Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Adoption: The Making of Me. An Oral History of Adoptee Stories
Episode: Christina: The Ups and Downs of Reunion
Description: Christina Thanstrom is a baby Scoop-era adoptee born in Los Angeles in 1966. A loving couple adopted her in 1967 through LA County and she had a mostly idyllic childhood with a younger brother (also adopted) in the San Fernando Valley.Christina was reunited with her birth mother, Arleen, an R.N., at age 19 while in college (the same age Arleen had given birth to Christina). Christina learned that whenArleen’s parents discovered her pregnancy, they threw her high school graduation photo against the wall and called her a “whore.” She then went to a “home forunw...