Excerpt of transcript from this podcast episode:

Monica Hall: I live in Sacramento. I was adopted out of Canada from a foster home with about 10 other babies. I was raised in Anchorage, Alaska, because that's where my parents had been living. That's where a lot of the trauma happened and caused me to write a memoir. We moved to California when I was 16. I'm still in California. It’s been a long journey being an adoptee and relinquishing a child for adoption.

The thing that adoptees most often ask me is, “Being an adoptee, how could you give up your own baby?”

I was the guest on the podcast, Claiming Your Voice with Janeice Garrard , a fellow adoptee. Over the months we’ve had a number zooms, connecting one adoptee to another. In this interview I reveal some of the things I write about in my memoir, Practically Still a Virgin. I believe this conversation… (although as usual I do most of the talking), will resonate with anyone impacted by adoption and others who have experienced family dysfunction, and difficulties in general. Adoption is part of my story but not all of my story…. Listen and you will see that it’s absolutely possible to heal no matter what the circumstances.

I was the guest on the latest episode of the podcast Unraveling Adoption, an intentional space to delve into adoption's complexities together. In this 30-minute program I share about my story as an adoptee and a birth mother; and I reveal some of the things I've learned about myself through the process of writing my memoir, Practically Still a Virgin.

Monica Hall is an author, adoptee, and birthmother. She was born in Canada, adopted by American parents, and raised in Anchorage, Alaska where she spent the first sixteen years of her life and had many of the foundational experiences that drive her writing.

“What if what had happened to us happened for us?

Adoptee and birth mother Monica shares her healing insights to help us heal and access our higher self. This has to be one of the most powerful and empowering episodes ever to air on this podcast.”

Today marks four years since Mama (my adoptive mother) passed away. She was 94. I loved her with my whole heart, but our relationship had many complexities, and we were nothing alike.

Life sometimes sends us unexpected derailments where we find ourselves in situations that test our strength and resilience. As an adoptee, I have always had a longing for a sense of connection and belonging…

I could see in my daughter’s eyes that she was on the verge of tears when she called to FaceTime me on a Sunday morning. I asked, “What’s wrong?” She said she was sad and didn’t know why. She thought it was just hormones, but I sensed the underlying cause…

I’ve read that inner-child work, a technique to help resolve repressed emotions can be a powerful tool for healing trauma. Over the years, I’ve repeated the same patterns and attracted similar experiences and people, many of whom did not have my best…

Looking back at my adoptee reunion and the few times my birth father and I connected, I wish I would’ve asked him more questions. I know he never held me before I was relinquished because he didn’t come to the hospital when I was born, but I…

When I hung up the phone after my 40-minute radio interview with Valerie Okunami, host of KCOR’s Bizi Yogi show I had a sinking feeling. I had talked about my shame on the air. I knew what I’d be discussing when I agreed to be a guest—the day’s…

Forty-five years ago today, I gave birth to the first person in the whole wide world who I knew to be a flesh-and-blood part of me. (I was adopted, so this was a huge deal.) Like today, it was a Sunday. The labor was long, and I was exhausted but elated…

Not long ago, I wrote a piece for Women Writers, Woman’s Books, an online literary magazine. This request coincided with the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the emerging #metoo movement. It was perfect timing because I had recently finished writing…

This May I was a guest on “Alaska Public Radio”, an affiliate of National Public Radio (NPR). They connected me live from the NPR Studio in Sacramento where I told my story of being an adoptee who also gave up a baby up for adoption…

Change sometimes happens when I’m not paying attention. For example: What triggered the writing slump I’ve been in for the last few months? When, exactly, did my shins turn to lizard skin? And when was I appointed as the matriarch of my family to…

When I met a former English professor in Seattle last summer, she said to me, “Why are you writing your memoir? What has caused you to take this journey?” I didn’t have an immediate answer. Initially, I’d started writing to share my story of being…

Being an adoptee even when I was young, I was compelled to know my biological family, a quality that is absent in many of the adopted people I know. It makes me wonder if my aboriginal Cree ancestry has something to do with my deep need to understand…

A few months ago, I was going through a box of keepsakes from 1973—the year I gave my baby up for adoption. Inside were the treasures I carted first from Alaska to California and then through eleven additional moves over the last 44 years…

For most of my life I have been filled with insecurity around body image, ugh! There is a saying that “beauty is wasted on the young.” This is so true. Over the years, I’ve looked back at old photos of myself from a time when I thought I was too fat, short,…

One of my coworkers is a middle-aged screenwriter, a former sports editor, and a nice enough guy with a dry sense of humor and sarcastic wit. Let’s call him Ben. Great life, great wife. You know the type. During the fifteen years that we’ve worked out of…