Noel Holton Brathwaite is an adoptee who lives in New York and is a tenured Associate Professor of English. Her husband is a scientist who works in the field of Computational Biology. They have a bright and talented son, who is a senior in college majoring in Physics. Music by Corey Quinn
Aimee Seiff Christian writes memoir and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, Pidgeonholes, Atticus Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She is a contributing writer to Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity and the Meaning of Kinship. She is a writing instructor and developmental editor and teaches memoir and creative nonfiction at GrubStreet and privately. She is currently working on a memoir about adoption, identity, and the long afterlife of separation. She lives in Massachusetts. More at aimeechristian.net.Music by Corey Quinn
Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao, Ed.D., LCSW, LMFT is a returning guest.She was the Founder and CEO of Center for Family Connections, Inc. in Cambridge and New York, Founder and Director of Riverside After Adoption Consulting and Training, PACT (Pre/Post Adoption Consulting and Training, and Pavao Consulting and Coaching. Dr. Pavao has done extensive training, both nationally and internationally. She is a lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and she has consulted to various public and private child welfare agencies, adoption agencies, schools, and community groups, as well as probate and family court judges, lawyers, and clergy. Additionally, she has worked closely with individuals and families touched by adoption, foster care, and other complex blended family constructions. She has developed models for treatment, and models for training, using her systemic, intergenerational, and developmental framework, The Normative Crises in the Development of the Adoptive Family. Her book, The Family of Adoption, has received high acclaim. Dr. Pavao has received many awards and honors, including the Children’s Bureau/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Adoption Excellence Award for Family Contribution (2003) and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption award for Angels in Adoption (2000).Music by Corey Quinn
Elizabeth Barbour. M.Ed. is an adoptee and adoptive mom with 27 years of reunion experience. In 1999, she found her birth mom, birth dad and eleven brothers and sisters. An adoption reunion coach, speaker and author of two books, she’s currently writing her third about building healthy relationships in adoption reunions. Elizabeth helps people find grace and grounding amidst the grief and complexity of the reunion process through self-care, storytelling, and ritual. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina and you can learn more about her at www.elizabethbarbour.comElizabeth Barbour's Eventbrite Music by Corey Quinn
Gretchen Sisson, PhD, is a sociologist who studies abortion and adoption in the United States. She is a researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, part of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examining adoption decision-making after abortion denial (as part of The Turnaway Study) was cited in the Supreme Court’s dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health from Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor. In response to the oral arguments and decision in Dobbs, she authored pieces in the Washington Post, The Nation, and the Washington Post (again). Gretchen’s research been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and Consider This, as well as in New York Magazine, VOX, and other outlets.https://www.gretchensisson.comMusic by Corey Quinn