Why Milestones Hit Different for Adoptees (And the App That Gets It) with Zoe & Ellie of Unfolding

Why Milestones Hit Different for Adoptees (And the App That Gets It) with Zoe & Ellie of Unfolding

CONNECT WITH ZOE, ELLIE + UNFOLDING Website + waitlist [https://www.unfolding-app.com/] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/unfoldingapp/] Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/unfoldingapp] Also on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/unfolding-app] - follow along as they unfold, live. CONNECT WITH ME [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] Join The Refuge Community Membership [https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge] What happens when two adoptees sit down for coffee at a place called the Blue Kangaroo? Apparently, a movement. This week I'm joined by two women I can only describe as kindreds: Zoe Hansen-DiBello and Ellie Robinson, co-founders of Unfolding - an app built by adoptees, for adoptees, launching THIS month. Their tagline is "where curiosity meets belonging," and if you've been with me through the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging series, you already know why my whole body was buzzing before we even hit record. We go deep into the milestones that carry layers other people never see - birthdays that are both celebration and anniversary of loss, the medical history clipboard and the weight of writing "unknown," school assignments that taught us we were othered before we had words for it, and the primal experience of becoming a parent and meeting your first biological relative. Zoe shares how becoming a mom "complicated the narrative" - and how her body told the story of abandonment through two years of chronic hives before her mind could catch up. Ellie shares her reunion journey at 21, the discovery that rocked her identity years later, and the grief that literally took her to the floor - and led her to build the community she couldn't find. And then we get into Unfolding: a daily practice of reflection, breath work, and journaling designed to give adoptees (and the people who love them) a shared language for the big feelings. Because we grow up - and we don't stop being adopted. This one is for adoptees, adoptive parents, partners of adoptees, and anyone who loves one. Which, statistically? Is just about everyone. KEY MOMENTS 00:05 - Welcome + how this episode connects to the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging  03:43 - Zoe's story: adopted at 11 days old, four women, and the moment motherhood brought it all to the foreground  08:09 - When the body keeps the score: grief, chronic hives, and what cleared them  10:16 - Ellie's story: closed adoption, a "speed round" reunion at 21, and what reunion actually opened  16:16 - The phone call that changed everything - and the hug that told Ellie the truth before the DNA test did  21:13 - The Blue Kangaroo coffee: accidental ghosting, a mutual friend, and a partnership born in one sitting  25:25 - Milestones that carry layers: what a birthday really is for an adoptee ("big feeling days")  30:14 - The medical history clipboard: "family history: unknown," defense mechanisms, and the box doctors aren't checking  38:47 - School assignments, family trees, and feeling othered before we had words (plus a first-grade Hanukkah lesson you have to hear)  42:40 - Becoming parents + a somatic bridge: from "what's wrong with me" to "what is happening in me"  45:07 - Inside Unfolding: the daily card, breath work, journaling, and sparking real-life connection  47:36 - Why "Unfolding"? (A shower moment, not AI - and a name that keeps going)  50:43 - Big Feeling ice cream: proof the framework works in real life  52:23 - A public health crisis hiding in plain sight - and why this app had to exist  57:14 - What 99 Kickstarter backers taught them about who this is really for  58:43 - Where to find Unfolding + join the waitlist  59:22 - What Zoe and Ellie are personally curious about in their own unfolding  1:05:41 = Closing + a brand new tagline you'll be hearing from now on If something came up for you in this episode - a question, a reaction, something that stirred - DM me on any of the socials, or schedule a conversation with me. I'd love to hear where you are and how I can support you. And if this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review (or even a few written words) goes such a long way in helping this work reach more adoptees and the people who love them. You are never alone in this. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing - Five Adoptees on Experiencing the Five Conditions

Links How to connect with all Dr. Liz is doing [http://www.lizdebetta.com] Schedule a Connection Time with Julie [https://calendar.app.google/zmYLYmpFcdyQm6hf7] Looking for Community Like the Retreat Created? [https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge] Five Voices, One Room This episode is different from the rest of the series. Instead of teaching the five conditions solo, Julie sits down with Dr. Liz DeBetta and five adoptees - Mike, Jill, Nicole, Jeremy, and Jen - who were part of the Un-M-Othered retreat in Moscow, Idaho this past May. Together they walk back through Curiosity, Clarity, Capacity, Connection, and Consistency, this time through the lived experience of the people who were actually in the room. The retreat itself was born from a request: Julie's client Mike asked her to bring Dr. Liz's Un-M-Othered film to his community, not realizing Julie and Liz had already been dreaming up exactly that. Their two frameworks - Liz's Migrating Toward Wholeness and Julie's 7-phase Belonging Blueprint - anchored the weekend. In this episode: * Why Mike reached out for something deeper than what already existed for adoptees * What it felt like for Dr. Liz to watch years of dreaming become a room full of real people * Jeremy and Jen on what it meant to walk in as siblings who share an adoption story, versus Jill and Nicole walking in alone * How curiosity showed up differently in the body the second time watching Liz's film * Nicole on reframing hypervigilance as a skill rather than only a wound * The origin of Dr. Liz's mantra: more stories = more connection, more connection = more healing * Jen's experience of staying with discomfort instead of disappearing, and what self-abandonment looks like for her * How Dr. Liz's Migrating Toward Wholeness framework supports the "return to self" through writing * Jeremy and Jen on being witnessed by a room that didn't require translation or explanation * Jill's puzzle-piece analogy for incremental shifts, and Julie's grains-of-rice metaphor for how transformation actually happens * What it feels like in a room when multiple adoptees find language for the same unnamed thing at the same time * Each guest's one sustainable next step two weeks post-retreat * The closing round: what each person is no longer available for, and what they're actively reclaiming Closing words - three words for the body right now: Jill: relax, believe, peace Nicole: content, hope, fulfilled Jen: healing, open, present Mike: grateful, hopeful, content Jeremy: grateful, curious, calm What's next for Dr. Liz DeBetta: Monthly virtual retreats resuming late August, small group coaching launching in fall and spring cohorts, ongoing one-on-one work, and a free monthly drop-in circle open to anyone in the adoption constellation. A second Un-M-Othered retreat with Julie and Liz is in the works - date to be announced soon. Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Why Healing Doesn't Stick (And What Adoptees Need Instead of Another Breakthrough)

Link Schedule a Call with Me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] The Refuge: A Community Membership [https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge] In This Episode Have you ever had a real breakthrough - a moment of genuine opening - and then watched it slowly close again a few days later? That is not failure. That is not you doing it wrong. That is what happens when we expect insight alone to rewire a nervous system. In this final episode of the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging series, Julie Brumley walks through the fifth and most quietly challenging condition: Consistency. Not the kind that asks you to do more. The kind that asks you to do less, more often, more honestly - and to keep coming back to yourself even in the most ordinary moments of your life. Julie shares the personal story of the one tiny practice that began building belonging in her own body back in 2022, guides listeners through a closing somatic integration practice, and closes the series with the truth that belonging isn't a destination you earn. It's a relationship you tend. Plus - a tease of what's coming next week. Chapters [00:00] Welcome back + recap of Connection  [00:45] You showing up is already an act of Consistency  [02:22] The place where well-intentioned healing quietly falls apart  [03:30] The shame of going backwards - and a different story  [04:30] Why insight alone doesn't rewire a nervous system  [05:00] Healing is repeated, safe return to self  [05:20] What happened at the retreat when Julie named this condition  [05:41] Tiny. Believable. Nervous-system sustainable.  [07:00] Julie's personal story - the hand over her heart and what began to change  [08:30] Somatic practice: returning to what stayed with you from this series  [09:53] The integration invitation - choosing one thing  [11:59] Closing thought - belonging is not a destination you earn  [14:24] Series close + what's coming next week Key Takeaways * Showing up week after week - even while doing the dishes or lying in bed - is already an act of Consistency. You have already been practicing. * Breakthrough moments are real. The opening is real. The insight is real. But insight alone does not rewire a nervous system. The nervous system learns through repetition, through embodied experience returned to over time. * The reason most healing intentions don't hold isn't because you weren't sincere. It's because the commitment was bigger than your nervous system could actually sustain. * The invitation of Consistency is not to do more. It's to do less, more often, more honestly. * One tiny practice - repeated over time - is what builds belonging. It doesn't have to be impressive. It has to be believable and yours. * Belonging is not a destination you earn. It's a relationship - with yourself first, and then slowly with the people and places that can hold you. The practice is the returning. Somatic Practice From This Episode For this final practice, Julie doesn't introduce anything new. Instead she invites you to return to whatever practice from the series your nervous system recognized most. Then, from that settled place, choose just one thing to carry forward. It might be: * A hand over your heart each morning before you get up * One slow breath before a hard conversation * One moment of orientation when you feel yourself beginning to spiral * A truth spoken to yourself daily - I am not too much. I am allowed to need connection. I don't have to earn my place here. * A self-hug or thirty seconds of checking in with yourself in the mirror * One moment of pause to invite curiosity, clarity, capacity, or connection back in Whatever it is: tiny, believable, and yours. That one thing, returned to again and again, is the whole practice. The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series - Complete Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself. * Episode 1: Curiosity — Why Adoptees Disconnect From Themselves (And How Curiosity Helps) * Episode 2: Clarity — "What's Wrong With Me?" Why Adoptees Ask This and What To Do Instead * Episode 3: Capacity — Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay) * Episode 4: Connection — Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved (And What Connection Actually Requires) * Episode 5: Consistency — Why Healing Doesn't Stick (And What Adoptees Need Instead of Another Breakthrough) ← you are here Coming Next Week You're going to hear directly from the five retreat participants who experienced this workshop live - plus Dr. Liz DeBetta. It was a profound and sacred conversation and Julie cannot wait to share it with you. Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved (And What Connection Actually Requires)

Link Schedule a Call with Me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] The Refuge: A Community Membership [https://www.cominghometoself.co/the-refuge] In This Episode Have you ever worked incredibly hard to be loved, and still felt completely unknown? That is not a character flaw. That is what happens when the part of you that most needs to be seen learned early on that it wasn't safe to come out. In this episode, Julie Brumley explores the fourth condition of the 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging: Connection. She names the paradox so many adoptees live inside - longing deeply for connection while being terrified of it - and offers the reframe that changes everything: connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, you have to be present to yourself first. Julie shares a deeply personal story about losing herself inside her marriage, guides listeners through a powerful mirror-based co-regulation practice, and closes with the truth that belonging doesn't require you to be fully healed. It just requires you to bring a little more of yourself into the room. Chapters [00:00] Welcome back + recap of Capacity  [02:28] The adoptee paradox - longing for connection and being terrified of it at the same time  [04:23] Julie's personal story - the moment she realized she didn't know her own favorite color  [05:30] Shape-shifting for love and what it costs us  [06:00] The reframe: connection starts internally  [08:03] More stories, more connection, more healing  [09:00] Why real connection heals what insight alone cannot reach  [09:45] Somatic practice: co-regulation with the mirror  [15:43] What the mirror practice is actually building  [16:10] Closing thought - you don't have to be fully healed to be in connection  [17:33] Next week preview: Consistency Key Takeaways * Adoptees often live inside a painful paradox: longing for connection more than almost anything, while being terrified of it at exactly the same time. Both things are true. Both make complete sense. * Shape-shifting - reading the room, adjusting your personality, being low-maintenance and easy - was an intelligent nervous system response to early attachment disruption. It kept you connected. It also kept you unknown. * Being unknown, even in a room full of people who love you, is its own kind of loneliness. * Connection starts internally. Before you can truly be met by someone else, there has to be a you present to be received. Internal connection is the foundation. * More stories means more connection. More connection means more healing. Real, safe connection - where you don't have to perform or minimize or explain yourself into palatability - begins to heal things that insight alone cannot reach. * You don't have to be fully healed to be in connection. You just have to be willing to bring a little more of yourself into the room. That is enough. That is everything. Somatic Practice From This Episode The mirror co-regulation practice Julie guides in this episode can be returned to any time you need to come back to yourself. 1. Find a mirror and stand near it without facing it yet. Let your feet find the floor, notice your breath, let your body settle. 2. Soften your gaze. Take one slow breath in through the nose and a slightly longer breath out through the mouth. 3. Let one hand rest wherever feels right - your lap, your heart, your legs. 4. Say - out loud or internally - you are not too much. Your longing is not too much. Your grief is not too much. Your need for connection is not too much. 5. When you're ready, turn gently toward the mirror. Make soft eye contact, or look at the base of your neck or the tops of your shoulders if that feels more comfortable. 6. Practice mirrored breathing with yourself - noticing the rise and fall of your shoulders. Notice any urge to look away, shrink, or disappear. Just notice. 7. Repeat the words out loud if it feels comfortable. Breathe. Notice the shift, even if it's small. The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series This episode is part of a five-episode series walking through the five conditions that allow self-belonging to emerge: Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself. * Episode 1: Curiosity — Why Adoptees Disconnect From Themselves (And How Curiosity Helps) * Episode 2: Clarity — "What's Wrong With Me?" Why Adoptees Ask This and What To Do Instead * Episode 3: Capacity — Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay) * Episode 4: Connection — Why Adoptees Feel Alone Even When They're Loved ← you are here * Episode 5: Consistency — Next Week Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]

Why Adoptees Abandon Themselves (And How to Finally Stay)

Links Schedule a call with me [https://calendar.app.google/CHajVJ8EkdqiPSHj9] In this episode: What if capacity isn't about handling more - it's about leaving yourself less? In this episode, Julie Brumley dives into the third condition that cultivates self-belonging: Capacity. This is the heart of the series, and the condition that surprises people most. Capacity isn't becoming someone who never gets overwhelmed. It's the ability to stay connected to yourself while emotion exists - to feel the wave without losing the thread back to yourself in the middle of it. Julie introduces two foundational somatic concepts - titration and pendulation - and guides listeners through a body-based practice they can use anywhere. She also shares something personal: what it felt like to stay with grief after losing her mother-in-law, and what she witnessed in the room at the retreat when participants practiced this work in real time. This episode will change how you understand healing. Chapters [00:00] Welcome back + recap of Clarity  [02:00] What Capacity is NOT, and why so many of us learned a version of strength that was actually self-abandonment  [04:50] What Capacity actually is - staying connected to yourself while emotion exists [06:30] The difference between being the emotion and having the emotion  [07:30] Titration - why the nervous system heals one drop at a time  [09:30] Pendulation - the natural rhythm between activation and settling  [11:59] Somatic practice: pendulation guided experience  [16:27] The most important line in this series  [18:00] Julie's personal story - sitting shiva with grief  [19:30] What this looked like in the retreat room  [20:08] Closing thought - why Capacity asks the bravest thing of us  [21:45] Next week preview: Connection Key Takeaways * Capacity is not handling it. It's the ability to stay connected to yourself while emotion exists - not after the wave passes, not before it arrives, but while it is happening. * The adaptations you developed - suppression, performance, disconnecting from your inner experience - were intelligent responses to real conditions. They protected you. And they may also be the walls now keeping you from yourself. * Titration means going one small drop at a time. The nervous system cannot heal everything at once, but it can heal a tremendous amount when we honor its actual pace. * Pendulation is the rhythm between the activated place and the supported place. Transformation doesn't happen in the overwhelm. It happens in the moving between. * The goal is not to never feel pain. The goal is to not leave yourself inside it. * Capacity grows incrementally - through small, repeated moments of choosing to stay with yourself instead of leaving. Every moment you stay, even a little, matters. Somatic Practice From This Episode The pendulation practice Julie guides in this episode can be used any time you feel activated or overwhelmed. 1. Find where your body feels activated - tension, heaviness, tightness, contraction. 2. Find somewhere in your body that feels more neutral or supported - your hands, your feet on the floor, the weight of your back against a chair. Even your earlobes if that's what's available. 3. Gently let your attention move between those two places. Activated. Supported. Activated. Supported. 4. This is your nervous system learning it can visit the hard place and still find its way back. The 5 Conditions of Self-Belonging Series This episode is part of a five-episode series walking through the five conditions that allow self-belonging to emerge: Curiosity → Clarity → Capacity → Connection → Consistency Not goals to achieve. Conditions to experience. Practices of returning to yourself. * Episode 1: Curiosity — Learning to Notice Without Judgment * Episode 2: Clarity — Awareness Is Enough * Episode 3: Capacity — Learning to Stay With Yourself ← you are here * Episode 4: Connection — Next Thursday * Episode 5: Consistency — Coming soon Website [https://www.cominghometoself.co/] Instagram: @juliebrumley_ [https://www.instagram.com/juliebrumley_/] Facebook: julierasbrum [https://www.facebook.com/julierasbrum] TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/theresilienceprojectforadoptees] You Tube: @julie_brumley [https://www.youtube.com/@julie_brumley]