A: In my experience, I'm not a transracial or transnational adoptee. Race has always been a part of my life. I grew up looking like a biracial person. I experienced this world as a biracial person. But I would default to someone that I've actually learned a lot from, which is Angela Tucker. She's amazing and has a lot to say for parents of adoptees who are of a different race. She's written a book, she's got a blog, and she also has a nonprofit called Adoptee Mentoring Society, which is mentoring specifically for adoptees. So I would look into her as a resource.

My first advice is to take your time. I know from my own experience how badly you want to rush and meet the person and meet the people and meet the family and know them and get information. Often, it's an overwhelming need, but you've got to take your time. You owe yourself time.

Even when time may seem to be working against us, there is a lot of value to be found in going at your own pace. When I first reunited with my birth mother, I remember her saying, "I just wish we could rush through the last 30 years," and my feeling was, "Oh, that's a lot. I'm really overwhelmed by that," because that was 30 years of my entire life. That was my whole life. I couldn't rush through it.

Now it seems like sometimes the tables have turned. I want more and more from her, and she's got to go at her own pace. As I was saying, we're all here doing the best that we can, and we're all on our own trajectories, our own paths. Sometimes the timing lines up, and sometimes it doesn't. So what can you do? You can go at your own pace and communicate that to the people that you are in relationship with.

A: Growing up, I was Jamie, and I spent most of my life as Jamie. When I got my original birth certificate, I learned that my name when I was born—my mother named me Jennifer. I never really felt comfortable with Jamie. Even as a child, I wanted to change my name to something else. I would ask my mom, "Why did you name me Jamie? This doesn't feel right."

I remember talking with Betsie Norris about how I wanted to change my name, wanted to create my own identity, but I didn't know what to do or what I would choose. I had come into awareness of other people who were changing their names or combining their birth name and their adoptive name.

So Betsie had this lovely suggestion to create an acronym, and so JJ is Jamie and Jennifer combined. "Rett," my last name, is an acronym of my birth mother's last name, my birth father's last name, my adoptive family's last name, and my husband's last name, and I love it.

A: I was born and raised in Dayton. I live in Dayton now. I went on a whole journey. I left, went to New York, went to North Carolina, and I didn't know North Carolina was going to be two years of really profound healing for me, but I'm now back in Dayton. I've changed my name and found my family and created my own family, so I feel like I've come back to my hometown, but I'm a whole new person. That's where I live now; that's where I'm from.

My brother and I are both adopted from separate families, but people used to think we were twins because we're so close in age and we look similar.