INDIANA ADOPTEE NETWORK NEWS Indiana Adoptee Network News

Join host Pam Kroskie with her guest Suzanne Bachner- 

Suzanne Bachner is an award-winning playwright, director and adoptee and adoptee equality advocate. Her award winning play, The Good Adoptee, is the riveting and outrageous true story of Suzanne’s search for the truth of her origins and her first/birth parents in the face of New York State's sealed records. The Good Adoptee won awards for Best Autobiographical Script and Best Actress for star Anna Bridgforth when it premiered in the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York City. It was also named a Best Play by Indie Theater Now and is included in ITN’s Plays and Playwrights 2017 anthology. The show has toured to the London International Fringe Festival and all over the U.S., including a 7-week 9-city Connecticut tour to support the vital legislative efforts of Access Connecticut and the Keynote Presenter for Indiana Adoptee Network’s 2nd Annual Conference. The Good Adoptee has raised funds and awareness for ALARM, Origins Canada, Access Massachusetts, Access Connecticut and You Gotta Believe. Other adoption plays include We Call Her Benny; Alexandra Triptych, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Twin Studies and her 14-actor reunion epic, Brilliant Mistake. Suzanne holds an MFA from the Actors Studio Drama School at the New School University, is a member of the United Solo Academy and the Dramatists Guild. JMTCTheatre.com • TheGoodAdoptee.com

Join host Pam Kroskie with her guest Rhonda Churchill- Rhonda will be keynoting at IAN's conference April 5th and 6th in Indianapolis- for more information on the conference go to IndianaAdopteeNetwork.org and click on the link.

Rhonda Noonan was born in 1956.  In 1980, she decided to investigate the grandfather she had been told “cared for her.” She embarked upon a thirty-year search culminating in the discovery of her grandfather Sir Winston Churchill.  Rhonda discovered, during the course of her search, that she had been called by five different names.  This led her to write The Fifth and Final Name: Memoir of an American Churchill. In 2013 she claimed her family name as Rhonda Churchill.    Rhonda is a mental health therapist and author who resides in the Tulsa metro area.

Join Adoptees Unplugged Host Pam Kroskie as she and her guest Heidi Meier chat about Heidi getting her certificate of live birth and other documents that the state of Indiana is issuing adoptees. Heidi is married and is a mother of two small boys. Heidi and her husband adopted their two sons in open adoptions. Tune in and listen as we chat about what it has been like to get the state to move through this process of releasing these records. We will also chat with Heidi how she plans the future for her boys who will no doubtly want some piece of their history for themselves. Also- Pam has released with her Vice President Marcie Keithley a children's book "Frankie and Friends Talk Adoption" and we will do a quick update on that. 

Indiana Adoptee Network is also holding their third annual conference in April and we will chat a bit about what that will be like and what the workshops will include.

 

Join host Pam Kroskie with guest Anne Heffron Thursday March 15th @ 3pm est

After teaching writing at San Jose State University for over fifteen years, Anne retired to work full time on screenplays with her writing partner, Antonia Bogdanovitch. In 2015, Phantom Halo was named New York Times Critics’ Pick and it won Best Screenplay and Best Picture at The New York International Film Festival.

The next year Anne packed up all her things, gave up her California apartment, and left for New York on a trip she called Write or Die. She said she was not coming back home until she had done the one thing she’d been wanting to do for over thirty years: write a book about adoption. Ninety-three days later, she had the manuscript for You Don’t Look Adopted. And the name of her birth father. 

She is currently writing The Unofficial Adoptees’ Handbook and teaches monthly Write or Die classes, where she inspires and guides others to discover ways to get their stories on paper.

You Don’t Look Adopted, which recently won Best of BellaOnline 2016, is available on Amazon.

Join host Pam Kroskie and her guest Pam Greenstone M.A., LPC

Pam is a counselor in Austin and has been in private practice since 2002. She’s passionate about helping the GLBTQ community have strong relationships and she helps people recover from eating disorders. Her love of group therapy began in graduate school and it has been a big part of her training and professional life. Pam is also an adoptee in reunion with her birth family and has found Group very helpful in issues related to adoption. 

 Pam began her counseling career at the University of Texas Counseling Center and spent many years at Waterloo Counseling Center, which specializes in the GLBTQ community. She served on the board of the Austin Group Psychotherapy Society (AGPS) and also served as President of AGPS. Currently, Pam is a counselor in private practice in Austin and runs a weekly women’s psychotherapy group. She enjoys working with adoptees and all people whose lives are touched by adoption. Pam is an adoptee and is passionate about acknowledging and healing trauma related to relinquishment and adoption. Thanks to DNA testing, she has been in reunion with her birth family since 2014 and has a close relationship with both of her birth parents, many siblings and other family members. In fact, Pam’s birth father, Dan, is planning to attend the IAN conference. Her birth family relationships have become a very important part of her life.

 

 

 

Join Host Pam Kroskie and guest Anne Heffron -she gets to meet her birth father!!!

After teaching writing at San Jose State University for over fifteen years, Anne retired to work full time on screenplays with her writing partner, Antonia Bogdanovitch. In 2015, Phantom Halo was named New York Times Critics’ Pick and it won Best Screenplay and Best Picture at The New York International Film Festival.

The next year Anne packed up all her things, gave up her California apartment, and left for New York on a trip she called Write or Die. She said she was not coming back home until she had done the one thing she’d been wanting to do for over thirty years: write a book about adoption. Ninety-three days later, she had the manuscript for You Don’t Look Adopted. And the name of her birth father. 

She is currently writing The Unofficial Adoptees’ Handbook and teaches monthly Write or Die classes, where she inspires and guides others to discover ways to get their stories on paper.

You Don’t Look Adopted, which recent