The Anna Jinja Show

Laura Schaeffer & Becca Lachman

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/fan_mail/new] "My darling, you aren't mine."   Those five words opened one of the most tender, honest, and hopeful conversations we've ever had on this show.  Episode 3 of our Athens County Children Services season features poet and foster-adoptive mom Becca Lachman and Athens County Children Services (ACCS) caseworker Laura Schaeffer.   They talk about:  💛 What it means to belong to someone — and to let go  💛 The poem Becca wrote in the middle of fostering a newborn  💛 Why Laura says the families she works with have the hard job — not her  💛 Why our community needs more people willing to open their homes   "If you want to know your community in a new light, to make connections you never would have before — fostering will do that." — Becca Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/support]

Stephanie Russell & Jillian Kay

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/fan_mail/new] What does it look like to offer sturdiness to someone navigating one of life's most complex systems?  That's the question at the heart of Episode 2 of The Anna Jinja Show's Athens County Children Services Season — and Stephanie Russell answers it beautifully. Stephanie is an independently licensed clinical mental health counselor (LPCC) and Treatment Foster Care Coordinator with the Southeastern Treatment Foster Care Network. A lifelong Athens County resident, she has built her career championing individuals and families in rural Appalachia through the intersecting challenges of mental health, child welfare, and substance dependence.  What sets Stephanie apart is her philosophy: that to serve others well, you must first fuel yourself — through solitude, self-reflection, and yes, occasionally running to the hills of Appalachia to recharge.  Alongside Stephanie, we hear from Jillian Kay, an Ohio University music production student and Athens singer-songwriter whose original song "Sometimes Blues" speaks directly to the courage it takes to face difficult emotions with honesty and grace.  This conversation is for anyone who works in service of others — and who sometimes wonders how to keep going. Stephanie and Jillian show us the way. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/support]

Otis Crockron & Bruce Dalzell

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/fan_mail/new] Something special is happening in Athens County — and it starts today.  The Anna Jinja Show is launching its first season ever, and we couldn't be more excited to share it with you. This season was made in partnership with Athens County Children Services (ACCS) — the agency quietly showing up every single day, often in the hardest moments, to keep children safe and families strong.  In this first episode of the season, host Anna Jinja sits down with: Otis Crockron — Executive Director of ACCS, who has called Athens County home since 1986 and brings both professional and personal passion to the work of protecting children  Bruce Dalzell — the patriarch of the Athens music scene, with 45+ years of original songwriting, who teamed up with poet Wendy McVicker to write an original song for this season  Lizzi Montanti — Assistant Producer and former ACCS intern, who bridges the worlds of art and advocacy in a way that will move you The song they created together? It will stop you in your tracks.  This episode is a love letter to every caseworker, foster family, kinship caregiver, and community member who shows up — quietly, faithfully — for the children of Appalachian Ohio. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/support]

Linda Pevac & Jim Pilgrim

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/fan_mail/new] I just want to know your name."   Five words. An entire life behind them.   For this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, author Emma Stevens and singer-songwriter Jim Pilgrim came together for something rare — a song born from the pages of a memoir. "I Want to Know Your Name" gives voice to the ache that millions of adoptees carry not judgment, not blame, just the need to know where they came from.  Jim Pilgrim, a gifted singer-songwriter and returning guest on the show, read The Gathering Place and found himself compelled by two persistent ideas. The first: Emma's desire to know the name of her birth mother — something most people take for granted, but which wasn't available to her, leaving a vast silence at the center of her identity. The second: the nine months Emma and her first mother spent together before birth — every heartbeat, every breath shared, a bond of pure proximity that would go unnamed and unmourned for decades.  From those two seeds, Jim built a song.  But the creative process didn't stop there. In a moment of real growth, Emma gave Jim honest feedback — some lyrics didn't land the way she needed them to. Jim, to his immense credit, was open. They collaborated. The song became truer. "I Want to Know Your Name" opens with the grace of someone who has done the work: You do not have to love me. You do not have to care. I'm not here to judge or blame. I just want to know your name.  From there, it moves through the ache of identity displacement, the echo of a voice without a face, and the quiet longing to finally see yourself reflected in another's eyes.  The conversation between Anna, Emma, and Jim is layered and generous. Emma speaks about the courage it took to speak her truth after a lifetime of people-pleasing. Jim reflects on the responsibility of entering someone else's story as a creative. And Anna — never stepping back from her own experience — shares her own complex relationship with her adoption origin story, the questions she has and hasn't asked, and the ongoing work of self-acceptance.  One moment stands out: Emma compares the adoptee experience to showing up to a movie of your own life thirty minutes late. You're there. You know your name. But the first scenes — the ones that explain everything — are missing.  This episode is for anyone in your life touched by adoption. It's for every creative who believes art can hold what language alone cannot. And it's a reminder — from Emma, from Jim, and from me — that healing is possible, your story matters, and the ruby slippers have been on your feet the whole time. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/support]

Betsie Norris & Ready Aim Flowers

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/fan_mail/new] What does it take to advocate for 400,000 people — over 25 years — to access something as fundamental as their own birth certificate?   For Betsie Norris, it started with her own search. As an adoptee in her mid-twenties, she searched for and found her birth family — and came away with a conviction that adoption is not a single moment, but a lifelong journey that deserves honest conversation, systemic support, and legal reform.   She founded Adoption Network Cleveland in 1988, volunteering for its first seven years before serving as Executive Director ever since. Under her leadership, Ohio-born adult adoptees — including those adopted during the formerly "closed" period from 1964 to 1996 — gained access to their original birth certificates starting in 2015.   She is also co-author of Journeys After Adoption: Understanding the Lifelong Process, and the subject of the documentary An Adoptee ROARed in Ohio, which debuted at the Cleveland International Film Festival.   Betsie joins host Anna Jinja for a conversation about what drives lifelong advocacy, how DNA discoveries have changed everything, and what she wishes adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees understood about one another.   Joining them is Dave Lawrence, frontman of Ready Aim Flowers (Athens, Ohio), whose song "Field Notes" — inspired by a real paleontological dig — opens up into a striking allegory for searching, belonging, and the courage to dig without knowing what you'll find.   "The wounds are relationship-based," Betsie says. "And so the healing comes through relationships."   Wherever you are in your own story - this episode is for you.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2185315/support]