Navigating Adoption’s Emotional Turbulence with Sara Easterly
Release Date: 09/12/2024
Resolving Math-Anxiety Through Trauma-Informed Teaching, with Dr Bea Bleile
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J’aime Rothbard This conversation explores how academic learning is impacted by a student's emotional state, prior experiences, and the safety of the learning environment. Bea, who has been teaching in various roles since 1993, saw that traditional teaching methods fail to account for the "whole" students who enter the classrooms. This failure often results in elevated student anxiety and hindered learning: As a teacher committed to evolving current educational institutions and systems, she addresses: - The impact of negative emotions on learning...
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Elevating Consciousness & Healing Through Art & Music with Ester Martinez
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. This rich conversation explores many topics, from Ester’s personal and professional journeys, to spiritual mysticism, to the parallels between experiencing ‘excellence’ in art, music and transformational trauma healing. Ester began sharing her NDEs and naming,”‘the Divine embrace” as her childhood comfort, the foundation of her healing approach and an enduring influence in her therapeutic practices. She also reflects on: - Why healing is always possible - Art and music as mediums for elevating consciousness...
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Shining Authenticity's Light into Corporate Leadership, with Lubna Forzley
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Kevin Young. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. This passionate conversation begins with Lubna’s upbringing in war-torn Beirut. She recalls seeing bombs falling and people dying and wondering, “What is the point of this? How do we find purpose?” Her mom told her, "It's okay, everything’s replaceable except you, the people you love and the story (or purpose) you live by.” After 15 years of corporate work Lubna launched her own business, Stories. Its name acknowledges the intertwining of our purpose and personal brands, and the alignment of our internal and external...
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Intimacy, Healing and "Sand in the System" with Kosha Joubert.
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. This heart-felt conversation arcs from the pain of apartness to the healing power of connectedness. Kosha shares her personal journey, which led her from the cognitive and somatic dissonance of enforced separation (apartheid) to the synchronicity of inter-connection. She also explains how: - Human love and connection can change systems from the bottom-up - Witnessing eco-communities’ good intentions and dedication to restoring relationships with nature, social systems, cultures, and economies led her to, “fall in love...
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6 Ingredients of Lasting Love with Dr Sara Nasserzadeh
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. This conversation delivers rich insights on the importance of clear communication and intentional maintenance in healthy love relationships. Dr Sara also explores the ways personal and inherited trauma can impact intimate relationships, from causing ongoing emotional issues to expanding individuals' resilience and abilities to maintain healthy relationships. In addition to sharing stories from her personal and professional life, Dr Sara explains: - How the six relational ingredients of her Emergent Love Model interact and evolve...
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The Sound of Healing with Reggie Hubbard
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Kevin Young. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. Listen to hear a powerful and playful discourse that flows from racial anger to curiosity, skepticism, critical thinking, surrender and stroke recovery. Reggie speaks about how his unwavering self-care practices unleashed the transformative alchemy of inner peace. He also describes teaching peace and mindfulness practices to political activists and US Congress members, supporting their need for grounding in chaotic times. He also invites us to: - Express our grief and connect with our emotions rather than avoiding difficult feelings -...
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Healing Ruptured Connections to Self, Land and Culture with Sanjog Kaur
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Kevin Young. Produced by J’aime Rothbard Sanjog’s spiritual name means ‘connection.’ In this flowing, deeply connected conversation, Sanjog describes how ‘longing’ helped her heal her eating disorder. She also explains how heartfelt intentions (as opposed to external goals) helped her navigate obstacles in her addiction recovery. In addition to attuning to our innate ‘longings’ and ‘intentions’, Sanjog highlights the importance of trusting our own intuition, and accepting that we inherently know what we need. Join us to hear Sanjog describe how: - A trip to the...
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Khonmadi: Feeling the Heartbeat of Mother Earth, with Dr Ruby Gibson
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes, Produced by J’aime Rothbard. In this magical conversation, Dr. Ruby shares the launch of The Khonmadi Project, which was inspired by a dream. She has since discovered that Khonmadi is known to different indigenous cultures worldwide, as a term that relates to healing Mother Earth. Dr. Ruby also shares her personal and professional journey, which began at age 13. Learning about the emotional roots of physical pain, led her from massage therapy to somatic healing, and the creation of Somatic Archaeologyⓒ which considers the body a "walking library" of...
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Healing the Trauma of the Heart with Tiph Fedor
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Kevin Young. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. The spiritual journey and process of trauma healing are presented as aligned experiences that unfold together as we progress through healing into wholeness. This conversation begins with Tiph’s healing journey. A highly sensitive, empathetic child, growing up in a family where emotions were suppressed was a painful experience that led her to heroin addiction— described as a "magic bullet," it numbed Tiph’s emotions but made her life a ‘grim’ period of survival. She goes on to share how she overcame her addiction, and the...
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Finding Chronic Pain Relief in Parts Work with Terry Baranski
The Gifts of Trauma
Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Compassionate Inquiry® (CI) both aim to reconnect individuals with their core Self. Learn how understanding parts' reality' roles, and feeling into the somatic flow of Self facilitates healing. In this conversation, Terry illuminates the IFS approach, including the nature of Self, how our how parts manifest chronic pain and why addressing these internal conflicts is essential for healing. Having been trained in both CI and IFS, Terry adeptly distinguishes the two approaches’ areas of...
info_outlineHosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes
Produced by J’aime Rothbard
Imagine a life where every day is a journey through complex emotions, punctuated by waves of separation, loss, and longing. For adoptees, this is often their reality—an unruly mosaic of misaligned feelings that demands understanding, support, and resilience.
A lack of social awareness around the true experience of adoption leaves many adoptees to face their issues with inadequate support. With heartfelt passion, author/adoptee Sara Easterly stands up for those who feel isolated, misunderstood, and/or burdened by invisible stresses and blocks.
Through the lens of Dr Gordon Neufeld's theories on attachment and primal emotions of unbearable separation, Sara delves deep into the experiences faced by adoptees: the pursuit of love, defensive detachment, profound frustration, alarm, isolation and misunderstanding, lack of safety, constant vigilance, people-pleasing, perfectionism, addiction struggles, and more. She also exposes how systemic issues, such as racism, classism, and religious messaging, shape adoption narratives.
In her mission to normalize adoptees’ experiences, Sara sensitively articulates the dynamics that adoptees face, by illuminating:
• The emotional complexities of being adopted • The importance of sharing adoptee stories
• The healing potential of creative expression • The flaws in the positive societal view of adoption
Passionate about supporting adoptees’ voices and stories, Sara is an advocate for creating space within families and cultures to acknowledge the full spectrum of adoption experiences. Her work aims to prevent others from growing up feeling unwanted, flawed, or alone facing common adoptee challenges. The research findings and perspectives she shares reframe adoptees’ chaotic feelings and responses as natural human reactions to traumatic separation.
Join us to hear Sara’s personal adoption experiences, and support her in both spreading adoption awareness and fostering a more compassionate world where every adoptee feels seen, heard, and understood.
Sara Easterly Show Summary - Release Date Sep 12
About Sara Easterly
Sara is an adoptee and the author of books that include Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies, co-authored with birth parent Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard and adoptive parent Lori Holden, as well as the award-winning spiritual memoir, Searching for Mom.
Sara’s essays, articles, and book reviews have been widely published.
She is the founder of Adoptee Voices, where she supports other adoptees in sharing their stories, and she is also a trained course facilitator with the Neufeld Institute, a lens that informs Sara’s insights on the intersection of attachment, child development, brain science, and adoption.
Additionally, Sara is co-host of the Adoption Unfiltered Podcast.
Photo credit: Eileen Skahill
Resources:
Websites:
Sara's Professional Website
Adoptee Voices
Adoption Unfiltered
Comprehensive Resources page at Adoption Unfiltered
Adoption Trauma Article
Adoption Statistic
Books:
Adoption Unfiltered
Searching for Mom
Hold On to Your Kids
The Late Bloomer
Videos:
Adoptions & Addiction with Paul Sunderland
Adoption Unfiltered Podcast Interview with Gordon Neufeld
The Trauma of Relinquishment with Gabor Maté
Quotes:
"For nine months, they heard the voice of the mother, registered the heartbeat, attuning with the biorhythms with the mother. The expectation is that it will continue. This is utterly broken for the adopted child. We don’t have sufficient appreciation for what happens to that infant and how to compensate for it." - Gabor Maté
"Adoptees and children who are fostered are over-represented in the prison system, addiction clinics and are 4 times more likely than their peers to attempt suicide." - Gabor Maté
“Adoption is one of the earliest and primary disruptions in the continuity of connection which can last throughout life. It doesn’t end right after adoption. That facing of separation is developmental and it will be there until the day you die.” - Gordon Neufeld
"...there is no adoption [or] relinquishment without drama, there is an enormous grief of a child or a baby who has been waiting nine months to meet somebody who is set up to bond [with them] and then doesn’t. [There's] the enormous grief of the mother ...who cannot live with having a child ... very often influenced by parents & patriarchal society ...saying ... you can't do this, which goes against her biology. And it's about the enormous grief of a group who can't live without having a child, ...adoptive parents who come ...with an enormous grief that they've been unable to have a child and actually this is the problem. ...this word adoption ...covers up their grief ... often we think... of people who are adopted .. as ... having been chosen ... but ... very often it's about somebody who enters into a family that doesn't genetically fit for them, it's about someone entering a family with an impossible job description...of having to be somebody that they can never ... be, to fix a wound of infertility with its’ ....enormous grief when that can't happen.” - Paul Sunderland
Sara’s Social Media: