Episode Details

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Summary

“Kids are resilient.” Most adoptees grew up hearing some version of it. In this solo episode, released the day before Adoptee Remembrance Day and two days before her adoption day and the podcast’s one-year anniversary, Julie takes a hard, honest look at the word her podcast is named for.

Drawing on Jean Kelly Widner’s The Adoption Paradox, Paul Sunderland’s idea that adoption should really be called “adaption,” and her own somatic training, Julie explores the difference between adaptation and true resilience. What looks like resilience in an adopted child is often a nervous system doing what it had to do to survive. Real resilience, she says, isn’t automatic. It’s built, in the body, over time, and no one should have to build it alone.

Julie also pauses to honor the adoptees we’ve lost, shares openly about her own hard season, and leads a short pendulation practice you can come back to anytime.

In This Episode

• Why Julie launched the podcast on her adoption day
• “Kids are resilient,” and what that phrase actually asks of adopted children
• Paul Sunderland on why adoption should be called “adaption”
• The Bruce Perry line that stopped Julie: separation as the single most traumatic event a human can survive
• A moment of silence for Adoptee Remembrance Day, and why the adoptees we’ve lost were not less resilient than the rest of us
• Why “Resilience is earned. It’s not automatic.” is good news
• How resilience lives in the body, and its link to Capacity from the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging
• Julie’s own season: three moves, a divorce, five losses, and four cancer diagnoses in her family, and what’s helping her stay with herself through it
• “Survival wearing resilience’s clothes”: when old adoptee patterns come back first
• Anger as an early sign of resilience, not a failure of it
• Taking back the pen: agency and authoring your own story
• A guided pendulation practice
• One year of The Resilience Project

Resources & Links Mentioned

• Bring Your Burden, a free live gathering for adult adoptees on Zoom, 6:30 PM Mountain / 8:30 PM Eastern. Replay available to everyone who registers -  https://www.cominghometoself.co/Bring-Your-Burden-Gathering
• The Refuge, a monthly community for adult adoptees - https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge
• The Adoption Paradox by Jean Kelly Widner - https://a.co/d/0eDMtOrg
• Paul Sunderland’s lecture on adoption and addiction -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e0-SsmOUJI&t=211s
• Adoptee Remembrance Day, observed every October 30. It was founded by Pamela Karanova of Adoptees Connect - https://www.facebook.com/adopteeremembranceday
• The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging series, including the Capacity episode -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-adoptees-abandon-themselves-and-how-to-finally-stay/id1849822021?i=1000772206976

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