TITLE: Adoption Disruption and Dissolution

DESCRIPTION

This event features adoptee panelists discussing the nuanced and complex topic of disruption and dissolution in adoption.

PANELISTS

Julian Washio-Collette (he/him/his) is a domestic, Baby Scoop era adoptee, adopted as an infant, and then adopted a second time after his first adoption was dissolved when he was nine-years-old. He has been in reunion with biological family for four years and intensively exploring the impacts of his two adoptions for two-and-a-half years, primarily through therapeutic work and writing with other adoptees. He is an avid bicycle tourer, unicyclist, and explorer of contemplative spiritualties, including living in Buddhist and Christian monasteries and taking temporary vows as a Catholic monk. He is now married and shares his writing at Peregrine Adoptee. Julian is excited to be on this panel to discuss the unique effects of undergoing multiple ruptures of core relationships and identity on the adoptee journey.

Dennis Alajandro Vegas Leoutsakas grew up as a ward of the State of New York from 1948-1966. At some time during his infancy or toddler years he was adopted, and then, the adoption was dissolved. He was returned to the care of the state and determined no longer adoptable because of his racial/ethnic origins. He has never know his biological parents. Today, among many things, Dennis is a university professor and academic researcher. The primary focus of his research is world-wide child displacement and its effects on child development. Dr. D. Leoutsakas is interested in the disruption and dissolution of adoptions because it is personal, and the discussion is so uncomfortable that it is often avoided.

When Anna Martin (she/her/hers) was two, her biological and adoptive mothers fell in love with each other and left their husbands to be together, which resulted in her first adoptive mother losing custody of Anna. Anna’s adoptive father remarried and Anna grew up wondering which of her three mothers was the “real” one and what to do about the others. Attempting to make sense of this complicated web, she became an international family lawyer, but this further tangled her understanding of her own families’ conflicting truths. Recently, her primary focus has been writing two autobiographical novels, “Fledge” and “Lacunae,” that are centered in her experience as the daughter of three mothers. While Anna’s adoption story doesn’t map onto many of the common adoption narratives, being separated from her first adoptive mother at a formative age has shaped every aspect of her identity, so she looks forward to contributing to this discussion about dissolution and disruption and hearing about her fellow panelists’ experiences.