitive content that may be traumatizing to some audiences. Listener discretion advised.

Katie is an adoptee who has always known she was adopted. Abuse and neglect by adoptive parents growing up led her to feeling unloved or unwanted by them. As a younger person, Katie felt so broken and joined Al-Anon and (ACA) Adult Children of Alcoholics for healing. She still felt like something was missing in her recovery. A friend gave Katie the book, The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier, and she then sought out podcasts about adoptees which all proved to be great resources.

Katie never had the desire to look for her birth parents, but an acquaintance insisted, and found maternal and paternal birth parents within days in 1996. She has met both birth families and have different relationships with them today.

Music by Corey Quinn

Debbie Nahid is a transracial intercountry adoptee born in 1968 in the UK. She was raised in foster care in a white English community and was adopted as a teenager by her foster mother. It was at this time that she also discovered the truth about her parents and heritage.

Debbie has spent her life searching for birth relatives and cultural connections and is the founder of Transracial Adult Adoptee Network (TAAN), a community of peers. She has created and facilitates two in-person support groups for adult adoptees in London and is also the co-founder of the Adult Adoptee Movement UK.

Debbie uses her lived experience to help others heal and inform of the dislocation, alienation and isolation that occurs from being raised in a white foster or adoptive home without a biological identity or same race role model.

Paul Sunderland Talks to Adoptees About HealingFrom Relinquishment Trauma and Complex PPTSD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8njTJVfsVA

Music by Corey Quinn