Voices of Adoption
Voices of Adoption
Podcast Description
Voices of Adoption amplifies authentic stories from across the adoption triad - birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive families - along with adoption service providers. Host Donna Pope, Executive Director of Heart To Heart Adoptions and Clinical Mental Health Counselor and her co-host Nathan Gwilliam, founder & former CEO of Adoption.com, create a safe space for honest conversations about the complexities of adoption. Birth parents share their journeys of love, loss, and healing. Adoptees discuss identity, belonging, and their lived experiences. Adoptive families open up about challenges and beautiful moments. Adoption service providers offer insights from their professional experience supporting families throughout the process. Each episode bridges different perspectives within the adoption community, helping listeners understand that every adoption story is unique yet connected by common threads of resilience and hope. These conversations don't shy away from difficult emotions or complex questions. Instead, they honor the full spectrum of adoption experiences with empathy and respect. Join us for stories that educate, inspire understanding, and remind us that every voice in the adoption community matters.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast emphasizes themes related to adoption including birth parent narratives, adoptee identity, and the experiences of adoptive families, with episodes such as discussions on the emotional ramifications of adoption reunions, the impact of culture on identity for transracial adoptees, and the importance of understanding the statistics behind adoption practices.
Voices of Adoption amplifies authentic stories from across the adoption triad – birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive families – along with adoption service providers. Host Donna Pope, Executive Director of Heart To Heart Adoptions and Clinical Mental Health Counselor and her co-host Nathan Gwilliam, founder & former CEO of Adoption.com, create a safe space for honest conversations about the complexities of adoption. Birth parents share their journeys of love, loss, and healing. Adoptees discuss identity, belonging, and their lived experiences. Adoptive families open up about challenges and beautiful moments. Adoption service providers offer insights from their professional experience supporting families throughout the process. Each episode bridges different perspectives within the adoption community, helping listeners understand that every adoption story is unique yet connected by common threads of resilience and hope. These conversations don’t shy away from difficult emotions or complex questions. Instead, they honor the full spectrum of adoption experiences with empathy and respect. Join us for stories that educate, inspire understanding, and remind us that every voice in the adoption community matters.
Birth father Jason Coombs carries a story most birth fathers never get to tell. At twenty-six, after four felony charges and a substance use disorder he could not shake, he learned he was going to be a father. His first reaction was to disappear. What happened over the next eighteen years became one of the closest open adoption relationships in the country. In this episode of Voices of Adoption with host Donna Pope, Jason shares what birth fathers carry that the adoption world rarely names, and the choices that turned his son’s birth into the catalyst for seventeen years of sobriety.
A Pregnancy Test on the Doorknob
The news came in a text message from a friend, not from Nathan’s birth mom herself. The pregnancy test was hanging on Jason’s apartment doorknob when he got home. Jason walks through the manila envelope of felony charges that arrived months later, the years of street drugs, and the denial that kept him from accepting responsibility for the child he knew was his.
The Hospital Letter That Changed Everything
Standing at the nursery glass watching his newborn son fight to breathe on oxygen, Jason saw his own life clearly for the first time. He went downstairs, grabbed a legal pad, and wrote Nathan a letter promising to become the kind of father his son could be proud of. That promise unlocked the deepest internal motivation he had ever felt and started the journey toward sobriety.
What Makes Open Adoption Actually Work
Jason credits Nathan’s birth mom and the adoptive Martin family for the choices that built what they have today. Polaroids in the mail. Soccer game invitations. Boundaries that kept everyone safe. He explains why strong fences and open hearts work together, why birth father involvement is possible when conditions allow it, and why his story is heart breakingly rare among the birth fathers in his son’s adoptive family.
Birth Fathers Deserve a Voice in Adoption
Seventeen years sober, Jason now leads Brick House Recovery and uses his voice to advocate for birth fathers who have been silenced, shamed, or written off. He teaches the three elements of hope he discovered through Nathan’s birth, visualizing the goal, seeing the path, and believing you have what it takes. His message to the adoption community is direct. Birth fathers love their children. Birth fathers carry pain too. Birth fathers deserve to be heard.
Listen to Jason Coombs’ full conversation with Donna Pope on Voices of Adoption and discover what becomes possible when a birth father chooses to show up.
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Website: http://www.VoicesOfAdoption.org
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Follow Nathan Gwilliam
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam
Follow Donna Pope
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-pope-41652ba
Follow Jason Coombs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondcoombs
Follow Brick House Recovery
Website: https://brickhouserecovery.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Getunhookedpodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brickhouserecovery
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