The Rudd Adoption Research Program has invited me to present the final panel for this year's virtual conference: "Adopted Adults: Connections Across Generations" and I am seeking 8-10 volunteer participants interested in exploring how writing about their experience of being adopted can help facilitate healing and integration of self. I am looking for a range of ages to represent the various life stages as well as a mix of identities.

Participants will attend 6 sessions of drafting, revising, and sharing our writing in an adoptee-only group; keep a reflection journal of the experience from start to finish; and may choose to record and share a brief performance of their writing at the culmination of the sessions to be shared as part of the final presentation on May 10.

90 minute workshops will be held on the following dates @ 9am Pacific/10am Mountain/12pm Eastern time (participants must be available for all sessions):
• 3/13
• 3/27
• 4/3
• 4/10
• 4/17
• 4/24

There will be a live round table discussion on May 10 @ 3:30pm Pacific/4:30pm Mountain/6:30pm Eastern time with those participants who choose to attend.

The purpose of this workshop experience is to:

1) guide adopted adults through a process of writing as a tool for healing
2) connect adoptees to other adoptees to learn from each other's experiences during different life stages
3) share the experience publicly to educate and inform the adoption community, including researchers and stakeholders, about the impact of trauma throughout the lifespan and challenges adoptees face as maturing adults
4) serve as a template for a larger research study to be conducted at a later date

Facilitator:

Liz DeBetta, Ph.D.

As an interdisciplinary scholar-artist-activist Liz’s work is grounded in creativity and social justice and focuses on creating cultural change within individuals and communities that have been marginalized and oppressed. Using storytelling and narrative techniques Liz invites others to create space for empathy and begin healing individual and collective trauma around issues of race, gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, and other intersections of identity that are misunderstood or misrepresented in dominant culture. Her writing has been published on Chicago Now's Portrait of an Adoption, DearAdoption.com, SeveranceMag.com, and in #MeToo: Essays About why this Happened, What it Means and How to Make Sure it Never Happens Again. She is a facilitator of Adoptees Connect in Salt Lake City, is currently researching the benefits of creative writing to heal adoptee trauma and has an adoptee focused book project in the works.