Monday Evening Speaker Series
Adoption Network Cleveland is pleased to offer a VIRTUAL Monday Evening Speaker Series full of topics that are of interest to a broad audience impacted by adoption, kinship, and foster care. These programs are made possible by donors and presenters volunteering their time and they thrive thanks to the active participation of attendees.
The series pauses for summer, but we encourage everyone to experience prior series events by listening or watching from our catalog of recordings on YouTube.
Upcoming Presentations
Monday, October 7, 2024
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
How to Bring Lightness to the Tough Stuff with Lauren LoGuidice
Comedian Lauren LoGiudice loves delving into difficult topics. A few years ago, she found out she was donor conceived after a lifetime wondering why she was the odd-one-out in an Italian-American family, and has been creating comedy about it ever since. During the day she teaches comedy to non-comedians who are seeking to bring similar lightness to their story and in the process has discovered patterns and tools that can help you do the same.
About Lauren
Lauren LoGiudice is a comedian, actor, award-winning filmmaker, and author of Amazon Kindle Best Seller Inside Melania: What I Know About Melania Trump by Impersonating Her. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, BBC, Bust Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hyperallergic, among others. Her writing has been called “criminal.” Her TV and film credits include Veep, Brave the Dark and Galaxy360. Moth StorySLAM Champ, as well as several national commercial campaigns. You can listen to her comedy album, Misfits: A Comedy Album, as well as select tracks from Melania Trump’s Rockin’ Right-Wing Christmas Album, on all major streaming platforms.
Currently, Lauren continues to create comedy through the lens of her unique personal experience with stand up and deeply flawed, painfully idiosyncratic character videos that have garnered over 12 million views, while producing her podcast Misfits Makin’ It on Radio Misfits Podcast Network.
Monday, October 14, 2024
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
The Gathering Place with Emma Stevens aka Linda Pevac
Emma Stevens aka Linda Pevac is the author of two memoirs, The Gathering Place and A Fire is Coming. Her adoption journey began with being relinquished as an infant and adopted by a mom and dad, with an adoptive brother who had also been adopted two and a half years prior. It’s only in hindsight that Emma has been able to see how her entire life has been colored and altered by being an adoptee. In her first memoir, The Gathering Place, she shares of a magical place she’s created where healing, comfort, and repair take place for the younger parts of herself who never felt safe, seen, heard, or understood. This past March, Emma was named as an Independent Author Award winner in Tucson’s 2024 Festival of Books. Her second book, A Fire is Coming, was just named as a Finalist in the 18th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards.
About Emma
Emma Stevens aka Linda Pevac is a U.S. domestic adoptee and has survived layers of trauma that have put her on multiple journeys. She developed the inner strength and courage to surmount the many struggles she faced. Her traumas were born from first being relinquished and then becoming an adoptee who struggled with being forced to wear an impossible mask of playing the part of the “good adopted child.”
Her childhood upbringing in an authoritative, cult-like family, predisposed Emma to several more struggles. One of them was falling prey to an exploitative therapist where she unknowingly entered a cultic, one-on-one relationship with her psychologist. Someone who was to help, support, and provide healing – instead, held Emma captive in a psychological nightmare.
Because of these past traumas, Emma desires to be part of the movement that is dedicated to help bring forth change to the way our world views the needs and support of adopted individuals, as well as bring awareness of the exploitation that can occur by the hands of counselors, therapists, and other healthcare professionals. By sharing her experience of being exploited by her abusive psychologist/social worker, Emma feels strongly to expose and bring light to what an unethical, boundaryless, professional therapy situation may look like.
Emma has an undergraduate degree in journalism and has completed Master’s level course work in psychology, specializing in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling. She has two adult children and two cat children who she adores.
Monday, October 21, 2024
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM ET
Adoption and Suicidality Panel with Beth Syverson
*Please note this event is from 8:00-9:30 PM*
Adoption and Suicidality: Adopted people are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their non-adopted peers. Join the contributors to a new book, Adoption and Suicidality, in a discussion about how adoption impacts adoptees' mental health, and how we can all help prevent suicide. The panel, moderated by adoptive mom Beth Syverson, will consist of adoptees who have survived suicide attempts or chronic suicidality and parents whose child struggled with suicidality.
About Beth
Beth Syverson is an adoptive mom, wife, musician, and as of 2021 a podcaster, activist, and public speaker. Since 2019, her son Joey has struggled with addiction to substances plus serious mental health issues. For the first year of that roller coaster ride, she and Joey were both derailed. Beth tried to “fix” Joey, and her Supermom cape was tied on tight. But when nothing worked to “fix” him, she sought help for herself, which improved her own life and also her relationship to her wife Jan and to Joey. She and Joey created Safe Home Podcast in August 2021, with the purpose of helping other families avoid some of the pain they've experienced.
Beth adopted Joey from Japan when he was 7-1/2 months old. She now realizes that his relinquishment trauma is one of the core issues that causes him to seek substances. Beth is a leader for other adoptive parents who are coming “out of the fog” and realizing that the adoption that created their family also created trauma for their child. In September 2022, she created a free support group for adoptive parents called APtitude, and in August 2023, she became a certified coach through the Virginia Satir Global Network so she can help more adoptive parents and others who are struggling.
Monday, November 4, 2024
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
Moving Beyond Awareness with Fred Nicora
For Fred, learning he was adopted came with two earthshaking revelations. First, he had no idea how central his birth story was to his sense of identity. Second, he was unaware that there was actually a group of the population in his state and country that had diminished records access rights—adoptees. Together, the two revelations sent Fred on a journey to redefine himself and find new purpose. Today, Fred’s writing work focuses on family, identity, different DNA, and the craziness of living in the Intersection.
About Fred
At the age of 41, Fred Nicora’s foundation was swept away by the slip of a tongue at a family gathering of about 250 extended family members. He discovered he was adopted as an infant. It wasn’t until he contacted the State of Wisconsin the following week to find out his factual identity that the second swing of the wrecking ball completed the annihilation of self, and he discovered he was legally prohibited from knowing his own story, his truth. Today, Fred is committed to bringing truth and transparency to all those affected by altered and hidden identities as a result of legal and societal barriers. Fred’s work is based on and inspired by compilations of real-life stories about genetic surprises derived from DNA databases, adoptions, and donor conceptions and the impacts they have on those affected, with the intention of spotlighting the need for factual birth information access to all.
Fred holds a B.S. in Business Administration, an M.S. in Management Technology, a master’s in architecture, and a secondary lifetime Teaching license via a master’s program. Careers explored include health care administration, architecture, business consulting, teaching, human resource management, and his own entrepreneurial endeavors including a startup gluten free baking enterprise and authoring his story of being thrust into the adoption constellation as a late-discovery adoptee.
A father of three grown children, Fred currently lives and maintains a small hobby farm in Southeastern Wisconsin. He is the author of Forbidden Roots: A Memoir of Late Discovery Adoption.
Monday, November 11, 2024
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
A Conversation with Canadian filmmaker Adrian Wills on his film "A Quiet Girl"
Join us for an engaging discussion with Canadian filmmaker Adrian Wills about his film, "A Quiet Girl." The film will be available for digital viewing starting August 1st. To make the most of the event, we encourage everyone to watch the film beforehand. Adrian will join us to share insights into his journey with the film and participate in a Q&A session.
In A Quiet Girl, adopted Montreal filmmaker Adrian Wills commits, on camera and in real time, to unravelling the mystery of his complex beginnings in Newfoundland. Spurred on by a meager clue in his adoption documents, Wills spends two years travelling from the wild beauty of Canada’s most eastern coastline to the red heat of Arizona in search of answers. What Wills finally uncovers pierces into the meaning of family, revealing disquieting parallels between his own life and that of the birth mother he never knew.
This moving feature documentary combines 16mm footage and contemporary images with deeply personal conversations, transforming an urgent search for identity into a quest to give a quiet girl her voice. Ultimately, Wills honours his birth mother’s resilience and, in doing so, reveals his own. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has provided a private, commercial-free Vimeo link for registrants to view the film before this presentation.
About Adrian
Adrian Wills is an award-winning director, series co-creator and showrunner with a passion for character-driven storytelling across various genres. His projects range from the co-created sports drama series 21 Thunder (CBC/Netflix) to All Together Now: The Beatles Love, winner of the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video. A Quiet Girl is Wills’ first film with the National Film Board of Canada and his most personal one yet—a POV feature documentary that begins as a mystery about his adoption in Newfoundland. In 2023, Wills will be releasing a new feature music documentary entitled Leonard Cohen: Tower of Song.
A citizen of both Canada and Australia, Wills studied Media at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and Film Production at Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal, Canada.
Monday, December 2, 2024
8:00 PM ET - 9:00 PM ET
DNA Decoded: Harnessing Epigenetic Testing to Empower Members of the Adoption Constellation and Revolutionize Tools for Behavioral Wellness with Dr. Evelyn Higgins
While genes play a 10-33% role in physical health, they can play up to a 50% role in mental health. For those in the DCP, NPE, and adoption communities, being separated from lineage can present challenges when it comes to understanding the biology behind behavioral wellness. Join Dr. Higgins, founder of Wired BioHealth and member of the adoption constellation, to learn more about how genes and other biomarkers can be tested and turned off/on through epigenetics to help individuals live their most optimal lives.
About Evelyn
Founder of Wired BioHealth(TM) and Wired For Addiction(R), Dr. Evelyn Higgins is a recognized international expert in the epidemiology of addiction and other behavioral wellness complexities. As a Diplomate of the American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders, Diplomate of the American Board of Disability Analysts specializing in pain management, as well as a Certified Addictionologist, Dr. Higgins has had the honor of advising the U.S. Surgeon General, served as a 1996 Olympic Team Doctor and Olympic torch bearer, and was a 2021 Nominee for Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Innovators in Healthcare.
With 35 years in clinical practice & consulting, Dr. Higgins has designated over 17 years to Research and Development in the science of mental health and addiction recovery. The keynote of the 2024 Addiction Studies Institute Conference at the Ohio State Medical Center, TEDx Speaker, and panelist at numerous international conferences including the 2022 International Society of Substance Use Professionals Annual Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Dr. Higgins finds herself at the nexus of epigenetics, neuroscience, and mental health.
