October
2026
Our Community
This space is intended to increase visibility for adoptee-led/centric work, events, and resources. Inclusion is for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as an endorsement, recommendation, or affiliation by Adoption Mosaic.
Support the Protect Adoptees and American Families (PAAF) Act
A community petition is gathering support for the Protect Adoptees and American Families Act (PAAF), a bipartisan bill designed to provide citizenship protections for internationally adopted adults excluded under current law. The legislation seeks to address a longstanding legal gap that has left many adoptees without the rights and security promised through adoption.
Fundraising Campaign - 9 Days Left and Approaching Goal!
Relative Strangers is a feature documentary about a group of adopted Koreans who were among the first to be sent for adoption by American and European families in the aftermath of the Korean War. Born to Korean women and unknown to or unacknowledged by their American GI fathers, they were stigmatized by Korean society and sent overseas. Now adults in their 50s and 60s, they’re searching for their original families, armed with DNA kits. The film follows their journeys as they confront their complicated pasts, uncovering the economic, racial, and social inequalities that determined their fate.
Your support will help us film the remaining footage needed to complete the production phase. Donations will cover crew fees, travel costs, equipment rentals, meals, and other critical production costs.
Registration Open!
Adoptee Read-a-Thon Fundraiser
Join us for a fabulous line up of adoptee authors reading from their work. The event is from 12 pm - 8 pm Eastern, with a detailed schedule coming soon. Pop in and out as your favorite authors are reading or stay for the whole day. Recordings will be available to ticket holders after the event, so if you can't be present for the live reading, we've got you covered.
Starting a October 9th at 12 pm eastern, you can bid on silent auction items donated by authors and allies. Items include signed copies of books, expert consultations, and much more. The auction will close at the end of the event on October 17th.
All proceeds will benefit Adoptees for Family Preservation who is currently raising money to support Haley Radke's latest project, the investigative podcast On Adoption, to be released fall of 2026!
Panel: If I Knew Then What I Know Now, What Would I do Differently? Planning for a Lifelong Adoption Journey
Adoption is treated like a one-time event that happens in infancy, instead of what it actually is: the catalyst for a lifelong experience woven into the lives of birthparents, adoptive parents, and adopted people. This session teaches every member of the adoption constellation how to anticipate triggering experiences and milestones before they happen, giving them the tools necessary to improve outcomes for everyone in their own adoption triad while centering the needs of adopted people. The act of adoption is trauma, trauma doesn’t just go away on its own, and it cannot be healed by love alone, making it vitally important that everyone in the adoption constellation understand when, how, and why trauma may manifest in both birthparents and adopted people throughout their lives, in order to build a personal toolkit that supports healing.
WHEN:
Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026
11 am CT
WHERE:
Online
Down the Rabbit Hole: The Fight for Texas Adoptee Rights Then and Now
In Texas, adoptees' original birth certificates are still sealed. Author Patricia Knight Meyer, handed over along a hospital curb in 1970, launches her memoir WONDERLAND: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption with a panel on changing that, Down the Rabbit Hole: Adoptee Rights in Texas Then and Now, moderated by Emily Ramshaw of The 19th. Free to attend, free livestream.
WHEN:
November 6, 2026 | 6-7:45pm Central Time
LIVESTREAM option starting at 6:25pm Central Time
WHERE:
Texas Spirit Theater, Bullock Texas State History Museum
1800 Congress Ave, Austin TX 78701
Tickets on Sale! The Incl[us]ion Initiative 2026 Leadership Summit
Join us on November 13th! Tickets are on sale until we sell out!
If you are an Adoptee, a Foster, or if you are an ally as a Parent, Employer, HR/People Leader, Executive, Young Professional, or a Community Member in any level of your career - this event is for you!!
This is open to all and all are welcome to come be inspired, professionally network, and build community.
WHEN:
November 13, 2026
3:30-8:30pm ET with a hosted networking hour from 5pm - 6pm
WHERE:
DuPont Circle in Washington, DCr
Notespeak ft. Lisa Marie Simmons
Every adoptee knows something that takes most people decades to learn: the systems we inherit shape us long before we understand them.
NoteSpeak (In a Word), Lisa's third spoken-word jazz album with pianist Marco Cremaschini, released on Ropeadope Records, begins from that same place of reckoning. It looks not only at the consequences of white supremacy, misogyny, and environmental collapse, but at their origins, because you cannot imagine new systems without understanding the ones you're standing inside.
Blending jazz, Afrofuturism, dodecaphony, and electronica with spoken word poetry, and brought to life by an extraordinary ensemble including guitar icon Vernon Reid, funk legend Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and the beloved doo-wop group The Flamingos, the album is built with all of the artistry that they can muster. The Carnegie Hall audience stood up. Lisa would love for you to walk through. NoteSpeak (In a Word) is submitted for Grammy® Award consideration.
Gigi, a Different Elephant
by Orianne Purcell
Gigi is a little elephant who grew up with her two parents... but they were both giraffes! For a long time, she never really paid attention to their differences. But one day, Gigi starts asking herself questions. Why doesn't she have a long neck like her parents? Why does she look so little like them? And above all... who is she, truly? A tender story about identity, differences, and the strength of simply being... yourself.
Gigi, a Different Elephant is a book meant to normalize certain emotions that children may experience regarding, among other things, their sense of belonging and their differences.
A simple, heartwarming story that touches on subjects such as adoption, identity, and self-esteem writing by an adoptee.
Pieces of Me
by Chad Kiser
Pieces of Me is a newly released collection of poetry and personal reflections by Louisville writer and adult adoptee Chad M. Kiser. The book pairs poems Chad began writing as a biracial teenager adopted into a white family with reflections written more than 30 years later, exploring adoption, race, identity, belonging, family, love, faith and what we come to understand differently as adults about the younger people we once were.
"I was adopted at approximately six weeks old and grew up biracial—Black and white—in a white adoptive family. I began writing many of the poems in Pieces of Me around age 14, long before I had the adult language to fully understand some of what I was experiencing around adoption, race, identity and belonging. At 20, I found both of my biological parents and eventually developed relationships with them. Now, approaching 50 and a father myself, returning to those poems gave me something I didn't expect: rather than trying to remember what it felt like to be that adopted teenager, I could actually read his words. I chose not to rewrite those early poems. Instead, I allowed that younger version of myself to speak as he originally did and responded through present-day reflections. My hope in sharing the book with the Adoption Mosaic community is that other adult adoptees may recognize something of their own younger selves in that conversation."
Participate in a research study related to genetic testing
Ivy Elvin is a second-year genetic counseling graduate student at Rutgers University. Her study is to learn about international adoptee’s attitudes toward predisposition genetic testing.
Study
-Title: International Adult Adoptee Interest In and Barriers to Predisposition
-Take a brief 10-minute Qualtrics survey
Eligibility
- 18 years or older
- A U.S. citizen currently living in the U.S.
- Adopted from any country outside of the U.S.
Contact Info
Ivy Elvin, Rutgers graduate student
484-886-9000 [email protected]
Have content to feature?
In the "Our Community" section of Adoption Mosaic's monthly newsletter, we uplift and promote adoptee-led events, programs, content, and services. If you are an adoptee and would like to have your work featured in our newsletter, click the button below to submit a content application. Please note that due to space limitations, we may not be able to feature everything that is submitted to us.
