Ethiopian Adoptees | Unapologetically Unfiltered
Ethiopian Adoptees | Unapologetically Unfiltered
Podcast Description
Hey hey! I’m Lidet O’Connor, an Ethiopian adoptee, storyteller, and the person behind this podcast.
Growing up, I often felt alone with the weight of being adopted across cultures, countries, and expectations. But I also heard stories, our stories, that mirrored mine in deep, complex, and often painful ways.
This podcast started as a way to document those voices. And now, it’s become something more: a living, growing archive of Ethiopian adoptee experiences—across ages, languages, losses, and lives.
Here, I interview other Ethiopian adoptees and explore the themes that tie us together: identity, grief, belonging, race, return, and reclamation. Nothing’s too neat. Nothing’s too polished. That’s the point.
If you’ve ever felt alone in this process, know that you’re not. We gotchu. And we’re so glad you found your way here.
Welcome to Ethiopian Adoptees – Unapologetically Unfiltered
A podcast. A community. A cultural preservation in progress.
Email: [email protected]
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast centers around themes of identity, grief, belonging, race, and reclamation as experienced by Ethiopian adoptees. Examples of episodes include discussions on systemic issues in the adoption process, personal narratives reflecting both trauma and triumph, and the emotional complexities during the holiday season, providing a wide-ranging exploration of the adoptee experience.
Ethiopian Adoptees: Unapologetically Unfiltered is a podcast by and for Ethiopian adoptees navigating the long aftermath of intercountry adoption. Hosted by Lidet O’Connor, the podcast centers adoptee voices without romanticizing adoption or softening harm. Through solo episodes and conversations with other Ethiopian adoptees, it explores identity, grief, systemic failure, survival, responsibility, and the realities adoption leaves behind. This is a place to listen, reflect, and to remember that your experience is real and worthy of being named.
A podcast. A community. An archive in progress.
In this episode (Part 1 of 3), I sit down with Rediet, a fellow Ethiopian adoptee, and we go back to the beginning of her story in Addis Ababa, where she was raised by loving, strong women and remember a childhood full of community and joy. We talk about losing her mother, the sudden move to an orphanage she didn’t understand was coming, and the survival instincts she developed at just four years old. She shares what it was like to receive a photo book of “random white people” who later showed up to take her to America, and how the reality of leaving truly hit when her grandmother came to say goodbye. We unpack being labeled “difficult” for acting out during an unimaginable transition and how trauma in adoptees is so often misunderstood. The conversation gets real about white saviorism, international adoption, and the entitlement built into the system. It’s the type of honest and reflective dialogue we both wish we had heard growing up.
Disclaimer
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