Linda Pevac & Jim Pilgrim

Send us Fan MailI just want to know your name."  Five words. An entire life behind them.  For this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, author Emma Stevens and singer-songwriter Jim Pilgrim came together for something rare — a song born from the pages of a memoir. "I Want to Know Your Name" gives voice to the ache that millions of adoptees carry not judgment, not blame, just the need to know where they came from. Jim Pilgrim, a gifted singer-songwriter and returning guest on the show, read The Gathering Place and found himself compelled by two persistent ideas. The first: Emma's desire to know the name of her birth mother — something most people take for granted, but which wasn't available to her, leaving a vast silence at the center of her identity. The second: the nine months Emma and her first mother spent together before birth — every heartbeat, every breath shared, a bond of pure proximity that would go unnamed and unmourned for decades.  From those two seeds, Jim built a song. But the creative process didn't stop there. In a moment of real growth, Emma gave Jim honest feedback — some lyrics didn't land the way she needed them to. Jim, to his immense credit, was open. They collaborated. The song became truer. "I Want to Know Your Name" opens with the grace of someone who has done the work: You do not have to love me. You do not have to care. I'm not here to judge or blame. I just want to know your name. From there, it moves through the ache of identity displacement, the echo of a voice without a face, and the quiet longing to finally see yourself reflected in another's eyes. The conversation between Anna, Emma, and Jim is layered and generous. Emma speaks about the courage it took to speak her truth after a lifetime of people-pleasing. Jim reflects on the responsibility of entering someone else's story as a creative. And Anna — never stepping back from her own experience — shares her own complex relationship with her adoption origin story, the questions she has and hasn't asked, and the ongoing work of self-acceptance. One moment stands out: Emma compares the adoptee experience to showing up to a movie of your own life thirty minutes late. You're there. You know your name. But the first scenes — the ones that explain everything — are missing. This episode is for anyone in your life touched by adoption. It's for every creative who believes art can hold what language alone cannot. And it's a reminder — from Emma, from Jim, and from me — that healing is possible, your story matters, and the ruby slippers have been on your feet the whole time.Support the show