ABOUT TORIE

Torie is a biracial Black woman who was placed into a white adoptive family through private domestic adoption as an infant. She grew up in a predominantly white town in Northern Kentucky where she navigated feeling isolated and alone in her racial identity.

Over the years, Torie began to ask questions and explore her own feelings around adoption. In 2018, Torie began to share her adoption story publicly through her Instagram micro-blog Wreckage and Wonder. Through her online presence she connected with transracial adoptees and found a community that understood her complex identity.

In 2019 she turned her blog into a small business, Wreckage and Wonder, LLC and began providing educational workshops and consultations as well as speaking at conferences and agencies about transracial adoption, racial identity development, anti-racism, and the history of child welfare and adoption in the U.S.

Torie has been featured on podcasts such as the Honestly Adoption Podcast, The Adoptee Nextdoor, and participated on panels and given presentations at conferences such as Replanted Conference, INSIGHT Conference, and The Families Rising Conference. Torie is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at Indiana University working towards a dissertation titled “Transracial Adoption in the Age of #GeorgeFloyd: Race and Kinship in U.S. Adoption.”

Torie’s personal life and academic pursuits have made her passionate about addressing racism within the domestic and international adoption industries and advocating for family preservation and reproductive justice. She was recently named an Indiana University Griffin Graduate Pathways Fellow for Summer and Fall 2023 where she worked with adoption agencies and post-placement organizations to improve adoptive family education and create adoptee and birth parent centered programming.

She currently coordinates the Activism in Adoption speaker series for On Your Feet Foundation and volunteers locally in Bloomington, IN as an expert witness in family court cases and a consultant for small family-centered non-profits designing staff trainings around race, adoption, and foster care. In her free time she loves to go on walks with her rescue dog, Rowdy, draw portraits, and play with her three nephews. You can keep up with Torie's professional, scholarly, and community-based projects through this website!