November 13, 2026

334 Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.

November 13, 2026/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/334

Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it, either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today I'm joined by Dr. Tanya Kaanta, the owner and director of the Ties Program, which guides adoptees and their loved ones on heritage journeys to their birth countries. Tanya shares her experience of a health crisis that left her unable to speak or walk.

We also discuss how she made room for adoption grief in her 40s and how heritage travel can offer opportunities to explore our identities and connect with other adoptees. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at [00:01:00] adopteeson.com/newsletter.

We wrap up with some recommended resources for you, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Tanya Kaanta, Dr. Tanya Kaanta. Welcome, Tanya.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Thank you so much for having me, Haley.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad we finally get to meet. I would love it if you would share a little of your story with us.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. So I was adopted in 1975. I arrived through JFK actually in December of 1975 and grew up in Connecticut. My parents had three biological sons, so I was the youngest one. But I was actually the second child they adopted. So the first child that they adopted passed away through Holt, and then they went back to Holt and said, "We want a healthy baby."

She was from Vietnam with Operation Babylift, and so then they got me instead, [00:02:00] which is very, also very interesting 'cause they wanted a healthy baby and they actually, I found out two years ago that I was the size of a toddler when I came through because the file was switched, so it's not me, so my file is somebody else.

So that has been really interesting.

Haley Radke: Okay, I just wanna clarify. So you were already a replacement baby for- ... the first baby they adopted that died. And then they were gonna send another baby, but they sent- ... you instead, so you're- ... twice replaced.

Wow.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. Yeah. It's from an academic perspective, it's really fascinating. If you think about it from a little child person perspective, it's a little sad.

Haley Radke: It is.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So then what do you know about yourself that's true?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: I know my height when I came- to the United [00:03:00] States. And I know this because I requested my FOIA, which is the Freedom of Information Act, so all their information when you immigrate to the United States.

And it's so bizarre because the Tokyo Embassy signed off on my weight, on my height and weight. It makes no sense at all. And so that's all I know. And I know I was twice the size of a six-month-old baby, that, they were supposed to get. And they told my parents, "Oh baby, Korean babies who are really healthy are just really big."

And so they believed that. But I've also found out that I had rickets from malnutrition, but my parents didn't know because they thought I was developmentally normal 'cause I wasn't walking. But turns out it's because I had rickets 'cause I was older. I was probably about three, two or three when I was adopted though.

Yeah so that's all I know. And I know that the baby is not me, and there's actually two photos of babies in the file that are different, but that [00:04:00] baby in the file does not match me. That baby's too small. Way, way too small for the toddler that arrived at JFK. That's all I know.

Haley Radke: Wow. So you grew up with three older siblings that were- biological to your adoptive parents.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: So yeah. And I was, I grew up a tomboy, obviously,'cause I was always playing sports and everything like that. And then, I went to college at Ithaca College. I was actually a music major. And then I ended that when I was a sophomore and ended up going into African studies and cultural studies.

So then when, once I graduated, I went to Colorado State University for my master's, and that's when I actually started doing work on adoption. So I was doing student affairs, and I did research on development of transracial and inter-country adoptees and their university experience. 'Cause a lot of the research at the time, so this was like the 1997, so a lot of [00:05:00] research at that time was children or parents' perspectives.

So I ended up doing my thesis on that. And then- worked for a couple years, but then came back, got a Ph.D., and then did my dissertation where I was in sociology, and then did my dissertation work on inter-country adoptee identity formation and emotion work advocacy and agency. And also wanted to really study adult voices, 'cause again, there weren't a lot of adult voices at the time.

I think I remember I found one or two studies that had Myers study. It's from like 1999, I think, or 1998, or Palmer. The, they're, like, almost 30 years old now.

And so I really wanted to do adult voices. It wasn't necessarily that I needed to do Korean, but the Korean diaspora were so much older, so that's why it made sense to do adult adoptees for Korean adult adoptee voices.

So I went to Korea [00:06:00] and I lived there... first I lived there in '99, but then when I went back and I was doing my dissertation work, I lived there for the summer and then interviewed folks who were returning to Korea. Either they had lived there long term or they were just coming for their first time to visit.

And then I also interviewed folks back in the United States who had not traveled to Korea at all and, or had no wish to. And then out of that came an identity formation model that everyone told me that I was supposed to publish back in the early, the mid 2000s, like 2000. But I just wasn't ready at my, on my own journey.

It was very emotional. Very- ... it was a lot. So I ended up going more into academia space and I would do stuff on the side with adoption, but I kinda left the academia space. So I was at the same time as Kim Park Nelson and Hollee McGinnis and doing all of the research back then.

I met Kim Park Nelson in Korea when, we were doing research and stuff, and Tobias Hubinette. That was the cohort. And then I was like, "I can't, I gotta I'm not in a [00:07:00] good mental space to do this." So I kinda became more adjacent. And so I would talk at, I would be invited every once in a while to talk in a classroom.

I taught sociology and social psychology classes, and then I did evaluation research. So I was still at the university doing stuff. Yeah, and then got married, had two kids, yada, yada. And then to about 2016, so I had been having- all of these issues since I was about 19, 20 years old, and I would try to...

I'd go to the doctors and they would be like, "You're sick. Your blood work's not good, but we don't know what you have." And finally, it came out that I actually had chronic Lyme disease, which makes sense 'cause I grew up in Connecticut. And then, so I started getting treatment for that, but then I also ended up developing an autoimmune brain disease.

That's the autoimmune encephalomyopathy, and it just took me out and really a lot of that stemmed from it, [00:08:00] which makes a lot of sense now. You've heard of ACEs and the study with the CDC and Kaiser.

It ended up I was wheelchair bound and I lost my speech and my ability to walk and talk, and my IQ dropped, so I lost all my memory. And but once I was starting to get healed again and I was looking at the correlation between trauma and then chronic illness, and it's such a huge correlation.

And then, Hollee McGinnis did this huge study that I keep... I'm like, "Hollee, you have to publish this. This is so good." She's got all this data. But it made a lot of sense, and when I was coming out of the... once they figured out the brain disease stuff, I did a really intensive adoption outpatient therapy program with my husband, actually.

It was two weeks three to four hours a day, solely focused on healing from attachment, abandonment, and all that stuff. Yeah, because of that link, and I was looking at that list and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I could check off every single one of those on the [00:09:00] ACEs list."

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: And I remember the psychologist that we worked with, he was like duh.

Of course your immune system shut down. So that was, like, one of the things that I really wanted to emphasize, is that we hold so mu- especially women, right? 'Cause the instances of chronic illness is so much higher in women. This is not to say it doesn't happen to men, it does, but especially women, we just hold everything in so much and I just wanna...

I was, like, one of those people who was a perfectionist. I could do everything on my own. I wouldn't take any help. And I, and it was almost like this disease was like, "Huh, too bad. You're not gonna be able to do anything at all. You're gonna have to accept help."

Haley Radke: It's like our bodies are screaming at us until they're like I guess you're gonna have to listen now." I'm so grateful you're sharing this, Tanya, because I think it is something that we don't talk about enough. And it's not something to be afraid of, I would say. It's just stop [00:10:00] stuffing your stuff down.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yes.

Haley Radke: That's what's unhealthy.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yes. That's what I wanna get out there. I know we all have... life is nutso for people. We all have stuff, just stuff, but we don't have to do it alone. I had such an amazing support with my husband and his family and, my kids were younger, they were 9 and 12 at the time, but it really forced me to stop and then accept help. And then once I was able to actually start functioning again, I was like, "What am I doing?"

That was also another weird thing, side note. My brain changed and I went into spreadsheets, and I worked for three years for a CFO of a company doing spreadsheets. It was very strange. When people have strokes and they come back, and all of a sudden they have this random ability.

That's totally what happened to me. But then I was, like, working for three years and... So this was like [00:11:00] 2019 to 2022, and I was like, "What do I wanna do with my life?" I had this really crazy experience since 2017 and healing, and now I'm in a good place. I had to have monthly infusions. I had all that stuff. And I'm like, I don't have to do stuff that makes me bummed out and depressed every day. Or it's not fulfilling,

Haley Radke: yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: It doesn't fulfill my heart. So that's what so that's what happened with Ties. That's how I ended up going to Ties.

I had worked for them in 2019 as an adoption specialist on one of their trips to Kazakhstan. And so in 2022, I resigned from that other job, which they actually ended up filling my job with two people and a part-time consulting firm. So-

Haley Radke: Your, your brain really was working overtime.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: It was really like, yeah. Oh, and I can't do it now, don't ask me to do spreadsheets now. So then I was like, "I wanna do something heart-centered." And so I called up the Ties program. I said, "Do you have a program manager position open or anything?" They said, "Actually, we do for [00:12:00] Kazakhstan," which is the country I went to.

And then they approached me. They're like, "We would really like to retire. We really want this to go to an adoptee. We think that's very important." And, my background is in adoptee identity and all that stuff. And then, my partner's background, his is all business. He was a businessman.

So it was like a... We're like, "Okay." So that was three years ago, 2023. Yeah, so here we are. And then also, I do wanna talk about the Ties Foundation.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna get to the Ties program, and we can talk about that. It's travel. It's heritage travel for adopted people.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yes.

Haley Radke: But how did you find some an inpatient, how did you find somewhere to go that was adoption competent when you were, like- At your wit's end.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: So it was two parts. I actually had to get... They wouldn't actually take me until I could communicate better '

Haley Radke: Cause you lost all your speech.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: I lost all my [00:13:00] speech. And so what happened was my Lyme doctor in Denver, he recommend... He's like, "This is not Lyme disease. All the stuff, that I would do to help with anything neural Lyme, this is not it. This is something else." And, 'cause he tried everything. And he's some- a specialist that people come from all over the country to see. And so he said, "There's a doctor in Manhattan. I think you should go see her. She's a neurologist also, and she knows Lyme." So my husband flew me out. I was in a wheelchair at this point, 'cause I had 24/7 vertigo from March until September, and it just never stopped.

It was just constant spinning. I had to be in a wheelchair. I couldn't walk. So he flew me out, and she knew exactly what I had. She knew all the tests to do. She clearly is connected to people, 'cause she called up Columbia University. They have this specific PET scan that only they have and one other hospital out west.

And she's like, "No..." And I'm not [00:14:00] gonna do the accent, 'cause it's terrible. I can't do it, but she's German. And she's like, "No, I, she can't do it two weeks from now. She's only here till Friday. Yes, tomorrow is great. 1:00, perfect." And they, so like they got me in, I had a spinal tap. I had to get 20 vials of blood taken.

I they just ... I had an EKG, an EEG, like all this stuff was done. And she's like, "Ah, this is what you have, and this is how we treat it." I had to get IVIG, which is, they call it like liquid gold 'cause it's so expensive. It's basically healthy people's immune systems, the immunoglobulin from healthy people.

And so they put it into a solution, and then they give it to you intravenously. So I was getting that. I was having infusions twice a month for 12 hours a day each day. But it ga- it brought me back to functioning. Like by, let's see, I had my first infusion end of August. By September I was walking with a cane, and then starting speech pathology and [00:15:00] also physical therapy and occupational therapy.

By October I was walking without a cane, but learning how to actually walk properly, 'cause I would just drag my feet. I didn't know how to walk. And then I had, was learning how to get out of bed properly so I didn't injure myself. Just things like that. And then by December, I'm really excited, by December I was learning to drive again, 'cause that was like a big thing.

That was really exciting for me. My memory had not come back by that point, so I still had my short-term memory, and by the end of 2017, really until like 2022, 2023, I didn't have a short-term memory. So I had to write everything down. I was always on my phone. If someone said something, I would have to write myself a note or send myself an email or write 'cause I would totally forget it.

So really it was my Lyme doctor, and then my husband, and they did some research, and my mother-in-law, and they're like, "This is who you need to go see." We got in, we called in March, and we got in June 'Cause there was a wait [00:16:00] list. 'Cause people come from all over the world to see her. And I'm very lucky that I have a partner who would, who can support me and do that, and fly me to Manhattan, 'cause there's a lot of people that don't have that financial ability. So I was very grateful for that. Yeah, so that's how that happened. And then the adoption one just happened to be the therapist that we were using for my son, he was also an adoption specialist, and he told me about this program that they do.

And I did it, and it was amazing, once I was in a place where I could do, I could function, yeah. And they just happened to be where I was, living in Colorado.

Haley Radke: So you don't take anything for granted anymore, do you?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: I do not. I do not. Which is why I was like, I wanna do something heart-centered now, because literally the first prognosis they gave me and the first diagnosis that I got from the doctors in Colorado was chronic traumatic [00:17:00] encephalomyopathy, and that prognosis is death.

So it's what football players get, and boxers, and... 'Cause I had eight concussions over the years, that's why. So the Lyme disease, it was complicated by Lyme disease 'cause the Lyme went to my brain, because my brain was the most vulnerable from all the concussions, and that was just really a lot from, I was in sports and everything. And then my immune system started attacking my brain, and so that's what.

Haley Radke: When you think about the things that you processed regarding your adoption it sounds like you had to go pretty deep pretty fast. What are some of the, the biggest lessons that you learned about yourself, and self-acceptance and those kinds of things during that time?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: I had been in therapy since high school. It was interesting. But I didn't really do a lot of the adoption stuff until later. I was working on other stuff. And I think it's [00:18:00] funny, because I was always prided myself and, "Oh, I love therapy, and I've done so much work on myself," and yada, yada.

But not a lot on the adoption stuff. And it wasn't really, until I was in my 40s that I was able to really go deep and really look at the piece of grief, and allowing myself to grieve for- birth family that I didn't know, and that was really hard. I think I was really, I don't know, a bit surprised that it would be that emotional and deep for me.

And also I felt like, 'cause essentially one of the things I did was I had the opportunity to go back in time, but not really, but to say what I would hope, what I would love to say at the time that I was separated, and what that meant and that grief that we carry in our bodies, [00:19:00] and that was really deep.

And then there was some other stuff with my adoptive family that I also went deep into that, 'cause my first adoptive mother had passed away, so I hadn't... She passed away when I was seven, so I didn't have a lot of opportunity to talk to her either about stuff and clearly, 'cause she wasn't there.

But I remember after the session and you work up to it, that one particular session, I was just sobbing and sobbing, and my husband, he was also, he never cries. This is one of the probably five times in his life he's crying. And after that, I was like, "Oh. Oh my gosh, I feel amazing. Like, why didn't I do this 20, 30 years ago?" It was like this huge weight was lifted, 'cause, because I'd been carrying this one pathway message over and over, and then I finally reenacted this I have a voice. I can say something or I... You know what I mean?

Even though it was imaginary in the [00:20:00] past, but my body felt it, and it was, like, I literally like they say, that weight on your shoulder, I literally felt like a weight was removed from my shoulders. And then I remember my husband, 'cause he's not adopted, he was like, "Oh, my God." He's like, "I never wanna do that again." 'Cause it was so intense. Obviously he would, he, we continued on the sessions and stuff, but it was so intense. But I felt great after that. So I think it's just being brave. I had to be brave to go there, and I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self that's okay to do that at a younger age, even though it's scary.

It was really scary. That's totally why.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: For me. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I think it's that way for so many of us. We can't... I always say this, I don't know how factually accurate it is, but I feel like our brain only lets us open those doors, like, when we're ready to. It's like a protective [00:21:00] mechanism, and you only open so many at a time. So to have a deep dive where it's pretty intense for in a short time period like you had, that's- quite the cleaning out. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I know you had a difficult upbringing there. Your parents divorced pretty early, your adoptive mom died when you were only seven, and then you went to your dad.

I understand that part of your story, and I could see how those are things that you might think about first.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And often we avoid the really early, just the reason we were placed, 'cause that's hard to think about.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: And and I think about that. There's... Now that I m- the academic side of me likes to dive deep into academic stuff, because I can.

All this research that's coming out about what happens when you separate the mother and the child in those first thousand days of life, which is, like, when, until [00:22:00] you're three pretty much, right? And how that's not supposed to happen, and then what happens physiologically, biologically in our brains, in our bodies, in our cells.

We hold onto that trauma. And then obviously it manifests in all these other different ways, right? Which if you're not an adoption-aware therapist, then, you might just say, "Oh, it's just because you have ADHD."

Haley Radke: Classic. One of the other things we've talked about on this show before, and I'm really excited to talk to you about it 'cause you're a literal expert in it-

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Oh.

Haley Radke: Is identity exploration through travel, and going back to your home country, or in other ways. I know you, you do a bunch of different things, but can you tell us a little bit more about that with the Ties program?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. So the thing I love about the Ties program, and there's a lot of different types of heritage travel.

There's, motherland tours, which are just adoptee [00:23:00] only, and then we do heritage tour- travel. There are also heritage travel which is just, someone who wants to go back, y- you know, their grandfather came over from, I don't know, Israel, and they wanna go back to Israel to see, what that was like, but they were born in the United States and they're not adopted.

So there's that type of heritage travel also. But for adoptees, the way we do it is- we encourage folks to bring a loved one that they feel safe with because so much of what goes on when we go back to our birth country, it's hard to explain to people who are not there. And traveling with someone who can be supportive for you and you can trust is, we feel, it's, it just makes it so that when you come, when you do re-entry back to United States or back to Canada or wherever, you have someone who was there who had experienced stuff with you.

And then our program, we like to do, we do facilitate discussion groups, and so we [00:24:00] separate the adoptees from the loved ones because we also feel like that's too much for them to hold space for one another when they're trying to process all of this emotional stuff. So we intentionally separate.

And then depending on if there's... now we're seeing a lot more partners and parents, so we'll separate those two because they're a very different dynamic. But the thing with going back to birth country that I feel like can be very healing, even if... 'Cause a lot of people think it's just about birth search and meeting birth family, and it's not.

It's not. 'Cause you think about our bodies, even our digestive system, knows the food 'cause that's the DNA that was passed down to us, right? So this is stuff in our cells. But being able to actually go back to the country and then maybe to areas that are important, there's a lot of emotion that can be processed.

And I think also a lot of adoptees from overseas and at [00:25:00] least this came out in my research, and then I've read it in other research too, there's this almost like a, a denial or an anger or a fear or a misrepresentation of their birth country, that it's this bad place or this bad thing or it's so poor and that's why I had to be adopted.

All the savior narratives and everything. And so a lot of people are embarrassed to be from that country growing up. 'Cause when we grow up, especially in our teen years, and we wanna be like everybody else. And to know we're kinda diff- there's something different. And it's a natural thing and during that time to be like, "I'm just gonna ignore it. I'm just gonna ignore it."

Haley Radke: Is there some kind of term for that? I know we talk about internalized racism, especially for adoptees of color who are raised in white families- ... and are, you know- sometimes expect to see a white person in the mirror when they look in the mirror-

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yes ...

Haley Radke: because everyone around them is white.

[00:26:00] Is there some terminology for that? This fear of your home country or...?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: So there could be and forgive me if I don't know it off the top of my head. What we do see is there, depending on which models you look at, and then there's also the adoptee consciousness model, which is different than an identity model.

But like, in the identity model that I had created, that I'm actually finally now going to submit for publication, so that's happening this month, I'm submitting it for pub- finally after many years. But we call it denial and avoidance, but not in a negative way. It's not to pathologize denial and avoidance.

It's what we were talking about earlier, about how our brains are just, sometimes it does that to protect ourselves. And we do things sometimes because that's where we need to be. And I, so I, that is one of the four phases that I see that adoptees just go in and out of throughout their whole life.

It's not a linear process. And so what we saw with that in my model and a lot of other models of [00:27:00] identity, it's always a a denial or an avoidance or that stage or phase is typically what they would call it. Just like a, "I'm gonna avoid this. I'm not gonna talk about it. I'm gonna pretend it's not there."

Or maybe just consciously I'm not even thinking about it. So that's typically in those models where that would be. Even in the adoptee consciousness model, it starts with that whole denial and then you come out of the fog. And then for the consciousness piece, there's different pieces that you go through.

Haley Radke: The touchstones, yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: The touchstones.

Haley Radke: That, Yeah ... makes a lot of sense to me- ... that there could be this "You sent me away," right? So it makes sense to me.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: There's a, yeah, 'cause there's a lot of things of, I was sent away. The country didn't keep- my family didn't keep me. The country didn't keep me.

I was sent to this country. And I've actually two of the adoptees I interviewed back in the day, in the early 2000s, [00:28:00] were adopted again in the United States. Just more trauma, more and more. And then trying to fit in. We all ... nobody wants to be different, right? When we're we come into that phase.

I'm not a psychologist, so I don't actually ... I know there's a phase in our pre-adolescence and our adolescence that we come into and we don't wanna be different. We wanna be like everybody else. And then being from another country sets us apart. For those of us who are racially different, that sets us apart.

Nationality, we can't claim the country as our own because we weren't born here. Obviously we can but from the outside perspective, even adoptees I've talked to who are from Russia or Ukraine or Kazakhstan who are white presenting, they're ethnically white, Slavic, people tell them, "Oh, you're not a real American."

So it's ... And okay, if nobody wants to recognize that part of us and that's bad, I'm not gonna recognize it too, because it's bad. It represents the bad, this negative energy [00:29:00] or this negative or grief or this story of, ... So then going back to the country is also in a way of confronting some of that grief and confronting a country that actually profited from us.

And that's a whole nother thing but it is truth. And that's really hard for people, especially when they go back to, a country and they're like, "It's really advanced. It's not a really poor place," or when they find out, "Oh, what I was told is not actually accurate," and then they go back and they realize, "My birth country is beautiful. I don't have to be ashamed to be from there anymore." And that is also very healing, that piece of being able to be like, "Wow, I can ... I'm from this amazing country and with all this culture, and I can be proud of this." And we see that with every country. It's not just country-specific. And so that's why we feel like it's so healing.

And again, 'cause not everybody can meet birth family, so it's not necessarily of course, that can be a huge component of [00:30:00] it, for sure. And that also can be very painful, too, when people do searches and then birth family doesn't wanna meet, or they meet and it's not a good interaction. But then I also hear people say, "But I now I know," 'cause that's another thing. We don't always have that foundation of our history. So being able to have that is also very healing.

Haley Radke: I love that you have supports available for the adopted person- ... when they're on a trip like this, because- I can imagine it would be very life-changing. And who do you process it with?

So- ... not just having your loved one there, but you have, you served as an expert on a trip and you have that available. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah, so when I did Kazakhstan, I loved that because there were four of us on the trip. One was a [00:31:00] psychologist and worked with the parents and she, that's her job, is working with adoptive parents, and she runs an adoption center in Wisconsin.

And then two of us were adoptees from another country. One, she wasn't in the adoption realm or field for her career, and she's a little bit younger, so it was... And then I was a little bit older. I was in my 40s at the time. So it was nice for all of them to get one-on-one experiences or opportunities to have conversation, to process things one-on-one, and then also in group settings, and then with other adoptees.

Because oh, this is another thing that I think is really cool about doing this type of group travel, is because there's this whole thing about belonging. Like, where do I belong? Especially for intercountry adoptees, there's that added layer of nationality. There can be a layer of race or not, depends on who's adopting whom.

But there's always that question of, okay, so for example, for me, [00:32:00] I'm not really Asian because I didn't grow up with Asian parents, but I'm not white, clearly, 'cause when people look at me they see an Asian person. And I don't know a lot about Korean. Growing up I didn't know any Korean. And I couldn't claim that I was an American, actually 'cause I didn't have citizenship for a while, but that's another story.

But culturally I'm American. I didn't grow up culturally in Korea. And then there's the whole family piece, and then I don't know if you get this on a lot or you did when you were younger, but, "Oh do you wanna find your real family?" Or, "What about your real family?" And I'm like who, what constitutes a real family then?

Is it a family that I don't know, or is it the family that is raising me? What... So there's all these foundational identity groups that we belong to normally, like most people take for granted, and adoptees, especially intercountry adoptees, and then interracial or transracial, [00:33:00] transnational adoptees, that foundation is not solid 'cause people are always questioning you're not really this, you're not really that. You're not..." But then when you go on a trip like this with other families and people who are like you, you belong. No one is ever going to take that away, and that's a very powerful thing that people, I think, don't really understand until they actually do it and they're, and it's like I am in a group of other, with other adoptees, and we get it, intercountry adoptees.

We don't have to explain anything to anyone. And it's the first time of being in a group- where no one's questioning your belonging and your membership to that group. Same with the parents. Parents like, " is that really your kid? Oh, so that's not your real kid." And so then the parents also get that support with other parents who are, like, in this constellation that they [00:34:00] belong also.

They're not the weird one with the kid that's not really their kid, but of course it's their kid. So that's what I think is so beautiful, and then you can have that one-on-one connection all the time so that people would always come up to me and be like, "Hey, can I just talk to you about this?" As they're going through stuff, they can process with us.

Which is really important. And then they can process in a big group, and then they can process in small group.

Haley Radke: What are you seeing trend-wise, like the demographics of people doing this travel? And you mentioned earlier oh, and now we're seeing more partners going along versus- ... adoptive parents I'm guessing.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. Inter-country adoption has really slowed down over the past 15, 20 years. Back in 2004, I think it was, like, 200,000 or 180,000 a year or something like that to the United States, and now it is 1,000. It's gonna be lower maybe two... Don't quote me on those numbers. I can [00:35:00] actually look it up and get the actual number, but it's very-

Haley Radke: It's definitely reduced. Yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: It's definitely reduced. The owners before me, and I'm sure the adoption agencies that do these types of trips, and then there's other private organizations that do heritage travel, they would see a lot of parents bringing their children. But now, as adoptees age, we're actually seeing a lot of adoptees go solo or go with their partners, or even now bring their adult children, which I think is really cool.

Haley Radke: I love that. Oh my gosh. That's the other thing we really don't talk about, is how it severs the next generation- ... also from their- right full history. Oh, I love that okay. And literally ages. Do... Are you seeing 20-somethings coming along, 50-somethings, like the whole-

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah

Haley Radke: gamut?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: The whole gamut, yep. So one of the [00:36:00] barriers, though, is cost. It's expensive. It's expensive to travel internationally, and then it's expensive to have adoption-aware staff going with you also. So that's a little different that we do, that other ones may or may not do, is that we'll fly staff people who are a- adoption specialists to the country as well and do that, so that they always have someone there in case something comes up, but some really just wanna do it solo. Oh, the money. The money is a big issue. It's expensive. There are some programs that are getting funding from the government. Like in Korea, there's one that gets funding from corporations and I think from the government. But then you're beholden to what they also want to show you on their trip.

And me, I was like, okay, now we have an administration that's not friendly to immigrants. We are immigrants. And it's expensive. So how do we help make this more accessible? So actually my [00:37:00] husband and I, we started this nonprofit 501[c][3] called The Ties Foundation. It's completely separate from us, but the whole goal is to provide post-adoption support services for adoptees.

So there's three buckets. One is they can do a heritage travel program. They can come with us. They can go with another organization that's doing something. I was just talking to a friend of mine who is doing a grassroots one in Peru set for next September in 2027. So that would qualify. They could use that grant money to go for that.

The second bucket is mental health. It's $1,000 grants for mental health. They wanna go see someone, but they don't take insurance, or they don't have insurance, so that would help cover that. And then the other one is community connection, so maybe going to a conference or helping to pay for that, those types of things.

And that's totally separate, so if Ties were to go away, the foundation would still be there. And so now we have an executive director. We got the 501[c][3] status, and they're fundraising right now, which [00:38:00] is really exciting. But then, The Ties Program, we just continue to do the travel and then we also like to do free webinars and informational webinars online.

We do a free connect and chat and talk time that anyone can call in from. And actually we had on one of them recently we had, she was a, a domestic adoptee. Mom was Korean adoptee. Birth mom was a Korean adoptee. And she was adopted then in the United States. And then she actually went to Korea to learn about her Korean background and so that was a really cool perspective to have in this connect and chat.

And so yeah, and those are led by different people, so like sometimes I'll lead the connect and chats, but for adoptees, and then the parents, have their own.

Haley Radke: I also wanted to mention this. I was gonna do this when we do [00:39:00] recommended resources, but- ... I saw that you also have a seminar for partners of adoptees.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. And we do it once a year now. We've only done it one time, and it was very successful, 'cause now our as we're getting more adoptees who are aging and the partners were asking, "How do we support our partner?" And so yeah, we put together a partners one.

Haley Radke: I think that's really important, honestly, because- You mentioned earlier the adoptee consciousness model and, the lingo coming out of the fog. I think for some of us when we do that and we're married, it's like your partner is not married to the same person anymore.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: No.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: So true.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So getting them- ... a little support. Sure.

Put it on the list.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Totally.

Haley Radke: What's the best outcome you've seen, if you can think of one story of someone going on Heritage?

Oh my gosh, yes okay, [00:40:00] 2023, I was staffing Guatemala. This is before we took over Ties. And there was an adoptee who did not wanna come. Parents made them come. Almost an adult, young adult. Young adult. And when we got there, would not interact with anyone, would not say hello, was not part of the welcome circle by their choice.

And then the next day, we did... So we don't do the typical touristy stuff, we try to find things that are meaningful for adoptees. And so one of them was we visited an organization that provides services for after-school care to keep kids off the street and you can stay there, you can go to this after-school program all the way through until you graduate high school.

So we went there, and they did this... it wasn't really performative. It sounds, it's gonna [00:41:00] sound performative, but it was not. It, the little kids... first, the older kids were playing the marimba, which is the national instrument for Guatemala. And then the younger ones were coming in from different provinces of Guatemala in the traditional dress, so people could see this was my traditional dress from this province that I was from.

And then they just had everybody dancing with them, so just grab the adoptees, and they were all dancing together. And it was just really beautiful 'cause it went from all these people, even the ones who would talk, really getting involved, wanting to learn more, wanting to try on the traditional dress of their province.

And dancing with the kids. They were all just mingling together, and that really provided a huge shift for a lot of people. And then, as we kept going and doing other things, we worked with an [00:42:00] organization that is permanent homes for children without... for whatever reason, they can't be in their home.

They're not necessarily orphaned. So that was really meaningful. They did some service and built beds for children and elderly so they're not sleeping on the floor. Just things like that. And this one adoptee who would not talk to anyone at all, by the end of when we were doing farewell dinner, this adoptee was one of the very first people to speak, and just came out and said, "This was so powerful and healing for me to come here, to meet other adoptees, to know I was not alone to be with other peop- and to be proud.

And this was the best thing my parents could have done for me." And they didn't wanna be there at all. It was, like, this huge transformation, and it was just, oh my gosh we're all sobbing, [00:43:00] because this is not a unique story. It was just all this like, "I don't wanna be here. This is stupid. This is dumb. I don't, like, why would I wanna go to this country? It's..." But, why would, why... I remember saying that. Why would I wanna go to Korea? And then having that experience, me connecting with other adoptees a similar age, and having that support, realizing we're not alone. It doesn't have to be solo. It doesn't have to be lonely.

And then seeing how beautiful their birth country was and, yeah, it was just a total night and day. And it was... I was like, "Oh, this is why we do this work." That's just... And there's so many stories. Like mother, son. There's another one in Kazakhstan. Mother, son were not talking at all.

They did not talk for a year, and I don't know how she got her son to go on this trip. I do not know. But it really mended and healed a lot of the relationship. Yeah. Just things like that, right? [00:44:00] 'Cause it also gives-

You gotta beware 'cause some of those people that go on those trips uproot their whole life and move back and-

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Oh, they do. Yeah, some do ...

Haley Radke: restart lives there. It's true. It's wild.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I can't even explain the impact it's had on so many adoptees I've spoken to. So-

... don't be scared ... it's probably something exciting that you could do. I love that you guys started the Ties Foundation. Congratulations. That's a big deal. We will make sure to link to that in the show notes.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yes.

Haley Radke: And of course, I'll recommend that folks check out The Ties Program, especially this Partners of Adoptees seminar. I see it's gonna start in 2027.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah, it'll be in the spring.

Haley Radke: Yeah, your website has all kinds of resources. You talk about all the tours that are available, and it's not just Korea.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: No.

Haley Radke: You're worldwide.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Korea China, Kazakhstan, Guatemala [00:45:00] Paraguay. Yeah, we do a, a bunch of different countries. And for Korea and China do have two. One's all ages, and one is adult. And then Korea actually next year... so this fall, I'm actually leaving for an 21-plus and loved ones group, but then next year will be 50-plus, so kinda that first wave. But you can bring your adult child-

Haley Radke: Yeah ...

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: or your partner. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Amazing. What do you wanna recommend for us today, Tanya?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Okay, I would love to recommend, and I feel like this has been recommended before, but I'm just gonna say it again because it's such a great resource, is iamadoptee.org. It's a great resource for support and mental health. And we have resources on our website of different organizations that people can look at or join or, explore either online or what have you.

And then also we do have a, a directory for adoption-aware therapists, but we have not vetted it, so that's the only [00:46:00] thing. We haven't vetted the whole list. And that is on our website. But I Am Adoptee, that's their whole thing, is providing support for mental health and wellness, and I just love it, so I would do definitely that.

And then also the Ties Foundation because it is really just grants for adoptees for all the support. And Ian Forber-Pratt is the executive director now, and he's an intercountry adoptee from India. He was in the anti-trafficking space for, like- over 10 years. And so he's just doing an amazing job, and our goal is to have an evergreen fund so that the money is just in perpetuity.

We don't have to worry about doing a ton of fundraising. We can put some money in a spot where there's an endowment. And so he's already gotten almost $200,000 in the last two weeks. 'Cause it's, there's just a lot that's not there.

Haley Radke: There's a huge need.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: There's a huge need.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Amazing.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah. That's the other [00:47:00] one, the TIES Foundation, and I believe that they're going to start opening grants early next year.

Haley Radke: Okay. Early 2027. amazing.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing that. Where can folks connect with you online?

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Okay. I am terrible at social media, but they can connect with me on Facebook or Instagram.

They can also connect with me through the TIES Program, so the TIES program has a handle on Instagram and Facebook as well, and also they can just email the TIES Program. They can email me, tanya@thetiesprogram.com. I'm really-

Haley Radke: Okay, perfect ...

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: really super open.

Haley Radke: We will link all of those things in the show notes.

Thanks for sharing a bit of your story with us, and I really enjoyed hearing your life reclamation story. Wow you've been through it, and you really did the work. Wow.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Incredible.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: I don't know if you saw on the Korean American [00:48:00] Story that, when I told you about my daughter coming in when I was really sick and I couldn't really talk, and it was at my worst, and nobody knew what I had at that point.

And I was like, I made peace. I was ready to go. I was in so much pain, and she literally came in right after I said to myself, "I'm good. I'm good. I am at peace." She came in, she crawled up next to me, and she started crying, and then she got up and she wiped her tears, and she said, "I hate crying. Mom, I hate, I don't know why I'm crying." And then she left. And I was like, oh, okay. I have to keep fighting.

Haley Radke: You did it. Yes, we will, we'll link to that. To your story there as well. And just so you know, your dissertation's still available online.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: It is. Oh, and I have a chapter coming out in Hollee McGinnis' book, edited book, on inter-country adoption next year.

Haley Radke: Oh, cool. Congrats.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: And then hopefully I'll get this article submitted, and it'll be published by 2027.

Haley Radke: Amazing. When [00:49:00] it's published, let me know and we'll add that to the show notes for your episode. Thank you so much.

Tanya Kaanta, Ph.D.: Thank you so much, Haley.

Haley Radke: Even though I was born in Canada, my maternal side is very Scottish. I'm actually a first-generation Canadian on that side, and I really have always wanted to go to Scotland doing some kind of heritage travel to figure out where my maternal grandparents grew up and their extended family, and it's totally, a bucket list item for me.

So I love hearing other adoptees talk about travel and how important it is for them and how meaningful and impactful, and I just, I love this idea of having support with you on a journey like that. I don't have the experience of being [00:50:00] transnationally adopted, so I know it would be ever so much more meaningful and challenging.

And so I'm really glad that something like the Ties Program exists. I'm excited to share about it with you. And it's getting so close. The new podcast On Adoption will be out. If you're listening to this when it releases, the show will be out momentarily, so make sure you're checking for my new podcast On Adoption wherever you listen to podcasts.

Would love your support over there with a rating or review, and please share it with your friends. Thank you for listening to adoptee voices over here on Adoptees On, and let's talk again soon.

October 30, 2026

333 [Healing Series] Intensive with Dr. Julie Lopez

October 30, 2026/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/333

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. This is a special episode in our healing series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Today, I'm so pleased to welcome back Dr. Julie Lopez, author of Live Empowered. Dr. Julie returns for a very personal conversation about my experience working with her in a therapy intensive. We talk about what those hours together actually looked like, and I share some unexpected changes I've noticed since, [00:01:00] including feeling more connected with my kids and having more capacity to navigate a very stressful season.

You'll also hear snippets from our conversation shortly after the therapy intensive, along with reflections from other adoptees who have worked with Dr. Julie. Before we get started, if you're listening to this when it's first been released, October 30th, it is Adoptee Remembrance Day, where we remember adoptees we've lost, to acknowledge adoption trauma, to stand with adopted people who are without citizenship in the country they were taken to as infants or children, and we think of those who have suffered abuse or worse at the hands of their adoptive parents.

I've had several episodes marking this important day over the years, and we have an Adoptee Remembrance Day playlist available for you in the show notes. In keeping with the theme of adoptee awareness and healing, today I wanted to bring you my friend Dr. Julie, [00:02:00] who is focused on the latest science in trauma-informed brain and body-based approaches that support meaningful and lasting change.

Let's listen in.

Pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Dr. Julie Lopez. Hi, Julie.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Hey, Haley. It's so good to be here, to see your face, hear your magical voice- ... and be part of the empowerment project that you are.

Haley Radke: Aw, thank you. You and I got to work together very closely for a few hours. It's a year and a half ago, just about two years now, which is wild, because can I tell you, I still picture things in our session extremely vividly. It is locked into my memory, which I thought was unusual to say the least.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Ooh, I'd love to hear more about that. I always love to [00:03:00] hear kind of the things that stick and the stuff that really makes an imprint since we're pulling stuff out of these inner recesses of your nervous system really.

Haley Radke: How about I just tell you that part first? And we are gonna describe what it's like to work with you in an intensive so people can really picture it. But one of the things that happened for me was I was recalling a lot of childhood memories, and during that time I was able to recall the home I grew up in such vivid detail to the point where I could open a kitchen cupboard and look in and recall exactly the different designs of the plates we had.

Same for the varied assortment of glasses or mugs. And I felt like I could, pick one up and look at it, and I [00:04:00] still remember that all very vividly to this day.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Amazing. So it was very sensory. It really took you back to that place.

Haley Radke: Yes, and I still feel like I can do that for my childhood bedroom and all the little knick-knacks on my dresser. Just all kinds of things that I have no access to now. I don't have photos of any of those things, but it's it felt so real like I was really there.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes, which is exactly what happens when we get into this deeper unconsciously held material. Your cells are holding that even if you're not consciously thinking about it. It's in there for you, and that becomes a pretty important principle to all of this work.

Haley Radke: Let's talk about just the actual what we did.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Because I think this can feel mysterious. I wasn't sure how to explain it to people. And we worked [00:05:00] virtually, so we were on a, secure Zoom call. I was here in my office where I am. I'm assuming you were where you are now in your office. And you had me have binaural music, so I had headphones on so I could hear the music. And binaural just means there's different beats happening in each ear, right? So you're stimulating the ri- right and left side of your brain-

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah

Haley Radke: at the same time. And then you would... we started with some goals in mind. We started the day, I think my thing that came up for me right away was, "I feel unlovable," which is great. Classic adoptee. And we just followed that thought. I would think about it for a couple of minutes. You would pause me. I would report back what I was seeing, feeling, thinking about, and we just carried on over, and over. Those would be called [00:06:00] sets, and we did that for several hours.

Dr. Julie Lopez: That's right.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Do you want me to add to that, a little bit of the science behind it?

Haley Radke: Please do, because that sounds kinda weird. How could that do anything.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally. So well, first of all, when we did the goal-setting, which is based on present day, no reliving old hard stuff, just "What's going on today? What's important to you?" We did not do that during the intensive session. We did it prior to that, and we put really measurable objectives on that. And the reason why is most of what I'm trying to do in the beginning of an intensive is get into a neural network that's inside of you connected to whatever your body pushes up as the most important thing.

And your body that day, [00:07:00] when we stepped out of your thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, and into your experiencing brain, more of this unconscious, implicitly memorized data, was, I was actually taking you into a more dreamlike state, so that we started when your body was fully activated. So that's why we do the thinking part like a different, totally different time, and most of what we did with talking was to get you into this altered state, and then to stay there.

And while you were in that altered state, although it was, hey, we started here with a target kind of image that was viscerally remembered so that it was alive in your system The beats were getting your system [00:08:00] into a restorative, regenerative place like you do with REM sleep, right? Rapid eye movement from right to left.

That's what we were doing. And many different, more cutting edge type of non-talk based therapeutic practices use bilateral stimulation. Your system started going on a journey. So it wasn't as simple as what you just said in my recollection of this half a day experience, because sometimes... So you would be in that state, and then I'd have you start the sound, which is you going on that internal journey beyond consciousness, stuff that's already living there already, but we're helping your body pull it forward to work with it and move it and change it and optimize it.

I don't wanna keep talking, but that's basically... So the beats were helping it do that, and then I was working with the material that came [00:09:00] up to help your body do what it wanted to do anyway, which is to optimize your present day life with the most current codes that you already had.

Haley Radke: When you talked about being in an altered state I should just say I've not, I did not take anything. There was no-

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes ...

Haley Radke: psychedelics are involved. There was nothing like that. This is just full sober, all the things, right?

Dr. Julie Lopez: Exactly. Yeah.

Haley Radke: But there were times where in between a, in a, during a set I would just see shapes. I'd have my eyes closed. I'd just see shapes, stars, whatever. I wasn't... I couldn't tell you, "Oh, I was thinking about this memory," or anything like that. I would just say, "Oh, I don't know, I just saw some shapes." Can you tell me what was happening for me then?

Dr. Julie Lopez: So our body is starting from early on, and you can see debates in the research and in [00:10:00] the scholarly study of implicit memory or our unconscious as early as prenatal cellular memory can be formed.

There's a whole other study also of memory that's inherited ancestrally. And so as a fellow adoptee, the research shows that our hungry little systems take in data through gene expression, the study of epigenetics that's passed on through our DNA, right? So our biological ancestry, even though we may or may not be in reunion or ever know our people that way, it's still impacting us.

And the primary caregivers who raise us in our most acute developmental years, where we're hungry for understanding how to survive, even on an [00:11:00] unconscious level, we can take that data in too. Anyway, all of the stuff impacts us, and that altered state and the shapes and the smells or the sounds or the physical sensations are the layering that your body holds anyway every day that you're walking through your life.

And now we are slowing down with intention, with tools, with language that isn't in words, of working with the whispers of our system that are there all the time, and it comes out in experiences that can mimic what happens with psychedelics because you're accessing the same part of the brain without the chemicals.

So sometimes, I already shared with you, I struggle with how to explain what's happening to people with the words, but one of the things I will say is I'll say to someone, "It's like having a psychedelic journey without the [00:12:00] psychedelics with someone who's very trained in the body and trauma and the way the system metabolizes that and how to integrate the experience afterwards."

Haley Radke: Yes. So there were moments like that where I was like, "I don't know, I saw some shapes," and we just- ... kept going, and that might happen for a few sets in a row. And then there were other moments, like I was describing, like I could open my kitchen cupboards and see things that are... But I was reporting back some childhood memories and things like that.

And then I started getting these physical sensations, and you helped coach me through what to do physically to try and get these things to move. So can you just give, talk a little bit about that and then, what's happening for us? Okay, we're going to all these places, but what's changing in our body, if anything?

Dr. Julie Lopez: So here's what's happening. [00:13:00] Your body is going to get the meta communication that we are cleaning house. Because of the way you're being, quote-unquote, communicated with, right? Beyond words. So it's oh, we went into a place that's got a lot of charge to it, and now we're given the space and the supports and the bilateral experience so that I nervous system, cells, deeper parts of the unconscious feel, oh, this is a place where I can pull forward the things that have been weighing down our system.

Because just like fasting, you don't eat for a period of time, and your body will start to detox. It's what it does. We want our system beyond our consciousness wants to be optimized. It's why you get a cut on your hand, and the blood rushes there and forms a scab. It wants you to [00:14:00] heal. It wants us to heal. It wants us to be optimized. So we're doing a number of very specific things to call the body to pull up what's stacked in there. So it's literally pulling forward important material, and it's not linear the way that we communicate. So sometimes, many times, I'll have someone say, "Ugh, I'm distracted. I'm thinking about this other thing," or, "I'm thinking about my to-do list."

And my professional experience in doing this for over 30 years is that it's never random. It's always in the higher path of healing or of metabolizing something difficult. So every intensive I do is different because it depends on how the material comes forward. But yes, there's many different types of, they're called somatic interweaves, or different types of study of whole system anatomy, physiology, neuropsychology that [00:15:00] supports how to keep it moving.

And oddly enough, a lot of it is me getting out of the way so that your body can keep going with what it needs to do.

Haley Radke: Can I tell you some of the results I've had?

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah, of course.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Like what I live for.

Haley Radke: So some of these things were not goals of mine or intentional. One was. One, I always had hooked together exercise movement as a punishment, and that really unhooked for me. That is, that's gone, which is amazing. Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: That's so amazing.

Haley Radke: I know. I know. Totally amazing. This is just a feeling, I feel like my resilience level has really gone up, and I was pretty resilient prior, I'm, right now I'm in the busiest, most stressful season of my life. I do have an endpoint. I'm working on another podcast, and once that's out into the [00:16:00] world, there's my endpoint.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Love it.

Haley Radke: But I feel like I have the capacity-

Dr. Julie Lopez: So good ...

Haley Radke: which is great, 'cause it's really difficult topics, and I'm doing really well, which is awesome.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, good.

Haley Radke: So we have a clip that I'm gonna share in a little bit of our kind of debrief after the session, and I talk a little bit about this, but I feel way more connected with my kids, and I-

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, good

Haley Radke: yeah, and I think I shared with you then that it's not like I ever thought I was a bad mom or I wasn't connected with my kids, but I felt like something got released that had been in between us, and that's gone.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Amazing

Haley Radke: And this is the most surprising thing for me. I never had an issue with alcohol. I was a very casual, light drinker. I've been totally sober since our session. I haven't drank anything 'cause I just don't want to.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my God. [00:17:00] I love it. That's amazing.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So there you go. I think those are all pretty huge, and some are unexpected. How do you be like, "Oh, I'm gonna have more resilience after spending a half day with Julie," like, when I wasn't expecting that.

Dr. Julie Lopez: I just wanna celebrate every single one of those, 'cause each one of them is a big deal on its own. You said the exercise, uncoupling it. You said disconnecting it from punishment, and in psychological terms, there are things that we might even logically know are not true, but uncoupling them actually brings up more freedom, which is so great, right?

If you're like, "Ooh, intellectually, I wanna exercise, but every time I do, I start feeling like I'm punished, so ooh, screw that, I don't wanna do that," or you're trying to override that unconscious thing, and you're like, "Why is it [00:18:00] so hard for me to exercise?" And then a lot of times, us human beings, we start- talking negatively to ourselves.

"I'm so lazy. I can't follow through. What's wrong with me?" The self-punishing thing. So having it authentically come from the inside where it just literally is not there anymore is so freeing and empowering. The other thing about having more capacity to do ... I know you are a mission-driven person, and so of course, one of the big pieces of your service to our community is that you're touching in and talking about topics that of course hold triggers in your own life.

And so that's a part of the energetic cost of doing the work. So if on a deeper level, you, it's not triggering the same level of response, or it's not tying in to what already sits in your cells, oh my gosh, that's a huge thing in terms of capacity. What a gift [00:19:00] to the work that you're doing. And then you said connecting with your kids, totally amazing.

And the last thing about being sober it sounded ... A lot of people work really hard, and I call it white-knuckling, to drop ... honestly, and I know this was casual for you. It wasn't what you would call compulsive or addictive. But you talking about it like it's just so easy. It was just an inside feeling, and it's "Yeah, no, I really don't wanna have that. I don't need to. I don't want to." It's as easy as that, is such a gift that comes with doing the work from the inside out, where you don't have to push against, quote-unquote, "invisible forces" internally that can show up as compulsive feelings, meaning before thought, right? "I'm just gonna eat that thing. I'm just gonna work till 10:00 PM. I'm just gonna, shop in this way that is ... " You can feel it when it has a compulsive quality, and it's usually because it's tied [00:20:00] to something in the unconscious that's driving a whole different thing. I worked with an adoptee who always was compulsively spending money, and he said it was related to how he felt really objectified as an adoptee and that he felt like the financial piece of it was really important to try to get mastery over.

He couldn't articulate that when we first started working together. He just had a massive problem with compulsive spending. So it's powerful, really powerful.

Haley Radke: Can you go into the science behind this again? Because it just doesn't it's really hard to understand how, oh, just I describe, "Oh, we're just thinking about this," and then it's a couple of minutes and then thinking about something else, to like actually seeing a behavior change that I'm linking directly to what we did [00:21:00] together. Like I, I really believe that's what's happened here for me.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. So basically what is happening is we are getting into this whole unconscious territory that you have in your body. We're opening it up, slowing down so that your body itself can come up with the solutions. So what we're doing is allowing you yourself to find, they're called adaptive memory networks, to find your own already existing adaptive memory networks.

And when you do it that way, instead of me telling you, which goes into here in an intellectual place, I like to use a metaphor of like speaking the wrong language. It's like you're speaking Chinese to someone who speaks Italian, and you're both nodding and it looks and it seems, but nothing, there is not comprehension or understanding.

When you [00:22:00] yourself quote unquote "communicate" to you yourself on a cellular level, it changes in an authentic deep way. So if you're like, I want to exercise. I know I do. I've read all about it. Apparently scientifically it's good for my organs, it's good for my heart, it's good for my metabolism, it's good for longevity.

Intellectually, I get it. So I have decided I am going to exercise every day. And every day when it's time to exercise, I don't because I don't want to. I don't know why. It's just not me. Or like maybe it's a critical voice like, "Oh, I'm lazy," or, "I'm not whatever," or, "That's just not whatever." Come to find out on a deeper level when you go into this I'm unlovable place, that's where we started with an image and the visceral material, 'cause the language is visceral and sensory.

It's not intellectual. I'm gonna talk about the difference between the intellectual versus the [00:23:00] sensory. The way it's mapped internally, I don't even know myself. You don't know. It's kind of a web of information that you've taken in through your life on a cellular level on this with visceral and sensory data.

And through experiences that you had, whether modeled, experienced, communicated in actions, you felt exercise as a punishment. You felt it on a deep level, and that came up in some of the processing. So when you allow your system to actually feel and tap into a memory network that's already in there and let it communicate with other real, valid, lived experiences, your body's always gonna choose the most optimized answer for you. [00:24:00] Which you already knew intellectually was to exercise 'cause it's good for you, 'cause you're amazing, and you deserve it, and you're like a ball of love and amazingness, and this is what... when you have a garden that's amazing, you tend it. When you have a car that you care about, you maintain it. And so it makes sense that it might be tied in there. So we're allowing your body to re-optimize itself in an authentic way. I talk about it like it's like cutting butter that's warmed up.

It's so easy. It's like, "Yeah, of course I would do this thing, so easy. No, I don't feel like drinking or whatever."

Haley Radke: Yeah. I love how you're describing it because there, I've also been in talk therapy. I've also tried to change things based on, oh, use this strategy. Use this, right? And you're following this list.

But having something that clicks in your brain is so [00:25:00] different than following the steps that, my psychologist has laid out for me.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. I call it the slow hard way, and it does feel like white-knuckling. It's like pushing a boulder up a hill. It's like, "My gosh, I've gotta do this thing. I know it. I'm gonna try. I gotta work through this stuff. I gotta talk about hard stories that really trigger me also." I gotta do all these hard things. And in my opinion, it's called bottom-up processing, but when you go in, have it click authentically, it, to me, it's like dropping the boulder down the hill.

It's got its own momentum. It does its own thing. You're just like, "Whoa, there it goes. Oh, so good." It's very freeing. And what I've witnessed, 'cause what? It's been a year and a half now, Haley. It's long-lasting because it's authentic.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Dr. Julie Lopez: And I think that's really important, too, and I think that speaks to, and this parallels the world of psychedelics, and I know a lot more people are doing this microdosing and stuff like that.

[00:26:00] My bias is that the most important part is afterward. There's about a six-week window of neuroplasticity where you can create new habits that are so much easier to create 'cause you don't have the resistance literally trying to prevent you from walking out the door to go exercise because somewhere deep down you're like, "Hell no, I'm not doing this. That's punishment. Why would I do that," right? And that's just not there anymore.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah, that's such a good explanation. And I think of course I'm also for talk therapy and there's so many powerful things about- ... having our experiences validated and, those, especially for adopted people, like just literally having someone be like, "Oh yeah, I get it," for the first time is just huge.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally.

Haley Radke: However, I'll just say I did say, "Oh yeah," and I was, having these childhood memories or whatever and I'm reporting back to you. I wasn't like describing these big scenes and, going into all this, [00:27:00] painful stuff or anything like that. I literally was more like, "Oh, I just thought about this one time," and it was a couple sentences.

And I didn't have to explain over and over all these things to you. That's not what the, that wasn't the point of those things.

Dr. Julie Lopez: No. It's, doesn't matter at all. The point is how it's sitting in your cells now. So all that matters is now, this moment and going forward. That's it. Yeah. And your body responds to that too.

Haley Radke: Yeah, so I mean I think especially for folks who really don't wanna talk about difficult things, this is great.

Dr. Julie Lopez: So great. It's so great. And I don't, at this moment I don't know which clip you're gonna share, but you were so generous to give permission for me to use some pieces of it to train some of my practitioners at my mental health organization.

And we all, myself included, were so blown away by watching what we [00:28:00] all clearly felt, and I don't know if you felt it this way, was definitely material from when you were in the womb.

Haley Radke: Okay. Tell me more. I think when I was talking about the shapes and things-

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes ...

Haley Radke: is what you said, "Oh, I think that is early on stuff."

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yes. It was when you were so parched. You were so parched. Set after set you were like, "Oh my gosh I am so thirsty. I'm like so thirsty," and you were... I could watch you actively drinking water. It wasn't about your actual present-day thirst. I felt very confident it was a earlier kind of memory, and I think what cemented it, 'cause I'm on the journey just like you are. I don't know what your unconscious map looks like. Nobody does. It's like in the moment it's coming forward, and you had shared that you knew that your [00:29:00] biological mom had smoked while she was pregnant with you.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Dr. Julie Lopez: And so it really felt so, so early and so just cellular, this thirst and not having enough satiation in your system. So that's powerful.

Haley Radke: Yeah. That... And it was such a weird experience to literally be drinking water. I think I put ChapStick on again 'cause my lips felt dry. I think I had tea with me. Like I'm drinking different beverages, and it was like nothing could touch it. That was weird.

Dr. Julie Lopez: But, and those are the types of feelings that I think everyone can relate to when there's a compulsive energy in our system. I have to meet this thing, and no matter what I do on a logical level, it's not quelled, and that's the kind of drivers that really have people [00:30:00] sacrifice with their lives for a substance or a behavior that feels like they're gonna get somewhere. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, like business owners, who think when they have a certain size company or a certain amount of wealth or a certain number of gold stars that say success, that they're gonna finally exhale, and feel like, "Oh my gosh, I've finally, arrived and I'm valuable," and that kind of thing.

And often it's not about the quote unquote drink, right? It's not about the beverage. It's about something deeper. And when you talk to that in a way it understands, you get the kind of results. I would guess on a theoretical level that your just absolute freedom around whether you want to have a drink or not, even though you didn't identify as an alcoholic or someone with a drive, you're just like, "Eh, no, I don't really, I don't want that [00:31:00] actually. I don't need it. I'm not whatever," is probably in part to being able to rework that on a deep level, that like insatiable thirst that lived in your cells.

Haley Radke: Interesting.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It's so fun.

Haley Radke: Okay. I'm excited for people to hear the clips of us talking about doing this, like right after, I think it was maybe two or three weeks after we had our time together.

And we also have a couple of adoptees who worked with you sharing their results as well. So we'll let folks listen to that. Before we go to that, Julie, is there anything else you wanna tell us about working with you, doing an intensive like this?

Dr. Julie Lopez: I guess I would wanna say that really incredible results are possible like this. It's not always in the logical map that someone thinks. And I would say that I'm not the only one doing this kind of work, this like... I think that it's [00:32:00] very specific to who is facilitating, right? People have what they've learned about this particular area of study. But I do believe that this is the wave of the future.

This is the most advanced way that I've seen to work and change and really break patterns and really have freedom and peace and optimization. So I'm just a big proponent of this non-talk-based way of working. So I know you're asking about me specifically, but I think there's a bigger message for everyone.

I know you and I are both adoptees, and this is Adoptees On. So what I think is really powerful is that you can actually access material that you're never going to remember, that those moments that may have greatly impacted the life you're living today, that you're like, "Wow, no one was around that's gonna tell me what happened when I was 2 or [00:33:00] 1 or these times."

Or, "Yeah, I don't have access to ancestral information." I wanna say this is the most, in my opinion, compelling part about the work. You literally don't need that data. You don't need the information 'cause your body's already holding the things that are impacting you today. So that's the biggest thing that I would wanna say about it, that there's hope for healing even if you don't have access to information that it logically feels you would need. Your body already has everything that it needs to change.

Haley Radke: Amazing. It is such a hopeful message. Okay, let's listen to us from the past talking about our experience. And then we'll hear from those two adoptees, and we'll be right back with you.

I felt proud of myself for, like, when I had the really big insight about this used to be my pattern as a child, no wonder I'm still [00:34:00] doing it, and I felt just self-compassion when observing it. I was like, "Good job, Haley." Like- Yeah ... that could have been really judgmental, but instead it was like, "Oh, okay. I get it now." Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: And kind of love for your struggling self.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like I don't have to feel guilty for doing that. It's like it totally made sense-

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: and that's just, that's how I could stay alive. The insight I've been thinking about the most is when we were talking about how sick I was through both my pregnancies and wanting to just get my kids out of my body, right? So I've spent the last week thinking about are there ways I'm pushing them away right now, and just feeling more able to connect.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Aw.

Haley Radke: Yeah

Dr. Julie Lopez: With your kids?

Haley Radke: With my kiddos, yeah. And I've always I don't ever feel like I've not been a [00:35:00] good mom or anything like that, but I just feel like there's just something else that's just been removed in between us, which is really cool. Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It's really cool. And you are the one in the relationship, so you are the best judge of the quality of your presence or your ability to be without feeling like you need space or feeling like you need, some distance or some freedom or whatever. Because it did seem, as an observer, right? You're living the experience, but as an observer, it did look like you, during that time period, were very triggered by the experience, of course.

So let me tell you what I saw and then what was so cool about what was happening. And I feel like I've gotten pretty good at this, 'cause I've seen it happen so many times.

A lot of your material that was coming forward [00:36:00] didn't have pictures or words or anything. Remember when it was, like, shapes-

Haley Radke: Yeah ...

Dr. Julie Lopez: and kinda... I think that was all stuff in the womb or pre-verbal stuff, that you were like, had main meeting in your system and you were sorting it through with new information coming into it. That's what I saw. Because, and I could go back to the exact thing, I felt like I was watching your system catch up to today, instead of that stuff that never had room or space to, work out just being stuffed in there. And remember, there was a lot visceral with your-

Haley Radke: Oh, yes.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Do you remember that or not really?

Haley Radke: Yeah, my throat. The dryness. Oh my God.

Dr. Julie Lopez: But it wasn't about water. You were drinking-

Haley Radke: No ...

Dr. Julie Lopez: your water. It wasn't about that.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like a thirst that couldn't get quenched.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like something that you needed. And yeah, so it was like watching the shapes during that time. You mentioned that you had strep throat and had your tonsils out. [00:37:00] Me too. I see all these patterns and I wonder how correlated they are to this- ... like pre-verbal trauma type of thing, but that's just me. There was a lot of physical stuff happening. There was nausea, there was head stuff. As the person watching, I was just trying to take my cues from you and have your system feel super attended to, like listening to what it needed and not demanding anything outside of what your insides were actually saying. And there was a lot of pain in there. In this not, in this amorphous form. Not enough sustenance, not enough fluid, physical pain.

Haley Radke: Can I say something about that?

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.

Haley Radke: When you were talking about the thirst thing, what you observed for me, you were, you at some point were like, "Oh, sometimes it, you can have low amniotic fluid."

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And just now when you were talking about that, I was like, oh my gosh. So my [00:38:00] parents told me that I was a super colicky baby and they had to try all these different formulas. And so I wonder if I was hungry and thir- for, and for milk, and it's like it's not coming, or the right thing's not coming, or the right... I wonder if it's that.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. We're not just doing an excavation for the fun of poking at something that's painful. And the reason why I'm biased about this is there's not a lot of storytelling. You don't need to tell the horrible stories. You do a little if it's coming up for you, but we're not just talking about really hard things that are just gonna re-traumatize you.

We're letting stuff be expressed so that it can move, and sometimes it doesn't have words. It's just a visceral feeling that you're moving through.

Haley Radke: That is fascinating.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It's so wild how it happens in the present moment. Last week you were burping actually a little bit. Do you remember that?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: It was like actually happening, like the stuff was actually [00:39:00] coming forward. I had a client that I worked with who had a lot of severe physical abuse as a child, and while we were working, and I'm gonna pull my hair back so you can see it, like a hand print came up on her neck.

I'm not even kidding. While we're working, a big red welt came up, and then it moved out. It's like these like memories from childhood. So like we're working on something, you're having the held visceral experience, and you started burping, and then you were like, "Yes, I was colicky, I had this." It's like your physiological reaction from the time is still in there, right? And of course, if your body feels terrible or your body is like feeling really distressed, then that's gonna play a factor on how you try to cope with it. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I think this is the first time... the phrase, the book, whatever, The Body Keeps the Score.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Of course.

Haley Radke: Like this I feel like is the first time I've really [00:40:00] pictured what that could mean. I think I've always thought of it as oh, so you might get a chronic illness or you might... like more in that vein versus no, it's all in there somewhere.

Dr. Julie Lopez: All in there, and you could get a chronic pain.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: And that's why when I do these intensives, I've had not one, but many clients who have had a diagnosis that's like chronic fatigue syndrome or like some type of other inflammatory condition, and Gabor Mate talks about this. When you take the stress load down in the body, you can actually reduce physical symptoms that lead to these diagnoses, where a lot of times medical doctors will say, "Ah, it's all in your head," or, "The scans are fine. You're fine." You're like, "No I'm literally not fine. I know I'm not fine," and it makes people super depressed because they feel a little bit crazy, and they're not.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: So yeah, the body keeps the score [00:41:00] in a very specific way, and there's a way to read it, and there's a way to move it and change it, which is huge.

Haley Radke: I think one of the most powerful things for me was when you were like, "Oh my gosh, it's like a perfect storm."

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my gosh.

Haley Radke: Yeah. 'Cause the outside world looking in, it's like, "You're so lucky. Everybody loves my parents. They're elementary school teachers pillars in the commun- all those things. And no- but nobody sees me, right? Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Yeah. And gosh, I don't know about you, but I think the dominant culture in general, like my little parents were doing the best they could. They were told, "Tell her she's adopted so she's not surprised." Good on them, right? I wasn't a late discovery adoptee or whatever.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: But no, I was not traumatized. I was a blank slate little baby in a blanket that, had no [00:42:00] pre them. The first three months just didn't happen, nor did the pregnancy or anything.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Julie Lopez: And so there was a cultural collusion with negating the real experience that your body might have been going through.

Katie Hern: My name's Katie Hern, and I'm author of the book Reunion, which features letters my birth mother and I exchanged during the first year of reuniting 30 years ago. I've done a lot of talk therapy, but I found I reached a point of diminishing returns. I understood the trauma of being relinquished as a newborn and how this had rippled out in my life, but my issues weren't shifting.

It felt like the trauma and its aftermath were locked in my body. A friend recommended EMDR with Julie Lopez, and I've done two half-day sessions with her over Zoom. For both, we met beforehand, and she had me articulate goals and external ways we could track whether the goals had been met. Afterwards, I could see [00:43:00] progress on all of these.

For example, I started with almost no tolerance for sitting quietly on my own. It just made me way too anxious, and now I love to spend time on my own, and I make it part of every day. The biggest effect was one I hadn't planned for. After our first session, I noticed that almost all my shame had lifted. I could look back over difficult past experiences and see the shame from the outside, see how it took hard situations and made them much worse.

I didn't even know how much shame was affecting my life until I wasn't swimming in it anymore.

Gregory James Kaple: I grew up in a loving adoptive family and spent most of my life believing I was simply driven, ambitious, and determined to succeed. What I didn't understand was how much of that drive was fueled by something deeper. For decades, I unconsciously carried a belief that I needed to earn my place, prove my value, and work harder than everyone around me to deserve belonging.

From [00:44:00] the outside, it looked successful. I built a career, achieved leadership roles, and checked many of the boxes I thought would finally make me feel settled. But underneath, there was a constant sense that something was missing. Everything began to change when I discovered Nancy Verrier's book, The Primal Wound, and started exploring the impact adoption had on my life.

Through that journey, I located my birth family and learned that I had been given a name at birth, Anthony William McDermott, together with the name I grew up with, Gregory James Kaple. Around the same time, I began intensive EMDR work with Dr. Julie Lopez. For me, that was the turning point. Talk therapy had helped me understand my story.

EMDR helped my nervous system finally process it. The healing wasn't about uncovering new information. It was about releasing beliefs and patterns that had been operating beneath awareness for decades: hypervigilance, overachievement, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the feeling that I had to earn love, safety, or [00:45:00] belonging.

Over the last four years, I've experienced a level of integration I didn't know was possible. Rather than choosing between different parts of myself, I've learned to welcome them all: the son raised by the Capel family, the child born Anthony McDermott, the performer, the executive, the coach, the seeker.

For the first time in my life, those parts feel connected rather than fragmented. My message to other adoptees is simple: healing is possible. The effects of relinquishment trauma are real, but they are not permanent. Sometimes the path forward requires approaches that go beyond talking and engage the brain, body, and nervous system directly.

Today, that experience informs the work I do helping high-performing professionals navigate pressure, identity, relationships, and life transitions with greater presence and authenticity. I am profoundly grateful for the adoptee community, for pioneers like Nancy Verrier, and for clinicians like Dr. Julie Lopez, who helped me find a path toward [00:46:00] becoming more fully myself.

Haley Radke: Okay. Julie, that sounds like you have really I know you've really impacted my life and others. I love that. It's so amazing, isn't it, to hear how your life's work- ... is like having ripples out that you might not even know about.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh, totally. Yes, totally. It's so meaningful in the most significant ways, honestly.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Where can folks connect with you online and learn more from you, or if they want to experience what I did, sign up for an intensive with you?

Dr. Julie Lopez: So the intensives for me are wrapped into my expert one-on-one consultations, and this is gonna be really hard to remember. It's at www.drjulielopez.com.

You can see all the things that I'm up to. I'm just really passionate about sharing this message of hope and healing to audiences, my books, [00:47:00] my programs. I offer some wellness packages for organizations that's all built on the same science that fuels those intensives. And yeah, it's easy, Dr. Julie Lopez.

If you happen to be in DC, Maryland, or Virginia, then I also have a mental health center that does this type of work, other people that are doing intensives here, and that's called the Viva Center, and that's at vivapartnership.com. But I know your listenership is global and people are tapping in from around the world, so the local stuff is limited 'cause they're all licensed practitioners, so it has to be people in that area.

Haley Radke: And you personally have chosen folks who are adoptee competent and have trained them in that way.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Totally.

Haley Radke: I was looking at the list of your therapists that you have there now, and they look great. So well done.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Thank you. [00:48:00] They are great.

Haley Radke: Thank you, Julie. You've made a huge impact on my life. I really appreciate you.

Dr. Julie Lopez: Oh my gosh. Thank you for letting me and for being a beacon of sharing good news and for having me on your podcast again. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Haley Radke: Pleasure is all mine. Love it.

I wanted to wait until some time had passed before I came to you to talk about this experience with Dr. Julie. And, ah, she gifted it to me, which I'm very grateful for, but I didn't want to bring it to you until I was like, "Do these things really stick?" And I can't believe the impact it had, and I know there's so many ways you can invest your money.

There's therapy, there's the psychedelic assists there's all kinds of coaches out there. There's all kinds [00:49:00] of books and courses and, self-helpy things, just high and low. And I try very hard to make sure I only bring you people that I actually endorse and believe are doing things in an ethical manner and have the credentials to back up what they do.

And I'm so excited to have someone else to recommend to you, some, some other really amazing brain, body-based approach because I don't know how many people email me every week asking for the list of therapists, and, "I need someone adoptee competent, and I'm working on this and that, and I'm not seeing any change."

And so I'm so grateful to have people I can point you to for when you really need help. [00:50:00] And I trust Dr. Julie. She has really made a difference in my life. And she's been a real cheerleader for Adoptees On for many years. I got to meet her in person a number of years ago when I was in DC, and she's just as amazing as she sounds on air and incredibly well-researched, science-backed.

I think if this is something that sounds up your alley and you have the resources, I can't wait to hear what changes for you. So with all that, thank you so much for listening and, taking a peek into what it was like for me. I have the whole session recorded. As Julie mentioned, she uses it as some training with her staff.

And I was going through it to be like, "Oh, is there any clips I can play for you guys?" And there wasn't any... it's so [00:51:00] strange in the moment, and it sounded just as strange when I went back to look through it. So I didn't include any of those, but I thought that hearing our conversation from just a few weeks after would be helpful.

And I'll tell you what, it was helpful for me to read back through it and just be like, "Wow, I am proud of Haley, and look at what she's, dealt with and accomplished." And it's nice to feel that way about yourself, so yeah. Anyway, okay, I digress. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very soon.

October 16, 2026

332 Danna Schmidt

October 16, 2026/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/332

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Danna Schmidt, a writer and celebrant. At 18, Danna found herself working in a courthouse with her own sealed adoption file within reach, and she began plotting how to read it. She shares her story of search, reunion, and estrangement, and how she's making room for the grief that runs through those experiences.

We also explore what it means to reclaim a story that's been told about us by other people, and how writing, meaningful objects, and personal rituals can help us honor our losses and ourselves. Before [00:01:00] we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter.

We wrap up with some recommended resources. And as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Danna Schmidt. Hi, Danna.

Danna Schmidt: Hi, Haley.

Haley Radke: As I was reviewing your story and, preparing for today, I realized we have a lot of things in common. I think some of them may come up when you share your story with us. But first of all, you've definitely been in my city before.

I live in Edmonton, Alberta. This is where I was born.

Danna Schmidt: I was born in Edmonton, Alberta.

Haley Radke: This is where my birth mother lives and my birth father has lived for many years in the Vancouver area, so I think we have some commonalities there. Yeah.

Danna Schmidt: Some [00:02:00] commonalities there. Yeah. Yes.

Haley Radke: But before I spoil anything further, would you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us?

Danna Schmidt: Sure. Yeah. So I am a baby scoop era adoptee. I like to say I was adopted one and a half times, and born in the mid-'60s. And when I was relinquished at birth, my birth mother, though, wanting to, leave that clue behind, named me after herself. So her name was Danna, and she named me Danna. So that first, I was in foster care for a few months, and then placed for adoption with a couple, and they were going through with it.

They renamed me Wanda, and that adoption did not go through because they separated. And at the time it was the father that wanted to keep me, but at that time in this, there was no way the Alberta government was going to allow a, a single father to adopt a child. And so I was placed back into foster care where [00:03:00] my parents, who were foster parents, then brought me home and renamed me back to Danna Diane because they too knew that they wanted this to be a clue that would make it easier in later life to search.

And at that time, so I was about 15 months old when they adopted me. So I grew up in a house with two older brothers. And there were a few other foster kids at the time when I was quite young, and I always knew or had a sense that I knew that I was adopted. So it's one of my first memories with my family is being told I was adopted and the whole thing.

"You're special. We chose you. We wanted a girl," yada, yada. And mom had always said, "When you turn 18, I'll give you a hint about, the name that was on file," because Mom was privy to some information as a foster mom, or so she said. So I was always looking forward to turning 18 and finding out.

And then when I turned 18, they moved out to [00:04:00] Vancouver Island. I stayed in Edmonton and took a job at the courthouse. So I was actually working with, as a file clerk, with my adoption file. So I was down in the basement by myself, the only one down there working with files. And it was actually a few months into the job where I was like, "Wait a minute, my adoption file is here."

So I went to that section, the musty section of the basement, and found my adoption file, sealed envelope, very old, and I began to scheme and plot stealing the file. And so I had it all figured out that I was gonna come in on a Saturday, and I started shadowing with the adoption clerk to learn how she procedurally did everything, and under the guise of wanting to steal my file.

And I had it worked out that I was gonna backdate, re-stamp, re-seal, wear gloves, and photocopy everything, and then put everything back. Then I looked [00:05:00] at the criminal codebook on my desk. I was working in chambers. It was called Master's Chambers at the time in Queen's Bench. And I realized that, looking at that, 16, 18 years if I got caught stealing a government document.

But that's how obsessed I became for a time. I was always hounding the adoption registrar to find out information on my file. So Mom did give me the name, which was Kaushmann. That was my birth mom's last name at the time. And I did do the searching that was, archive files at the provincial archives, again, in a basement.

Library, microfiche. Searching at that time, pre-internet, wasn't easy. And I kinda gave up, 'cause it was a bit like a needle in a haystack phoning every single Kaushmann in the white pages, to see, "Are you my mother?" And so I gave up that search for a while in my 20s, until I started experiencing pregnancy losses, moved overseas, had a child.

And then when I came [00:06:00] back in the late '90s, the Alberta government had opened up the adoption files to third-party agencies to permit pay-for-play searching. And of course, I'm like, "Take my $500." And so that's how it went down for me, where my son was a year old and I paid to do that search.

And a few months later, the agency called me to say, "We found your birth mom, and you're never gonna believe it, but her name is your name too. And she lives 10 minutes from you." And then they started listing all these commonalities, all of the synchronicities in both of us working in the hospitality industry.

And so we reunited on that, fateful phone call day, April 21st, 1998, and it was fast and furious and, in retrospect, very overwhelming, and would ultimately, decades later, lead [00:07:00] to estrangement. And she is now dead. She died in December of 2021. I say dead in that blunt way because I work in death care, and I don't believe in the euphemisms of passed away and graduated.

Haley Radke: Grad- graduated. Graduated to the great beyond. I haven't heard that. This makes me wonder if you were working in the adoption in the court when I was adopted. I was adopted in 1983.

Danna Schmidt: I was, yes. Yep.

Haley Radke: You might have handled my folder.

Danna Schmidt: Oh, my gosh. That gives me chills. Yes. Yeah, I graduated from high school in '83.

Now I'm dating myself, and everyone knows how old I am and I'm 60. And yeah, that's exactly when I began working at the courthouse. So your paperwork was probably going through even later than that.

Haley Radke: [00:08:00] Yeah. Wow. Okay. There's another match-up reunion is so complicated.

And I'm wondering if you are comfortable talking a little bit more about that. You have this dream for so long, you're willing to break the law. No, not quite. And you pay to search and all this, and then ultimately you're the one that chooses to walk away. And I think we have all these ideas of like what finding our birth parents might be like.

And, society has romanticized it in a way to the airport moment, and, I call it reunion porn. And yet, like you just find a human, and it's difficult, and that's the reality of it.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. It is messy stuff. And it's to be continued in how I'm unpacking, looking back at that, especially now that my birth mom is dead and we were [00:09:00] estranged at the time of her death, although we had spoke a month prior and, kinda rehashed our words of, "I love you," "I love you, too."

And yet when I look back at, just how I leaped into it, what I would say now, which is make it mediated, take it slow, have a therapist, all of those things that I did not do. And we were both doing our level best. We were doing the best we knew to do. It was a big, fat Ukrainian family, and a week after we reunited, there was a big 70th birthday party for my birth grandmother, and a cousin had commented, as soon as she met me, "Nice to meet you, and you should be lucky you didn't grow up in this family."

And that was, that was a cautionary. In retrospect, she was right, and there is no greener grass. Every family is messed up and dysfunctional in their own special way. But I really struggled with [00:10:00] addiction in the family and not knowing how to cope with that. So my birth grandmother was sober by that time, but that was kinda revealed as a secret.

You should know that she used to be a fall-down-the-stairs drunk, and, that was a very open secret, but they were letting me in on that. And it would be years before I would figure out that my birth mother too struggled with addiction with alcohol. And I just didn't know. It was yet more space between us.

I didn't know how to navigate, this, this new intimacy where we became very close very fast. Not a mother-daughter relationship, but very much kind of a friend relationship But then to have this other thing, this unwelcome guest of, alcoholism in there too. And that just for years was weighing on me until finally one day I just had to cut off.

And it was about a month [00:11:00] after my father died, my adoptive father and her mother had died in November of 2016. And in December, just a regular phone call in which she, I was talking, and she was not really listening, and the tinkling of the glass. And I just hung up knowing this is it. Kinda like this older part of myself taking my younger self by the hand and going, "We're not gonna do this anymore."

And so that's kinda how that went down. And yeah, and that was by my choice. So as much as the search was everything, and, I wouldn't do anything differently in terms of leaping into everything, I would still have that same drive 'cause you can't as an adoptee, I don't feel, unless you're completely disconnected from self, you can't help that need to know.

That is, the great longing. And so I know that I would still be approaching it the same way of wanting to [00:12:00] leap into things. And, our story was our story, and we had a great ride for a long time, and we were very close for a long time. And yeah.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. So another thing we have in common, I'll say, is that I'll speak for myself, I have always thought that my next career would be working in a funeral home and helping the bereaved in some way, like being a part of, taking care of them in some way.

And you're a celebrant. You work with folks who would like to celebrate all kinds of different occasions, but you're intimately familiar with death and grief. When did that become interesting to you, or when were you drawn to that?

Danna Schmidt: I was first drawn to death in childhood. I [00:13:00] grew up on an acreage outside of Edmonton.

I could tell you the exact points, and you would probably be able to map it on the map, but a listener would not. And when my dog died, I buried her, and so performed my first green burial at that time. And so death was just a natural part of, having animals on the acreage and living with that, even though I had not really experienced death in family until my grandfather died much later.

But, I suppose there was that latent curiosity then, which became more acute when I had gone back to university. When I was a young mom, I decided to attend the University of Calgary, and I thought I was gonna be an English major, but then I took a sort of a survey class, an anthropological perspectives on death class, and I was hooked.

That was it. And so I switched my major to religious studies. It took me a long time to tell people I was a religious studies major b- 'cause anyone who knew me knew I was [00:14:00] pretty irreligious. And so it was always a funny thing. And so I did study comparative religions, predominantly myth and ritual.

Began collecting death poetry, and it would be years later before I would become, I would pivot from my career as a marketer in tourism to becoming a celebrant. But it was that interest that... it's just funny that we do need to pay attention to our curiosity. So that grief and funeral home interest of yours, stay with it. Don't, don't ignore those, those inklings of the soul.

Haley Radke: Yes, I'm sure someday I'll be there.

I thought, a lot about this and I, in fact, I invited many years ago a, a death doula to come on the show and that didn't end up happening. But I'm so fascinated by adoptees and how we process our grief through the [00:15:00] lifespan, and I'm curious your thoughts on that having now, seen people die, helped people die peacefully, helped their loved ones to process all of those kinds of things. I'm sure you have thoughts around this.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. Absolutely. My work in the world, I do death doula work as well as being a funeral celebrant as well as being a medical aid in dying volunteer and advocate. So I'm at the deathbed pretty much every week in my work in some way. So I get to see dying people all of the time.

And, it's not, being a celebrant and ceremonialist, I'll say, a lot of times that medical aid in dying death is not is not super sacred and filled with ritual. A lot of times it's very mundane. And what I will say, too, is that I do witness people [00:16:00] tiptoeing from this world or attempting to without having dealt with their stuff.

I'm a huge believer in all of life's threshold moments, and I absolutely believe it's never too late to go back and reconsecrate a moment. One of those moments that's really pivotal to, I think, a lot of humans is coming of age, where we maybe didn't have a great coming of age experience, especially as women.

And it's not too late to go back and revisit those moments. The same too for all of us adoptees. We can look at our key life moments where we didn't really feel like we got what we needed, and we can re-gift that to ourselves. We can reclaim those moments, reconsecrate them. And so relative to death, I would say, that, death is the great leveler.

So for every human and all of our way points throughout life, I think it behooves all of us while we can to do our work as humans of assessing, what our needs are and were along the way. And we can do [00:17:00] that a lot through story and re-storying and, as I say, reclamation work. Because I think as adoptees in particular, there's so much that we have kicked to the curb.

There's so much that as our identity that we've subsumed under somebody else's or society's perception of who we are. And so getting at our core authentic identity, I believe takes great work like ritual as well too.

Haley Radke: Do you think that there's something different about us as adopted people that we understand grief to a certain level versus kept people, or it's all kinda the same and some of us have processed those things and some just haven't.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. I think one of, one of my lines in my memoir that I'm working on that I begin my [00:18:00] birth chapter with, because I basically rewrote my birth when, back in 2016, my adoptive mother said, we took you in when no one else would." And that was my moment of, "You know what? You don't get to tell my story anymore. I am done hearing my story told via you." And so that was when I began to remythologize my story. And so that first line in my chapter is that I'm, "A fourth-day of Christmastide baby, birthed like a song that is great cry, bright lights, and cold air." And that "birthed like a song that is great cry" really speaks to the grief.

And, every baby experiences that coming into the world, and there's an author, Martin Prechtel, who speaks to that in this fabulous grief book called The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise. And he insists that, our first cry, our first great song is grief. For adoptees, [00:19:00] and obviously those of us relinquished at birth, it's even more acute, right?

We experience loss upon loss, not just loss of the womb, but loss of, first mother. So yeah, I think we're definitely as adoptees experiencing grief in a different way. How we metabolize that and compost that, completely different. There's a lot of adoptees in denial and maybe not out of the fog, quote-unquote, and/or just, grievers that will do what in the grief world we call constructive grieving, where, we busy ourselves with our work and other things as a way maybe not to really face our grief.

And so yeah I absolutely think, hey, let's do it. Let's create a grief retreat for adoptees. I think that would be fabulous. Let's get on it, because really, that's a core common denominator too for all of our stories.

Haley Radke: I love this idea of going back and marking moments that [00:20:00] perhaps we weren't able to at the time or didn't know to do that and this idea of reclamation.

And I wonder if you can speak a little bit more about that. I think for so many of us we're so ready to just keep going, and yet there's something underneath that we bury and These I'm gonna call them even small things of ritual you can do can really make an impact more so than folks might think.

Danna Schmidt: Oh, absolutely. And yeah, I think that, rituals of reclamation don't have to be anything fancy. It doesn't have to be. It's really, And I come at ritual in a very personal way. It's not one size fits all, "Here's a ritual on the shelf, use it." It's very much connected to our own personal story.

So I would invite [00:21:00] adoptees to go back through their life story, even if it's just timelining, and pick out those pivotal moments that, maybe are pain points or moments where there was lack, something was missing, and to consider the symbols that connect through the decades as well to those moments.

For me, we had a house fire when I was five, so our house burnt down to the ground. I was blamed for it because I ran next door to get my aunt, and as this family lore goes it was, a cold winter day, and she had cookies and hot chocolate, so forgot to tell her about the fire 'cause, I was warming my feet by her other, you know- stove fire. But with that, came loss of my my pivotal doll, my doll that I had just gotten for Christmas. And so that doll would be one I have been doing some work around that reclamation of I, really [00:22:00] identified with that doll. There was a almost a genetic mirroring, if you can, through a doll, that the doll looked like me, and that was meaningful to me at that time.

And so symbols like that, like really looking at those, and then how can we work with those symbols to help to... and it could be a photograph. It could be, just whatever the ephemera of our life, and I do that. As a funeral celebrant, when I'm meeting with families I low-key snoop through the home.

Not up and snooping through the home, but I'm looking around, noticing what those symbols are of a life, and we all have them, whether it's a collection or if it is just cherished things from the past. So that's a start in terms of entering into some of those rituals. Things like a receiving blanket can be a powerful way into doing a, a blanket ceremony in adulthood to receive ourselves again in our wholeness because we were [00:23:00] always whole and, always will be, and yet there is that feeling in our soul like there have been so many pieces of ourself, as I say, kicked to the curb.

So it is a soul retrieval kind of process, and we can do it through story as well, and through writing and et cetera, et cetera. I could talk about rituals of reclamation for adoptees forever, 'cause there are, oodles of ways that we can get at that in order to honor ourselves again.

Haley Radke: You talk about one that your birth mother did for you, really, in reunion.

Sorry, I'm just looking to make sure I'm in the right spot. In Bone Mother, in your essay Bone Mother, you talk about that.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. Yes. Are you talking about the 32 gifts? Yeah. Yeah, that was a really... And when I talk about the [00:24:00] overwhelm of reunion, the overwhelm started with this big fat Ukrainian family party, and everybody partying and drinking and, telling me that.

But connected with that was her pulling me to the side and gifting me 32 gifts to represent all the years that, all my birthdays that she had missed, which is, the most incredible thing, right? To feel welcomed. But... And it was everything from, PD Eastman's Are You My Mother to ending a porcelain doll, a large porcelain doll that has always sat up on a high.

And so yeah, that was a lot to process, and it was a very cool, for a birth mother, I would say that's a great idea. But probably prep it a bit not just lamb based, us adoptees with that kind of thing because I took it in as really grappling with worth and self-worth, and there, was just something about it that just felt I was, taught all my life to [00:25:00] be grateful.

So the, the appropriate response in the moment was like, "Oh, thank you," and the fawning that I do so well as an adoptee, but it would take me years to process that. And my is out there of how I was kinda processing that a little bit too, of things that were nailing, a nail in the coffin of our relationship.

Haley Radke: As I was thinking about it, it's, again, it's someone else doing a ritual with no input from you. And I think the hope was, and the intent, right? Was to be the big welcome, and yet it doesn't land that way.

Danna Schmidt: And it was performative too because there was this big audience of family, of look what I have done for her. I'm a worthy... it's the, her having to deal with her own guilt and everything that, again, you know, to be in reunion is to consider everybody in the adoption [00:26:00] triad of what lack was she feeling at that time too, what insecurities. And so I can, what I would make up is she was trying to make up.

Not that we can ever make up. And it, and we always set the ground that we're just gonna go from here. There is no going back and woulda, coulda, shoulda, t- it's always from this point onward.

Haley Radke: Can you I'm curious how you came to, write and- you speak about writing letters for certain moments as well. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like how you started writing and how it's helped you process and then maybe some prescriptive writing opportunities for adopted people?

Danna Schmidt: Sure, yeah. When did I start writing? I guess as a child. I was at the age of 10 when we moved into town, into Edmonton.

I was writing the great, summer novel, right? And so and that, of course, was a creative act abandoned for a zillion [00:27:00] reasons. And so I really didn't get- I've always written as part of my career, whether it was copywriting. But it really wasn't until, I would say, going back to university, writing essay after essay on, Indian philosophy and all the heavy, deep, and real stuff as a religious study scholar that I really began to write, kinda more prolifically.

And then in English class, we were journaling. And so I think that was, that journaling was my entry point into more reflective writing. When we moved to the US, we moved to Seattle in 2005, and so that was, like, the Katrina, Bush two era. And I was experiencing a lot of kinda disconnect as an immigrant.

And so I began blogging at that point. And so I kinda have never stopped since that point. So for 20 years I've been writing prolifically, whether as a blogger. [00:28:00] And then, of course, to pivot into a celebrant career is to write ceremony, which is great. I get to write people's love stories, their life stories, their healing stories, and so that's another great outlet.

It wasn't actually funny enough until the end of 2023 when I kinda fell off the apple cart. My daughter is a social worker, and her mentor at the time and continued is SooJin Yu Simpson. And so she had told her, which I know she's been on your show before, and as a therapist. And when my daughter said, my mom's an adoptee," she said, "Oh, does she know about all these resources, including Adoptee Voices as a writing group?"

And I was like, "Oh, adoptees talk to each other?" So keep in mind, this was the end of 2023. I'm such a lone wolf and had always been and had always been [00:29:00] processing my adoption, but alone. It never dawned or occurred to me that I could be in community with other adoptees. So that's when I joined Adoptee Voices and began writing with fellow adoptees, which has just been the greatest thing, and we continue to write, together weekly.

I really believe in the power of writing. I do work with my families and clients to encourage them to be writing, healing letters to connect to core relationships current or past as a way to get back into those moments and look at unhealed, be that trauma or just the stuff we're carrying.

The courthouse moment, I went back and wrote a letter to my younger self, and that was published in Severance Magazine, and that was a lot of fun to do, to kinda go back and, 'cause my story at the time was, oh, I was getting too obsessed with this, and that was just not healthy, and it was [00:30:00] illegal.

But, current self, had I been guiding myself at that time, would've been, "Steal the file. Don't even replace it, just take it." And and that was my letter, was just this facetious, do it quick before the janitor comes kinda thing. And so these moments of writing can be really fun and cathartic and meaningful, and we can mine a lot of, epiphanies from it, too, I think.

Haley Radke: You have this found poem that we're gonna link in the show notes for people that I think is such a great example of that. And it's such a, I don't know, it feels like an, I'll call it an easier way in to cut something up and use someone else's words perhaps to express something for yourself, especially for folks who are like, "Oh my God I'm not gonna journal, I'm not gonna write a letter, I'm not gonna..."

Danna Schmidt: Yeah.

Haley Radke: If that's a barrier, it's like why don't you photocopy your adoption records [00:31:00] and chop it up and see if you can make a found poem out of it?

Danna Schmidt: Absolutely. And yeah, when I said fun, I don't mean that writing a healing letter is fun, but I was thinking of that poem that I had written which was basically composting my, all of my literary rejection letters and starting to submit work out into the world.

And because many of them were adoption-related stories, and adoptees don't have the easiest time getting our stories out there. So I was able to have so much fun cutting words and phrases out of all of these rejection letters and basically rejigging them into a found poem of basically how an adoptee reads a literary rejection letter.

And so that was very satisfying. I recommend every adoptee do that, whether it's, the microaggressions and tropes of adoption that, we can begin to collect and just [00:32:00] put all the words into a bowl and make something else of it. And of course, our birth records. There are a lot of... I didn't get my birth records until 2023, and it was a great big file because of all of the foster care visits as well, and there's a lot of activating language that I will definitely have to do something with.

And in fact, I was copying on that poem online that you're, you were referencing, I have an image in there that is from one of my birth records, and it's on the graphic of the poem.

Haley Radke: I see it now on the side. "Child returned from VTA placement."

Danna Schmidt: Yeah.

Haley Radke: "See memo dated March 9th."

Danna Schmidt: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Oh my God. This, this poem is I this is so good.

"Unfortunately, we are sorry that despite consideration, adoptee, you were not [00:33:00] chosen."

Danna Schmidt: All of the words were there. Like it just was so amazing that I could, you know-

Haley Radke: Oh, yeah ...

Danna Schmidt: craft it into a kind of form letter, a form rejection.

Haley Radke: It's so good. This rejection of you as a person is very telling. You should be grateful we considered you.

Anyway folks, you gotta click on over to that. That's, it's wonderful. Okay, another thing I think we, we have in common is I think you would be very good friends with my neighbor. She runs a antique booth at the local antique mall, and in addition to her best-selling creepy doll head planters, one of the things that she sells is skulls and preserved bird wings and [00:34:00] butterflies and bones as art- pieces.

Danna Schmidt: Love it. Love it. Yeah. And yeah, doll head planters aren't creepy, by the way.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Danna Schmidt: Those of us that have them, yes.

Haley Radke: The, the ones she chooses are intentionally Chucky adjacent, I'll say. So

Okay, so anyway-

Danna Schmidt: Yeah, I love her already.

Haley Radke: You should. You should. She is a character. Anyway I wanted to talk a little more about that in your piece Bone Mother and Bones. And- this isn't bone adjacent, but I still have the three quarters that was the first thing my biological father ever gave to me.

And it's just a, it was a weird little exchange for some reason, and I [00:35:00] have the three quarters, and I keep them in my jewelry box upstairs. And there's something about having this tangible thing that he gave me that it's even just saying it I'm like, "Oh my god, it's so embarrassing. I have three quarters."

But I'm never gonna get rid of them, and so can you talk about that having something tangible and I'm thinking of your piece bone mother, but I'm sure you can go other places with that question

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. I... And I think as humans, we are wired to we are collectors. Back in the day, once upon a time, we were bone collectors.

But those items, have morphed into things like your neighbor. And the things that we carry that, again, it's connected to meaning, so the talismans. And I, if I could run the world, I would have everybody have an altar to be able to place those meaningful [00:36:00] items on. And I think part of that is the wound of never really never having attended kindergarten, so I never really got show and tell, so I'm constantly making up for show and tell in my life.

And I think that shows up through these objects that either are an object of veneration or an object that, again, tells story. And so even in my late life legacy work that I do with people we talk about artifacts a lot because artifacts are a partial show and tell of, items and our stuff is imbued with meaning, unless it's not, in which case, get rid of it.

Do that Swedish death cleaning thing. But yeah, so I don't know if I've answered your question, but...

Haley Radke: I was thinking about how you have some of your birth mother's ashes, and this idea of maybe I should create something with it. Maybe I should send some of it, to nature. Maybe I [00:37:00] should-

Danna Schmidt: Yeah

Haley Radke: Make something out of it that I can hold onto in my hand. And I think one of my regrets when our last dog passed was that I didn't have her remains given back to me. And so what I have instead is like her collar. I had a rock made with her name that sits right outside my window here. I have those things, but I don't have like something-

Danna Schmidt: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: of her.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. When I just came back from the UK and I was doing a lot of sort of release rituals connected... it was an ancestral pilgrimage. So I was visiting where my birth father was born, and then, I took some tree bits from, his home there where he used to live. And then when we went to Liverpool, that's where the family departed from on the ship to come to Canada.

And so I didn't have his cremains. I had some of my birth mom's cremains with me. [00:38:00] And so I just wrote a letter to him and, you can burn those into ashes and create ashes from burnt, and I do that a lot. So we don't have to have cremains. We can make our own ashes, from other ephemera, right?

But in this case, I actually composted it because it was a water ritual, so I was, adding that water to it. And I did that release with some of her cremains my letter to him, and then also to my birth aunt because I was in reunion with my paternal side of my family in 2019, only to discover my birth father had died, decades prior.

So I didn't have that, but I did have the intention and the emotion as that was fresh for me. It was like he had just died kind of thing. And I was able to grieve that. So yeah, I think it can be really meaningful to do stuff with it. This was the first time I had done anything with my birth mom's [00:39:00] cremains.

And to be continued. In Bone Mother, I talk about all the ways, and I will be making art from it. And, even a shadow box it sounds like for you with your dog. I would totally be on the shadow box thing with the collar and-

Haley Radke: Oh, it's right here. It's all... It's above our... Yeah, I see it-

Danna Schmidt: Yeah

Haley Radke: every day. You write about, a little more about your biological father in your piece Hungry Ghost, which is in the collection Relative Strangers, which is put together by BK Jackson of Severance Magazine creation. And I really enjoyed this piece, and it sounds like you have intentionally gone back and done travel.

My, friend Lisette Austin has talked about this genealogical travel, and if you could just speak to that a little more, because again, sometimes going back to places where maybe [00:40:00] we know that our biological, our ancestors have been, or some of those things, especially for folks who don't get the benefit of being in a reunion.

We have transnational adoptee friends who will go back to their home country and perhaps go to an orphanage that they were in for a brief time, or, like , this feeling of like place and trying to anchor yourself to the world. And I think this genealogical travel can maybe do some of that for us.

Danna Schmidt: I think so. For me, I'm still, fresh from the trip last week, having come home. I'm still very emotional about it. Of course, I'm still unpacking what it all meant because I was doing, releasing my adoptive father's cremains in Ireland as well. But I think that, in my piece in Relative Strangers, Hungry Ghost, I'm speaking to walking in those footsteps and the, the surreal, and I guess to take it kind of a big macro level, to consider [00:41:00] that all of us as humans, we all have our footprints on the planet.

We are going places, and we are migrating. And I think it's meaningful to, in the case of my birth father he died mysteriously in Stanley Park in Vancouver. And so my daughter and I went to Stanley Park to the spot where his body was found. And there's just something about connecting dates and time, and I write about that.

There were some incredible synchronicities to his death, and I happened to be in Vancouver that same weekend he died, decades prior and, of course, had no idea. And so I think sometimes when we can connect on a map places and traces, as I call it, some really meaningful things can happen. Or not, right?

It can just feel mundane. But when we're connecting again the myth part of ritual, when we're connecting story and meaning to that, like I think I felt really [00:42:00] emotional because I knew my birth father, part of the mythology that I have inherited from the family, is learning how much he loved being British.

That was his entire identity, which probably, you know, that severance for him of having to leave at the age of eight would've been really meaningful. And then, showing up in February in Winnipeg, Canada, is a bit of a harsh disconnect. But I think ancestral trips can really do a lot, and I

It's not a, once and done thing. We're continuing to do this work as humans and make meaning of our families and all that we carry and they carried. But I was also able to stand on land, for example, with my adoptive father and see where the Irish ancestors had farmed in the potato famine era.

And part of my journey back to the UK and Ireland was to look at all of the things [00:43:00] that they were affected by in these family lines and the traumas that we carry, and I'll be writing that into my memoir about some of that. So I think that's part of, as the descendants, that's part of our job to bear witness, and so I feel like that's what I'm doing.

My job, I didn't get to know him in life, but my job is to carry him for the rest of my life and to keep saying his name and telling his stories and being that descend- being that good, what I would hope would be, that I'll be a good ancestor one day myself.

Haley Radke: You are leaving your writings for the next generation, and I really hope people follow along with you, Danna, because you have such range in how you write.

Like this poem I find it so humorous while also very pointed. The, sorry, the found poem that I was referencing earlier it has some cross outs, so I'm gonna read the full thing, but, "How an Adoptee [00:44:00] Reads Literary Rejection Letters: A Lost and Found Poem." And then it says, "Adoptee Rejection: A Found Poem," which is the words not crossed out.

It's just wonderful. But your recent pieces, which we've been referring to, Bone Mother and Hungry Ghost in Relative Strangers, are just so powerful and I've never had this before, but when I finished Bone Mother, I had goosebumps. And to have a physical reaction to reading something was really different for me.

And I think there's gonna be a lot of adopted people who wanna read your work and will really connect with it like I did. So thank you so much for putting it out into the world for us. And it's a tremendous legacy you're gonna leave just with your words, not counting anything else.

Danna Schmidt: Yeah, I think it's, it can be really just it's part of how we process. It's very, the complexities of being an adoptee. This is one avenue. A few [00:45:00] months ago, I put together a an adoptee fortune teller kit, and actually wrote the whole fortune teller, and that, I'll link that as well for, or you can link it in the show notes.

And that was also really powerful to get at, how we're always searching and we always have that question of, "Where will I find my mother?" And, as, right from childhood, that those searing questions just stay with us. And but I believe in the power fortune teller is a form of divination, and I believe in the magic of, be it a ritual or a creative act, to manifest.

Not that I ever found out by doing that as a child, fortune telling. But if life's not linear and it's circling back on itself, then, there were, there was some fortune telling that did, come to be

Haley Radke: That's so interesting. I'm sure that there will be a lot of adoptees who are interested in that [00:46:00] too.

Wonderful. We will link to that as well in the show notes for folks. What do you wanna recommend to us today, Danna?

Danna Schmidt: I just read an adoptee book I love, and it's not out yet, Wonderland by Patricia Knight Meyer. That is a fabulous memoir that everyone should put on the horizon. I had an advance reader copy, and what I loved about her memoir is that she did talk about that messiness of reunion.

But I also do want to, I think, connect back to the grief piece that we talked about, and The Smell of Rain on Dust is definitely a grief book. I have all kinds of grief resources on my waypointceremonies.com website under the grief tab, and they're old. To have grief resources is to constantly update it, so I haven't updated it in a few years.

But there are some core books on there, including Martín Prechtel's The Smell of Rain on Dust. So I recommend that for everyone to [00:47:00] look at grief in a new way. He illuminates praise as being part of it and, praise is a pretty activating word for adoptees, to connect that we always have to be happy joy.

But he connects praise in a different way to that experience of being human, and grief is probably the most human expression we can have. So to be initiated in our grief is absolutely to come more alive as a human. I absolutely believe it. It cracks us open to our real living.

Haley Radke: You seem very in tune with all the things, so I think that can change a person. Wow. Thanks, Danna. I appreciate that that resource. It's-

Danna Schmidt: I'm gonna write that down and put that on my bulletin board to remind me when I'm not in tune which is a daily basis. Haley said I'm in tune with things.

Haley Radke: All [00:48:00] right. If that's the highest praise you get from today- ... then that's great. Where can folks connect with you online and follow along with your writing and your other offerings?

Danna Schmidt: Yeah. People can find my newsletter, Altared Moments, spelt as A-L-T-A-R-E-D moments.substack.com. That's my newsletter and where I post a weekly poem, 'cause I'm a poem hunter. I have adoption stories on there, and just my riffs and, meanderings and monthly rituals that I offer to my paid subscribers.

And then my work in the world, waypointceremonies.com. My blog is on there as well as other resources, too. So both ways are great ways to find me.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you. We'll put all your links, including your social media and your newsletter, everything, in the show notes for folks. So you can click there to follow along [00:49:00] with Danna.

Thank you. What a delightful conversation. Appreciated our time.

Danna Schmidt: Oh, yeah. To be continued, yeah.

Haley Radke: To be continued, certainly. Thanks, Danna. Before we go, I hope that hearing Danna's experience will encourage you to make some room for whatever you've been wanting to create or mark in your own life. Write it. Do it.

Do the thing. Find a way to honor someone you've lost or something you never got to have. You don't have to post about it or publish an essay anywhere. You don't have to explain it to anyone. It can just be for you. So much of our lives have been narrated by other people, and this is for you. This is a part of a healing journey.

I know therapy's not accessible to everyone. Your [00:50:00] therapist, if you're lucky to have one, probably gives you assignments like these on the regular, and you can do some of these things on your own. You're allowed to make something that matters to you, even if no one else ever sees it. Thank you so much for listening.

Let's talk again soon.

October 02, 2026

331 Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

October 02, 2026/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/331

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. Marci shares about growing up in a deeply religious adoptive family. We talk about finding room in her writing for questions about her origins that may never have answers, how translation can echo the adoptee experience, and why creating spaces for adoptee writers matter.

There is a mention of abuse in this episode, so please take care when listening. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at [00:01:00] adopteeson.com/newsletter. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.

Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello to Adoptees On. Welcome, Marci.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited to chat with you. I have seen you in the adoptee circles for years and just waiting for the moment. Here it is. I'd love it if you would start. Would you share a little of your story with us?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. Thank you so much. I've been such a, a longtime fan of your podcast too, so it's an honor to be here today.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's so nice.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah, a good synergistic moment. I was born in South Korea and adopted to a white family in Michigan at the time, and then we moved to upstate New York, where I spent most of my childhood into adulthood.[00:02:00]

And I have an older brother who's also adopted from South Korea, and we're not biologically related, but we're very close, and he's my ride or die. And so I was raised in upstate New York in a deeply religious Baptist family, and I was homeschooled also for all of K through 12. I graduated early. I did a gap year at 17, where I went to South Korea, and I tutored North Korean refugees through a missionary that my family knew and also taught...

Just did some English tutoring on the side and things like that. And I spent a year there, and then I came back for college. I went to a community college in upstate New York and transferred to a college in Pennsylvania, and then I did an MFA in creative writing with a poetry focus in Miami, Florida, which is where I now am.

And I have been in [00:03:00] Miami for 12 years as of this past August. And so that's a, a quick overview of , my life trajectory. And in terms of I think my creative identity is very much tied up in my adoptee identity, I think, where a lot of my... I'm a poet and a translator of Korean poetry into English and an essayist, and I would say that the questions that arose when I was thinking about my adoptive identity came out through creative writing.

And so it was a sort of Emily Dickinson has a "Tell all the world, but tell it slant" kind of phrase, and so I took that as an angle for answering questions that didn't have answers. And so I think in some ways, my writing is how I move through the world as an adoptee also. And so my writing moved [00:04:00] me down the Eastern Coast.

And I think as I get older and I look back on how my creative life has evolved, it's a very parallel journey for how I have thought about my own adoptee experience in settling into my own identity with confidence and finding community in very similar ways through writing and the adoptive experience and the constellation, if you will.

And then finding a lot of adoptee writers too, I think, which is where I really started to feel that I had gained a foothold in how to articulate what it meant to be an adoptee to me.

Haley Radke: I love that. There's so many places to go. Can we start with growing up with a brother who was also adopted? I heard you say in another interview that he was the one who's older, and he was the one that maybe questioned your parents or opened up conversations that you might not have been quite ready yet.

Can [00:05:00] you speak a little bit about that?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. So my brother is older, and it was just the two of us, and we were both homeschooled, so we were in the house 24/7, and we fought endlessly when we were children, which I think is probably why we're so close now. But because he was the older sibling, and he was the first for a lot of experiences, as older siblings often are, and because he was already asking questions about "Who am I? Where did I come from? What does it mean to be adopted transracially?" And because there were not a lot of... There were, there was no answers, so he was always asking the questions, and then I was always just following along. And so he would bring home anything Korean, like Korean music, Korean TV shows. He's the reason that we connected with the local Korean church that had Korean language lessons as a kind of outreach program.

And then we ended [00:06:00] up connecting with other Koreans and making friends, and that is where I started learning about Korean culture. And that, in that way, he was the reason that I really thought deeply about and questioned a lot of things that had come up. And in a more personal sense, just our family home dynamic was a very difficult one.

There was a lot of tension, a lot of abuse going on. And so in a lot of ways I feel like I'm starting to say this more often out loud, but he saved me in a lot of ways because if he hadn't been my older brother, I'm not sure I would've made it out of that house. I'm not sure I would've made it out of that kind of life alive in a very rural, very deeply religious family, and a lot of depression, and all of those things.

And so in those ways, too, this is where I think a lot of experiences so personally gets wrapped up into too many things to be [00:07:00] able to cleanly untangle. He was also the first to leave and the first to tell me that I could leave and be okay, or that I could survive and do different things, and that I could do, and I could live, and I could blank, right?

So in a lot of ways, I don't know. There's no way to know if we would have had the same kind of bond if we were both not adopted, if we were both, biologically related or biological blood family, right? But I do think that a lot of how we interacted and how he functions as a person was part of what saved us both from that, that life and perpetuating that kind of family environment

Haley Radke: I'm really sorry that was your experience, and I'm so glad you had him.

Wow.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Me too.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. Yeah. That's why he's my ride or die- ... 'cause no, no one else... I think that's the thing is like no one... Everyone's [00:08:00] stories are different in life, but no one else understood me and understands me the way that he does in all the, the nuances of experience and identity.

Haley Radke: So you have a couple different layers. Transracially adopted, transnationally adopted, and now we're- I'm hearing a really difficult home life, the homeschooling, the religious upbringing. So I'm gonna ask, like I'm curious about how you start perhaps as a young adult, like, thinking about how did adoption impact me?

With the asterisk here obviously you knew it did because it wasn't like- ... oh, the better life you were promised.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. I do understand that we had a difficult childhood, but I also understand that the dichotomy that was happening is that our adoptive parents were also doing what they thought was the best thing [00:09:00] for the family, for themselves, for us in those moments, which is not to say that they were right. But one of the things that they did really well was that obviously I'm, I move through the world as a Korean woman, and they are white, and so there was no way to hide the fact that we were not blood related. So that question had to be addressed in some capacity, and I think, they addressed it in very similar ways to a lot of transracially adoptive parents where it's, it's "You were adopted."

There was the, "We don't know anything about your birth family. We chose you." There was the religious element of, "We are encouraged by the Bible to and so adoption was a conversation piece in the house very early on. I don't remember a time that we were not able to openly talk about that as a fact.

What made everything [00:10:00] uncomfortable in those family dynamics is when my brother started asking very specific questions of where he came from. And we knew that we had adoption files. He wanted to see the adoption files, which of course prompted more questions, and then out of fairness, which is, great even though I was younger than him, they were like, "Oh you should probably see your file too."

And I didn't know how to look at it and- I had questions, but I didn't know how to ask them and it's one of the things that we didn't really talk about when we were young, my brother and I directly and privately with each other was what was in our files. We didn't really share that, but it opened a different kind of way of thinking for me in seeing actual documentation, not knowing what it was, not really being able to walk through it with an adult.

They were like, "We're just gonna give you this file, and we'll come back in an hour if you have [00:11:00] any questions." I was like, "I don't know," and then that was about it. Oh,

that's

Haley Radke: I'm sorry. That sounds like what some of the agencies do in Korea. Here's your file. You can look it up for a few minutes, and then we're gonna take it away.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yes, which is interestingly also how I was educated as a homeschool student. So it was very normal for our family. It was like, "Here's the textbooks. Go do the workbooks. If you have any questions, come ask us," right? And that's partly why I'm a bit of a self-starter and I'm always asking questions now because I think I didn't know how to ask questions before.

Haley Radke: Yes. Okay this also it's keeping on the personal, so you just say when you're ready to pivot. But being raised in a religious family, and I read in one of your essays perhaps more than you have some religious language. You talk about Moses. You just mentioned there's this biblical mandate to adopt kind of thing, which, that's what I grew up believing, too, but now my [00:12:00] understanding has changed so much.

That's really not what biblical adoption was. And have you unpacked any of that for yourself? I don't know if you're still religious at all, but whatever you're comfortable sharing about that topic.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. It's actually a fun topic for me. So as a oh, I should probably have clarified this earlier. When I mean that I was in a deeply religious family, I mean that my adoptive father was a Baptist pastor, so I was a pastor's kid. So as a pastor's kid, I have read the King James Bible and some of the other versions multiple times which maybe actually is where my love for language started. But I also am an avid reader, and there's a lot of archetypes that happen.

There's a lot of, across literature, there's references and classics and things like that. So there's a, a kind of reverence for literature in a way in the religious sense, right? That one book is being taught for centuries across cultures and generations. And so that's one thing I find really [00:13:00] interesting about biblical stories.

The other thing is that I so I was an English major and part of what I love about reading is just knowing weird, obscure facts. And so I know a little about a lot of- random things. I'm not an expert in any of them. But one of the things that I fell down a rabbit hole once when I was trying to research for, actually for an essay, is the origin of adoption as a concept and how it's changed over the years and how maybe power has impacted...

It's lot about, everything comes back to power, who has power, who doesn't. And it's interesting because adoption I know in some of my research, adoption comes from the idea that in like the Greco-Roman world if a person did not have children, they could adopt another adult to inherit and pass along names and [00:14:00] wealth and everything like that.

And it wasn't the way that we think of adoption now. It was a way to preserve lineage and house, the house of such and such.

Haley Radke: And that adult got to also keep their original identity-

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yes ...

Haley Radke: and a connection to their original family.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Exactly. And they got to be part of the conversation and the choice. And this is where power also keeps coming back into play, right? And so what the biblical mandates are referencing that time period, what kind of language and customs people might recognize, and it's a very different read than what we think of now and also what cultures think of and what maybe a country is thinking of politically, where you see a lot of patterns if you look at the history where maybe government policies or economy or any kind of external forces cause a birth rate to go [00:15:00] down and then maybe, different reproductive rights or medical advancements or different things are going up or down, and then conversations about adoption come up, ages about adoption come up.

And so it's a very different history than I had learned or that had been any kind of information that even my adoptive family might have had access to at the time. And so thinking about the way that religion can be interpreted, because I had been taught all my life how one interprets the Bible, there is a lot of...

There is one answer is the kind of Baptist mode of thinking, is there's one interpretation that is the correct interpretation. And for an adoptee who has no certainty and has to live in uncertainty, I learned to start questioning what does truth mean when there is no proof of the truth and you have to go fully on faith.

And so [00:16:00] it's an intertwined development of how I think about fact-checking and history and influence of all the different variables that get swept under the rug or were not even accessible to the people researching them at the time.

I don't know if that answers the religion question.

Haley Radke: That's great. I was just checking. I did an episode, it's a- all the way back, 191 from October of 2021, where I have Dr. Erin Heim on, and we literally unpack what you just concisely explained about that's what adoption really looked like. And so for modern day churches to be talking about adoption like it's this mandate to scoop all these babies up from impoverished countries and take them to the real homeland over here, it's not accurate.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. Yeah. It was a mutually beneficial business transaction.

Haley Radke: Yes. It's that. It's certainly [00:17:00] that.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: It still is a one-sided mutually beneficial often.

Haley Radke: Oh, my goodness. I have a quote here from you that I really identified with. You were a guest on the podcast Unraveling Me, and you said, "Asking questions implied a threat." And can you speak to that a little bit? Because I, I remember asking and getting the no answer, the stern face, and then thinking, "Okay, I'm not gonna ask anymore."

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. Asking questions implied a threat

Haley Radke: Of your adoptive parents. I'm sorry, I should have given more info there.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Do- I do remember saying that. Contextually, I think for me, there are a lot of human elements tied up into asking questions.

There's an inherent need to know or desire to know, [00:18:00] and there's also a cultural expectation, or maybe it's a human expectation, to know the thing, and that is not just the person who wants to know, but it's also the person being asked. I should know an answer that's satisfying, or I should know, how to answer this question or how to be a parent, how to be a human, how to... and the other thing that happens is that if you have an unanswerable question, but you have a really persistent child who's like, "But I still wanna know, but why? But why? But why?" It can threaten the ego quite a bit. And also, as a student of literature, and if you even look at television, which is a really strict form of writing the scripts, every story starts with a secret, multiple secrets, right?

And there's a lot of what happens if I answer the question? Who has the power in answering the question, and who has power in asking the question? And in a [00:19:00] household where silence was golden. I grew up with the adage, "Children should be seen and not heard." Even asking a question is a threat in that kind of society.

And also, as a woman in a really patriarchal religious home, asking a question can look like defying the one true truth of, do not... Why are you questioning me, or why are you questioning how things are? And so on that level, it definitely can threaten the ecosystem, and it also... Any questions threaten the nuclear family assumptions that, you have two parents, you have maybe two or three kids, you're repopulating the earth.

And asking questions of why don't we look like that kind of family, why don't we have that kind of story, when you don't have an answer because you made specific decisions for your family, is also threatening because none of the answers are going to stay aligned with how you've built the rest of your life.

[00:20:00] And in a household where there is an idea of absolute truth and uncertainty is like there's always an answer. There's one true answer if you sit with it long enough. There's no room for silence. There's no room for the leader to be wrong and I think maybe that's why I do believe in a lot of nature versus nurture because I have actually become even more insistent on asking questions.

And even in my career and as a writer and as a student, I was always like, "I'm gonna be the stupidest person in the room. I'm gonna ask the stupidest questions." I don't believe in stupid questions. I don't. I'll ask what no one else in the room wants to look like they're asking, and I encourage that too, because for me, a question can, is only threatening if you think you have to have an answer. But if you're questioning because you assume there may not be an answer, it's actually quite freeing. And what I tell people that I'm [00:21:00] training or teaching is that a question tells me a lot of information, and I'm always just looking for information.

I always say I can do a lot with information as long as I know something. And so asking a question also tells me what the person is focusing on, what they're thinking about, what they're wondering about. And if I'm the one asking the question, I know what I, that I don't know something, which is actually quite exciting 'cause it means I'm always learning something.

And if I am being asked a question, it forces me to evaluate whether I can answer the question, whether I have the answer, and it's an opportunity to reevaluate whether I still think that is the answer, because I might have changed my mind, and that is also not something I grew up believing a human should be able to do once they have found the answer.

So for me, questions are actually the opposite of a threat, but it took me years to get to that as a concept.

Haley Radke: I live my life as a very curious learner [00:22:00] also so I definitely relate to that. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about how your writing and connecting with other adoptee writers has shaped your view of being an adopted person.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yes. I started out as a fiction writer. Actually wrote a lot of fan fiction, probably a lot of young people. I love fan fiction. There is, somewhere on the dark web, Nintendo fan fiction under my pseudonym.

Haley Radke: We'll put the link in the show notes. No, just kidding. Just kidding.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: But in school, I ended up, through a variety of ways and failures, gravitated toward poetry, and one of the things that poetry does is it's a slice of life. Often it's capturing a [00:23:00] moment of chaos in the tranquility of the aftermath of it.

And it's also a way of processing. It's a way of thinking about the world and really sorting through articulation. I have a professor who once said, "Poets are always trying to tell you what they're not going to tell you, and then they tell you." And it's a thing that I felt very comfortable with, and it turns out that I was a terrible fiction writer, but I loved the world-building elements.

Also, as a video gamer I think that's part of it, is the world-building, the character development that fiction has that I didn't think poetry could have. And in undergrad, I had a professor who in one semester taught the poet Ai A-I, and she is known as the Queen of Persona, and she wrote about essentially the dregs of humanity, if you will.

She would write persona poems in the persona of a serial killer or a child beater or, just terrible human beings, like war [00:24:00] interrogators, right? And in looking at her bio, her artist bio, I found out she was a Buddhist, and a lot of apparent dissonances that I was starting to question.

And I also didn't realize that persona poetry was a thing. I thought we're in the post-confessional phase of Sylvia Plath. The I is the artist I, and I was like, "That's too vulnerable for me." But the persona allowed me to go back to fiction roots and under a kind of pseudonym, think about things and write about things and step into the mind of people in order to get questions that I could not get by asking them as myself.

And so I started working with a lot of persona in undergrad and then also in grad school, and my grad school poetry thesis turned out to be my first poetry collection, Hour of the Ox, which is entirely persona poetry that revolves around the question: What happens when an [00:25:00] integral member of the nuclear family is suddenly removed?

And the secondary question that I was asking on a personal level was: What does it mean for me to be a Korean American woman? What kind of people have I come from? What kind of history have I come from that I don't have direct and comfortable access to? Even the small things, like I don't know... I say this often, I think, but I don't know what lullabies my birth mother might have said, or sung to me in the womb, right?

I don't know what a typical prayer would be for a Korean person. And so those are all things that I think I was spiraling around in my writing that persona poetry really allowed me to tap into. And so that's the kind of process that I have brought to every other project, because it turns out that's [00:26:00] how I think and how I like to think is those poetic leaps, the persona of fiction, and the world-building of a storytelling aspect, a kind of narrative.

Haley Radke: I heard you talk a little bit about that when you did a, a local TEDx talk about your pivot. I promise I don't have links to your fanfic. It sounds like I did the full deep dive, but I missed that. You're having a reaction to me say- mentioning this Ted Talk.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: It's gonna surface one day. AI's gonna scrape it from the deep reaches of the internet, and one day it's gonna surface.

Haley Radke: It surfaced today. I watched it today. If you come on the show, I Google you top to bottom.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: I love that.

Haley Radke: No. Okay. Sorry. Let me pivot. I wanted to ask you [00:27:00] about your Korean language lessons. You mentioned your brother, finding out spots where you could learn, and you also said you've translated Korean poetry to much acclaim, I'll have listeners know.

And yet you tell this story of, receiving this award, and there's some kind of press conference or some such organized thing where of all the translators, you're a very apt with the written Korean, but not as much with spoken. Can you talk about learning the language and coming to this mastery where you can translate and yet still you're othered, and you're still, you know- Say more.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. [00:28:00] Yes. So when my brother and I were young, we took language classes. They were every Sunday after church at the local Korean church, and the beautiful thing about Korean language is that it's a really phonetic language, unlike most of the East Asian languages where you have to memorize characters.

It's a very simple alphabet that you can... it's very similar to the English alphabet, where you can learn the alphabet and phonetically sound out words, but then it becomes a question of vocabulary, syntax, and then the native speaker instinct. And so it was very easy to learn as a child, too and I also had my brother and then our new friends to practice with.

And being in Korea for the gap year when I was 17 was really helpful in learning how to navigate and just immerse myself entirely in the [00:29:00] language, which South Korea I lived in Seoul, and at the time it wasn't the kind of K-pop tourist destination that it is now. So there was a lot less English.

There were fewer English additions to, let's say, street signs or things like that. And so it was easy to use what I had to practice. And so since that year, I really haven't had a space to practice speaking, but because I'm an avid reader and I'm a really visual person, it's a lot easier for me to take the time that I need to read and write it.

I should say read it more than being able to write it above kindergarten level, but the reading of it is much, is slower. I don't have the quick kind of translation that an interpreter might be able to have. And poetry even more so because it's such a dense and complex form, even in Korean. And how I had studied poetry in my MFA program, there's a kind of, there's a history there also of [00:30:00] language, and I didn't feel comfortable. There was a lot of the imposter syndrome of I'm not Korean enough to do this, or I'm not native enough. I'm going to miss idioms and references that a native speaker might be able to translate differently. And so as much as I love... I could tell that it was a home language for me just sonically because even if I don't always understand what is happening, I, there's something about, listening to a TV show or K-pop beats the sounds of the language.

And so there's a comfort in it sonically for me, and the time I get to spend as a translator is a slow time for me. I do not use AI in any of my translation. I will write out all of the words by hand. I'll go through a literal they call it a trot sheet, a literal translation of word for word, and then because it's poetry, my translation mentor calls it the [00:31:00] making the poetic leap and thinking about authenticity and accuracy.

And I was interested in translating poetry, but I didn't really know how to get into it, and Don Mee Choi had been interested in pairing Korean women poets with Korean-American women translators because she thought that the choices that one makes in that process would be very different than what had been done historically.

And she knew that I didn't feel confident in my Korean, and so she paired me with E.J. Koh, who is a good friend of mine, but she didn't know we were friends at the time. And so having that kind of comfort of being able to work with a friend who had a different skill level of Korean was very different experience.

But what I loved about the process is that she was studying literature and film, and she would come to me and she would say, "I think it should be this," and we would say, "Okay." And our project took five years together, and then she would come back maybe a month later, and she'd be like, "Actually I've been studying the history of rice, and I think this is the reference that they have."

And [00:32:00] it changed the whole poem because it's a poetry line. It's not, just a straight up factual, sentence. And so the process felt very comfortable even if the language did not. And I am in the minority probably as a translator to say that I hope a lot of people translate the poems that I'm translating just to experience the choices, and our publisher, it's very rare, but our publisher translates the original language alongside the translation, and I do often encourage people to think about the choices because it's the same question, right?

What happens if I translate it different, if I made different choices? And so translation feels like a, a language, like a trans language experience that is very much the adoptee experience in a lot of ways.

Haley Radke: I was gonna ask you. So first I'll just say that you expound on that story in your essay, The Truth Untold, which can be found in Relative Strangers, [00:33:00] which we'll speak about in recommended resources.

But yes, this metaphor of translation in an adopted person, I'm sure you've thought about this, and have you thought about writing about it?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: A little bit, yeah. I think actually that essay that you're referring to started me thinking about it and that essay was the first time I was starting to write nonfiction about it, rather than just sitting with the translation process itself. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay, I look forward to your future work on that. I won't poach it for this conversation. I really enjoyed your poetry book, Hour of the Ox, and I was telling you before we got on, I've had it for a number of years on my shelf. And you said earlier that you like to collect all these little facts and things, and you're a researcher, and the stories you [00:34:00] tell about the pearl divers, of course, captivated me.

It's so fascinating, and I wonder if you could share a little bit of that just for people to kinda get a taste of a little bit of what you write about in Hour of the Ox.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yes. Oh, thank you for asking that. So when I was writing poems about being Korean American, and it wasn't quite sticking as a thesis, and my professor was like, "You're not writing poems fast enough to graduate."

And I, at the same time, I read this article about the pearl divers, they're called haenyeo, on, on Jeju Island, and I did a whole deep dive into... I was like, "Oh, they're... This is a dying art. Why is it a dying art? What is this?" I had never really heard of them or really cared about doing any more research.

And it turns out the history of Jeju is really a fascinating history it, within the larger South Korean history. And haenyeo are these pearl divers. The women on Jeju Island so the, the story goes that they were protesting what was happening on the [00:35:00] mainland, and I'm saying this with very little clarity on that element 'cause I do hope that people do their own research into that.

But they were protesting the mainland, and the mainland taxed the island, and the main source of income is the fishermen, and so they were taxing the fishermen. And because it's a patriarchal society, the women were like, "Oh they can't tax us, so we're just gonna go swimming."

And so culturally, they were pearl divers. They free dive with no diving equipment and they can hold their breath for three minutes at a time is the average length of time, and they harvest, sea life, so abalone, octopus, other mussels and different things.

And it's a very similar practice there's Hawaiian pearl divers and things like that. But it's a dying art because as these women were getting older and this way of life was starting to shift because advancements were happening on the mainland and all of the younger people were going to the mainland and then staying there for work and to raise families, no one was really taking on... the younger gener- generations were not taking on the [00:36:00] lifestyle and the career that the pearl divers were. So this New York Times article was talking about the dwindling numbers of these women, and it just struck me how powerful they were. There were some incredible photographs.

There was this one photograph that I tacked to my wall for the entirety that I was writing the book, and it's this woman who is you know, she has a wrinkled face. She's got the little glass goggles, and she's holding up an octopus, and it's wrapping its tentacles around her arm. But it's such a victory pose, and she's just in the water with her diving rubber suit, and it's such a powerful photograph, and it made such an impression on me that I was like, "What if I was descended from women like this? Is this what it means to be Korean American?" It's not the pop culture references or anything I had been raised with. Is this what it means? And that just blew open the entire book process for me.

Haley Radke: I love that story. I connect to it so much because I've [00:37:00] always been obsessed with locks- ... the way you move into another waterway when the heights are different, and my maternal side is from Scotland. There were locks there, whatever. So I always think "Oh, I wonder." And it gives me back this piece for folks who may search... they may choose to search, may- they may not. For folks who search and never find an answer, and how do you build your history and lineage? And as a poet, a writer, a storyteller, you're able to assemble some things together for yourself. I think that could be inspiring for folks that might feel really sad at having a dead end- ... and no answers, and to think that you can become curious about other things in hopes of having something that you can think about or ponder. I don't know. Do you have thoughts on, more thoughts on [00:38:00] that?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah. I thought of the process of writing that poetry book as a I love mythology and I love the ancientness of prophecy and as, just as a concept, I think, again, my fantasy days and classics and things like that. And I thought of the process of asking those questions and writing poems to answer them and answer them over and over again.

At one point I felt like I was writing the same poem over and over again, and yet it was very different. And it felt like I was making my own myth of myself. What is the mythology of me? And as someone who still doesn't have any real answers for my own origin story which I think is what a lot of people expect that an adoptee will focus on or expect the the reunion story or the knowledge story.

I'm actually more interested, I think, in the [00:39:00] emotional truths that get uncovered in that process than in really finding my own story. I've done the DNA tests and the birth searches and things like that, and my brother has asked me, he asked me before I did any of that stuff, he's like, "Why don't you wanna know?

Don't you wanna know? I wanna know. Who, who wouldn't wanna know?" And I was like, "I'm not ready." And then I was like, "Is that true? I don't know if that's true." I think what's true is that I have decided I don't need that to be a whole person. And in fact, I think maybe that's what poetry does for me, and well, writing in general does for me, is that I have decided how to form my own myth- my own origins and my own person in order to move through the world in a way that feels satisfactory and fulfilling for me, and that's not for everyone.

And it's actually a thing that I asked BK Jackson, the editor of the [00:40:00] Relative Strangers anthology. She was like, " would you be willing to write an essay? Someone, another contributor recommended you, said I should get in touch with you." And I heard the concept of the anthology. It was like meeting relatives who are strangers and thinking about just any kind of genetic displacement, if you will.

And I said, "I don't have that story. I've never met a relative stranger. Would you be interested in an essay from me about not finding any of those answers?" Because I do think that is something that's extremely painful and not talked about enough, that I have become strangely comfortable sitting with.

And she was like, "That's actually great. No one else is really writing about that right now." And so it gave me a real opportunity to think about absence. The, the white space, which is also very common for poets to sit with, is the white space around the text on a page, is something that [00:41:00] maybe that's why it feels very familiar to me to be writing about not finding people and being okay with it.

And yes, I would like to know, but I'm also okay not knowing. And maybe the poet Mary Ruefle talks about yet. She'll be like, "Oh, I don't like that thing, yet. I might change my mind." She'll be like, "I don't like that movie, yet." Which gives a future forward and an acknowledgement of who you are in the moment, but an, an opportunity to change your mind with it, which I think is a really beautiful human thing that we don't talk enough about.

Haley Radke: I'm so grateful for you sharing that. Thank you. We do focus more here often on the reunion, and I know it's not possible for everyone, so I always wanna make sure we have space for that. I'm running out of time with you, Marci, and before we do recommended resources, I just wanted to thank you for your [00:42:00] involvement in starting the Adoptee Literary Festival which has been so meaningful personally to me to see so many of my friends get a platform and-

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah

Haley Radke: an opportunity to share their reading. I've heard you share about it on other podcasts where you and Alice Stephens were discussing how you wanted to make it as accessible as possible. And so if you've never heard of the Adoptee Literary Festival, you can go back and watch all the many of the sessions, I should say, and participate in it at your leisure on YouTube.

So is there anything you wanna say about that before we do recommended resources?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Ooh, yes. Thank you for bringing that up. It truly became a space that, it's the sort of thing where you build the thing that you wish you had which is very much how I've built the communities and connected with those people who want to do those things in [00:43:00] specific ways.

And we don't have to be everything to everyone because we recognize that everyone is building something, and that's also why I love your recommended resources part of the podcast because it's a little bit of everything. Cumulatively, we get to grow together as a community and learn. And the Adoptee Literary Festival is a real... it's a space that when Alice and I were building it the first year, we were like, "I don't know if anyone's gonna show up. Maybe 10 people. Maybe 100 if we're lucky." And it was literally Zoom was like, the Zoom webinar was like, "How many people do you think are going to show up?" And they're gonna charge you based on the number of people they think, the attendees that they're gonna let into the room.

And it turned out that we had over 600 people showing up in the first year, and it was a new connection, too, that- we both thought we were pretty plugged in to a lot of things, and yet, and it also, ... I s- I firmly believe [00:44:00] in any space that you are, you leave it better than you found it, and if you are able to open a door, you leave it open if you can for the next people.

But also, one of the things that Alice and I ended up learning together was, people are very concerned about bringing people to the table, and between my day job and just the creative world, a lot of the questioning I'm now in my new era of is, do we need a table, or why can't we just make the table bigger?

Why do we have to even think about a table, right? How do we re-envision and innovate a lot of things? And the Adoptee Literary Festival is just that. The second one was two years later, and it morphed entirely. And we were like, "It doesn't have to be the same as the first thing." And so it's really cool to think of it as a tangible growing thing with whoever is at the helm.

Haley Radke: Love that. Okay, so I ... It won't be a surprise. I want listeners to pick up your poetry book, Hour of the Ox. We already talked about The Pearl Divers. And I say [00:45:00] this about almost every poet who comes on the show, but it's absolutely true of you, too. Your vocabulary is so meticulous- ... precise. And I pictured you reading aloud some of the poems.

The way you play with words, I can read it in my mind. I hear things audibly and, ... when I read. And I think, "Oh, man, she has ... She knows the sound of these words," certainly. So I look forward to hearing you read sometime. And then we both talked about Relative Strangers, this collection edited by BK Jackson of Severance Mag, which many people will know her from.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship. And your essay, The Truth Untold, it's so wonderful. I wanted to read more. You have more essays online that I found we'll link for folks, but you're just such an amazing writer, Marci. Thank you for-

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Oh ...

Haley Radke: the truth you bring [00:46:00] into the world. It's just a real delight to get to read your work, so thank you.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Thank you so much.

Haley Radke: My pleasure. What did you wanna recommend to us?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Ooh, I would love to recommend The Starlings Collective.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: So The Starlings Collective is a group of BIPOC adoptee writers that I connected with through Kundiman and then the greater community.

And there are a lot of poets, and then there's some essayists. There's some fiction writers. Alice Stephens is part of it, Tiana Nobile, Sarah Audsley, and Ansley Moon, who has a new book coming out in 2026 called Register the Missing, which chronicles an exploration of the 50 million girls in India that go missing have gone missing over history, and it's also an accounting of her own experience as a, a transracial [00:47:00] adoptee.

So The Starlings Collective, we have a list of resources on our website of people- things that people have recommended to us that have helped us in our journey. That includes creative work as well as critical work, even movies, documentaries, even graphic novels books for children. I think a couple therapists also that work with adoptee folks.

And we also do a quarterly book club where we we look at a different book in a different genre every single quarter. And it's just a great community of people. It was a way for all of us to keep in touch and do something that was for us that we wanted to share with anyone else who wanted to join the conversation. And it's just been a little lighthouse in my life since we've started it.

Haley Radke: I love that. I've seen many of the events on Instagram, the word I'm looking for is advertise. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, they're doing it." So amazing. Love it. We will link to that and your work. [00:48:00] And would you let us know how we can connect with you online?

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Yes. So I have an author website, Marcicalabretta.com. I do have some social media. Instagram is probably my most active, and it, the handle is Marcicalabretta across all platforms. And I would love to connect with folks.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much, Marci. What a delight to get to speak with you today.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: Thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation. And thank you so much also for the work that you do through Adoptees On and everything else.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

I am so thankful for adoptees like Marci who are brave enough to start something and invite the rest of us in. Whether it's the Adoptee Literary Festival, The Starlings Collective, another book club or support group, these spaces exist because someone took that first step. Someone thought we need this and was willing to [00:49:00] do it.

It takes courage to put an idea out into the world and so much work to keep showing up and making it happen. To those of you creating places where we can connect, share our work, and feel understood, thank you. If you're listening in real time, make sure to go to our Adoptees On Instagram account because we have a book giveaway for the anthology we were just talking about, Relative Strangers, and you'll find all the details on how to enter right on the Adoptees On Instagram.

Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

September 18, 2026

330 Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.

September 18, 2026/ Adoptees On

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/330

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today, Deanna Shrodes returns to share the remarkable story behind her new book, Finding Mr. Greek, about searching for, finding, and reuniting with her biological father, Gus, when he was 91 years old.

We talk about the precious time they spent together, the peace she found in finally learning the truth, and why she felt called to return to writing and adoptee advocacy. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter.[00:01:00]

We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On my friend Deanna Shrodes. Hi, Deanna.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Hi, Haley. It is so great to be here. I, as love and respect you so very much and watch and listen to everything you do and I'm just so grateful to be here.

Haley Radke: I have to tell you, one of my most disappointing moments this year was almost getting to meet you in real life.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Oh my gosh, me too. I was never so upset when I had to cancel that. I was never so upset.

Haley Radke: We'll make it happen another time. But you're back. Yes, we will. Oh my goodness. Okay. So I've had you on this show in 2019 and then again in 2023, and in 2019 we really talked about your first reunion with [00:02:00] your birth mom and how that went.

And then we talked about, in 2023, we talked about how you found your father after your birth mom took his name to the grave, and that story is so incredible. We did two whole episodes on it.

And now you've written it all in a book called Finding Mr. Greek, but would you catch folks up just in case they haven't heard those, which I encourage folks to go back and listen to you share the whole story and read your book.

But just give us a little glimpse into that part of your story, would you?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes, absolutely. I was in relationship reunited with my birth mother for many years. At the time she passed away it was 20 years. And we had known each other all this time, and she had been very resistant to telling me who my father was.

All I knew was that he was Greek. Later, DNA would prove that to be true. I knew that he was [00:03:00] 100% Greek. I knew that he had black wavy hair at one time, and I knew that he wasn't supportive of her. And she told me 10 years prior to me finding him that she was never going to tell me who he was. And I said, he has to be at least 80 by now, probably dead. What's the harm?" And she was resistant. She let me know she was never gonna tell me. And then very shortly after she made that declaration, she became terminally ill, and she passed away in just a few months of cancer, and I was devastated. I had done all the DNA tests. It was even more depressing. Yes, it showed I was 50% Greek.

It also gave me very little Greek matches. I was just in absolute devastation, and as a person of faith, I was praying about this. I was literally fasting about this. I was reaching out to friends to help me. I had developed a search team that met on Facebook. It was a private search team called Finding Mr. Greek, and we were endeavoring to find my father. I'm a very deep person of [00:04:00] faith, as and at one point, I literally prayed for God to tell me my father's name, and amazingly, one day as I was praying about it, He dropped this name into my mind and said, "Your father's name is Gus." I know that sounds nuts to most people.

I figured it was gonna sound nuts to my search team because some of them are not people of faith. Nevertheless, I have great friends, and they helped me. When I said I wanna search for a man named Gus, they were on board with it, and we looked for a man named Gus 10 years younger to 10 years older than my mom just to have a 20-year stretch And we did that, and we would search for people that were in the area back in the 1960s in Richmond, Virginia, and we would search for them, and then I would call them if they were still alive or their family members, if they were dead, and I would ask them to take a DNA test to see if maybe we were connected, and that didn't work for any- anyone.

And then we brought in the search. We were looking for a man by any name who was Greek, who was in the area at that time, and we searched high [00:05:00] and low all over the world really for the next 10 years, and nothing. And then finally on May 11th, 2022, I got a very close DNA match of a first cousin.

Then we noticed that it was a, an X match and we had a high enough centimorgans there where we could figure that it was through his mother. And fortunately for us, his mother only had one brother, and we were absolutely stunned to find out that the man's name was Gus. And not only was his name Gus, but he was still alive.

He was 91 years old. He was still living in Richmond, Virginia. He had never gotten married, and he had never had any children, and I was his only one. And to make an extremely long story a little shorter, I connected with Gus within 24 hours on FaceTime. He immediately opened his arms to me. I pretty much did, in this case, have the fairy tale story.

He immediately opened his arms to me and was just even weeping and asking me how soon I could come. We met very quickly. [00:06:00] We began bonding very strongly, and he immediately accepted me into his life. It was really like every adoptee's dream who's searching, really. I realize I was, like, just so totally blessed.

And we connected, and he was not well physically. He was actually in a nursing home. He had taken a really bad fall three months before and was even, debatable as to whether he was even gonna live. He was only found because his doctor had done a wellness check. And so it took a couple months to stabilize him, and then he was put in a nursing home, and Adult Protective Services was in charge of him when I found him.

And then we were just bonding very strongly. I was flying there constantly even though I work full-time. I was... I would literally do an event for work and fly to Richmond and spend even 24 hours with him and then fly back and then go back to work. And I would bring my work with me and stay for days and just work, at the little tray table at the nursing home alongside him, and this went on for months.

And then we realized that this... first [00:07:00] of all, I'm not a millionaire, so flying back and forth constantly, it was just not really financially doable, and it was unsustainable to just keep up this pace of continuing to go back and forth, but we wanted to be together very badly, and we didn't really know how long we had.

We didn't know how long that he would live. So I went through the process to have basically almost custody, so to speak, over my father and to bring him home with me to Florida, and I brought him with me to Florida to live for the rest of his life. And we had all that time together until he passed away on December 6th of the same year.

So I'm so thankful for that. It's a miracle story. I always say it was better than Disney, and I still wake up every day pinching myself that this actually happened to me and that I could be so blessed as to have this type of not only knowing who my father is. I was thinking I was gonna find a grave and maybe an aunt or an uncle or a brother or a sister who could give me a picture of my father and tell me a [00:08:00] few things about him. I never imagined I would have what I did.

Haley Radke: I still teared up through you telling that story even though I know how it ends. I know I know parts of- ... parts of the middle, parts of the beginning.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And it's just like- It's what we all hope for, many of us hope for.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: It is. I know.

It's just, it's miraculous. It really is. It's miraculous. So miraculous that, everybody was telling me during that time period, "Write a book," and all that. I would do these little small paragraphs on social media and put them out there and put videos of us. Sometimes Gus and I would do videos together, and people loved it, but I wasn't interested in writing during that time anything extensive 'cause I wanted to spend all the time with him that I possibly could.

And it didn't really go that way because the social media posts were going places, even just those little tiny posts. And then, of course, David Begnaud and CBS News heard about it. They came to our house to spend three days with Gus and I. [00:09:00] Larissa MacFarquhar from The New Yorker came for three days to spend time with us, and then it made its way to everywhere from People Magazine to Woman's World to just so many other places.

So I'm really thank- I just... It doesn't even do it justice to say that I'm thankful for it. I wake up every day just so thankful to have known my father and to have had this opportunity.

Haley Radke: The last time you were on the show, he had passed several months prior, I'd say. I don't remember exactly, but say six months prior.

And, grief, they talk about stages of grief, and I'm wondering where you are now after several years have passed in mourning Gus and how you process that.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: It's different. Of course, it's not... I don't really believe we ever, quote, "get over," just like we never, quote, "get over" adoption.

I'm not over his [00:10:00] passing. I've moved forward, but it won't ever be something that I'm, over. I'm so thankful for even a brief time. I realized in real time I have no regrets. I realized in real time that we were limited. Of course, I always wanted more time, but I would literally write out questions.

I would write out questions, and every night I would ask him those questions and even record us so that I could always remember. Tons of questions, Haley "What was your favorite movie growing up? What's your favorite color? Tell me what elementary school was like for you. Tell me what middle school was like for you. Tell me what high school was like for you. What are your favorite sweet treats? What are your favorite meals? What are your favorite restaurants?" Just on and on. "What were your difficult experiences in high school? What do you wish you would've known then that you know now?" I just drilled the questions because I didn't know how much time we had, and I just wanted to know absolutely everything.

So it's helpful for me in grieving [00:11:00] that I don't have regrets. I asked him absolutely everything I could think of to ask, and we just loved each other every day. A lot of people during that time would say, "Aren't you angry? Is it hard for you to forgive him?" I chose... another decision that I think I made right was I chose to not get caught up in that in the moment.

It's not that I gave him a free pass and never asked him anything hard. I did ask him hard questions. But I chose to not get so wrapped up in that I couldn't enjoy him and enjoy the time we had together and to ask him all the questions I possibly could and to have a relationship. So I realized that I could process a lot of these other things like forgiveness after he was gone, but I was only gonna have this one chance to build that relationship and to ask him the things that I so longed to know and to bond with him and that I could process a lot of the other stuff later.

I'm a big believer in [00:12:00] therapy, so I go to therapy. And that's been very helpful to process a lot of the things that didn't make sense, a lot of the things that were hurtful, a lot of the things that were unfair. As I was told over and over again by my maternal biological family that they know nothing.

And even some of them were even very crass, saying, "Don't ever call us again," or, "Don't ever ask us anything again." Like as if... and I would wonder, "Okay if you know nothing, why are you so sensitive? If you know nothing, why are you so angry?" Like you're very defensive with me for a person that knows nothing.

And then as I shared on the last show that I did with you, I, in going through old boxes and records, I found proof that Gus had asked about me and that he had reached out to my maternal family and that the very people that told me, "We know nothing," they did know something. And so I had to work through all that.

I had to work through all those feelings of anger and not allow them to turn into bitterness and hate and allow me to become a person that I don't wanna be. So [00:13:00] there's a lot of things that are wrapped up in that grief not only of being separated from Gus for 56 years, but grief of the fact that people did lie to me.

People did know who he was. People did know where he was. And there was a lot more than just grieving that he's dead. I was grieving the overall picture. He didn't even know I was adopted. He thought... He explained to me and other Greek relatives explained to me that a lotta times Greeks don't, and it, just like in certain other cultures, they don't always give up their children, they will give them to a grandmother or an aunt or someone else in the family to raise.

And he had always assumed I was with my aunt. He never in a million years thought... The first time he found out I went to foster care, he exploded. He was so angry. And he just, he'd, he had no idea that's where I was. He knew I existed, and he knew I was somewhere, and he thought I was with my aunt, and that's who he had reached out to, was my aunt.

And who I had reached out to was my cousins, that aunt's daughters, [00:14:00] who also knew. And no one would tell me who he was or where he was. So all of that was part of working through the grieving process. And I'm doing well through all that. It's as I said, we never get over it, but we do go through it, and we can move forward, and that's where I'm at this time.

Haley Radke: Did you ever get answers from anyone? Like, why the secrecy? Why the hiding? 'Cause in my view- the, let's call it the shame of it, it's the, it's the- ... unexpected pregnancy, out-of-wedlock whatever. Okay. I don't get why people hide that, but okay. But then this, like, why? It just doesn't make any sense to me. I think I told you this last time too.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah. I have to preface all this by saying that I, like many or even most adoptees, I don't have absolute proof of what I'm about to say. So I need to underscore that, that I don't have absolute proof. But some of the [00:15:00] theories I have been told, first of all, the reason that we did not find Gus after looking for a man by the name Gus was that he was so much older than my mom.

He was... It wasn't just 10 years younger or 10 years older. My mom was 20 when she had me, and he was 36. My mom had only told me that he was Greek, 100% Greek, black wavy hair, didn't support her. And then she had also added on to that one more thing, that she was contacted by him in the '80s when he found out she got divorced and had talked about getting back together and that it was a horrible conversation and that she even considered it harassment and wanted nothing to do with him again.

So I knew that little tidbit. When I met people on my paternal side, I was told by some a different story, and again, I don't know if it's true or not. Another little tidbit that the adoption agency told me, not my mom, but the adoption agency in my non-identifying information had told me that my father was from California, he was married with a little boy, [00:16:00] and that when he found out that my mom was pregnant, he decided to go back to his wife and family.

Of course that was all untrue, but I don't, I didn't know where that came from. Where does this lie come from? When I met Gus, all of it came together. First of all, I found out that he had apparently or supposedly I want to say, allegedly, told someone in the family "Whatever you do, don't get a girl pregnant."

And they said did... Is this coming from personal experience?" And he said, "I don't wanna talk about it." And that told that family member that perhaps there was someone out there, maybe there was a child, an adult son or daughter out there. And then everybody in the family wondered, why isn't Gus married?

Greek people are very family-oriented, and they typically, they go to the, at least back in the day especially, they went to the Greek Orthodox Church. They met their future mate through the Greek Orthodox Youth Association. It was unheard of to marry [00:17:00] someone not in the Greek church, and that was just how it went.

And nobody could figure out, why is Gus not married? He's a very attractive man, and he loved women. Everybody just assumed he was not gay because he was just a womanizer to the nth degree. And they wondered, why isn't he putting down roots? Why isn't he getting married? Why isn't he having children?

What is happening here? And I guess some people did some digging to find out why, and I don't have proof that this was my mom again, but the story that was told was that he was dating a much younger woman whose parents did not approve. That's exactly what it says in my non-identifying information from the adoption agency, that the parents did not approve, that he was so much older, that he was a player, he was a womanizer.

They did not like him. That was part of the reason they said, "We do not support you. Do not bring this baby home. You are placing them for adoption." And so her parents [00:18:00] didn't approve, and then I found out after meeting Gus that his parents didn't approve and said, "She's too young, and the main thing is she's not Greek.

She's not wife material. No, this is not happening. You're not going to do this." And so as I said, allegedly, as the story goes, he was told it's either this girl or your family. It's either her or us." And he supposedly made a decision and said, "Okay, I'll stay in the family. I won't marry this girl, but I'll tell you what.

I'm not gonna marry a Greek woman and I'm not gonna give you any grandchildren." And He never did. He never got married. He womanized his whole entire life. Back when he was living with me, we would have these talks late into the night. I would feed him supper, and then we would just talk for hours.

And one night, I said, "So you just womanized until the end of your life." I said two of his friends that I [00:19:00] met, Flo and Francis, one dated him for a while, and they've told me many of these same stories. They've backed up all of these stories that he's told me. And I said, "What did you do as far as these girlfriends?

Did you bring them home?" He said, "Oh, I never brought them home. I didn't want them to know where I lived, and I didn't want them to know my... And when I was living with my family, I didn't want them to know my family." I said, "Where did you take them?" He said, "I always took them to a hotel or to their place. I would never let them know anything about my life." And Francis, who was a friend that I met and was friends with up until the time of her death just a few months ago, told me that he would even tell women that his family was dead, that he had no family. He didn't want his family meeting these girlfriends because he didn't want them getting attached because he had no plans to get married and no plans to have any children, and he didn't want them to mix with his family.

And then to get further clarity one day when he's sitting there in bed and I'm feeding him and getting him ready for nighttime and going to sleep, I said "So what's this California thing? [00:20:00] What is this California thing? I don't... Where does this California story come from about you having a wife and kids, and why did that happen?"

And, Gus' profession, he was a dancer and a, a dance teacher. He was very widely acclaimed. He danced at the White House in the 1960s for the president. He was a very beloved teacher in the area and did a lot of work as well on shows and things like that, and as a dancer. And I said "Where did this California thing come from?"

He goes, "Oh, around the time that your mother was pregnant with you, I got a eight-week dance contract in California, and I took it, and I went out there, and that was my excuse." "Oh, there's a wife and kids you don't know about in California," and I really was in California. I just didn't have a wife, and I didn't have kids, and I was out there for work for a while.

And then when that was over, I flew back to Richmond. So that's where that crazy story came from. And I wasn't sure. I think maybe he had made it up to make the separation easier [00:21:00] rather than say, "I'm just not gonna choose you. I'm gonna choose my family," meaning my mom and dad, my culture. I think it was easier to say...

It might have been easier or seemed easier to say, "Hey, listen, I didn't tell you this before, but I have a wife and kids in California, and I'm gonna go back there and try to make that work." But that was all a lie. And then, of course, I'm always, digging on these things, and I ask his friends that I had met.

After I found Gus, I reached out to all the same Richmond, Virginia social media sites that I had posted on before trying to find him, asking people to help me. I reached out and said, "I found my dad. This is who he is. Do any of you know him? Do you have pictures? Do you have videos? Do you have memories that you can share with me?"

And people did come forward and said, "I know your father. I know him well," or even, "I used to date him," or what have you. And I became friends with different people that responded. And I asked these friends, "Did you ever hear these type of stories, or is this something that you could picture him doing, like giving this excuse?"

And they're like, "Oh, yeah, [00:22:00] absolutely. He would've said whatever he had to say to, get out of this, to cover this up." So that's where that California story comes from. But I found a lot... In answer to your question, I found out a lot of the things like this just by these late night talks and just asking the questions.

Haley Radke: For adopted people, often before we know the answers, if we're lucky to ever get an answer- there's just the feeling of like not being complete or not being rooted or people describe it in- ... various ways. But how have things changed for you now that more of the answers to both, both sides?

And can you just talk about that? I know some people are reluctant to search or some people won't get those answers.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: But what difference has it made for you?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: It has made a huge difference for me, and it's not only me that sees it. My husband is so grateful for it. He is so thankful for it. My husband is not a, a crier. I've [00:23:00] seen him cry maybe five times in 39 years of marriage. But when Gus passed away, my husband stood over his body when the funeral home said, "We'll give you a couple last minutes with him in the living room," as they had him on a stretcher, and my husband stood over his body and just cried and cried.

And then when they took him out, my husband went out and stood on the front steps and cried. And when he came back in, of course I was crying, but I was in shock that my husband was like this because even with other people that have died, I haven't seen this behavior.

And I said, "Wow, babe. You're taking this even stronger than I am tonight." And he said, "I'm reacting this way because he changed your life. I'm reacting this way because I now see the change in you, the change I have waited to see for all these years of marriage. I now see this huge change in you.

I can't even thank..." I would even [00:24:00] overhear him tell Gus several times, "Thank you so much for saying yes to Deanna. You've made all the change in her life. I can't even thank you enough as a husband for the change you've brought to my wife's life." People that have known me for many years in the church, they would say different things to me like, "Wow, Pastor Deanna, you just have this sense of peace that I've not ever seen in you before. Not that you were, like, this particularly non-peaceful person before, but I see this new, I see this new thing in you that I can't even describe." I wanna be clear that it doesn't take away absolutely every question you've ever had, 'cause there's always gonna be things we wonder if they were true.

There's always gonna be those loose ends that we may not be able to tie up. There are always things that I wish I knew more about. However, I will say that something... I felt kinda 50% settled down when my maternal reunion happened. I didn't feel completely settled. I never felt completely settled until I met Gus.

But I felt [00:25:00] halfway settled down in my soul when I met my birth mom. When Gus and I met the other piece was in place, and there was a settledness that came that I had never experienced. I don't walk around anymore looking at faces in public wondering if these people are related to me. I don't have that constant searching in my mind.

When I hear people bring up certain places or certain years or periods of time, I don't wonder, "Oh, could they be my family? Are these people related to me?" Like, all of that wondering and searching and that restlessness it's gone, and it's so freeing. It's so freeing to not have to live in that space anymore.

Haley Radke: When you were describing Gus being so stubborn to his family, being like, "Oh, yeah? I'm never getting- ... married or having kids. Joke's on you," I thought, [00:26:00] "Dang- ... I think Deanna's got a bit of that streak, who searches with such tenacity and assembles a team and keeps year after year like..."

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: You're right. My husband calls me Gus Jr. He used to tell Gus, I'm telling you, he says, "I am married to Gus Jr."

Haley Radke: That's cute. Do you have the moves? Do you have the moves Gus had?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Not professionally, I will say. I would never be hired as a professional dancer, but I love to dance. I absolutely love it, always have.

Haley Radke: Oh.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: And just for something fun to do. I love it with friends. I love even just being on a cruise with friends and dancing, or dancing at a wedding and things like that, or just dancing with friends. Yes, absolutely love it for fun.

Haley Radke: That's lovely. I love knowing that. I really do.

I think that's one of the most special things for me when I was reading your book and, like- filling in those [00:27:00] gaps for you, for, like, where did these things come from? I don't know. I craved that so much- ... in my own story-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yep ...

Haley Radke: too. So before we got on, I was saying to you, I was trying to figure out when we first connected, because I remember getting your first books that were about adoption reunion and Worthy To Be Found, and I remember reading those. I think I recommended them on early episodes-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: You did ...

Haley Radke: of Adoptees On. Okay, so you remember that. I remember you blogging at Lost Daughters.

I remember reading Adoptee Restoration and how- ... impactful that was for me in my early years. I looked up to you so much and respected your wisdom so much.

And so now to be, friends with you and to be connected, it's just really special for me. Anyway, earlier this year I saw you started posting on Adoptee Restoration again, and you started a Substack, and I-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes ...

Haley Radke: I got really [00:28:00] excited because the community that's able to be built just in the comments, even on Facebook, I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is what folks have been missing." How did you come to decide- ... to bring Adoptee Restoration back and what's, how has that been going for you?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: It's been going great. I was on a hiatus for a very long time from it. First of all, I just got so busy with my job. I do work full-time, and I got so busy with my job and ministry and just everything.

But a lot of it, too, was the stress we can sometimes go through as adoptee communicators. It, as can get very heavy. The comment section, even if you don't read the comments or you try to ignore them, the comment sections, particularly from adoptive parents, can be so rough and even abusive.

And then sometimes you get a lot of really [00:29:00] bad attacks from adoptees who haven't worked through many issues, and they choose to lash out at you. And for people like you and I, busy professionals with a family, I know your family is a huge priority for top priority for you in your life, as is mine.

And one of the things that I really wanna have in life, it was always my dream to develop the kind of family I always wanted to have. So my family is a priority. My work is a priority. My friends are a priority. I just only had so much space, and many days when you're just facing all these attacks online, it gets heavy.

It gets very heavy. I kept the blog Adoptee Restoration up. It was still there, and I kept my social media, my Facebook page there and very rarely posted on it, maybe a couple times a year. But I backed up because I'm like, "I just don't know if this level of stress..." And stewardship.

If you do something, Haley, [00:30:00] you do it right. If I do something, I do it right. I'm gonna steward it well. I'm gonna facilitate it. It's gonna be done the right way. So I didn't really enter the fray again for a very long time. And then what really began to stir me, ultimately, I believe it was the Lord.

However, God used people. So when Larissa MacFarquhar came from The New Yorker to my house for those three days, I was wondering that whole time "Is it my imagination?" Or "Could I see myself being friends with this person?" I didn't even know if that was even a thing, if she would ever remember me again or ever wanna hear from me, or if this was just her job.

But we actually did become friends who stayed in touch, and even when she was at my house for those three days, she would say why aren't you still speaking out more about this? And you have a lot of important things to say, and you say them very well, and I don't understand why you're not stepping into this arena."

And I would say as you can see in your interviewing process [00:31:00] and searching all of these sites online, there, there is a really heavy comment section that can just get really difficult. And I'm just really, I just really don't know if I'm up to that. And she would say, "I just really believe you're meant to step out into the fray."

Then there was an adoptive parent who I've mentioned to you, Haley. She follows you. I know she'll be listening to this. Danielle Quinones. She has read everything I've written. She has listened to everything you've ever produced and loves it. And she she's an adoptive parent who's really doing things right.

And she reached out to me, and she said, "Deanna, why aren't you speaking about this? Why aren't you still writing at Adoptee Restoration? Why aren't you in this arena?" And I explained all the same things to her that I did to Larissa and that I have to you, and she said I really believe you belong here.

I really think you need to pray about coming back." And so I did, and it was not a fast decision. It w- this was something over I was really wrestling with it the last time you and I interviewed. I was really wrestling with [00:32:00] the whole thing even though I had just, I had just found Gus, and you had a lot of just off-the-record advice for me on taking time with my book, not rushing the process, which I did.

I was never so glad to have received that advice and never so glad that I took it. And just waiting, trying to figure out in my spirit, what I was supposed to do and where I belong. And a couple months ago, I just had an assurance in my spirit that this is what I was supposed to do.

There was another conversation with Larissa just sitting out on my porch talking on the phone, and she said, "Have you thought any more about this, Deanna? I really feel like it's where you belong." And then another conversation with Danielle. "Have you thought about this anymore? I really feel like it's where you belong."

And I decided to just put myself back out there, and boom. It just, it's been a great response ever since. So I'm glad to be back, and there are days where the comment section does get heavy, but I'm doing the best I can.

Haley Radke: I'm trying to describe the feeling. I felt like- [00:33:00] relief, I think, to see you back there because- it does get heavy, and there's times where I want to pause, and I wanna know that there's other people out there carrying some of the weight. So I love that you're-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: you're there.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Thank you. Thank you. And even though I haven't been speaking out for several years, I still follow. I still follow everything you do.

I still follow what you're doing. I still needed to have a personal investment in me as an adoptee and to receive from other people. And it's been a great joy to keep following what you're doing and to receive the personal help that I need.

Haley Radke: Can you talk to us a little bit... I know you're a writer. People know that. You've written many books, both on adoption but also in your vocation as a minister. And can you talk about what it was like to write [00:34:00] about Gus and to- go through papers and listen to the recordings- ... you made and what's it been like for you to do that?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Almost indescribable. I've never taken so much time on anything I've written. In fact, one time I felt led to write a book for this tour that I was doing as a part of my job, this women's tour for my job. I'm the director for women for the state of Florida for the Assemblies of God. And I felt led to write a book and, but I would have to do it real quick in time to have to give it to these women on this tour.

And I wrote an entire book in 30 days. I'm a fast writer. I can crank out, I can crank out content. I don't write slowly, ever. It's just not what I do. So taking your advice and you had talked to me about it, it's not just write slowly for the sake of writing slowly, but it was because I was going through the grief process and not rushing that.

And also realizing that on year one I might feel differently than I do on [00:35:00] year two, and there's more to share or there's something different to share. Now I'm four years out. This happened... he passed in 2022, and this was a very hard... The... I tell people, this is my seventh book, and I tell you what, this... and I will write many books after this, this is the book I was born to write. I will never do any more important book than this one. I can assure you of that. And it's not just because it was a miracle story, but because woven into this book, I've tried to, I've tried to share the common thoughts and experiences of those of us who are domestic adoptees born in the baby scoop era with the closed and sealed records, and what that process is like for us, and that only 17 states are still are open in the United States of America, and that we need to see change and to help people try to understand what some of us have lived through.

And so I feel like this is the project of [00:36:00] my life. 'Cause I'm not just weaving the story of me and my father. I'm trying to describe what it is like to be me, what it is like to be many of us So that process has been very long, and there were whole chapters, like the chapter where he died, that I don't even... it took it well over a year to just even finish that one chapter. I would just write a little bit, write a couple paragraphs, and just sit and cry. And then write another couple paragraphs, and cry, and put it away for a week or two. Pick it back up, write another couple paragraphs, and cry.

The part where I describe the moments of his death and the moments right after, it was just overwhelmingly emotional to call those memories up again, to describe them exactly as I remember them being, and to try to quantify the enormity of those moments for people, to try to bring them into... make them feel like they were in that room with me when I lost my father. [00:37:00] So it was a very long process, and I'm glad that I've taken all this time, and I'm still on that journey, to be honest with you

Haley Radke: I remember when you were so very public with the story, when you had all the media coverage and eyes on you.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And, we spoke about it, and you really were like, "I made them focus on the adoptee lens. I made that..." The, the boundaries you put up and how firm you were about that. And I think you and I both share this passion for adopted people to have-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes ...

Haley Radke: the mic and to be seen, and so I so- appreciate that about you.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: That was another thing, I gotta be honest with you, about coming back to this space. I want to be... I endeavor all the time to be a mature leader and someone who responds in the right way. I say leader, referring to myself as a leader, not just a writer. I want to always respond in a way that is [00:38:00] wise, and sometimes it is very hard to not just pop off with some crazy thing when they don't focus on the adoptee experience, and here they are, reporter after reporter would call me and try to talk to me about this miracle story of my father and I, but inevitably, within the first few minutes, they would say something like, "And how does your adoptive mother feel about this?" And I would just wanna scream or punch somebody in the face. It's so hard in those moments to handle yourself with wisdom, with maturity, with grace, and I've tried really hard.

But that was another reason why it took me so long to come back to being in this arena. Because dealing with questions and statements and comments like that, it's maddening. It's maddening, and I just find myself saying, "Is it ever gonna change?" We're here to be part of the change, but it gets so frustrating dealing with that.

I have turned down interviews. I have turned down interviews with, I won't even name the names, but people that everybody would know [00:39:00] because I said these are my ground rules, especially after the first couple that I experienced and I saw how they go, I would tell them upfront, "This isn't... This is a story about my father and I. These are the ground rules. Don't ask me how my adoptive mother feels about this or I'm not doing this interview." And one, one reporter even said do you understand that our viewers are not gonna be okay with this?" And I'm like, "Yes, I actually do understand that they won't be okay with it, 'cause I've lived with this for 56 years of my life, so yeah, I do understand that."

And so she said, "But do you understand that they're not gonna be okay with that and that they will probably bombard us with that question? They will bombard our media agency. They will bombard us with this question. We're just gonna hear this constantly, so wouldn't it just be easier to answer it in the interview?"

And I said, "No, because I don't want to, because this is a story about me and my father." And she said do you understand that if they can't get this information from us, they're probably gonna then [00:40:00] track you down and bombard you to get the information?" I said, "Yes, ma'am, I do understand that. I've dealt with this 56 years of my life.

Why do you think I'm refusing to answer the question? Because it needs to stop." And then there were interviews that some people would think I was crazy to turn down, but did because I'm just not going to... I'm just not gonna be bullied in that way anymore. I'm just not gonna do it.

Haley Radke: I'm gonna be shady, 'cause I know one of them, and then I know who stepped in- and was fine selling out. I- you have a lot of integrity.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah. And that celebrity, let me just say, and this is what they do, that celebrity, which everybody would recognize her name, everybody listening to this interview would recognize her name, when I said, "These are my boundaries. This is an interview about me and my adoptive [sic: biological] dad.

This isn't about my adoptive mom," she made the statement that we're not gonna do this interview because you've got bad vibes [00:41:00] you've got bad vibes. I'm like, "Cool. Okay, I got bad vibes." I'm not, you're not going to bully me into, you're not gonna name call and bully me into doing this interview. I'm just not doing it. I'm very content to have bad vibes. If that what she thinks, let her think it

Haley Radke: Wow. I will be mature and keep my comments to myself. Everybody guess in the comments.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: So much we could say.

Haley Radke: No, just kidding.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: So much we could say.

Haley Radke: I appreciate you so much. I was so honored to read an early copy of your book, and Finding Mr. Greek, I think is gonna be on everyone's reading list this fall. Instead of gushing, 'cause I'm gonna go too long, I'm just gonna read the endorsement I wrote for you. Is that okay ?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Oh, yeah, I would love that, and thank you for endorsing it. I'm honored that you endorsed it.

Haley Radke: If you've ever reached out to me for [00:42:00] a book endorsement, you'll get the email saying, "I only endorse books that I read all the way through and I actually love." So I don't... It doesn't go on very many books.

"Finding her father, Gus, feels miraculous, but it's Deanna's rare compassion in caring for him that makes this story unforgettable. Being invited into her search and reunion while also exploring the hard truths of being an adoptee feels like meeting on hallowed ground. A moving, tear-filled, and deeply authentic account that will resonate with anyone who understands the pain of not knowing where you come from."

I'm so proud of you, my friend. It's so good. And we've talked before about faith and how difficult it can be in this space because so many of us were hurt in a way by the church.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes.

Haley Radke: Conflating adoption [00:43:00] and saviorism and all of those kinds of things, so a lot of us have had difficult experiences.

But I think even as you bring your your personal faith through this book, I think even people who are not necessarily interested in that will take away a lot from your story. And getting to know Gus through your eyes is so special.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: It was such a joy to be able to introduce him to the world. I did a little bit of that with the little bit of time we had together just through even 30-second videos. And people loved him. They thought he was so hilarious, and he was. Through the short reels on social media and the short posts, but being able to have this longer opportunity to really describe him and our relationship was such a joy.

Haley Radke: Yes. What did you wanna recommend for us today?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes, there's so many things I could recommend.

Of course, I always, I'm not just [00:44:00] saying this, I don't want anybody to think I am just buttering up to you here. I really mean it. The number one thing I always recommend is your show. But if I have to come up with another one and I can't use that one, I would say I wanna recommend the Adoptee Therapist Directory.

I am a huge believer in therapy. The one regret that I have from my initial, my maternal reunion is that I didn't have any therapy going through that whole thing, and it was just so difficult. So I'd already gone to therapy through the years, but with my reunion with Gus, I immediately, therapy was so key, and for us to go through that.

And then I've had a lot of therapy after that, too, and I just recommend it for all adoptees to have trauma-informed therapy with an adoption competent, particularly adoptee competent therapist. So I love this site, growbeyondwords.com and Beyond Words Psychological Services. They have this fantastic resource that they call the Adoptee Therapist Directory, and these are therapists that [00:45:00] specifically work with adoptees all over the world. And I just, I think that's wonderful.

Haley Radke: I love it. I send folks there all the time, and there's more and more therapists who are licensed for all the states and yes, great recommendation. Where can we find Finding Mr. Greek and Adoptee Restoration and connect with you online, Deanna?

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes, you can find Finding Mr. Greek on Amazon. And thank you for directing people there. And please leave a review. Leave an honest review, please, if you read it. I'm honored by people that do that. It really helps to get the word out. You can also find me at drdeannashrodes.com. D-R Deanna Schrodes, D-E-A-N-N-A S-H-R-O-D-E-S.com.

That's my main website just for all things Deanna Schrodes. And then you can find my old ... I just began this Substack when I began really entering in with Adoptee Restoration again, because my [00:46:00] old blog was on Blogger and I just wanted an updated platform. So all my old work is archived at adopteerestoration.com.

The whole, the whole entire archive of all of my old posts, my initial posts that everybody got to know me by are at adopteerestoration.com. And then there's the link there to my new Substack, which is Adoptee Restoration on Substack. That's where I'm writing now. Oh, and then the main place that I interact with adoptees is the Adoptee Restoration Facebook.

Haley Radke: When I went to, do a little research to prepare for today, I was reading back through some of the old posts and I was like, "Oh my Go-..." I just had such this nostalgia feeling. We were friends then, you just didn't know it.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yes. Yes. Absolutely, we were. I love it.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much-

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: I love it

Haley Radke: for coming back, sharing more of your story.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Oh.

Haley Radke: And just congratulations on the book. It's wonderful.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Haley. It is always a joy. You got the best thing going here with Adoptees On. And have you talked yet about [00:47:00] your new project that's getting ready to launch?

Haley Radke: People know. People know. Yes.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Oh, okay.

Haley Radke: Yes. I'll continue to talk about it.

Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.: Yeah, you're getting ready to launch this... Yeah. Yeah. Please. This new thing that she's talking about, everyone needs to know about it because it's gonna change the world.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you. Appreciate that.

You can find out more about my new project that Deanna was mentioning at the end of our conversation. It's called On Adoption. The website is onadoption.net, and if you sign up for our podcast newsletter, you will certainly hear about any updates. Adopteeson.com/newsletter. I feel so grateful for my friendships with fellow adoptee advocates in particular because they really get it and we share the same passion, which is supporting adult adoptees.

And I have been so grateful to have Deanna [00:48:00] as a part of my life, and of course, you can hear her passion behind her story and her willingness to serve adoptee community. So she is well beloved among- by many of us. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

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Adoptees On