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Kristina Denbow & Mather Family Part 2
Description
What does it mean to have two homes, two families, and two lives — and to love both fully?
In the latest episode of The Anna Jinja Show, host Anna Jinja sits down with Kristina Denbow, a transnational adoptee who was adopted from Kazakhstan as a child and raised in Athens, Ohio. After years of questions about her origins, Kristina made the journey back last summer — visiting the orphanage where she spent her earliest years and reuniting with her biological sister, grandmother, and niece.
What she found wasn't just closure. It was a flooding of memories, a rekindling of love, and a complicated, beautiful reckoning with identity.
Joining the conversation are Sophie Mather — Kristina's longtime friend, who chose the poem "Battery" by Anne Waldman to honor her story — and Sophie's father, Pete, who offers a parent's perspective on what Kristina's courage represents.
This episode speaks to something universal: the human need to know where we come from, and the remarkable capacity we must carry more than one home in our hearts.