The Adoption Files

Healing, Recovery, Remaking: Which makes sense for you?

Please join me and my guest Dani Joy as we continue our conversation on spiritual trauma and adoption, from the perspectives of an adopted person and a mother of loss to

Gods will or?

Please join Dani Joy and me, Ande, as we continue to discuss spiritual trauma and adoption, with the book Holy Hurt by Hilary McBride PhD as a scaffold. The foundation ha

I am terrible at titles. Continuing the conversation about spiritual trauma as people impacted by adoption

Yes, I am terrible at titles, and hate to mislead. Just laying that out there. Dani Joy, mother of loss to adoption and me, late discovery adopted person (as well as an

Feel the Feelings: continuing our conversation on spiritual trauma

Hi! Please join me and my guest host Dani Joy as we continue with the next section of our conversation on spiritual trauma from our perspectives as a mother of loss to ad

How to use Spirituality as a Defense against Discomfort: Spiritual Bypassing

Please join us as we continue our conversation around spiritual trauma and adoption as we work our way through the book Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the

Your Feelings Matter: the Core Emotions and Spiritual Trauma

Please join Dani Joy and I as we delve into the core emotions and how we are born with these crucial forms of communication. We continue to explore how adoption and spiri

Victim, Villain, Valiant Hero: The Drama Triangle and Spiritual Trauma

Please join Dani Joy and I as we continue our conversation about spiritual trauma and adoption. We are using the book Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Pr

Let's: See What Develops: The Essentials. Continuing the conversation on spiritual trauma

Please join Dani Joy and me as we continue to discuss spiritual trauma and adoption. I am a Late Discovery, Intercountry adopted person. Dani is a mother of loss to adopt

Returning to the Familiar: When we keep going back to things that hurt

Please join Dani Joy and I as we continue to explore spiritual trauma using the book Holy Hurt by Hillary L McBride Phd as a scaffold for our discussion. How might these

What we need from the beginning: Continuing the conversation on spiritual trauma

Please join Dani Joy and I as we discuss the section What we need from the beginning, from the book Holy Hurt by Hilary L McBride, PhD. Dani is a mother of loss to adopt

Alert: California SB 381. California adopted people need your support

California Alliance For Adoptee Rights and Senator Wahab have a bill being heard in the Health Committee this Tuesday, 23 June 2026. They need you to call the members of

The Culture we Swim in, Pt 2. Spiritual Trauma is NOT fun!

Please join me and Dani Joy as we continue our conversation about the intersection of spiritual trauma and adoption. We are talking trauma, just nonstop, processing! It's

The Culture we swim in: continuing the conversation on spiritual trauma and adoption

Please join me and Dani Joy as we continue to address spiritual trauma from our lived experience as a mother of loss to adoption and as a late discovery adopted person.

The Adoption Paradox: a Conversation with Author Jean Kelly Widner

Please join me for my conversation with Jean Kelly Widner, a domestically adopted person who is the author of The Adoption Paradox: Putting Adoption in Perspective. Jean

Fundamentally Bad: a Survivor's Universal Experience of Spiritual Trauma

Please join Dani Joy and I as we continue our conversation about spiritual trauma using the book Holy Hurt by Hilary L McBride PhD as a guide as we explore how this has i

This Feels Familiar: How leaving the system that harmed you can be hard to do. Plus more fun stuff about spiritual trauma!

Please join me and mom Dani Joy as we wrap up chapter 3 in our discussion of spiritual trauma using the book Holy Hurt by Hilary L McBride PhD as a guide. In this episode

System Erasure; Ecological Systems Theory and adoption. More on Spiritual Trauma and Adoption

Please join Dani Joy and me as we continue our conversation on spiritual trauma using the book Holy Hurt: understandin spiritual trauma and the process of healing by Hill

Happy Mother's Day?

Hi! This is me, stream-of-thought-ing my way through a monologue on one of my least favorite days of the year. Enjoy! The host is not a therapist, a lawyer or an adoptio

Feeling naked: continuing the conversation about spiritual trauma

Please join me as Dani and I talk about the journey so far, in our conversation about spiritual trauma and how we got here. Dani can be found at: https://medium.com/@da

Codependency, yuck.

Please join Dani and I as we continue our conversation using the book Holy Hurt: Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing by Hillary L McBride as a guide