TITLE: Adoptees & Disordered Eating

DESCRIPTION: 

This panel features adult adoptees who will share their experiences with disordered eating. Each story explores how adoption—particularly the trauma of loss—can shape one’s relationship with the body. For some, disordered eating becomes a way to cope with trauma, silence, or disconnection. This conversation will explore how adoption can impact our relationship with our body and the struggle to inhabit a body that may have always felt disconnected from identity and belonging. Join us as we hold space for grief, healing, and the ongoing process of making sense of one's self in a world where biology, history, and identity are often

fragmented or erased.

Points to ponder:

• How has your experience as an adoptee shaped your relationship with your body?

• What role has the absence or loss of biological history—medical, cultural, or familial—played in your journey with disordered eating or self-understanding?

• What would you want therapists, adoptive families, or support systems to know to better understand the connection between adoption and disordered eating?

• What has helped you begin healing or reconnecting with your body?

PANELISTS

Teresa Hughes (she/her/ella)

Teresa Hughes is a transracial adoptee who was adopted as an infant from Paraguay in 1989. Teresa is a mental health therapist in training, and aspires to utilize her lived experience and training to help future clients navigate adoption trauma and identity development. She has a passion for mountain biking and has found physical sports and somatic experiences to be very transformative along her journey. Being a part of this panel is very meaningful to Teresa; disordered eating has served as both a coping tool and signal behavior in her life. Through various modalities of work to process the underlying needs these behaviors have served, she now seeks to intentionally redirect herself with compassion and care each day with regard to food. Teresa looks forward to sharing this space with other adoptees who can relate to this experience in their lives.

Mary Carman (she/her)

Mary Carman is a transracial adoptee from South Korea. She was adopted in 1984 when she was three months old through Holt International and is an only child. In 2005, she was contacted by her birthmother through Holt and spent several years attempting to maintain contact. She ended contact in 2012 and is now focusing holistically on who she is outside of and beyond being an adoptee. Mary has worked in food banking for several years and is a strong advocate for food justice. She is currently a Food Assistance Network Strategist at Oregon Food Bank and belongs to the board of directors for Farmers Market Fund. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, going to the movies, and being in nature. Mary suffers from several chronic illnesses, including OCD, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and binge eating disorder.

Dr. Melanie (JaeHee) Chung-Sherman (she/her/yeoja)

Dr. Melanie (JaeHee) Chung-Sherman, DSW, LCSW-S, CEDS (she/her/yeoja) is a licensed clinical social worker and Board-approved clinical supervisor through the State of Texas. She is the Director of the Clinical Social Work Fellowship Program at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW). She is also the Clinical Therapist Lead and clinical co-lead with the eating disorder interdisciplinary team at UTSW's Multidisciplinary Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. She specializes in working with predominantly QTBIPOC-identified clients, including TRIAs, impacted by eating disorders and complex trauma. She holds her CEDS (Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Certification) through the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She is also a Social Work Adjunct Professor for doctoral, Master 's-level, and undergraduate students. She received her Doctor of Social Work from The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, as the first Asian-Pacific Islander to complete the program. She speaks and writes about QTBIPOC mental health to address power-based violence and deconstruct structural oppression.

Lorie Tensen (she/her)

Lorie is a Biracial transracial adoptee: Black American and Honduran. She was adopted as a 7-month old infant in 1966 and grew up in the extremely homogeneous rural Midwest. As an adult, Lorie learned that she may have been the only person of color within a 50+-mile radius. The impact of this isolation and a traumatic accident at age 13 affected her life in many ways - including a 33-year battle with disordered eating. Lorie is a psychotherapist specializing in menopause and mental health. She's written a training course on the topic for mental health professionals and believes that women deserve to age vibrantly and live a juicy life! Lorie is honored to participate in this panel discussion and hopes her story and perspective as a transracial adoptee has an impact on someone's life. Sometimes knowing you're not the "only one in the room" is enough.