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Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Maria highlights stories of people that have been the "less than 1% chance" and have come out of their situations thriving and seeing life as happening FOR them and not TO them! Inspiring and empowering stories that will show you that against all odds you can make it through anything!
Against All Odds Podcast, The Less than 1% Chance with Maria Aponte
Finding Inner Belonging After Adoption with Jhorna Hochstedler
What if belonging isn’t something you find out there, but a home you build inside your body? Maria sits down with Jhorna—a mother, wife, and embodiment healer—whose journey spans transracial adoption across countries, a late diagnosed neurological condition, and the jarring introduction to American racial dynamics. Together we trace how the constant pressure to pass, perform, and fit in drains our energy, and how self compassion and nervous system regulation can restore it so purpose has room to grow.
Jhorna shares how motherhood created the space to face pain without numbing, and why reconnecting with divine intuition became her compass. We dig into the realities of visible identity and invisible privilege—education, language, proximity—and how holding both truths can turn a life into a bridge instead of a battleground. You’ll hear practical methods she uses with clients: guided meditations to establish a safe inner place, body based practices to settle stress, and inquiry that loosens limiting beliefs so a higher self can lead. Maria adds a story of gut led career change that unfolded through uncanny synchronicities, proving that alignment invites opportunity when we act on our yes.
If you’re exhausted by reactivity and hungry for choice, this conversation offers grounded steps. Start and end your day with gratitude to sync heart and mind. Walk in nature if sitting still feels impossible. Practice nonjudgmental awareness so all parts of you can come home. From that wholeness, creativity returns, courage grows, and impact becomes sustainable—whether you’re raising a family, leading a team, or building community. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more listeners find tools for inner belonging and outer change. What practice will you try first?
Connect with Jhorna:
Website: https://www.inner-res.com/
Instagram: @jhornahochstedler
Facebook: Jhorna Hochstedler
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Welcome back to the Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people thriving against all odds. And my hope is that we can all see how life is always happening for us, even when we are the less than 1% chance.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte. I am so excited for a new interview today. I am really excited to introduce you to Jorna. She's a mother, wife, and embodiment healer, shares her profound story of healing and transformation as someone who grew up with deep pain of not belonging due to her experiences in transracial adoptee in multiple countries, navigating life with neurological condition, and trying to make sense of racial injustice in the United States. She reconnected with her divine intuition and uncovered an unshakable sense of inner belonging. In this critical time of massive change, she is on a mission to support others in returning home into their inner wholeness, which I absolutely love, so that they can have a stronger impact in creating more compassionate, humane, and loving world. So, Jorna, welcome. I'm so excited to have you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. I'm so honored to be here. Thank you for having this amazing space to connect with people.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes, absolutely. So give us a little bit of background. Try to go into it a little bit in the bio, but give us a little bit of background. How did you come through to your against all odds story and to where you are today?
SPEAKER_03:Thank you. Yeah, like my bio said, I was born, actually don't have proof of where I was born. And I was adopted as a transracial adoptee out of northern India. And I grew up in multiple places around the world. And during my whole life, I had this neurological condition that actually wasn't diagnosed till I was about 13. And in that process, didn't always fit in at school, didn't have the right learning style for school, and then didn't have this sense of what group do I fit into? Because I had moved around so much. And then obviously, there is this when you separate from your birth culture and your birth mom prematurely, that creates all kinds of attachment issues. So in that process, there was this common theme of not feeling like I belong anywhere. And then in college, I came back to the United States, which was the passport country of my parents, my adoptive parents, and hadn't lived in the United States until then, and had no idea of the history of race in the United States and had to unpack all of that in my professional life and ended up going back to get a master's degree, more for the reason of just to get some kind of understanding of what was happening racially in my experience being defined as a woman of color in the United States. Where do I fit in? And I was using so much emotional energy to try to fit in and try to navigate in the world. And it was pretty exhausting. And it wasn't until actually the birth of my children when I ended up being a stay-at-home mom that I had the time to unpack all of this for myself.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's I can only imagine it's that connection. And as a parent, you feel that connection with your child and can't imagine how it would feel from a child not having that connection with their mother. I can imagine how difficult that must have been. You said you got a master's. What did you get a master's in?
SPEAKER_03:So I actually self-designed it. I went to the school for international training and they are really focused in international NGO work, international relations. So a lot of my coursework was in international relations, international education, and multicultural counseling. And I put all that together so that I could work in multicultural environments because that was my background, that is my identity. And it was this opportunity to not only do my own identity work, but also to get to define my professional life in identity work, cross-cultural identity work at that time.
SPEAKER_01:Very, very interesting. I love all of that. I love learning about cultures and about just having maybe not from my the color of my skin, but I'm Hispanic. And so my kids have the browner skin. And I I can understand where the fear of what everything that's happening now can definitely play a big role. So definitely always have a lot of empathy and compassion for that. So what are you passionate about and the work that you do now?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So, you know, what you just said is so current and so profound for this moment, particularly in the United States, but actually around the world, because so many systems are crumbling, and I think people are saying, hey, I matter, and the system doesn't define who I am. And that isn't my truth to fit in a box that someone has defined for me. And so I think we're really at this critical point where stepping into that truth and hearing who we truly authentically are and expressing that in the world in a way that builds a world that supports everybody. Yeah. This is why I'm here. This is why I do the work I do. Because we're seeing the results of systems that say, based on the way you look, based on the way you believe, based on your opinion, you could be incarcerated, you could be psychologically and physically harmed. You can be not allowed to get a job, all of these things. And yet our communities are made up of everybody, right? Yeah, all colors, all colors, all races, all belief systems, absolutely, different ways of doing things, and the sustainability is not based on one type of person or only one way of doing something. We just know that from nature. Diversity is what builds us. And if this planet's gonna survive, we're gonna need the resourcefulness and the creativity of all of us. But so many of us are living in survival mode, and our nervous systems are irregulated because of trauma and because of not even past trauma, but current trauma, who do I trust on the street? Yeah, kind of thing. And so that comes back to I'm so passionate about people coming into that not only nervous system regulation and how to do that in a world that is changing so rapidly. And at the same time, then as you as that becomes your familiar to be regulated, what is the creativity that comes out of that? Where do I tap into my own possibility of building and creating so I can contribute back into our world?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that. It's very eye-opening with everything that has happened. Like I said, I was born in Puerto Rico, so technically I am a US citizen since I was born. And when I see people that I grew up with cheering on this rhetoric of immigration, and if you speak Spanish or you believe something different, then you gotta go thing. And I posed a question at some point. What if my skin was a little darker? And what if my eyes were not green? And what if my accent was just a little bit more broken or broken English? What if all of that would you have treated me differently in the time period that we grew up in? Would I have been treated differently? Would you have seen me as less than you? And it really has opened my eyes to a lot. And I think that it's I don't know. I really feel like I am in a space of really just sending lots of love and understanding and compassion to the world because it needs it right now. So much empathy. I feel like that's what we're missing right now. And so I am trying to make a conscious effort to that's what I'm radiating out into the world now because I can't even imagine what it would if I didn't look the way that I did. Would you have treated me any different?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's a really powerful question, I think, because I think we all come to this awareness of where are the places we pass in the system, right? And then there's these places that we don't pass in the system. I am visibly a woman of color, defined by the United States, right? And yet, and also defined by the United States, I have quote unquote good English. And I always joke with people, I speak multiple forms of English because my English will shift depending on where I am in the world in order to be understood. But these are all outward definitions. So I also carry privilege, I obviously carry privilege because of my master's degree. I carry privilege from education and for my ability to articulate and be a voice where others may not. And then there's these visible pieces. And so it's really, we we are in this place of holding a yes and, you know, both the places that that we're defined as risk somehow to the system, and also these places of, well, I do have this access, or I do pass in these ways, or I do have connections. I have a whole connection to white identity because I grew up with white parents. That gives me an access to privilege as well. And then it's how do we utilize that to bridge, right? But that comes from having courage within, which means we have to start hearing what's within us, not these definitions of who we are outside of us. And that's where my work takes me and this piece around all the processes I utilize, I work one-on-one with people, all of it utilizes self-compassion. Because if we won't start with processes of self-compassion and practice that with ourselves, how can we offer that into our world? Which is like you said, so needed right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So, how has your own journey through rejection and oppression informed the work that you do now?
SPEAKER_03:It's everything because when we have contrast, you know what you don't want. It's so painful. Yeah, it's so painful not to be seen and heard, not to be believed, not to be told, you know, your truth is not true, or oh, just hush that up, sort of thing, or you may not see the whole picture, whatever those are the soft, polite, but very offensive ways people will reject you. And then there's of course the outright, like, you're a scary person. I don't want you promoted in an organization or participating any further in an organization. So all of those pieces of not being seen or being stopped by the police just by being in my neighborhood, walking in my neighborhood, and asked why I'm here in my own neighborhood, all those help me say, Oh, I don't want to live in a world like that. And I don't want, I certainly don't want my children living in a world like that. So, what is in my control to be able to influence that, to influence the energy of that? I may not be able in that instance convince somebody, but I can bring myself into a place of acceptance, I can create the acceptance within that I seek to see out in the world. And that is why I do the work I do right now and why I'm passionate about it, and I don't know that it's gonna go away.
SPEAKER_01:No, especially not right now, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, how do you help your clients heal?
SPEAKER_03:So, like I said, all right now, all my work is a one-on-one container, and I really work with people who often have done quite a lot of healing with themselves and also are really like to connect to the intuitive that part of themselves that feels whole already and bring that into their body. So there's a lot of times a lot of guided meditation in my work that then leads into some other modalities of looking at well, what pieces block you or limit you from accessing that possibility of who you are fully and stay connected to it because that's the other piece, right? Like we know that we're whole, we know that we're divine, we know that we're a good person. However, you think about that, we many of us know we have a higher self, and even if you don't, I have a good heart. Yeah, how do I stay connected to that? And so that's where we create within one's body a safe place, because the world too often has not been safe, yeah, where that wholeness can reside. And then the second piece to that is oftentimes people will work with me because they want to make this shift from having been on their healing journey to, as you said, how does that contribute into the world now? There's no way I could have gone through all this just for the sake of me. How does, as Brene Brown says, how does my journey become that book of support, that survival guide? I think that's the word she used, survival guide for someone else, and hopefully a thriving guide for somebody else. So it's oftentimes folks who want to influence the world to build a more compassionate, humane world and remove the boots.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. I think that in my own journey, I've experienced a lot of healing in so many different modalities that I feel so connected. And as I was telling you before we started to even record, this podcast came out of a spiritual journey that I went on, and my higher self was like, This is what I foresee for you, and this is where you're gonna part of where you're gonna create impact. And I think that's so important to be able to connect with that goodness in your heart, because that goodness in your heart and and that intuition is always gonna guide you the way that you need to go. So I love that's what you help people connect with, if that's what I'm understanding.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't think I like to talk about myself as a channel in some ways, but I it may not be in the traditional sense of go talk to a psyche and talk to the crystal ball, because it's really, I have this deep belief that we all have a channel, as you said, to that higher self. And it's about being open, being safe enough to receive it, right? And to create that connection and then be able to follow through with, oh, I heard that, just like you said, and I just know I've got to do this podcast, I've got to express this art in the way I'm I was meant to. I need to work with this population of people. This is what I'm called to do to create this new earth, a healthy earth.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. So, how is tapping into your intuition important for creating effective impact in the world?
SPEAKER_03:So, because we've been so socialized by everything outside of us, right? And you as we're seeing, we're we're in such a reactive mode right now in the world. Just turn on the news and you're distracted. You will go down a rabbit hole. We all know that for all day, right? If we let ourselves, right, we're so reactive, and it's a protection mechanism to be reactive because none of us want any of that to happen to us, right? So we're constantly in protection mode, and the way to shift out of that, one of the ways to shift out of constantly in hypervigilance and protective mode is to tap in to our inner voice and the place within us that is safe, that is grounded, that has the wisdom, the infinite wisdom of possibility and ways of being in the world before we go out and we do, before we go out and react. Then we're actually introducing choice back into our life when we tap into our intuition because we're coming back to our own inner voice. And when we hear that, then we can actually consciously choose how we want to respond in any situation because all parts of us come home, and so we have a much larger pool of resourcefulness from within when we're connected to that intuition.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I agree. I feel like that is something that I didn't really realize that I followed uh you would call it gut feeling, or I always hold my belly or my solar plexus, and I allow whatever voice can come from there. And I've done it with the most simplest things, like when I've been looking for a new place to live, and something tells me this is not it, this is not it, and when it's that place, you're like, Yep, this is it, this is where we're meant to be, and it creates the more you listen, the more I feel like the safer you feel trusting your yourself and allowing yourself to be guided by that intuition. And I don't know, I feel like I've learned throughout my own healing journey that that is a voice that I trust, and when it doesn't feel right, then I need to steer away. And when it feels like this is it, I can I will also feel that like compulsion to go towards that. I don't know. It's been quite a journey to uncover how to be able to do this, and I think that trusting in that has gotten me to where I am today. And I think that's the important journey. Obviously, the more you heal, the more you feel like you are able to trust that.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yeah. And I would be curious to know like your what your experience of contentment and joy and how that has shifted from having listened to your intuition, because I think that's a piece of the healing process we often don't always talk about, right? But most people are trying to heal so they can feel good in life, I think, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I can go back a few a lot, a few years, quite a bit of years. I remember going back to work after I had my second child. He's now 20 years old, so it's been about 20 years, and I went I went back to work and I just I cried every single day from that. It was just such a mundane job. I was at an incoming call center and it was very scripted, everything was scripted, and I am definitely not a scripted kind of person, just in the way that I am, but I cried like almost every day for months. And about six months into starting that job, I remember going into work and I was running like just a little bit behind. And so I was like rushing to get there. I found a parking spot, and as I'm getting into that parking spot, a car backs into me, and I get into a car accident, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, like I'm literally right there. I'm at the building and about to get to work. And so the gentleman comes out and he's like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm running late to an international flight, and I'm so so sorry I didn't. This wasn't my intention. Here's my card. I will take care of everything. I just have to go. And I'm like, I normally you that happens, and you have to call the police. And he's like, I just I have to go. I'm running late to this international flight. So I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna trust that this is gonna work out. So he's like, email me get as soon as you get the estimate for the damages, and I will take care of everything and so forth. So the building that I worked in, there was four floors, and I worked on the third floor, and that's where this call center was. And when I look at the card, he's the president and CEO of the company at the top floor in the fourth floor of that building. And I was like, oh, okay. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. All right, well, hopefully he's not gonna like completely forget about me or whatever. When I didn't even know what company was on the fourth floor, so I never really paid attention. I always went to the third floor and that's it. And so when I look at it, I call my husband at the time and he's like, oh my gosh, okay, we'll get an estimate and blah, blah, blah. We'll get it taken care of. So I get the estimate. This is like a week later. I take it upstairs. He told me to leave it with the receptionist. I left it with the receptionist for him. And I don't hear back from him for like a week, a week and a half. And I'm like, oh man, this sucks. I'm like 22 years old, maybe, or maybe 23 at that time. And I was just like, this just I was just not expecting this. Like, I really hope that he wouldn't have just left me hanging. And all of a sudden, I get a call one day, and it's it's him saying, Hey, sorry, I just got back from my trip. Come upstairs when you have a second, and I will make sure to take care of everything. And I was like, Okay, well, I had gone upstairs to give the estimate, and I'm looking around and it says TORICO holidays, and it's a travel company. I was like, Oh, what is this? I love to travel. What is this? And so I didn't, I try to do some research. It wasn't really like I wasn't really understanding what it was. Anyways, I go upstairs, I give him, I I sit, he calls me back, and he's like in this corner office, huge mahogany desk, beautiful. And he sits down and he's like, I'm so sorry. I just got back. I I had to go back home to my parents and blah, blah, blah. So I was like, no worries, no worries. I sat down and I was like, Are you guys hiring for you? And he was like, I'm not a hundred percent sure. We use a staffing company, check with the front desk, they'll get you all the information. And so he gives me a check for what the estimate was I got to get my car fixed. And I was like, Oh, I wasn't expecting it, but thank you. I appreciate it, blah, blah, blah. And so I go to the receptionist, I ask them for the information for the staffing company. I uh, and I was like, all right, I don't know what it is about this company, but I I want in. I can't even begin to explain the hoops that I had to go through. In the same week, I was going down for lunch and coming in from lunch, I see this man that comes in and I'm like, oh my gosh, Matt, it's some kid that I went to middle school and high school with. And I was like, wow, what do you do? And he like whips out his business card and he's like, Yeah, I'm the senior product development manager for the US at blah, blah, blah. I was like, wow, are you hiring? And he's like, Yeah, yeah, send me your resume. I can tell you now he probably got my resume and just deleted it because that's just the type of guy that he was. And so I'm like, okay, I don't hear back from him. Have a I go to the staffing company, they had me do like an Excel test and a word test and just to test where I'm at. And then they were gonna have me come back and to do an interview. And so I'm in the process of all this. And as I'm waiting for calls to come in at work, the guy that used to like pick up the trash, like he was like the maintenance guy and janitor, whatever. So he was coming around and I'm like, hey, Jose, what's up? How are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And he's like, How have you been? I'm like, nothing. I've been waiting for someone to get back to me from upstairs because I applied there, blah, blah, blah. He's like, girl, get me your resume. I know this really great guy. And I'm like, okay, I go and print out my resume at work, and which totally should not be done. But whatever. I print out my resume, I give it to him, and I'm like, here you go. And he was like, All right, no worries. I'm gonna tell you the next day I got a call from the director for the US product development team. And I was like, Oh, okay. He's like, Yeah, come upstairs, we'll do an interview, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, I'm still waiting for the staffing company's appointment to, but okay, sure, I'll do that. So I go upstairs, I guess I make a great impression. And as he calls in, he's like, I want you to meet who would be your supervisor, blah, blah, blah. And in comes in Matt, the kid that I went to school with. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I emailed you, you never got back to me. And he was like, Oh, oh, I don't know what happened. And I'm like, it's all good. So I get the job, not through the staffing company. They weren't hiring anybody directly to the company at that time, but I got hired directly to the company. And the first month that I was there, I didn't know anything about what I was doing. I was supposed to be calling for renewal contracts. It just felt like I needed to be there. I can't even explain it. I didn't know what I was doing. The training pretty much sucked. So I just sat down and he was like, Call for this is a list. Call these people and ask for a renewal contract. And I'm like, okay. And so I just did. And every week my numbers would be super high and blah, blah, blah. So within that month, the owner of the company always had like a not orientation, but kind of like this is where we came from. This is how this company was created, their origin story. And I was like enamored with the whole story. It's a story of Against All Odds, right? And so I was like, this is amazing. I don't know. This is why I feel like this is the company I needed. To work with. And so he's like looking at the room and he sees me and he stops his story and he's like, You made it. And I'm like, I did. And it took some persistence, but I'm here. And we still to this day have a such a beautiful connection. But it felt like that's where I needed to be. That's where I grew up. That's where I learned to negotiate. That's where I learned business. That's where I learned. I feel like I got so much out of that. But it was always because my intuition guided me to this is where you need to be. And even if that first six months I was miserable in that building, the following 10 years completely impacted my life. My kids got to stay in the best hotels. I got to travel, things that I wouldn't have been able to do if that wouldn't have been the case. And it was just that's what I'm saying. I feel like I've experienced a lot of things in the moments that I feel like I follow my intuition, it always guides me to something that I can celebrate later. If that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:I think so many people, again, are looking outside of themselves for that to be defined. And really that permission slip comes from within us to say, it's my birthright. I'm born whole. I'm born worthy. And as you alluded to, we even within utero, we get the message that maybe we're not. And so we carry those imprints, those blueprints throughout life. And so that, yeah, that's one of those shadowed pieces that has come up repeatedly in my life. And then the limiting belief that can I do something because I do I have a neurological condition, and there's just a lot of things I don't do the same way that other people do. And so I have to find my way of doing it. And one of those ways is intuition. So for example, I'm partially blind. So the left side, the peripheral vision on my left side and my right side are gone. And and so I utilize intuition a lot to get where I need to get, to to find things, to do things. And I'm using that outer office for me. But because I do that doesn't mean I'm not capable of doing something. I'm just using a different capacity, a different skill set to create my life. And so it's again that permission, like, what is our joy? What is that bliss that we are creating? And when we are in the energy of that, you don't always, that's the other piece. I don't always know exactly the specific thing I want. But if I'm in the energy of I want to feel good and I want to create joy and be a resonance of joy in the world, then like you just talked about, those synchronicities start to show up, and you've given that permission to follow that, and then your capability to do it shows up as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's like not searching for the how, it's just what you want and how you want to feel, and then everything just folds out the way it needs to.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So what daily habits or rituals would you say have helped you reach the level of success and continue to help you reach your potential?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I I think I just recently posted something about if have on your day the bookends of your day, gratitude. Because if you start the day with gratitude and you end your day with gratitude, then that directs your heart and your mind to work together. And so I have a practice just when I'm laying in bed of being in deep appreciation for everything in my life and naming that to myself so that that is part of my inner dialogue with myself at the beginning and the end. So that's one practice. The second practice that again, after my children were born and I was at home and I had nowhere to go, and all the pain was in my face, actually, because my whole identity changed. I no longer had a professional identity at that point, and my marriage changed, everything changed. It was just me and me. I would walk every day in nature and I would connect intuitively to my at that time, my my guides and my angels and whatever my higher power was that was coming to me. And I would make a practice of walking. I'll confess, I'm not a good sit quiet, and meditate kind of girl, but I love to walk in nature and feel a broader perspective coming into my awareness through doing that. So that's a second practice that I love to have out in the world. And then the third one for me is really being in self-compassion to myself. And it initially it can feel like it takes time, but over time it doesn't. But it's really stopping and acknowledging whatever is coming up for me and being in compassion and love and connection and developing this non-judgmental observer to just say, okay, whatever emotion comes up, whether that's anger or whether that's joy, whether that's sadness, or whether that's clarity, like I have practices to to just connect to those parts of myself. So every day, sometime, even for 10 minutes, bringing all those parts of me home.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that so much. Is there anything else that you would like to share with us today?
SPEAKER_03:It's for listeners to really give themselves the permission to develop a joyful relationship with themselves and allow that to overflow into the world we have today. Because that's what's going to change the world, that's what's going to create the kind of world where we all have a voice, where we all have a place at the table, where we all are equitably paid, where we all operate from a place of well-being rather than crisis management. And so it's really give yourself that permission and take the time for it. Because everywhere you go in the world, you take you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, you're the biggest and longest relationship that you will ever have.
SPEAKER_03:Right, right. And your only task in the world is to take care of you. And when you take care of you in a healthy way, you end up taking care of others and you end up taking care of your community because you no longer respond from your woundedness, you respond from your wholeness.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I love that so much. Oh my gosh, Jorna, this was awesome. Thank you so, so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:And such a pleasure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was amazing. Listeners, I hope you got so much out of today, just like I did. Thank you so much for listening. Peace out, guys. Love your life. Bye.
