In this episode of Adoption Utah with host Donna Pope, adoptee and writer Dr. Liz DeBetta unpacks adoption through the lens of creative healing, sharing her lived experience from growing up in a closed adoption feeling emotionally overwhelmed and alone. She recounts starting to write secret poems at 14 to process unnamed grief, receiving her original birth certificate on her 40th birthday, and the reunion with her first mother who said, "I've been waiting for this day for 40 years."

Making Space to Heal

The conversation stays grounded in the internal experience of being adopted, including the challenge adoptive parents face with resistance to curiosity and the need to hold space for the "both/and" rather than either/or thinking. Liz explains how adoption asks families to act "as if" while creating disconnection, and argues that adoptive parents must work against resistance to make room for both families to coexist. She discusses taking two years to tell her adoptive parents about the reunion and the estrangement from her adopted brother, who views her search as betrayal.

Creative Tools for Connection

Drawing on her award-winning solo show 'Unmothered' and her Migrating Toward Wholeness process, Liz explains using writing and performance as tools for processing embodied trauma through five core principles: making space to heal, rewriting the truth, expressing the primal wound, becoming the subject, and breaking silences. She addresses how going back to teenage poetry revealed unacknowledged loss and grief, and offers guidance for adoptees seeking community, birth parents navigating impossible choices, and adoptive families learning to stay curious.

A guide to creative healing in adoption that honors complexity, validates internal experience, and offers pathways to connection. Listen now and share with someone seeking tools for processing adoption trauma.

Follow or Subscribe to Adoption Utah on your favorite platforms:
Website: www.AdoptionUtah.org | YouTube: @AdoptionUtah | Twitter/X: AdoptionUtah | Instagram: AdoptionUtah | LinkedIn: Adoption Utah

Follow Donna Pope: LinkedIn: Donna-Pope-41652ba/

Follow Liz DeBetta: