Dr. Liz DeBetta:

Storyteller, Healer, Guide. Scholar, Artist, Adoptee Activist.

I am an adoptee who didn’t know the impact the trauma of maternal separation had on me until I hit a wall and realized something needed to shift if I was ever going to move forward, have healthy relationships (with myself and others), and feel more whole. Since then I have been on a massive healing journey that began with a simple invitation to write about my experience of being adopted. At the time I didn’t think I had a story to tell. I knew nothing about my origins and had no access to any records or information due to closed records, secrecy, and the cultural silencing of adoptees as a condition of our existence. I struggled to tell my story but the act of piecing together a narrative that was mine and not the one I had been handed and made to swallow wholesale was profound. I like to say that this first attempt at writing my story was what cracked open everything that was waiting to happen.

Since that pivotal moment in 2015 I have received my Ph.D., am the writer and performer of Un-M-Othered: A Story of Adoption and Patriarchy winner of “Best Autobiographical Show” at United Solo 2022, the author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness, and the creator of Migrating Toward Wholeness© a trauma-informed approach to healing for adoptees & others using expressive writing and poetry. I now use my story and the Migrating Toward Wholeness© process to help folks find more healing and wholeness through workshops, 1:1 Coaching, and performing my show Un-M-Othered nationally and internationally.

I am a member of Actor’s Equity and SAG-AFTRA, Affiliate Faculty at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and part of the Diversity Scholars Network at the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan. My work has been published in the scholarly journals Adoption & Culture, Frontiers, and the Voice & Speech Review and online at Adoption Knowledge Affiliates, SPARK Magazine, Severance Magazine, Portrait of Adoption, and DearAdoption.com.