A New Writer at Gazillion Voices

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Maureen McCauley

I’m thrilled to announce that I will be a contributing writer to Gazillion Voices, the first and only adoptee-led, adoptee-centric on-line magazine.

The mission of the magazine is to “create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.”

As an adoptive parent, I don’t take lightly the realities of adoption. I have written a lot about adoption here on my blog, and my views have evolved quite a bit over the last 20+ years. I look forward to writing about my perspective as a contributor to Gazillion Voices. You can (and should!) follow the magazine on Facebook.

I have known Land of Gazilllion Adoptees founder Kevin Haebeom Vollmers since we worked together at CHSFS-East in Maryland in 2006. We both stopped working professionally in adoption around that time, and we’ve both thought at great length about what adoption means to us. We don’t always agree, and we are good friends.

I admire the work that Kevin and others have done at Gazillion Voices. Full disclosure: my daughter Aselefech is a columnist for Gazillion Voices. I am biased, I know, but Aselefech is an insightful, talented writer. She and I don’t always agree either lol, but we are both open to hard, challenging conversations.

And that’s what I admire and enjoy about Gazillion Voices: provocative, insightful, and real voices and ideas. On my blog, I’ve written my own views about adoption, and have used my position as an adoptive parent (we have held the microphone in adoption for far too long) to urge others to listen to adopted adults and first/birth/original parents. I look forward to contributing to GV, and to furthering the mission of Gazillion Voices to reshape and reframe the conversation about adoption.

I’m looking forward to the adventure.

Amazing Resource for Young Adoptees: Creating Home

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Maureen McCauley

Anyone connected with adoption is aware of the need, value, and scarcity of post-adoption resources, especially for teens and college-age young people. It’s a complicated, vulnerable time for figuring out identity, independence, and values for any adolescent/young adult, and often especially so for adoptees.

How about an opportunity to be with other young adoptees as well as with adopted adults/mentors and accomplished artists from many fields, sharing stories, creating art, and building community?

Creating Home will be a great new resource aimed at connecting young adoptees with artists (many of whom are also adoptees) to tell their stories and explore their realities in a safe, affirming way. The pilot project is beginning in Minnesota, and will hopefully be replicated in many other places. The need is there–let’s get this into action.

An excerpt from the Kickstarter page:

Creating Home is a multidisciplinary storytelling program for teen and college age adoptees, and is driven by the idea that finding one’s voice through the arts can be an empowering experience. The three month pilot program will feature world-class teaching artist mentors (like the artists, actors, and writers featured in our video), interactive workshops, performance opportunities, and much more. It will serve as a space to affirm identity and build community in whatever ways that makes sense to the participants. Whether through spoken-word, visual art, dance, or other forms, the teen and college age adoptee participants will be given tools and resources to tell their stories and talk about their thoughts and perspectives on their own terms.

Sun Mee Chomet: actor/playwright. adoptee, featured in Coming Home Kickstarter video

As the adoptive parent of 4 now-young adults (all in their mid-late 20’s now!), I know that this program would have been embraced by them, and would have been extremely useful to them. It brings young adoptees together in a creative, active way. It’s a partnership with COMPAS (Community Programs In the Arts), Land of Gazillion Adoptees, and the hip hop artist/activist/slam poetry champion Guante. Creating Home meets a huge, gaping need in the adoption community.

And it needs your support! Please take a look at the Kickstarter page and make a donation. Adoption agency professionals, adoptive parents, adult adoptees, artists, performers, photographers, poets, anyone who cares about solid, appropriate, meaningful resources for young adoptees–please join me in Creating Home.

Adoptee-Led, Adoption Reform Conference: Early Registration!

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

This is exciting.

Early registration is now open for the Adoption Policy and Reform Collaborative’s conference: Reframing Adoption and for the Minnesota Transracial Film Festival, November 15 and 16 in St. Paul, MN. Adoptees, original/first parents, and adoptive parents are all invited to attend. Space is limited. Register now! I already did.

Why go? Because you have the opportunity to attend the Minnesota Transracial Film Festival on November 15. Among the films are the amazing Closure, which I wrote about here; plus Where Are You Going, Thomas? by Jaikyoung Choi; Tammy Chu’s Searching for Go-Hyang; and Ramsay Liem and Deann Borshay Liem’s Memory of Forgotten War. There will be a (no doubt exciting and powerful) panel discussion with many of the people involved in the films.

And you should go because the film festival is the extremely tasty appetizer for this wonderful main course on November 16. From the Adoption and Policy Reform Collaborative page:

Featuring: Jane Jeong Trenka, Marissa Lichwick-Glesne, Robert O’Connor, Katie Hae Leo, Liz Raleigh, Amanda Woolson, Soo Jin Pate, Lisa Marie Rollins, Kelly Condit-Shrestha, Susan Ito, Chad Goller-Sojourner, JaeRan Kim, Nicole Callahan, Susan Branco Alvarado, Joy Lieberthal Rho, Michelle Johnson, Sandy White Hawk, Mary Mason, Shannon Gibney, and many more!

Anyone who has been following adoption issues knows that these folks are among the motivated movers-and-shakers and the catalyst cage-rattlers in the adoption community, in the US and globally. Adoptee writers, advocates, poets, artists, academics, researchers, and others will be there. Change is in the air, and it’s definitely happening here. Come for the workshops, stay for the after-party. Serious conversations, serious partying. Be there.

Early registration is available here at AdopSource. Lots of people and organizations have been working hard on this conference, which will be amazing. A special shout out to the folks at Land of Gazillion Adoptees and at Gazillion Voices. Well done.

The Launching of Gazillion Voices

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

After much hard work, the first ever adoptee-led online magazine launched today. It is insightful and innovative. Gazillion Voices is live! Subscribe today: it is well worth it.

The “Voices” section includes a wonderful essay by my daughter, Aselefech Evans. Other Gazillion Voices writers include talented poet-writer-actor Katie Hae Leo, Declassified Adoptee Amanda Woolston, Dr. John Raible, Harlow’s Monkey JaeRan Kim, and others. The sections include Research, Film Essays, Arts, Photo Essays, Food, Literature, Interviews, and Podcasts. Very cool.

The mission: “To create a platform for adoptees and their allies to bring topics important to the adoption community to life through rich, compelling, and thought-provoking content that will be accessible to the broader community, and will ultimately reframe and reshape the conversation about adoption.” It’s time.

Gazillion Voices– An All-Adoptee Led Online Magazine

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

While there are lots of articles, magazines, and policies about adoption, most are written by adoptive parents or adoption agencies. Very few are written by adoptees. Well, that’s all about to change.

Gazillion Voices will be the first All Adoptee Led publication addressing adoption issues from an adoptee-centric perspective. They’ve assembled an astonishing group of (US and international) adoptee writers, artists, academics, chefs, musicians, actors, researchers, change agents, activists, iconoclasts, and more. It’s gonna be great.

Its roots are in the Land of Gazillion Adoptees blog, and its branches are now looking for a little green. The Kickstarter campaign launched today. Your donation will be well-placed. The magazine launches in August–I can’t wait.

Full disclosure: My daughter Aselefech–the one who wrote the most viewed post on my blog ever–will be a contributing columnist. I will also be writing an article for a fall issue.

Adoptees Talk: A Podcast

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Maureen McCauley

Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows that I always try to acknowledge and include the voices of adult adoptees. We adoptive parents have so much to learn from them.

Many of you have probably seen or heard of the documentary Somewhere Between, about Chinese adoptees and their search journeys and decisions. One of the young women, Jenni Fang Lee, recently spoke with Kevin Haebeom Vollmers, a Korean adoptee, via podcast on Land of Gazillion Adoptees.

Enjoy the podcast here.

As Kevin says: the conversation topics include racism, the film Stuck, traveling to China, and building relationships between adoptees of different backgrounds. Important stuff.

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