A Late Discovery Adoptee: From Hidden Identity to Advocacy with Melissa, the Adoption Educator

Cate & Ty Break It Down

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Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cate & Ty sit down with Melissa Guida-Richards, an Adoption Educator and transracial late discovery international adoptee. Melissa shares her adoption journey, revealing the complexities and challenges of discovering her adoption at 19 after a lifetime of being raised as an Italian-Portuguese. Melissa opens up about the profound impact it had on her sense of self, how she dove into educating herself about the trauma of maternal separation, and the multi-billion dollar adoption industry. Melissa also delves into the nuances of transracial adoption, the importance of acknowledging a child's heritage, and the often-unseen struggles faced by adoptees. She shares her eventual reconnection with her birth mother in Colombia and other siblings who were also placed for adoption.

Learn more about Melissa's work and her book "What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption" at adopteethoughts.com. Follow her on social media @adoptee_thoughts

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Transcript

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0:22.8	visit www.triton digital.com to learn more.
0:41.4	Welcome back to another episode of Kate and Ty, Break It Down.
0:43.0	We appreciate you joining us.
0:48.0	Today we have Melissa, the Adoption Educator, which I am so excited you're here.
0:56.3	I appreciate you so much for taking the time to just come out here and, you know, be a part of this whole discussion's important so yeah thank you so much for having me i'm very excited to see what we get into today yeah obviously
1:01.1	adoption's a huge the whole thing that we're kind of trying to elevate voices here and you're an
1:07.2	adoptee so can you like kind of just like give us the summarization of what is you
1:12.0	the broad over? Yeah yeah. Okay so I'm all these fancy labels to say I'm a transracial
1:17.7	adoptee. I'm also a late discovery international adoptee. What does that mean? So that means I
1:23.4	didn't find out that I was adopted until much later in life. So for me, I was 19.
1:28.2	Oh, wow.
1:28.6	And my parents whitewashed me, essentially, for 19 years of my life and totally integrated me into their Italian Portuguese culture.
1:37.1	And then at 19, I found my brother's adoption paperwork that referenced me being adopted. And so the cat was out of the
1:45.5	bag. And so not only did I find out about myself, but I had to tell him because now I was just
1:52.2	like, wow, this is huge. So that kind of started my adoption journey of like coming out of the fog.
2:00.3	And then over the next few years like I tried to
2:03.6	like understand it in college go to counseling there but they had no idea how to help and it just
2:09.5	kind of really hit me when I was pregnant with my first child and that's when I'm really dug into
	...

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