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.
Upcoming Presentations
Monday, May 4, 2026
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
Healing After Open Adoption with Amy Seek
With her son now an independent adult, Amy will reflect on the evolution of their relationship, her perspective on ‘openness’, and her journey beyond the story of open adoption she wrote in God and Jetfire. She will speak about moving through narrative and into more embodied forms of healing, navigating chronic pain, listening to what the body holds, and nurturing the conditions for a new, truer story to emerge.
About Amy:
Amy Seek is a landscape architect working on climate-adaptive infrastructure in New York City. She is also a birthmother in an open adoption that remained open throughout her son’s childhood. Amy serves on the board of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), where she focuses on writing and storytelling to change the dominant cultural narrative around adoption. She facilitates a first families support group through the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Vogue, and her book, God and Jetfire, was published in 2015.
Monday, May 18, 2026
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
Sharing Your Truth with B.K. (Kate) Jackson
B.K. (Kate) Jackson, along with a panel of essayists, will discuss the forthcoming anthology: Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship—personal essays about the experience of encountering unknown close relatives. Together they’ll address the importance of storytelling for adoptees and how it contributes to shaping the narrative about adoption.
About B.K.:
B.K. (Kate) Jackson is the editor of Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship, which will be published in June by ELJ Editions. She’s a developmental editor, a certified book coach, and a journalist who’s contributed to HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, SurvivorLit, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Kate is the founder and editor of Severance (severancemag.com)—a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She’s revising a memoir about maternal abandonment and family secrets. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. Find her at www.bkjacksonwriter.com, creativelyadhd.substack.com, and halfasorrow.substack.com.
Monday, June 1, 2026
An Ethiopian Adoptee’s Journey Through Loss, Belonging, and Becoming with Rebka Lile
Rebka Lile was born in Ethiopia and spent the first ten years of her life in a tight-knit neighborhood in the capital of Ethiopia, surrounded by extended family, church, and community routines that shaped her earliest memories. After the sudden death of her father, she and her siblings were separated from their familiar world, moving between her grandmother’s home and multiple orphanages before she and her younger sister were adopted by an American family in Ohio. Navigating a new country, language, and culture while carrying unresolved grief and disconnection from her Ethiopian roots, Rebka grew up balancing the expectations of a white Midwestern family with the reality of being a Black girl whose earliest identity had been left behind. Now a pre-law student and founder of Abera Adoptee Coaching, she continues to explore the intersections of adoption, race, mental health, and belonging, and looks forward to sharing the ongoing healing journey that has emerged from her experiences in Ethiopia, in America, and in reconnecting with her family and homeland.
About Rebka:
Rebka Lile is an Ethiopian adoptee, writer, and speaker whose work centers on identity, loss, and belonging in intercountry adoption. Adopted to Ohio at age ten after spending her early childhood in Ethiopia, she has spent years navigating the tension of holding Ethiopian roots, a white Midwestern family life, and a Black American identity. She is a pre-law student at The Ohio State University and the founder of Abera Adoptee Coaching, where she draws on ICF-aligned training and her lived experience to support adoptees as they process their stories and build lives of agency, community, and self-trust.
