2 transracial Chinese adoptees, Leah & Tayler, exploring their lives as adults 28+ years after adoption. They'll bring candid, weird, brutally honest conversations about the modern realities of adoption: dating, sex, attachment, anger, the adoption economy, birth parents, medical histories, internalized racism, & what it actually means to be dumped at birth. They hope this can be a resource for adoptees, adoptive parents, & anyone who has ever struggled with identity, family, belonging, temporality, or abandonment (spoiler: that’s all of you!).
Why birthdays hit different for adoptees [Interview]
Many adoptees don’t know their true birthday. That’s a reality for us and our friend, Michelle Nakamoto, an actress, fellow Chinese-American adoptee, and former host of her own podcast “Error 404: Birthday Not Found.” In a belated birthday celebration, we share our thoughts on astrology, “gotcha days,” visiting the orphanages we were adopted from, and reflect on our most recent revolution around the sun.
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About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording and editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
Theme by The Blasting Company
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Instagram: @dumpedatbirth
@dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com (mailto:dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com)
Dumpedatbirthpod.com
7 Dec 2023
Interview: A Native American Jewish Adoptee
In our first guest interview, Ariella shares insight into her unique experience as a domestic transracial Native American Jewish adoptee. From discovering she was Native American as a teenager, instead of Salvadorean as she initially believed, to reclaiming her Native culture and community as an adult, we explore the nuances of that experience. Ariella shares what it means to be triple abandoned by her birth mom, her adoptive mom teaching her to empathize with her birth mom from a young age, and why adoptive parents should always “see color."
CW: adoption
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Resources:
Video: How the us stole thousands of native american children (Vox)
Read: The Long History of Native American Adoptions (Harper’s Bazaar)
Read: Native American People & Mormonism (Wikipedia)
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About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording, mixing, editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
Theme by The Blasting Company
1 Nov 2023
Nature vs Nurture: 2 Chinese Adoptees on their White Families
Transracial adoption often means growing up in a culture that is not typically associated with your ethnicity. In other words, for Leah and Tayler: being shown Asian culture by white people. As two transracial Chinese adoptees growing up in the Bay Area and Denver respectively, they had two incredibly different childhoods with two different sets of white parents. It’s affected a lot of how they show up in the world, and they wanted to share some things they’ve learned (and are still curious about). They’ll talk about genetic mirroring, nature v nurture, adopting your parents’ culture, and generally what it means to be a different ethnicity than your immediate family.
—
About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording, mixing, and editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
Theme by The Blasting Company
—
Instagram: @dumpedatbirth
Threads: @dumpedatbirth
TikTok: @dumpedatbirth
dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com
dumpedatbirthpod.com
—
Instagram: @dumpedatbirth
@dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com (mailto:dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com)
Dumpedatbirthpod.com
23 Oct 2023
Jewish identity as a Chinese Adoptee: adopting your parents’ culture
One of our co-hosts, Leah, is Jewish. In light of current events, we wanted to offer some thoughts about what it means to “adopt” our parents’ culture while still living with the actual ethnicity into which we are born. As an adoptee, we are adopted by our parents’ cultures, their heritages, their family histories, and the ways in which their own ethnic backgrounds have affected their lives. This conversation does not speak to the larger nuances of current circumstances but rather offers an additional perspective about what it means to be both Jewish, Chinese, American, and adopted. Later, we will be releasing a larger episode about our adoptive parents and childhoods as adoptees.
CW: discussion of (not utilizing) racial slurs, ongoing Israel / Palestine / Hamas conflict, adoption
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About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording, mixing, and editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
—
Instagram: @dumpedatbirth
@dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com (mailto:dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com)
dumpedatbirthpod.com
1 Aug 2023
The f*** is a primal wound? 2 Adoptees on Dating
What does romantic attachment after adoption actually feel like? Two Chinese transracial adoptees (Leah & Tayler) take an honest, curious, and navel gazing look at dating and relationships. Leah is currently single with unflinchingly high standards out on these streets. Tayler is a dormant bisexual in a long term hetero relationship. Together, they have exactly zero birth parents and countless “abandonment issues.”
They’ll talk about: fear of abandonment, setting standards, object permanence, in-law “adoption,” joking about trauma, defense mechanisms, domesticity, parenting your inner child, stability and control, The Primal Wound, and (for some reason) Sigourney Weaver.
Content Warning: adoption, birth parents, abandonment, childhood trauma.
—
About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording and editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
Production support by Sebastian Torrelio
Theme by The Blasting Company (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4paO0IcImRazkM6c1RUt48?si=2BjGBbTWQbCfw4IZmHIzew)
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Instagram: @dumpedatbirth (https://www.instagram.com/dumpedatbirth/)
Threads: @dumpedatbirth
TikTok: @dumpedatbirth (https://www.tiktok.com/@dumpedatbirth)
dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com
dumpedatbirthpod.com
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Additional Resources:
The Primal Wound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Primal_Wound) (1993, Nancy Verrier)
27 Jun 2023
After Roe: 2 Adoptees on Abortion
In a candid convo, two adult Chinese adoptees, both born during China’s One Child Policy, dive into the modern realities of being adopted. In the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, we’re tackling a topic head-on: why “choosing adoption” is not a simple solution to the abortion debate.
We’ll talk about: empathizing with our birth mothers, the One Child Policy, adoptee suicide rates, "adoption doulas," adoption rates before and after Roe v Wade, the politicization of adoption, and our honest experiences as adult adoptees.
Content Warning: abortion, adoption, Roe v Wade, One Child Policy. We recognize all people with uteruses who are capable of becoming pregnant, but in this episode, due to the specific subject matter of our personal adoption experiences, we heavily utilize “mother” and “women” to contextualize these individuals.
—
About the podcast:
Produced by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Co-created and hosted by Leah Kelly-Reingold and Tayler Bunge
Recording and editing by Tayler Bunge
Marketing and design by Leah Kelly-Reingold
Sound engineering support by Sebastian Torrelio
Theme by The Blasting Company (https://open.spotify.com/artist/4paO0IcImRazkM6c1RUt48?si=vd8NqnwLQWSGD9L-j_5LVg)
—
Instagram: @dumpedatbirth (https://www.instagram.com/dumpedatbirth/)
dumpedatbirthpod@gmail.com
dumpedatbirthpod.com
—
Additional Resources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/10/living-in-adoptions-emotional-aftermath - Emotional aftermath of adoption.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/ - Challenges and costs of adoption.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/why-more-women-dont-choose-adoption/589759/ - Reasons why women don't choose adoption.
https://bixbycenter.ucsf.edu/news/adoption-decisions-among-women-denied-abortion#:~:text=Of%20the%20231%20women%20in,chose%20to%20do%20so%20anyway - Adoption decisions of women denied abortion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/18/adoption-abortion-roe-dobbs/ - Adoption and abortion laws.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-sep-20-fg-china-adopt20-story.html - Babies who were stolen in China to supply adoption demand.
https://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/15/ - Coercive practices re: China's intercountry adoption system.
https://www.vox.com/2021/12/8/22822854/abortion-roe-wade-adoption-supreme-court-barrett - Adoption not a replacement for abortion. https://youtu.be/gmehUgOy5ok - China's shrinking population - Vox.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/04/skinfolk-book-matthew-pratt-guterl-adoption-racism/673096/ - Adoption and racism.
https://msmagazine.com/2022/06/02/adoption-abortion/ - Women who chose adoption support abortion rights.
https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2023/pregnant-people-united-states-seeking-abortion-do-not-see-adoption-alternative - Abortion preferred over adoption.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010782421003528 - Adoption research article.
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1063784711/its-not-as-simple-as-abortion-v-adoption-just-ask-bri - Complexities of abortion and adoption.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2022/3/down-syndrome-and-social-capital-assessing-the-costs-of-selective-abortion - Down Syndrome, abortion, and social capital.
https://2date4love.com/adoption-statistics/ - Adoption statistics.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubpdfs/safehaven.pdf - Safe haven laws.
https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/06/long-term-decline-us-abortions-reverses-showing-rising-need-abortion-supreme-court - Rising need for abortion.
26 Jun 2023
Dumped at Birth (Trailer)
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