TITLE: Where We Find Joy

DESCRIPTION:

A perfect way to start off the 2026 We the Experts Adoptee Speaker Series: with a discussion featuring adult adoptees sharing the many ways they experience and cultivate joy in their lives. Panelists will share the spaces, relationships, practices, and passions that bring them joy. By understanding the both/and of adoption, adoptees can push against narratives that focus solely on loss and trauma, offering a full picture of the adoptee experience. Through storytelling and reflection, we will show how joy can coexist with complexity.

Points to Ponder:

Why is it important to talk about joy alongside trauma and loss?
How can joy coexist with grief, loss, or longing?
What roles do community, creativity, or identity play in joy?
In what ways can joy be an act of resistance and/or healing?

PANELISTS:

Elizabeth (E) Marshall (she/her)

Elizabeth Marshall, E for short, is a queer adoptee (forced closed adoption) in reunion. Having always felt “different” she was told around age 13, but dissuaded from searching until serious medical challenges in her 40s led her to change her mind. As an abuse survivor and having recovered from eating disorders, E has reclaimed joy through positive connection - creating safe community spaces, boosting creativity, time in nature, learning to trust herself and bringing pleasure back into food after years of shame. E turned this into a career to help others and is the founder of Body Mind Food Coach, an award-winning certified health coach and neurodiversity-affirming mental health coach, and host of the Mind Over Mouth podcast. She’s honoured to join this panel as she believes adoptees deserve joy and lightness, and both are possible when we notice the glimmers and reclaim our right to live on our own terms.

Yaron Michael Hakim (he/him)

Yaron Michael Hakim is a transracial Colombian adoptee. He has an adopted sister from New Zealand and his adoptive parents are from Israel. After adoption he grew up in Australia, England and Switzerland. Yaron is an artist working in painting and sculpture, and his work is centered around his itinerant early life and adoption experience. In recent work he has been interviewing Colombian adoptees and making paintings about their adoption/reunion stories. His work has recently been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Sargent’s Daughters gallery in New York. Yaron is honored to be on this panel, to dialogue, grow and share.

Jeff Forney (he/him)

Jeff Forney is a baby scoop adoptee in reunion and currently working on a project in the adoptee world. With the ‘Innocent People Project’ he aims to share the adoptee experience. The truths adoptees seek may be difficult and the healing may be ongoing, but Jeff believes in the power of human stories and the healing it can create. He believes everyone is worthy of love. “A non-adoptee’s view on adoption is not an adoptee’s view on adoption. And in between is a gap I hope to fill. Adoptees carry burdens. Some being the burden of explanation, the burden to be affirming and the burden of loyalty. An adoptee’s ‘book of life’ starts on chapter two. How often does one purchase a book and start on chapter two? This project does not look to make a single story into a stereotype. Each story is unique and valid adding to the many stories that make up the adoption mosaic. We are a global community of disconnect that is finding its voice, in real time. A minority hidden in plain sight. Some adoptees fall out of the ‘Adoption Issues Tree’ and hit only one branch, and some hit every single one of them. It’s different for everyone, yet we all have a common thread. Stay curious…and be grateful. Gratitude loosens the grip of inadequacy. Gratitude is liberating and sharing is healing.” - Jeff Forney

Gabriel “MoFundamentals” Gutierrez (he/him/el/inde)

Originally from Chicago, Gabriel is an adult adoptee, street dancer, reconnecting P’urhépecha native, MoFundamentals founder - the only foster-adoptee led dance program in the U.S., artivist dedicated to highlighting the resiliency of the foster-adoptee community in Los Angeles. His work includes visibilizing powerful narratives rooted in foster care memory while honoring P’urhépecha and street dance culture in conversation with lessons of manhood; experiencing houselessness; being his own financial safety net; and processing the loss of his little sister through dance.

His accomplishments include training at intensives hosted by Rennie Harris (founder of the first and longest running hip-hop dance touring company), representing LA City District 1 as an ACTIVATE Cultural Policy Fellow, piloting re-entry through performing arts programs, being a 2022 DanceUSA Fellow, and being a 2024-2025 MAP Grantee. He’s excited to share his healing dance methods, transforming grief and trauma into celebration on the Adoption Mosaic panel!

Support Panelist - Carmen Hinckley (she/her)

Carmen Hinckley is an international adoptee from Brazil. She was adopted as an infant by a single mother. Many years ago, she returned to Brazil and met several members of her birth family.

She works at a university and in her free time, enjoys writing, Zumba, and going for walks.

She has been involved with Adoption Mosaic since 2012, volunteering in many capacities, most recently, as the Meditation Teacher following We the Experts panels. Carmen is honored to be part of this panel to discuss the importance of self-care, how we can find joy through taking care of ourselves, and how this can be helpful to adoptees.