331 Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Transcript

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

---

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'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.

330 Deanna Shrodes, D.Min.

Transcript

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

---

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'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.

329 Alex Blum

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/329

---

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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Alex Blum, author of An Accident of Birth. Alex shares his story of how he reconnected with his three full biological brothers through DNA testing. We also talk about seeing yourself reflected in biological family for the first time, nature versus nurture, and what Alex has come to believe about adoption in recent years.

Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Alex Blum. Welcome, Alex.

Alex Blum: Thanks, Haley. I'm so happy to [00:01:00] be here, and I really appreciate the opportunity, frankly.

Haley Radke: Your voice has been in my ears for the last couple days. I've been reading your book on audio. I've been listening to you on other podcasts, but I- for my listeners who maybe don't know you, would you mind sharing a bit of your story with us?

Alex Blum: Sure. I'd be happy to. I was born in the '50s, right? And so I was adopted in the mid-'50s, and I'm sure everybody knows that at that time, adoption was completely closed and firewalled and, it was impossible to get any kind of information without lawyers and a court order, and people used to hire private detectives and all the rest of it.

And so that was my history. So I knew nothing about my birth family, mother, parents, nothing. And, that was my experience for most of my life. And as I got older and when I had kids, I started to get a little more curious about the whole situation and about my history. [00:02:00] And then about seven years ago, I was on 23andMe for quite some time.

My wife actually got it for me as a gift. And about seven years ago, in 2019, I came home from vacation and I opened my computer and there was a message there from a young woman named Brooke, who is my niece now, and she had gone on 23andMe and bought a kit for her husband, and they sent her another one by mistake, which speaks to, for me, how important coincidence and randomness is in life, right?

And so she sent in the kit, and next thing she messaged me and said, "This is weird. It looks like we have," I can't remember exactly, but 24% shared DNA. And the result of that was that- within a day or two, I found myself on the phone with three brothers of mine. They're my full brothers.

I'm the oldest of the four of us, and I had no idea they existed, [00:03:00] and I had no point of view or understanding of this until it happened. So it was one of those sort of amazing kind of miraculous things that kinda fall from the sky, and it's a very... It's a really good story. It's all upside for us, for me and for my brothers, and all of a sudden I had all of a sudden I have four brothers and their spouses, and I have six nieces that I didn't have before, and everybody's really all connected.

So it's been a really miraculous experience. And what happened was that very... almost immediately after I got connected to my brothers, we started doing this thing, which they were doing already, which is we have a Zoom call every Friday. In fact, this morning. And we started talking, and of course, we're comparing stories because it's all about parallel lives, this whole thing, right?

When you have this experience, I'm sure you've heard lots of people say this. And what it does is it gives you perspective, and you get to rewind the tape and fill in the blanks. So we [00:04:00] started doing this, and it came to me very quickly. I thought I have to write a book.

I have to write about this. This is something. So I said to them, are you guys cool with this?" And they were, as they always are, they were like, "Yeah, great. We're all in." So I started writing the book, and it took me about four years to get to A, something I was prepared to say was a finished draft, and then of course several more years of editing and fixing and dealing with the whole publishing experience, which is a whole other subject that I don't even wanna get into and all of that.

So that's a basic background for all this, and, what it's really done is it's, it really expanded my understanding of the whole adoption environment, if you will and I've been exposed to the experiences of a lot of other adopted people, which cover all sorts, that really run the gamut from people who are traumatized by it, people who have had joyful connections, [00:05:00] people who haven't, people who've had disappointing efforts to connect with their birth relatives.

All sorts of stuff. So it's been a really big learning experience for me, without a doubt. So that started the origin of the whole thing.

Haley Radke: Can you tell me a little bit about doing the DNA test? In your book, you alluded that you probably wouldn't have searched. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Alex Blum: Yeah, that's an interesting question. At one point I said to my wife, after I'd been on 23 for years, and I think I was starting to resign myself to the likelihood that, my parents... And in this situation, I think it's normally or it's more common for people to talk about their mother than their father, for whatever reason, and I had resigned myself, like, that, my mother had probably passed away and my father and all the rest of it.[00:06:00]

I didn't really focus too much on the, on siblings for some reason, even though the story everybody loves is Steve Jobs finding his sister Mona Simpson, who was a famous author, so you hear that story. But I hadn't really focused on that very much, and I said to my wife, "You know what? I'm not gonna go searching around and make a meal out of this.

If they're out there, they'll find me." And I don't even know really why I said that, but that's what happened.

Haley Radke: So you tell a story of a moment of holding your first child, which is a moment for a lot of us if we choose to become a parent, and I'm curious if you had curiosity throughout your life.

And I get that stance of if it happens. If it doesn't," but just talk to me a little bit about that. Your... did you have wonderings about where you came from and your story and those kinds of things? [00:07:00]

Alex Blum: Yeah, I did. I did. But I also, to be honest, it was pretty clear to me as I was growing up that My mother, my adopted mother and my father to a lesser extent, but my, my mother, it was very clear that she took a dim view of people that were pursuing, people who wanted to find their birth parents, people...

it's like she framed it almost like it was some form of neurosis. Like, why would you do that kind of thing. And I think whether rightfully or not, I think I internalized that. So I think that, yes, I was curious, no doubt, and I became more and more curious as my children were born and they asked me question- medical history and these kinds of questions and all that sort of stuff.

And then, my parents both passed away. My mom died in 2001 and my dad died like '90, I don't know, '98 or '99, something like that. My adopted parents, and that kind [00:08:00] of cleared the decks for me a little bit because I knew that they had a very dim, negative view of that and I was sensitive to that.

So I think it created a little space for me at that point because I felt like there was really no downside for anybody, and that made it easier. Because yeah, for sure I was curious. Although, I didn't really anticipate what actually happened. But absolutely, I was curious and I wanted to know.

And I had a funny experience which I talk about pretty often. I don't know if you're a fan of the show Mad Men.

But it's that's my dad basically, Don Draper. And that whole, that's the '50s. That, like my dad's office looked like that and I knew people like that and, and there's a... we were big fans of the show and we were watching the show and there's this thing that happens in the show where Peggy, who is a groundbreaker in advertising as a woman and transitions from being a secretary to being a, creative person and she's a very dynamic character. And she has this moment with this guy and she [00:09:00] has sex with a guy in the office and she gets pregnant.

And it's the '50s and she comes from I think classic Irish family in Queens which my dad's secretary was 100% that person. And so she has to, she agrees or decides to give up her child and there's a scene in the show that happens in the hospital after she's given birth and Don goes there to see her and they have this conversation in which she says, "This is not your life.

This didn't happen. So you're gonna get up and you're gonna go on with your life and that's that." And at that moment when that happened, I didn't know that was gonna happen on the show and this, this scene happened. I turned to my wife and I think my kids were sitting and I said, "I can't watch this." And I had to stand up and leave the room.

It was like I, this is way too close to home for me.

Haley Radke: It's accurate.

Alex Blum: 100%.

Haley Radke: That's what doctors told their patients who were mothers that were relinquishing. That's what they told them.

Alex Blum: Yeah. "

Haley Radke: Forget [00:10:00] this ever happened."

Alex Blum: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And don't tell anyone 'cause it's gonna ruin your life.

Alex Blum: It felt very real to me. I thought, "Here it is right here. This is it. This could be my mom right here."

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Alex Blum: It was, I... It was impressive, I thought.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Alex Blum: What they did. So I had moments like that, for sure, where I thought, "Wow." And we didn't know. My wife and I used to talk. Maybe your mom was a drug addict. Who knows? You know what I mean? You just don't know. You don't know.

Haley Radke: I think it's been pretty common for me hearing from adoptees who wait till their adoptive parents pass before they feel safety enough to really examine that part.

Alex Blum: I'm sure that, I think that's true. And it was on the other side of the coin, talking to my brothers, our birth mother, she...

And this gets into the importance of this book, Relinquished, that I also kinda wanna talk about a little. But she, I think, there's a good deal of [00:11:00] evidence, and if you saw that in my book, the little note that she wrote. It's pretty obvious she was pretty tortured by her experience, and I don't think that's in the least bit uncommon.

I think that is a super common thing for moms who give up their children. So on a certain level, my brothers and I have, I think we all feel that it was just as well that all of the parents were gone, because I can't even imagine what it would've been like for her, after the life that she lived, for me to suddenly pitch up in front of her as a 60-something-year-old man and go, "Hey, I'm your kid, the one you gave up, you remember?"

That doesn't feel like it would've been super comfortable for her, or probably me, or anybody, frankly.

Haley Radke: Can we talk about this, how you... she's passed already once you reunite with your brothers. But how you build this picture of who she was through the [00:12:00] eyes of your full brothers.

Alex Blum: These phone calls that we have were super important, and we, 'cause we just talked for an hour.

We talked a lot about her, and they would tell me stories about her. A lot of those stories are in the book, in other sections where they speak in their own voice, and we talked about all that. My brother Hank's wife, Jen, had a lot of personal, had some personal experience of her, so Jen told me some stories about her.

Jen is always saying, "Wow, you remind me of her," which is so interesting. It's a interesting thing to hear. So it's just really, it's assembled just from conversations with people, mostly my brothers, to some extent their spouses. Our mother, she was alienated from most of her family members, so there really wasn't any of that kind of input, aunts and uncles and people like that.

And she was very volatile. She [00:13:00] was not very reliable. She was a serious alcoholic. You know what I mean? So there was, like, this sort of- unreliable narrator feature of her personality, so we just assembled... we just talked and basically just assembled a kind of a spoken word picture.

And I'm sure there's stuff we don't know and stuff that I don't know, stuff that we've missed, but yeah, we just did the best we could, to fill in the blanks.

Haley Radke: And your father died much sooner than her. So how old were your siblings when he passed?

Alex Blum: My brother Hank is the oldest of the three, and then Pete's two years younger, and then Bill is another four or five years younger.

Hank was 10.

Haley Radke: Okay. So it's... I wonder how learning about your father has been different than you have years of experience with your mother and so many stories [00:14:00] to tell you. How have you assembled that together for yourself?

Alex Blum: Of course of the four, my adopted parents and my parent- my birth parents, he is the biggest mystery, not only to me, but frankly to my brothers as well, because they were so young.

Bill really doesn't even remember him. So that was weird. But the, the context is intriguing because he and my adopted father were very similar. They were both in marketing. They were both, marketing and advertising. My birth father was a, an executive at Pepsi and Canada Dry. My dad was in charge of sales promotion, public relations for Macy's, and he worked for Unilever.

And they both had a lot of international or sort of global connection. So in, at least in superficial ways, they appear to have been very similar in a funny way, which is interesting. But in terms of him and what he was like, it's hard to know. [00:15:00] There's not that much to work with. He was in the military in the Second World War.

He was, from what I understand a little bit of a war hero. There's not a lot of detail there to work with, to be honest.

Haley Radke: And the thing about that is if you had searched sooner he would've had passed anyway. There's no, no time that would've helped-... with that. Yeah.

Alex Blum: That wouldn't have filled that space.

Haley Radke: No. Thank you for sharing that because a lot of us search and find a grave, and the complexity of trying to fill in knowledge that feels like is owed to us in some way, and it's so difficult when they're not here. So it's really neat that you have your brothers and this extended family to fill in some of those gaps for you.

Alex Blum: It is. And it, I guess there's a feature of it which is great because it's coming to me from my brothers. So it's I don't know if I can explain this clearly. It's a little [00:16:00] bit like it's my experience. What they're telling me is a large part of what I would have remembered if I had grown up.

You know what I mean? So there's some sort of consistency there, if you will, because what they're telling me is I was two years older I don't know how much that would've changed things, but it still feels like their perception is in some way similar to what my perception would've been, so it feels accurate to me, right?

And we all know all memory is unreliable in some way, right? Your brain is constantly sifting and creating and filling in blanks and doing all sorts of stuff. So all you can do with memory, and with a memoir if you write one, is just try to be as truthful as possible. You can't promise that everything you say is something everyone's gonna agree with. It's impossible.

Haley Radke: Yeah, absolutely. I think for... I remember when I first learned, it must've been in my psych undergrad, something about every time you access a [00:17:00] memory in your brain, you're overwriting that part. You're st- like, you're changing it every time you access a memory. It's a little weird to think about.

Alex Blum: Th- actually, that's a kind of interesting way to look at it. Yeah, because you are. You're inevitably and every time you tell it, you know how that is where we refine the stories we tell all the time? Which goes back to what I was saying before, because one of my experiences is that when people say that thing to me, "Oh, I read your book. I know that story," it's like I think, "Wow, I gotta come up with some new stories." I can't keep telling the same stories again and again. It's kind of a challenge. It's funny.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I have that happen with the podcast. I have a, a Patreon show, too, and I'll say something, and then I'll have my in real life I'll be- recount something that I've already shared on the podcast, and they're like, "I've already heard that." I'm like, "Okay that's weird. That's a weird part."

Alex Blum: Like, all that material that I was using is I used it already. Now I have to come up with new material.

Haley Radke: And your book covers a lot of ground. It does. It does, so that makes sense. Let's talk about nature [00:18:00] versus nurture. And I hear you when you say your biological mother was an addict or an alcoholic, very complicated. Sounds like there was some difficult things happening especially once her husband had passed, your father. And also, your adoptive family, I'm like, whew. Okay, they were wealthy, but they didn't seem like super nurturing people either if I'm being candid with you.

Ready to send you off to boarding school. It's a... I know it's a different time, but also, it's... it was a wild thing to read about. Let's... Can you talk about nurture versus nature?

Alex Blum: It's funny what you said because at one time I was being as, again, as you read, I was being difficult as a teenager.

I was in high school and I was... I went to high school in New York, but for two years after I was trying out a school, and I remember I was being really a, pain in the ass. And my mom looked at me and she said, "You're not even supposed to be here." And I [00:19:00] thought okay, that's pretty honest."

Haley Radke: Wait, what did you take that as?

Alex Blum: It was so typical. I just figured I'll just put that in a file of things like that she used to say. It was like I get it."

Haley Radke: Not in this family?

Alex Blum: I'm supposed to be at boarding school, and I'm here.

Haley Radke: Oh, boarding school.

Alex Blum: You're supposed to be at boarding school.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.

Alex Blum: You're not supposed to be here. I didn't plan on having a teenager in my life. I thought somebody else was gonna do that for me. But the nature versus nurture thing I think is fascinating. I've had interesting conversations with people about it, and I think when you have kids, I don't know if you have kids of your own, but the nature thing becomes so obvious immediately when you have kids because this idea that people seem to have, and unfortunately, I think this is an unfortunate thing that some people who adopt do, which is this idea that a kid is a blank slate.

You're gonna mold that kid. You're gonna create that kid. It's like it's [00:20:00] an empty glass that you're gonna fill with all of this stuff about you and your family and your expectations and all that. And once you've had kids, you know that's baloney. They come with their stuff. They're people already, and they bring a lot to the party.

So I'm a real believer in nature, and I'm clear on how real that is. But on the other hand, also, it's your life. It's your story, and you have to figure out what you're gonna do in that life. So I think there's this incredible balance basically between nature and nurture or nature and experience or DNA versus, the random nature of the universe.

However you wanna look at it, I think there's a real interplay always between the power of coincidence and things that happen and how it affects your life and who you are and how you respond to the experiences that you have versus the stuff that you come [00:21:00] with. It's like there's something that people describe, and actually it's a lot...

It's always brought up in, when they, people talk about Bob Dylan, right? And he was born in Minnesota, and- he left home very young, and he describes this experience of looking at his parents and thinking, "Who are these people?" "How did how did these people get to be my parents?" kinda thing.

He just felt there was some... and I'm just telling the story as best I can. I've heard a lot of different versions of it, right? But that sort of thing. So there's so many different versions of it, but I think, without a doubt, as, when you're born, you bring a lot of stuff to the party. And I've heard some difficult stories, adoption stories, about people who have adopted kids who've had very unrealistic expectations or perhaps didn't fully think about what they were doing, and they don't like the kid they got.

And it's like, "Get [00:22:00] a life. Pull yourself together." "You shoulda thought of that before you did this." I've heard some really unfortunate stories, and I just think, "Wow, what were you thinking?"

Haley Radke: There's also an impact that maternal separation just has on our brains factually and that actually came to mind immediately when you shared the story of like a medical emergency when your tendon got severed, in that you were, like, super cool, collected in an emergency, and that's exactly how I am. Two of my best friends, we're all adopt- we've all talked about how adopted people, on the whole, are very great in emergencies 'cause our brain is trained from the jump, "It's an emergency. Where is my mother? Survive." And I don't know, maybe I'm making a grand generalization, but I think that's pretty accurate. What do you think about that?

Alex Blum: That's so interesting. I've never heard it described that way, but [00:23:00] that's interesting. And I've thought about it another way, which is there is this experience also that I...

And I've heard a lot of adoptive people say this, where it's like you have this sort of inherent critical distance. You feel a little bit outside of things. You know what I mean? You tend to be looking at things, and in your head you're thinking about the situation, and you're having an opinion about it even though it's happening to you.

And I think it may be a little bit of a version of what you're saying, which is... and I still remember what it felt like, and I remember holding up my foot and looking at my foot and thinking, "Yeah, this isn't great." In a very detached kind of way. Oh, and then looking at the people around me and thinking, "They're hysterical," and that I need somebody to, this is not a problem I can solve, so I need some people around me who aren't paralyzed by the whole situation. And I had that experience quite a few times, so it's interesting to hear you say that. I never really connected that with the adoption thing, but I think that's [00:24:00] interesting- ... for sure.

Haley Radke: Okay, I'm going along the same vein, I think, where you're talking about that disconnected kind of feeling. So you share in the, your memoir about your adoptive mother and this legacy and land and farm and this very importance to her, and it's so important she tells your adoptive father "You gotta take care of this with me," before they get engaged or right at the engagement point.

Alex Blum: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I can't recall exactly.

Alex Blum: Exactly right.

Haley Radke: And I think, and it ended with you. How did you feel? Did you feel like you were a part of this legacy that was passed on? Or when you're adopted, it's like, "I don't know, it's not really my history." What do you think about it?

Alex Blum: I think that sometimes adoptive parents betray themselves, [00:25:00] because there is a gap between what they say and what they do. Or else they say things that they're not thinking about, and they don't think about what that's gonna sound like to you. And I think I reference this in my book, but my adopted brother, who was three years older than me, he and I... She used to do this thing. Her maiden name was Phelps. Old New England WASP family thing, whatever, been there since the 1600s, whatever.

And she used to say, "I'm the last surviving member of my family." And my brother and I used to look at each other and go, "Yeah I'm pretty clear where that leaves us." You know what I mean? And even though what she was saying was logical and we understood the, from a factual point of view what she meant, it was such a weirdly insensitive thing to say.

It was like... And she didn't just say it once. It's something she used to say. And you feel like, "Wow, okay. I get it. I get that's how you feel. What you're showing me is how you feel, not what you [00:26:00] think." You know what I mean? And as kids, people don't give kids credit for being as instinctively smart as they are.

And you're gonna make your own judgment about what you're hearing. It's like you don't get to control what the other person thinks, even if it's your kid. So they say this stuff. And then when they started with protecting the land and giving the land away and all that, in the beginning it was great, because we had 600 acres of land that was mostly wilderness.

Not completely virgin wilderness from, whatever but still. And we gave away 300 acres of it, and it was combined with some other land and made into kind of a nature preserve, and I was psyched. I thought that was so cool, right? That was great. But then, and I guess I said this in my book, it's like, you know the thing about cosmetic surgery?

The people that do it, and it becomes a little bit of an addiction, and they keep doing it, and in the beginning it works, but after a while they're just like Joan Rivers. They're freaks. It's like you look at them and you think, "Don't [00:27:00] you see?" "What are you doing to yourself?" It was like that. My mom, and my dad just went along with it, whatever.

It became an obsession. And so from that, then it became historic preservation easements on the buildings. And it was like, okay, I understand, and, we would have these meetings. Of course, they would've already decided what they were gonna do, and then they would have a meeting with me and my brother as if we were being consulted.

And it becomes clear very quickly, you're not being consulted, you're being told. So they started doing that, and we were like, "Okay." And, but, we would say "Okay, we gave all that land away and we created the Phelps Research Area, and that's really great. Why do we need to do this?" And it, but, and it just didn't stop.

It was like easements on the pro- and then there were easements on the remaining property, and then there were... And it just didn't stop. And so at a certain point, again, there's a message that's being delivered, and you think, Okay, who exactly are you protecting it from? [00:28:00] Because we're the ones that are gonna inherit it.

So if you really wanna protect it, what you should be doing from an inheritance or an estate tax point of view, is conveying it to us so that we already own it and we have an investment in it, but that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is you're putting all sorts of legal frameworks around it.

And if there's one thing that we've seen, particularly in our government today, there's a world where legal frameworks don't seem to make much difference, right? It seems like there's always a lawyer ready to figure out how to undo something that isn't supposed to be able to be undone. You know what I mean?

And so it's it feels weird, and you think, "Okay I get the message," and it's not the message you think you're delivering.

Haley Radke: Tell me how your view of adoption has shifted over these last few years.

Alex Blum: I think I've become a lot more conscious of... in the course of writing the book, actually, it was part [00:29:00] of... it was a, a learning process for me in terms of discovering my own feelings and having more of a developed point of view about it, and then all the things that I've heard from other people, and I've been on Louise and Sarah's Adoptee Cafe, and I've listened to people talk and stuff like that.

And the first thing is that adoption is complicated and people have a real desire to oversimplify it and not to appreciate there's two groups of people that are experienced it to the largest extent, and those are the people it seems like nobody wants to listen to, and that is the mothers who give up their child and the child themselves.

Regardless of whether you're adopted as an infant, there's still, to your point there, there's a dynamic there. There's something going on there as a child and it's-- I think this, the [00:30:00] adoptive parents that recognize that are doing a really good thing and being really smart. You have to be open to the child's experience of it and their point of view of it, and you have to be as honest as you can be, and you have to not be overly invested in your own perception of what it's supposed to be.

"Oh, I adopted this kid and they're gonna go to Harvard." Yeah, not their problem. That's your problem, kinda thing. So I guess in that sense, my perception has really evolved in terms of the complexity of it and I think it's very challenging for adopted-- it's-- parenting's challenging anyway.

I think adoptive parenting can be every bit as challenging, if not more, and I think people have a tendency to just the, old truism. It's like, "Oh, you're so lucky because they chose you," that thing that everybody wants to say who isn't adopted, or has never given up a child. It's yeah, [00:31:00] great.

That's an insight that's just about very small. It's just about this thick. It's a very shallow insight if you're the person that's experienced it.

Haley Radke: What have been some of the reactions to your book now that it's been in the world many months and also some of the media coverage that you and your brothers have had?

Alex Blum: It's been great. It's been a, it's been a great experience. The New York Post article and the People article both, they were really fun. The meeting up in New York thing that we did for the New York Post was just fabulous. It was so fun, and it was so fun for the four of us to be in the same place because we don't... my brother Pete lives in Florida, my brother Hank lives in Baltimore, and in the beginning, my brother Bill was living in London, so getting everybody all together in the same place was not always all that easy. So that was a great experience. It was super fun and the, the People magazine thing was fun.

My experience also, [00:32:00] and it isn't wholly related to the adoption thing, is that people have reached out to me that I haven't spoken to in years, in decades, like people that I've known or people I was friends with or whatever, and that, those kinds of communication have been emotionally satisfying. I guess I don't know. There's something about the book where people have reacted to it in a really emotional way. People I've known for a long time have reached out to me and either written me long emails or even you know when you get one of those texts that's a mile long where somebody's like poured their heart out in a text kind of thing.

And also people that I didn't know that have read it and that have wanted to talk to me about it, that have responded to it and wanted... I have a friend, my neighbor, and he read it, and he was like, "You gotta come over. We gotta talk about it." We had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation about it right off the bat, and now we have a completely different relationship than we had before.

You know what I mean? So in that sense, that's been really [00:33:00] fantastic. The whole thing has been really positive, and I'm sure that there are people that have read my book that don't agree with me and think that I'm a jerk and whatever. Okay, everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I haven't really had a lot of interaction with those people.

There's a few people that went on there's somebody went on Amazon and gave me a one-star rating. It's like, okay, great, whatever. That's how you feel. It's okay.

Haley Radke: In podcasting, that's how you know you made it.

Alex Blum: Yeah, right? Yeah. If nobody... Yeah, exactly. That's great. I love that. That's true.

Haley Radke: I'm curious if you've thought about this. People love the reunion story, right? That they're obsessed with it. It's heartwarming. I call it reunion porn. People- love it. And why? Because they ultimately understand it's really [00:34:00] difficult that you were separated from your siblings for your whole life.

Alex Blum: It is. And I spent so much of my life thinking, because I think I was told to think this, that like it's no big deal, right?

And again, people who don't, who aren't connected to this issue, that's always with you. "Oh, what's the big deal? You were adopted. You grew up," and they're like, "What's your problem?" kinda thing, right? And and I carried that opinion around with me for a long time so what?" And only when this happened, I started to realize actually how significant it is and how much of an emotional landscape there is there.

And, there's so much to discover about yourself and other people and the situation and to have my three brothers and there was a funny thing that happened the first time we spoke. We talked for an hour and a half, and I hung up the phone. I was like, "Ah," I turned to my wife. I said, "I love these guys."

And she goes, "Of course you do. They're just like you." Which was such a funny, perceptive thing for her to say. But it is this amazing thing where all of a sudden I felt like I got three best [00:35:00] friends kinda like overnight. Like there was... and this goes to the nature versus nurture issue that you raised before.

It was just different. Here they were, these guys, and there it was. We settled in immediately to this sort of interaction. And we have a good time, we make fun of each other, we have this sort of funny, sarcastic, but very open, emotionally open kind of relationship with each other, and it was just there.

It like, we didn't have to build it. We didn't have to create it. I didn't need anybody to, give me a resume and explain to me who you are and can I trust you? You know what I mean? It, none of that. It was just like, there it is.

Haley Radke: Is Bill the oldest of the three?

Alex Blum: Bill's the youngest. Hank is the oldest of the three.

Haley Radke: He's the youngest. Pardon me. Okay, so Hank.

Alex Blum: Yeah.

Haley Radke: How did Hank feel about being usurped as the oldest brother?

Alex Blum: Ah, he was thrilled. It was hilarious. He was like, "I was never supposed to be the older brother." She, it was really, he's so funny about it. He's "See, you weren't here. I shouldn't have had to deal with this [00:36:00] stuff. That's you. You should have been there," which I just loved. And actually, Andrea, my wife, is really funny because she conversely, she says to me, in my adoptive family, I was the younger brother, and she said to me, "You're, you've always been an older brother personality. You were, you're not a younger brother. You're an older brother personality. You're kinda the person that's in charge and deciding things, and you were born a grown-up," this kinda thing. So it's very funny because on the one side I have Hank saying, "I shouldn't have had to do this stuff. You should've been there. I wish you had been there. I wish I had an older brother," and on the other hand, my wife's saying to me, "You're not a younger brother. There's no way. You were meant to be a younger brother," right? So on both sides, we sorta have that going on, which is kinda funny.

Haley Radke: How has this impacted your relationship with your adoptive brother?

Alex Blum: It's great. I just love him. He's so funny. So when this whole thing happened, my kids, I have two stepkids and three of my own kids, and so we have this [00:37:00] whole blended family going on. And so my stepkids and my kids and everybody, they were brought into it, and COVID happened pretty quickly after this happened, and we started doing Zoom calls with everybody.

So we'd have my nieces and my brothers and their spouses and my kids, and it was like this whole free-for-all. It was really, it was great. But I was a little bit worried because I hadn't really brought my brother, my adopted brother, into the situation, and I was a little worried because I was afraid...

I didn't want him to feel in some way that he had been replaced or that he was not part of it. And so I was a little bit worried. And so I called him, I said, I, there's something I gotta tell you." And so he's like, "Okay, sure." And so I tell him the whole story about what happened and all the rest of it, and he's listening, and he's not asking any questions, and I'm telling the whole thing, and I get to the end of it, and I'm like, "So what do you think?"

And he looked, and there was a pause, and he goes, "You gotta have a party." And that was that. Which [00:38:00] of course I should have known because that's who he is.

He was never gonna be all tortured about it, but I was worried about it. And it was so funny because there's this thing I sometimes say, which is that everybody's always in character, and he was so in character.

That's exactly... I should have known that's how he would respond. He wasn't gonna have a big problem with it.

Haley Radke: Did you guys ever talk about being adopted growing up?

Alex Blum: Not very much, because the message that we were given from the start was my adoptive parents did the right thing in that they told us when we were very young, and that I am convinced, and I'm sure you agree, that is the right thing. Do not wait. That's a bad idea. So we were told very early on, and I give-- and I'm sure that's what the adoption agency told my adoptive parents and all, and that was good. But what went with it was this, "Yeah, so this is it. You're adopted. It's no big deal, and that's it. Let's move on." And there was no discussion, and there was, there were, [00:39:00] my, my adoptive parents were 100% not interested in any discussion of who our parents might be or anything like that.

So my brother and I took that on. It was "All right. Whatever." And that was the end of that. We knew we were not brothers, right? We had no DNA connection, and we knew that, and that made kinda sense 'cause we didn't look alike particularly or anything like that.

But yeah, we just accepted the sort of party line, which was, "It's no big deal. Doesn't matter. Let's move on."

Haley Radke: I am really excited for people to read your book, An Accident of Birth. You include so many historical events throughout, and I think fellow baby scoop era adoptees will really enjoy it. And this really unique thing about your book is you include the chorus of your bio brothers chiming in-

Alex Blum: Yeah

Haley Radke: and sharing what was happening for them throughout the same [00:40:00] times, and I really appreciated that. That's one of the most difficult things, I think, for me in reunion is you know, seeing the family pictures and I'm not there-

Alex Blum: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: and wondering, where was I during that time? It's like the sliding doors moment of like we're in parallel lives, but-

Alex Blum: Yeah

Haley Radke: So yeah, I think folks will really enjoy reading your memoir. I'm really excited to share it with folks.

Alex Blum: I'm glad. That's so great. I, and I really appreciate that. I appreciate your point of view. And I have found that a lot of people, regardless of their age or what generation they are, even whether adoptees or they're not, the one thing I have found that really makes me happy is that people tell me all the time, "I see myself in your book."

They find something to attach to and there's a lot of variety in terms of what that is, and that makes me happy- ... 'cause that, I feel like [00:41:00] if that's the case, then I feel like I did something right, which is good.

Haley Radke: And I read portions of it physically, but I also listened on audio to prepare for our conversation today, and I love hearing all your voices. I think that's really special.

Alex Blum: That was genius, the moment when we figured out to do that. It was like we were at the recording studio and we were there and it was like how do we do this? They're not here. We can't put them all together in the same place. And we set the whole thing up and I just was so happy we were able to do that.

I'm glad that's your reaction, and that's exactly what we were after, which it was, and I think you described it this way, as like they're kind of a chorus, and so to hear their own voices rather than me, I was so excited about it and I was so glad it worked. It just, I think it's great.

Haley Radke: And you all sound similar, which is pretty special too.

Alex Blum: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Alex, what did you wanna recommend to us today?

Alex Blum: I read this book. There's a lot of books out there about adoption obviously, and there's a lot of how-to books and stuff like [00:42:00] that which I'm suspicious of just to put it nicely. But I read this book called Relinquished, which is written by this woman Gretchen Sisson, and it's a study that she did where she, it's where she interviewed mothers who gave up their children over a period, a long period of time repeatedly, and she talks about their experience and why they gave up their kids.

Most of them gave up their children not because they wanted to, but because they had to for either financial reasons or... there's a young woman she talks about, and she said literally, if somebody had given me $1,000, I wouldn't have given up my kid. She said, "I couldn't even figure out how to buy a car seat. Forget about a car. I couldn't even figure out how to buy a car seat. I just didn't see any way that I could get through this. So I gave up my kid, and I've regretted it [00:43:00] every single day since then. And Gretchen Sisson points out that the fact that a mother says that I'm sorry, and maybe this is a little political, though I don't think it is.

It's a failure of our society that a woman who has a kid has to give that child up because she, there's, there is no societal support and she can't get any help. I think that's wrong.

Haley Radke: Yep.

Alex Blum: So I think that book really... those stories are incredible, and I think she says some very valuable things about misperceptions of adoption and the politics of it nowadays and all of that. I just thought it was an incredible piece of work, like really impressive.

Haley Radke: Agreed. Yes. She's a sociologist and scholar and yeah it's fabulous. I'm working on a project myself called On Adoption this year, which is a podcast covering the same themes as Gretchen covers in [00:44:00] her book, and I'm really referencing her book quite often, and she's gathered so many facts and statistics to share with people. It's just excellent. So great recommendation. Thank you.

Alex Blum: Yeah. I was so impressed by her, and the one thing that really struck me, which made me a little bit angry, was the politicization of adoption and people relating it to abortion and all this other stuff that's gone on is infuriating, and she's so informed and she's amazing. I just think it's amazing what she did.

Haley Radke: Agreed. And she's a, a great example of an adoptee ally 'cause she never-

Alex Blum: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: speaks over us and she's always in support of adoptee advocates. I really appreciate that about her, too.

Alex Blum: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing part of your story with us, Alex. I'm sure folks will check out your book, An Accident of Birth: A Story of Adoption and Identity, [00:45:00] and we'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.

And in the meantime, where can folks follow you and connect with you online?

Alex Blum: That's great. Thank you so much. This has been really great. It's a privilege to meet you, and I really appreciate the whole conversation and and you're out there with your podcast, which I think is great. I think that's really good.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you. Do you have Instagram, website you wanna shout out?

Alex Blum: There's a website which is talexblum.com, and on the website, that's the website for the book, and it's, there are links to all the podcasts and everything like that on there. And the Instagram, which is talexblum as well, so it's pretty easy to find.

Haley Radke: Great. We'll make sure to link to those in the show notes for folks as well.

Alex Blum: Great. Thank you so much.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

I am so glad to be back with you [00:46:00] friends. Thank you for your patience as I had a bit of a, in quotation marks, summer break. Actually, I have spent the balance of my time working on my new project On Adoption, which I'm very excited to share with you soon. I'm still looking for your support. We are having an adoptee read-a-thon put on by our friends at Adoptees For Family Preservation, and we will have the dates, how you can attend and participate up on social media.

Please check for that. We will also link to any information we have for you in the show notes, so please click through and I would love to have you come and hang out with us. There's also going to be a silent auction as a part of that, and all the proceeds go to Adoptees for Family Preservation. They are [00:47:00] a registered 501[c][3] and all donations will be tax deductible. Tax deductible. That's tricky to say. Anyway, I'm so glad to be back and podcasting and talking to fellow adoptees for Adoptees On and just know we are so hard at work behind the scenes getting On Adoption ready for the public and my team is so incredible. I can't wait to tell you all about them, and we have so many good things coming up to share with you soon and all of that is only possible through your support, your generosity sharing with your connections that we're working on this show and I would love for you to support Adoptees for Family Preservation, which in turn helps On Adoption come and exist in this world.

When I dreamed [00:48:00] up making a narrative-style podcast that told the adoptee experience and the birth mother experience and what's happening right now for birth parents in contemporary adoption I had no idea the things I would learn and the depth of work it takes to make a really excellent, listenable audio documentary.

And I've learned so much and I can't wait to share that with you. In the meantime, Adoptees On is back sharing adoptee voices and we have a lot of great folks lined up for this fall season and I'm also excited to share those interviews with you. So thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again [00:49:00] soon.

328 10 Years of Adoptees On with Haley Radke, Sullivan Summer, and Kristal Parke

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/328

---

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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I'm the creator and host of this show, which aired its first episode on July 1st, 2016, a full decade ago. When I started Adoptees On all those years ago, my teens were a toddler and a preschooler and I podcasted in a corner of my basement with a laundry rack behind me that I'd toss a quilt over top of for better sound quality.

I'd met a few adoptees on Twitter, and I wanted to have more in-depth conversations about reunion, grief, mental health, identity and [00:01:00] healing. I just didn't know that thousands of you wanted that, too. Thank you for building this show with me. This milestone moment is for every single guest who trusted me with their story, every listener who felt seen while listening, and all the folks who have supported the show, Patreon, sharing episodes with a friend, leaving me comments or reviews.

I am so deeply honored to be in community with all of you. Thank you. Today, I've invited a couple of friends to turn the microphone on me, and we run the gauntlet of tears to laughter in a very short time. I hope you enjoy. Sullivan Summer and Kristal Parke of Adoption Pop are here to celebrate 10 incredible years with us today.

Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter. We [00:02:00] 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 Sullivan Summer.

Hello, Sullivan.

Sullivan Summer: Hello.

Haley Radke: And Kristal Park. Hi, Kristal.

Kristal Parke: Hi, Haley Radke. Hi, Sullivan Summer.

Sullivan Summer: Hi, Kristal Park.

Haley Radke: Welcome, friends.

Kristal Parke: Thank you for having us. I'm so excited to be here. Today is such a special day.

Sullivan Summer: It's an incredibly special day. How do you feel, Haley?

Haley Radke: I cannot remember the last time feeling nervous before a recording, and today I am I think I want to be able to remember all the things, and I'm fearful I will not be able to.

And that feels sad, [00:03:00] right? When it used to be when I even edited the show myself way back in the day, I knew every guest. I knew their story. I remembered everything. And now I don't anymore because there's been so many, like hundreds of people I've, had the privilege to talk to, and all of their stories are important, but I don't wanna forget something.

So I don't know. I feel this pressure to hold everything in my mental archive, which I'm pretty good at usually, but there's a lot packed in there of adoptee things now.

Sullivan Summer: Do you think there's gonna be a quiz?

Haley Radke: Yeah. Didn't you write a quiz of what was episode 262? I'm not sure.

Sullivan Summer: I feel like, so Kristal and I obviously prepared for this episode, but now I'm feeling like we did not use our prep time the way we should have.

Kristal Parke: But we did do some prep, so we're not [00:04:00] freewheeling it here.

Haley Radke: Okay. All right. I'm so glad to allow you to interview me. Did my voice shudder? That was like... yeah. No, I'm ready. I'm excited to talk about 10 years of Adoptees On.

Kristal Parke: This is big. This is big, and it's emotional. For me even, to think about the impact that Adoptees On has had on my life and the lives of so many who have shared publicly that you have impacted their journey, it's emotional. And here she goes, everyone. Haley's... I can see the emotions coming to the surface.

Sullivan Summer: What was the over-under on minutes it will take Haley to cry?

Haley Radke: If you get under three, you win.

Sullivan Summer: So Haley, at what point did you realize that this podcast was clicking [00:05:00] into something? At what point did you realize, oh, wait a minute, this is actually a thing. It's not just kinda something that you started, a personal hobby or anything like that, but this is actually, this is gonna be a thing.

Haley Radke: I think somewhere between six months to a year in of recording the stories, yes that was a thing for me. But it was when listeners started really commenting or wanting to share with me or emailing me and giving feedback. To, to your point earlier, Kristal, of "Oh, this is the first time I'm hearing these things. I feel so seen," and like that. I was like, oh, it really isn't just me having an impact from hearing these stories. It is going to be a thing. But I had no idea how big it would get really.

Kristal Parke: Was there [00:06:00] ever a moment that you felt like you were in, over your head? Whether it be an interview or when Adoptees On started to get a lot of feedback, did you ever feel like you were in over your head? What did I create here?

Haley Radke: I think I can think of two different pieces. So I never knew... I used to have seasons, and I had what I would call season one, season two kind of thing, and I never knew how many episodes I was gonna make in a season. I was just like, I- that's what you do. You call it season one and I think editing, I don't know, seven, eight I can't remember the exact number, and I was like, Ugh, I need a break. This is all so much emotions. And then listening it, to it back multiple times, make sure the edit's good, right? You're really taking in all the feelings. That was one piece where I'm like, "Okay, I gotta wrap this and have a little break." So that was one. The other was, I don't remember exactly the timing of this.

I would say it would be within the [00:07:00] first two years. I got my first really harsh critique. I don't even remember what it was now. But I took it so deeply personal, and I went to the Facebook group of listeners at the time, and I was like, "How could she say these mean things to me?" And it really kinda shook me a little bit, because to that point, all I had was good feedback.

And I've told other creators who have thought about starting a podcast this before. You don't really get a lot of bad feedback in podcasting. If you post something on Instagram, your keyboard's right there. People can tell you how ugly you look, and you shouldn't have worn that, and why do you, why did you vote for who you di- you know.

But on podcasting it takes a few steps for someone to find your show, play it, and then also to find you to give you [00:08:00] feedback. So if they do all those steps, they're ready to really lay into you. But that really was such a good experience for me now, because I think about all the terrible things people have said to me in the last, years since that.

I don't care. I just don't even care. I'm thick-skinned now. And also, we're recording this, I have a very dark burn on my arm, sunburn which has a thick demarcation line. I look like I taped off a rectangle for some reason, and I feel like it's gonna be permanent. So that's where my thick skin is, right there.

Sullivan Summer: So it sounds like for sure getting that harsh feedback was a hard moment. Was that the hardest moment? Or if you think back over 10 years, what's, what was the hardest [00:09:00] moment?

Haley Radke: I think I've had a few. One was I was a couple of weeks out from interviewing someone, and he passed away. And I didn't even know him. I hadn't interacted with him really. I think someone recommended that he come on. I can't even remember his name at this mo- so here, that's one of those oh, shoot, I wish I knew what his name was. And I was like, "Oh, no," now his story won't be preserved for the record. And I've... and that was really difficult for me to wrap my head around.

And then when my first guest who I had on passed, Dr. Sunny Reed, that was brutal. I remember grieving for her for a really long time because she was in a doctoral program. Her research [00:10:00] was going to benefit and has benefited adopted people in a large way, and I knew her future and trajectory. And so when she died, it was so devastating.

So those hard moments, I think, were all community related when I think of the other items 'cause I don't know how... I guess I feel like I'm like a adoptee historian collecting all these stories and trying to preserve them forever and highlighting the books and articles that adoptees have added to the collection of our stories and the documentary.

Like, all those things I wanna be the collector. There used to be this thing called the Adoption Museum Project, and ultimately that shuttered. But I was like is this the new digital adoption museum of, oral histories and that kind of thing? Anytime something's lost, that was [00:11:00] really hard for me.

Yeah. It's not necessarily podcast related, but that's just me being in this space more.

Kristal Parke: Yeah, that makes sense. And of course, loss, it's a theme in us, in our, us adoptees', our lives, right? And yeah to lose a story or a life or any of that's a lot. It's a lot. Do you wanna come up for air and for me to ask you something a little lighter?

Haley Radke: Sure.

Kristal Parke: Okay. What do you wear from the waist down? Are you wearing shorts, granny panties, slippers, socks?

Haley Radke: I'm always wearing underwear. I'm always wearing pants. Occasionally a skirt. I will definitely wear shorts in the summertime, but... And I'm 98% of the time barefoot, and that might be [00:12:00] surprising 'cause I hate feet, but I choose to be barefoot. Yeah.

Kristal Parke: I love the format of Adoptees On because we don't... it's not video, right? And so there's a real casual comfortability about recording with you. I do appreciate that.

Haley Radke: You know what? I remember one guest, I think his name was Bernie, and he wasn't really public adoptee. I can't recall exactly how we got connected to have him on the show, but he showed up in a suit, and he was ready and it was... I remember just being, like, so struck by that. He's taking this very seriously, and he's very prepared, and he had a full suit on.

Kristal Parke: Oh, Bernie.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Kristal Parke: I love that.

Sullivan Summer: That makes me feel that makes me feel warm inside.

Kristal Parke: Me too. I think.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's 100% how I took it ... yeah. Yes. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. It... And that's such a good memory for me.

Kristal Parke: [00:13:00] Wow. I just wanted to say, it... we do this, and Haley, you've been doing this now for 10 years, and I think we can get a little desensitized to just this whole experience. But for some people, it's their very, maybe their one and only time that they ever share their story, and it means a great deal to people. And I know it means a great deal to you as well. I certainly don't think you take that for granted.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I've had some really special opportunities to be the first person someone's ever told their story out loud to. And that's such a privilege, right? What a privilege to be so trusted.

And then for them to trust you as a listener with it,

Kristal Parke: yeah,

Haley Radke: so special. And so I've had times where [00:14:00] I've had open-to-guest applications, and I think folks get a little bit salty sometimes when, with some of my questions or they're like I don't have a platform or I wanna be anonymous. She's not gonna take me. Absolutely, I will. Absolutely. It's not about who has the biggest following. I wish I could interview everyone. I wish everyone's story could be preserved for all of us to learn from.

Sullivan Summer: So Kristal and I can see you in this conversation, and we can see you tearing up and getting emotional just thinking about some of the guests that you've had over the past 10 years. Can you share some of the most unforgettable on-air moments?

Haley Radke: I remember one, one gal we had on who shared about how she snuggled up with her birth mother every [00:15:00] night for months, and would lay... They would lay together. I think she described it as laying on top of her somet- like, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad you said that out loud." She wasn't embarrassed by it, and I thought how there's gonna be many people that are like, "I wish I could climb into my birth mother's skin. I wish I could have that experience." When I was interviewing Jane for the genetic sexual attraction episode, I remember thinking like, "Wow, I'm never gonna have a conversation like this again."

The moments where people I'm gonna use the word overshare. I don't mean it that way because they're just, they're so open and vulnerable and willing to say the things that most people would keep secret, and we're so much [00:16:00] better for it. Because there's so many people who have had those experiences and have felt so completely isolated, I think... What other memorable... We've certainly had some funny moments or embarrassing moments. My favorite are when pets make an appearance even though most people are so careful to put their pets away and we're not gonna hear any jingling and And which my dog is upset with me right now. I don't know if you can hear that either. But yeah, I'm trying to think if there's any other... I don't know. I've cried with so many people, and the thing that gets me the almost every interview I always ask at the end "Is there anything that you shared that you maybe overshared 'cause you felt like you were just talking to me, a friend, but you don't really want the rest of the world to hear about this, and you want me to edit it out?" And almost everyone is "No leave it in. That's the real." And [00:17:00] so that's pretty special, too.

Kristal Parke: I don't know about you, Sullivan, but there's episodes of Adoptees On, like that one that you just mentioned about the adoptee crawling up with her birth mom, that I can remember where I was in the world listening to. And I think that is many people's experiences with Adoptees On.

Sullivan Summer: There's an episode with Pam Cordano as part it was part of the estrangement series in 2021, and I literally remember where I was on the sidewalk when I heard Pam say certain things in that episode.

Kristal Parke: I remember where I was when I first heard your episode, Sullivan. Oh. You were one of those episodes. I was I was walking on my treadmill in my basement. I can fully go back to that [00:18:00] memory, so it's the impact,

Sullivan Summer: I remember when Haley met you because she left me a voice note the day that you met and told me that she met someone special.

Kristal Parke: Aw. That's Oh my gosh. So that brings me to my next question then, which would be what are some of your favorite memories of meeting listeners in real life?

Haley Radke: Oh. That one really makes me cry. That's a, that's such a joyful thing to think about. I remember when I went to a conference in 2017 and David Boll came up to me and he told me that he had been listening to my podcast and he loved it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh."

A real life listener in [00:19:00] person. That really felt like the podcast was real and that strangers were listening, it wasn't my, 10 friends and family that I could, summon up to, even though I know, knew the numbers were higher than that, but that was a good moment.

And Nick and I went to San Francisco on a holiday, and so we had arranged to do one of Anne Heffron's writing workshops, 'cause she lived nearby at the time, and then do a listener meetup. I think, I don't know what the year that was now, maybe 2019. And I had listeners come from, I wanna say six states, traveled from out of state to, not just like local people, but traveled from out of state to, yes, visit San Francisco, and then do a writing workshop with Anne, and then hang out with me and the other [00:20:00] adoptees for the evening.

That felt really wild. Like I'm trying to think of who would I travel to hang out with that I listen to on a podcast. I don't know. And then the other really fun meetup I had was when I spoke at a conference in Washington DC and we had a listener meetup. I think there was like 30-some people there and there was like a lineup formed to meet me and take pictures with me.

And I was like, what is happening? That was wild. And that was, I tell you what, that same day, that was a, such a low moment for me because I had this peak experience. I met all these listeners, and we spent time together and took pictures, and we took a big group photo, and I don't know if I've posted that.

I should post it in with the celebration kinds of things. And that night, Nick had made [00:21:00] plans to go see a sporting event. I can't remember which kind. And everyone kinda left and filtered away and had their own dinner plans or whatever, and I was all by myself that evening in the hotel, and it felt so Oh, okay, and now I'm by myself. It was a weird swing

Kristal Parke: I think at the end of the day too, you're like, "I'm just me." I'm still just me, right? Every- I think sometimes people look at you like you're this, I don't know, this like they put you on a pedestal, right? And then at the end of the day it's no I'm still me, right?

Haley Radke: Still Haley just waiting for someone to ask her out for dinner.

Kristal Parke: There you go.

Haley Radke: Can I come to your group dinner? No. Okay. Okay, bye.

Sullivan Summer: Do you find that people have misconceptions about you?

Haley Radke: I think people think I'm... I'm gonna, I'm gonna say the thing and then I'm gonna also be like, but that's actually kinda true.

People think [00:22:00] I'm too busy or like I might not get back to them or, they want something from me and like a lot of the time I'm not too busy and I can reply to the things and I can interact for a brief time period. I'm not inaccessible, except for this year. This year I really am.

But in the normal times when I'm not working on several shows at the same time, I do comment back to listeners and I do message them and I wish I could replicate myself. But I've always hoped that when people contacted me looking for community that I could send them out outwards to build community for themselves and to make their own friendships and all those connections outside of me.

What other misconceptions? I think people think I know every single adoptee that's ever made some kind of media or book and I... someone [00:23:00] on this call might DM me regularly saying, "Do you know this person?" And I'm like, "No. I wish I did." Okay, two people on this call might do that regularly. Okay, there you go.

Now you've both outed yourselves. Sorry, they're like pointing at themselves and stuff. Yeah, I don't know everybody, I don't know every book. I continue to discover new interesting adopted people on the regular.

Kristal Parke: All right. Who are your dream guests? If you could have anybody in the world, and I won't even make you pick one, you can pick a top three.

Haley Radke: I think here's another misconception. I think people think like I want big celebrity guests on or something, but so many of them are so private and closed off and they don't wanna necessarily talk about those things. So I can name one. I'd really like to interview Sarah McLachlan. I think she would be a really fascinating adoptee interview [00:24:00] if she was willing to be public with the real, which is what the majority of my guests are willing to do, really be authentic.

And I don't think celebrities are already asked so many intimate personal questions and have so little privacy and anything to themselves that to ask them to do an interview like one of mine feels so incredibly intrusive. And like truthfully, I haven't gone after too many. I think the most famous person I've interviewed probably is Mary Gauthier, and she's been very public with her adoptee experience, so I didn't feel like I was overstepping when I was asking her my questions, so yeah.

Kristal Parke: I love Sarah McLachlan. I love her music. I grew up on that.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And she's Canadian. Come on.

Kristal Parke: Yeah. Yeah, she'd be a perfect guest.

Sullivan Summer: [00:25:00] Haley, what's been the greatest sacrifice you've had to make in bringing Adoptees On to life or continuing it over 10 years?

Haley Radke: I have a couple things going through my mind.

I was a stay-at-home mom, and this led me to be a working parent, and so I think I sacrificed time with my kids when they were young. That's a deep cost, as mothers know. And saying the things that I know deeply to be true, but can be very controversial when critiquing adoption, has cost me some relationships.

That's a tough one. And then I don't actually know if this is true or not, [00:26:00] but this is the story that I tell myself, to use that phrase, is that I think by doing this podcast, like I think it, it might have cost me a chance to reconnect with my birth mother. I'm assuming she's heard it, and that's something that I've always had in my head that's "Oh, if I do this, then this might be a bridge too far for her."

Kristal Parke: So if you could go back 10 years and know what you know now, with that in mind, but as a whole, Adoptees On as a whole, would you do it again?

Haley Radke: Yeah. It's it's changed me so profoundly. I've learned so much from my guests and my [00:27:00] listeners. I've learned so much about myself. It has pushed me to heal things I didn't know needed to be healed until somebody said something and I'm like, "Oh yes, I gotta go back to my therapist."

That happened so so many times. And I think I'm... Like I think I'm a better person now than when I started 10 years ago. I hope I've become a better human. But from the feedback I've gotten I can't... like I can't believe things people have shared with me about how the show has changed their life or... I think at this point I'm probably up to, I think I can think of maybe 15 people now who've told me that they decided to stay alive on this planet, from hearing Adoptees On. And I... who could trade that, all of every sacrifice is worth it for [00:28:00] that.

Sullivan Summer: I know I can't imagine my life without Adoptees On. I can't. It's been in my life for five years, and I can say with confidence that my life would have been not just different, but not as full if I hadn't have Googled, "Is there a podcast about adoption?" One day and found Adoptees On.

What about you, Kristal?

Kristal Parke: Yeah, I would say the same, the very same thing, and I also Googled.

I was looking for a Canadian adoptee connection and yeah, I found Adoptees On and I think the, and this is, I think this is the antithesis of what Adoptees On has done is just opened adoptees' eyes and given them the courage [00:29:00] to be able to look at their own journey And so thank you.

Sullivan Summer: Thank you.

Kristal Parke: We love you.

We love you. We love you so much.

Sullivan Summer: We love you.

Haley Radke: I love you too. Thank you. We did it. Okay, that was... I feel like I did have my answers in order. Good job, Haley, mentally prepared enough. But you two have been on my screen a lot lately because, the three of us started a whole new thing this year, which is Adoption Pop, and I would love to just get the chance to tell Adoptees On listeners about it. Sullivan, why don't you share how you came up with the idea for Adoption Pop?

Sullivan Summer: [00:30:00] I watch a lot of TV. I think so many of us where, you know, you're home, you're watching your Netflix, you're watching your YouTube, you're going to the movies, and you just get blindsided by adoptee storylines in all these films that you didn't know they were...

it was in there. And I feel like the reason I say blindsided is because it always felt like the stories were always told very poorly. And I don't recall what the most recent one that I had watched, but I had this flash of oh, we should have a podcast where we get to just talk about talk about this media really thoughtfully and really deeply with other adoptees who watch it too and just share our opinions of it.

And I reached out to the two of you, and I left a voice note, and at the time I left the [00:31:00] voice note, it was what I call a fake fantasy job. I have a lot of ideas all the time, and I sometimes will be like this is a fake fantasy, and I was like this is a fake fantasy thing.

And so I got... I just left you both a silly, long-winded voice note about we should do this, but I didn't think it was serious, and the two of you responded immediately very seriously and already were like we could do this, and it could do this. It could look like this. And I remember thinking oh, I think they're serious, and I think, I actually think I'm serious too.

Haley Radke: I've been the recipient of many of your fake fantasy Voxer messages. I didn't hear that message as a fake fantasy. I heard it as, "I'm presenting this idea that we're doing."[00:32:00]

Kristal, did- what did

Kristal Parke: Oh my I'm over here just laughing, cracking up. I've got my audio on mute because I'm laughing so hard. Yeah I didn't think that either. I thought, "Wow, this is a great idea." And I loved the opportunity to be able to create with two females and fellow adoptees, and two individuals that I have a lot of respect for.

And I just was like, "Yeah, sure." And I remember, I actually remember vox-ing you back and being like, "I don't know if I have much to offer, but I could do this."

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.

Kristal Parke: That's crazy, Kristal.

Haley Radke: I think Sullivan and I are laughing because of the three of us, Kristal lifts the most for this show

Kristal Parke: I don't know

Haley Radke: next to Sullivan, and I just, roll up.

Kristal Parke: But that [00:33:00] was all predetermined. That was all predetermined because we knew that you were, taking on a big project with On Adoption, and I think both Sullivan and I were so happy to do what we could so that you could be a part of this.

Sullivan Summer: And you also come, Haley, for the production of each individual episode, which we do, we have weekly episodes, and so for the production of each individual episode, while Kristal and I are doing the lifting on those, you're coming with a decade of experience. So you have already done the work for Adoption Pop, you just did it over 10 years, what Kristal and I are doing, in these seven-day rounds.

Haley Radke: So we always watch a piece of media every week that more than not, likely more than not, [00:34:00] gets us very upset and ready to roast the creators, the writers, whoever's participating in these trashy projects. Not always, but most of the time. And so I've never watched so many things that I have just had huge angry feelings about.

I do hate watch things. I, that's true. That is true about me. I do hate watch things. Never in my life have I watched so many things I hated for the purpose of this podcast. Kristal, has it changed your viewing habits at all?

Kristal Parke: My viewing habits? How do you mean?

Haley Radke: Of any... do you view things for pleasure anymore? Or you just think, "If I have to turn the TV on, it's, I'm just gonna watch this next triggering thing and- ... have to write down all the terrible things about it so I can repeat them to Haley and Sullivan in a couple days."

Kristal Parke: Y- yeah. I feel like, there's... I'm either watching adoptee, [00:35:00] Adoption Pop content or I'm watching The Real Housewives to get my mind off of anything sort of adoptee-related, but they alway- they somehow slip it in there somehow.

There's always some sort of adoption storyline that that makes it into reality TV, too. Yeah, I don't watch TV the same way. I feel like I don't even see life in the same way after being around the two of you. You two are actually the ones that taught me what the term hate watch meant. I'd, I had never even heard of that before.

Haley Radke: I'm an expert. I'm an expert hate watcher.

Sullivan Summer: Haley is an expert hate watcher. I don't like to hate watch. I'll just shut something off, which I can't do now with Adoption Pop.

Kristal Parke: Yeah.

Sullivan Summer: But I think Adoption Pop... So I, you both know, I do a lot of literary criticism kind of outside my Adoption Pop life. And so [00:36:00] turning now to television and film criticism for me was not that big of a leap. It's just I'm taking in the media in a different way. But the podcast has really challenged me to speak thoughtfully about why I'm having the reaction that I'm having. And also- something that we were really thoughtful about when we started the podcast, because it was more than simply a voxer, we prepped, I think it was it six weeks- or so between the idea and when we recorded our first episode. So we put a lot of work in the front end, and also thinking about, what do we want this podcast to be. And we were... We have been very intentional to say we hope and assume we will have an adoptee audience, people that feel validated perhaps by... that may share our opinions of pieces of media. [00:37:00] But I think we were really conscious about perhaps wanting a broader audience to include adoptive parents and families of adoptees, whether biological or adoptive as well. Because I grew up in a family where talking about things was not really what we did.

And so I feel like I would have wished for perhaps an entree, if people are watching TV or a movie or something, to use that as the anchor point for having what is otherwise a tough conversation about the way that somebody might be feeling. And I feel like I've been challenged in the podcast to think about the language I use and how I present my own ideas, because just saying, "I hate this," is not helpful for anyone, myself included

Haley Radke: Okay, fine. That's all I did the last episode we recorded. But [00:38:00] no, I think to your point it's the Big Daddy one for anyone who wants to listen. I'm not sure if it'll be out when this airs, but-

Kristal Parke: Sullivan's "Fix your face."

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Kristal Parke: Is your face gonna be like this the whole episode?

Haley Radke: Yeah. That was my most sour episode so far.

No, wait, to your earlier point, I think we had feedback within, I wanna say, the first two to three weeks of someone saying just that. "Thank you so much for doing this episode. I was able to watch the thing and talk about it with my adoptive family," and it created those conversations that a lot of us wished we were able to have when we were growing up.

And it's also this, I'm gonna call it, like it's a sideways safe way to have a conversation. We're talking about this movie or TV show and how they're portraying adoption. We're not talking about our family or adoption, how it impacts us personally. [00:39:00] So it is like this ease into how can you have those more deeply personal conversations, which is really helpful I think anyone in relationship with an adopted person.

Kristal, who do you think should listen to Adoption Pop? And also comment to people who might not like to watch all these things we're talking about.

Kristal Parke: Yeah. One thing I think that we do really is I feel like we definitely give a very compassionate place for birth mothers to land here I think that the way that media portrays birth mothers is terrible, to say the least.

Look at we're about to do Shrinking. And I can imagine as a birth mother watching media that, oh, I don't wanna I don't wanna watch Adoption Pop because, media has done me dirty [00:40:00] already. But I think that for first mothers and and fathers for that matter to come, they can... I think they can come and watch this and really feel seen, and yeah, they should have done that differently.

I would also say non-adoptees, because I think it gives... and I have lots of friends that are not adopted, but maybe have a connection to adoption, and they watch, and then they're like, "Oh my gosh, I never thought about it that way," which is so cool 'cause that's what we're trying to do. So my answer is everyone.

But I know that, your audience can't just be everyone, but yeah. My vote is everyone.

Haley Radke: I think I agree. And I think I just wanna say that you don't have to have watched the thing-

Kristal Parke: Yeah ...

Haley Radke: to learn from our conversations and laugh with us at the creators of some of these terrible items. And [00:41:00] not everything we've covered has been terrible. We have had some gems. So you can look forward to, watching those along with us, I think.

Sullivan Summer: I think I'm always really proud and excited when someone will tell us that they went out and watched the media because we talked about it.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Sullivan Summer: They had never watched it before, and so now they went and watched it. And some of those have been things that we were very harsh about.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Sullivan Summer: Others, people have watched after we've said very positive things about them. And I think we should also say that the three of us don't always agree- on depictions, on, there are some pieces of media that, that one or two of us are incredibly activated by. And one or two of us had no problem with it, maybe even enjoyed it and other times where we disagree about the depiction [00:42:00] of whichever characters.

And again, I'm proud of that as well because I think, we represent different backgrounds and different life experiences and some of those overlap and some of them don't. And we also don't represent every adoptee experience either. And so I'm hopeful that listeners and viewers, 'cause we're on YouTube as well, but listeners and viewers of Adoption Pop can see something in every episode that resonates with them

Haley Radke: Agreed. Adoption Pop is definitely one of my recommended resources for folks because we can be your friends critiquing the shows that you like to watch or hate to watch alongside of you. So that's pretty fun. You can add us as a trio to your friend [00:43:00] crew if you watch Adoption Pop or listen.

And you guys have so many things going on. I do, too, but I wanna make sure folks know about all of them. I'm working away at On Adoption. We are writing and editing episodes right now. It is some of the most difficult work I've ever done in my whole life because of the subject matter. I interviewed birth mothers for 18 months and hundreds of... not hundreds. Hundreds of hours of thinking about it, dozens of hours actually recording, I should say, and now putting everything together. It's very emotionally taxing, and I hope that people will really learn a lot from what we're working On Adoption. And Kristal, will you tell us about your film and your new [00:44:00] film and what you're bringing into the world in the adoptee space?

Kristal Parke: Yes. I still have my film, Because She's Adopted, out there. It's still being invited to be screened at various places and events, and we will actually be showing it at CUB this year on the 10th of October. So if you are going to CUB, come and see Because She's Adopted, and we'll do a Q&A after.

Haley Radke: That's the Concerned United Birthparents retreat. It's gonna be in Seattle, Washington this year.

Kristal Parke: Yes. Yes. And my film's also available to rent on my website, kristalparke.net. And then I kinda, I said I wasn't a real filmmaker until I did my second film. So I do my second film. It's called Life's The Mother.

It's a short film. It features Monica Hall. She's an adoptee, a first mother, [00:45:00] and she shares some very deep and personal and intimate experiences of her life. So that should be completed by the end of summer, and we'll do the film festival run. And yeah, hopefully it'll be available for everybody to see as, as soon as that's done.

And I'm actually gonna be... I have another project coming up, another doc as well, but I can't talk about it yet. So I guess if I do three docs, then I am a real filmmaker.

Haley Radke: Do you keep adding real? Yes. You're just real. Eventually it's just R-E-E-L. It's just film reels. Okay.

Kristal Parke: As you can tell, I have bad... i've got imposter syndrome big time, but that's all right.

Haley Radke: We don't have that for you. We believe you're a real filmmaker, an excellent one, and I'm so excited to see Life's a Mother when it comes out soon. And your, of course, [00:46:00] your film Because She's Adopted is incredible. Sullivan, will you share with us all the things you have going on?

Sullivan Summer: Yes, and before I do, 'cause I'm making a face at Kristal's imposter syndrome- ... that I mentioned that Adoption Pop was on YouTube. Kristal is entirely responsible for the editing and production of our YouTube show every single week, and I gotta be honest, we look fantastic. And and that's a result of Kristal every single week.

Kristal Parke: Thank you. I appreciate that. I really do. Okay, I'll never talk about myself that way again. Thank you.

Sullivan Summer: That's what, that's what we're here for.

So I have a couple of things going on. One is related, Haley, to your project On Adoption, this amazing limited series investigative podcast that you're putting together that I know [00:47:00] you've talked about before on Adoptees On.

But to produce something of the quality that you are doing costs a lot of money to do it well. And so Adoptees for Family Preservation is a 501[c][3] organization that is responsible for raising funds to support On Adoption, bringing On Adoption into the world. And we have been... so I was, I serve as the president of Adoptees for Family Preservation, alongside my other board members, Lora Alegria and Lilly Anspach.

We are all adoptees, and we've been working really hard for over a year to fundraise for On Adoption. And I have been blown away by the commitment and [00:48:00] generosity of so many people in this community who have given of their financial resources in small amounts and in large amounts to support the work that you're doing.

And so as we come into the latter half of 2026, we're in our final fundraising push and so people may see and hear us talk about fundraising more as we're coming into the end of the year. I would encourage listeners, you can go to our website adopteesffp.org. We're also on Instagram @adopteesffp. And certainly if you're able to give any amount fin- financially, we are incredibly grateful for that.

If you are not in a position to give financially, you can sign up for our [00:49:00] newsletter and you can follow us on Instagram. Both of these are free ways to support. Tell a friend also. Sign up and tell a friend as well, and again, we're grateful for that sort of support as well. So that's one thing I'm involved in.

And then I mentioned before I do quite a bit of literary criticism, but I also like... none of us, one podcast not good enough for any of us. So I also have another podcast. I have a podcast called Additions to the Archive. I interview Black authors writing Black history across genres.

That drops weekly. It is a New Books Network podcast. And so I'm really talking to historians and thinkers and people in the broader community talking about predominantly US history, politics, pop culture, literary criticism, and the like. And I will say while that is not [00:50:00] overtly adoption related, I'm thinking, Haley, when you were talking before about Adoptees On and the interviews that you're doing as being this archive of, adoptee stories.

I named my podcast Additions to the Archive because I think about a historical archive, a Black historical archive. And for me as an adopted person whose- not in reunion with either biolo- both of my biological parents were passed by the time I found them. So I have a hunger for this personal history and this archive.

And so my identity as an adoptee and as a transracial adoptee and a Black transracial adoptee is really at the foundation of Additions to the Archive, even though it is not a, quote unquote, "adoption-related podcast."

Haley Radke: Thank [00:51:00] you. I am so honored to create alongside of you two brilliant women. And, we celebrated Sullivan's chapbook launch last fall of Performance Anxiety, and I think folks would also like to read that.

We will link to all of those things in the show notes for you so you don't have to remember where to find Kristal and Sullivan. We'll have that there. But Kristal's website, kristalparke.net, and sullivansummer.com. And you're on all the places. IG, Sullivan's got a Substack. No worries, we got you covered on the links.

Thank you so much, both of you, for joining me to celebrate 10 years. Such an honor to get to speak with you and share you as my friends with all my listener friends. I'm so grateful that you agreed to come on and interview me. Thank you.

Sullivan Summer: [00:52:00] Congratulations.

Kristal Parke: Congratulations, and it is such an honor to be on Adoptees On and celebrate with you.

Love you.

Sullivan Summer: Love you.

Haley Radke: Love you too.

Thank you so much for listening to me all these years. I know there are some of you who've listened to the show since the beginning, and you've heard me evolve over the last decade, and I'm sure you have, too. And it's so incredible that you've stuck with me all these years, and I know I'm thankful for the new listeners, too.

New folks find the show every day. I hear from you that you binge the back catalog, and I love that all those hundreds of episodes are available in perpetuity. I've joked before that it's in my [00:53:00] will that someone will keep paying to keep the lights on the podcast feed when I'm long gone from this world to be able to preserve these stories for generations to come, and I hope that does happen.

I'm so proud of everyone who was brave enough to share their story and all the folks who have been inspired by my guests sharing to share in their own ways and share on Instagram and start their own TikToks and start their own podcasts and write their memoirs and workbooks to help adoptive parents and all the resources that folks have created out of listening to adoptee stories.

All the people who listened to the show and [00:54:00] went back to school to become therapists for adoptees. When I think about the ripples I'm looking at my wall of cards and letters right now. I've said it before, but whenever I'm recording at my desk, I see all the cards and notes people have sent to my PO Box, and when I have a difficult work day, I just look up, and I remember who I'm doing this for.

And I'm so Honored to be a part of such an incredible community, the adoptee community who spent, decades in activism work, and I just came alongside and learned from, all of the academics and adoptees before who have put their work out into the world. I came in as a newbie and [00:55:00] really gave myself a crash course in all that is adoption.

I don't know how many books I've read now. It's gotta be close to 300, maybe 350 adoption-related books, and all the hours of reading the academic articles that have been published, the conferences I've attended in person or virtually. If anyone wants to give me an honorary PhD in adoption, if that's a thing I think I'm ready for it.

I remember early on when somebody called me an adoptee expert, and I would kinda be like, Ugh, and now I can embrace that. I am an expert in listening to adopted people's stories, and they really stay with me, and I've carried all of your stories along with me in this world, and it powers me to [00:56:00] do the work that I'm doing now.

If you haven't heard, I'm working on this show called On Adoption. We are editing and writing the episodes right now. I've finished the majority of my recording at the time you're hearing this, and speaking to mothers who've relinquished their children is going back to how painful it was in the beginning when I heard adoptee stories and the difficulties people had and I identified with.

And now hearing the mother stories and fathers who have lost children to adoption in recent years is so deeply painful, and I have been strengthened through hearing all of your experiences and [00:57:00] knowing that there is hope for change. And I really believe that sharing our stories empowers all of us to share our stories, which impacts people's views of adoption.

And we have been changing the societal narrative together as a community for years and years, and our voices are more amplified now than they ever have been in history. And I believe that continues to happen. It continues. The amplification is growing. People are listening to us. Some are believing us.

And the more of Gen Pop, I've been calling them, that believe adoptee stories and believe stories of mothers and fathers who have [00:58:00] relinquished children, the more we will be able to support family preservation, vote for things that mean family preservation, all the upstream problems that cause adoption to happen in the first place during a temporary crisis situation.

I believe we will turn this ship around, and we are doing it. On Adoption is one of those projects that I hope will have a great impact in that work. And if you wanna learn more about it, you can go to onadoption.net. You can sign up for the Adoptees On Podcast newsletter. I share about it there, and you can look for Adoptees for Family Preservation, as Sullivan mentioned, if you'd like to support that brand-new project.

Thank you for doing that, and thank you for all the folks who have already done so. [00:59:00] You're helping power this work, this new project of mine, which will be my fourth podcast. So started with Adoptees On, went to Adoptees Off Script, which is my Patreon podcast. Now we have Adoption Pop and On Adoption's number four, and I hope to have good news about that for you soon.

Thank you to everyone who keeps asking me, "When is it gonna be out? I wanna listen to it." I wanna listen to it too. I do. I do. We're working on it, promise. Thank you so much for your celebrating with me. If you would like to give me a gift today, here are the ways you can celebrate. You can, A, tell a friend about Adoptees On, especially an adopted person that you might know. There's plenty of people who've never heard of Adoptees On. I think [01:00:00] now people assume you have, but you might not have. So tell a friend about Adoptees On. B, you could leave a podcast review. I always ask for that on my actual birthday, but this year you could leave me a review when you hear this episode. That would be so great. It helps build the credibility of the podcast and also helps people find the show a little more easily and helps in the podcast rankings of it all. And C, if you would subscribe to my newsletter and support Adoptees for Family Preservation by doing the same, that would be incredible because we will need your cheerleading and listening ears when On Adoption releases into the world to make sure it amplifies and gets out to as many folks, many listeners as we can.

[01:01:00] Those are the best ways to celebrate with me, or you can come and congratulate me on Instagram and leave a thank you for all of the guests who've shared their stories over the years. Thank you so much for listening for 10 years. Let's talk again soon.

327 Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/327

---

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. On today's episode, I'm talking with Beth Yu Simpson, a therapist, educator, and founder of AIRE Roots. Beth shares how mentorship, community building and her own lived experience as a Korean adoptee have shaped her work, including her focus on ancestral healing and adoptee-centered care.

We also dig into the gaps in social work education around adoption and what meaningful change could look like. 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 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 Beth Yu Simpson. Hi, Beth.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Hey. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad to get to talk to you. You have appeared on Patreon for Ask an Adoptee Therapist, but this is our first time having you on Adoptees On. So I'd love it if you would start, if you don't mind sharing a bit of your story with us.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I'm a transracial Korean adoptee. I was adopted when I was 10 months old. I grew up in the Seattle area, so in the suburbs, so the Coast Salish people. And I also had a stepparent adoption around maybe 10. I have two brothers who were not... who were biological to my parents, and I'm the only girl. But I am estranged from my adoptive parents.[00:02:00]

And the other thing I think is interesting about me is I'm married to another Korean adoptee, which is unique, but actually not so unique, which is interesting. And he is not estranged from his family and is really close with them and it's been really healing for me to be part of their family and even to witness the way that he was raised.

And for me, my family has really been my chosen family, so that's other adoptees and my best friend growing up. Her family really took me in and so that's actually the other family we do a lot of our holidays with. And I owe a lot to my mentors and teachers. So for my adoption, I would say I was interested I realize now I was actually really interested in my Korean culture. So when I was in eighth grade we moved to Federal Way which is- has a ton of Korean people actually. And I asked my mom if I could go to Korean school or do TaeKwonDo, and she was like, "No." And so I kinda just dropped it. But I really got [00:03:00] immersed into the adoptee community around 2005. I did Holt Camp. And I had grown up doing camps. I grew up really Christian, and I had grown up actually being a camp counselor. And it was perfect, because it was the first year Steve Kalb, it was his first year, and this was the year that Holt was moving from the cultural camps to identity. And that really resonated with me, because I had also just started the, my undergrad as a social worker.

And this is so powerful. You're just immersed into it, and it's so transformative. You spend a whole summer with all these adoptees. And for me, I love working with young people, so it was really perfect for me. And that just kinda launched, my work with the adoptee community and my adoptee community family actually.

And then I went into the MSW program right after that, the School of Social Work at University of Washington. And that, I think, is where I was more politicized and really embraced my identity as a person [00:04:00] of color and as a Korean person, and also continued to learn about the industry of adoption and the structural things at play.

And I was really lucky to be surrounded by adoptee community at that time, and tons of mentors. I went into public child welfare. So I went into this program. It's a Title IV-E program, so they pay for you to go to your MSW, but you work in public child welfare in return. And I actually ended up working for that program as a teacher for 10 years.

But I think a lot of people go into that thinking they're going to be doing adoption or be doing adoption work, and I actually think I thought that too, and then quickly you're like, "I actually don't wanna do adoption. I wanna do family preservation." But I did that, and I worked in child welfare for 20 years actually.

And then in that time, when I was around 30, I also did my, I did my birth search then. So I did find my birth family, and around the same time I decided to go to Korea. So [00:05:00] I had never left the country, ever. I went to Canada. But I just got up and I moved. I went Do the EPIK program as a English teacher.

I actually can't believe I did that. I think I was, like, 33. But I had already worked in child welfare for a little bit and I just, I moved and I was there for a year and a half.

Haley Radke: You just moved to Korea?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I totally just moved to Kor- I, I look back and I can't believe I was able to do that.

Haley Radke: And you didn't travel there first? You just your first step there you were moving there?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, exactly.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I look back at that and I can't believe I was able to do that. But it was also financial. It's such a privilege to be able to go to Korea and travel there, but I just was like, "I'm gonna just do this." And I was really encouraged by some mentors who were like, "You should go back. If you wanna go back." So I went there and that I had also been in contact with my birth mother and I can talk about that later. We ended up meeting and then she kinda ghosted me which is fine. I think at that point [00:06:00] I, because I was a social worker, I understood the cultural dynamics and the pressure.

But I did, I lived in the country because I decided I didn't... I was really connected with the adoptee community at that time, but I actually wanted to learn about the culture, so I decided to live in the country. And so in that time I got connected with an orphanage there and that is where my full circle was.

I started a, like, where the foreigners would come and teach English and I did some programs there which was special. Because for me being from Seattle, there's so many social workers so I, there's a lot of people doing a lot of community work, but there I was the only one. So it just forced me to, that, that's where I learned to organize and do events and if you want something done, just do it. So that's where my full circle was I think, is the orphanage and the director there, the Wonjeong. And then I came back. Actually, I was there for just over a year and a half. I came back. I went back into child welfare.

But at that [00:07:00] time, that was when I started with a group, with AAAW, Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington. That's when we started our AMP program, the Adoptee Mentorship Program. That was the vision of Sarah Kim Park who was the president there at that time and then Jenny Kelly really supported it, the new president and that went on for 10 years and that was for Asian adoptees.

And I think what was significant about that program, and it was with a group of people, is we really realized, and it'll, this'll come back later, but we really realized the mentors actually needed what we were doing for the mentees. So then we started really working on identity development, racial, anything we were doing with the young people we actually did with- The mentors.

And then we started doing a parent program. We called it PAIR, I think. But that ended and we kinda tried to hand it off because then we s- started AIRE Roots, which is the BIPOC adoptee group that I'm doing now. I'm the principal of it, but it's with a [00:08:00] group of other adoptees, and we do capacity building.

The goal is actually to support other BIPOC groups with using our privilege and knowledge to actually hopefully support other adoptee groups that wanna do things, or individuals that have a vision. And then, so yeah, I can talk about our work later, but I just wanted to say, I owe a lot of my adoption work actually, and adoption identity to my mentors.

First AAAW had been, I think, 10 years old when I came around, but Amy Pak and Saul Tran-Cornwall. So Amy was, like, this Korean auntie to me and encouraged me to really immerse myself in Korean culture and go to Korea. And then Saul actually, I would say, was a mentor through actually just working together.

And I think what's so powerful about our community is the multi-generational and we can mentor one another. We love each other. And so I've learned... I wouldn't be here without my mentors. And not just them, but the community. And so [00:09:00] now professionally, I worked in public child welfare for 20 years doing child welfare and then training students.

And then recently I just moved. I work in the Department of Psychology in a master's program as the Associate Director of Educational Equity and Student Wellbeing, so basically doing social work there. And through that, it's part-time. I also do a pr- I have a private practice, so AIRE, and that's where I do my therapy, and I focus on BIPOC people, adoptees, and doing a lot of somatic EMDR because of your podcast, and ancestral healing.

So I think I approach healing both... the work we do is both spiritual and emotional. And so that brings me up to now, where I'm really focusing on, for myself and also in the work I'm doing, I'm diving more into our ancestral healing that we have access to. And, I do it with everybody, [00:10:00] but I think it's really powerful for the adoptees that I'm working with. So that is kinda where I am now.

Haley Radke: Can you... I just w- before we go to ancestral healing, I wonder about your step parent adoption. Not that you have to go into the personal of it, but I've had, folks who were adopted by a step parent compare their experience to an adoptee who's been severed from both biological parents, and I wonder if you have thoughts around that.

Because to me it's- different. There's still a connection there, but y- for you, it was adoptive parents are s- there's a new stepparent to take over one of the adoptive parents', empty spots, I'll call it. Do you have any thoughts around that?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, that's interesting. I think the first thing that made me think about is for us as adoption, because it's a stepparent adoption, but really adoption, the, a lot of the trauma [00:11:00] for us in adoption is from the separation. And so if there isn't a separation from your first parent or the non-stepparent, I think, yeah I think it is different. I think it can be connected, but I do think the experience is different. There, and depending on the situation, so maybe it's a stepparent adoption because they were a child and th- one of the parents l- left or passed away.

So I can see how it would be very similar, and also I can see how it could be very different.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: But I say I had a stepparent adoption to just normalize that, and also say that it can happen for adoptees as well.

Haley Radke: Totally, and I appreciate you bringing it up, because I think there's this traditional fantasy that if an expectant parent chooses a hopeful adoptive couple to adopt their baby, that this is the couple that is going [00:12:00] to parent and raise this child forever. But people get divorced. There is a diff- there could be a new, person in town. There's no, no guarantees in adoption, as we like to say.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I actually thought back in the day adoptees, we're... Sometimes I think it's just the same as if we were born into a family around if we're going to have, what our experience is going to be like. It's just a crapshoot. The same, and I think I was thinking that because people always think we have a better life. But then you, when you pull out a little bit more, it's even someone navigated and facilitated that, so it actually should've been a lot better than a crapshoot. But I was just thinking, yeah, maybe we're just average.

I think I thought that as a child. I was like, "Oh it's just the same." But actually, I hold the industry responsible to, it shouldn't have been a crapshoot, though.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yeah. Where were our guarantees? I'd love to know that. The other thing I'm really [00:13:00] curious about is your work as a social worker and as an educator of future social workers.

I wonder if you've seen any changes over all these last years. I remember- A few years ago now, but I connected with this lady in my city. She was going back for her, second career, and she was studying social work and we were connected through podcasting. And she told me in her program, basically almost no content related to adoption.

And it was so disappointing to me that they're not teaching about the trauma involved in family separation, which can often be a large part of a social worker's role. So have you seen any changes? I'm assuming you've got you and, other adoptees experienced or care experienced folks in your program there. I don't know. What's going [00:14:00] on there?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I do think that there's more classes being offered. So I know ... I think it's Cam Small. They're doing something with Portland University or Portland State with BIPOC adoptees, I think. I think it is so dependent on the instructors themselves being educated and knowing that adoption is a trauma.

So I'm lucky because I worked in the Child Welfare Training and Advancement program. And so part of that we teach, our students and there's a class on child welfare. So we do talk about the trauma of separation. I think in the child welfare community in general, there's a lot more awareness around the trauma of separation.

So there's a new policy that came out in Washington State, the Keeping Families Together, which really makes people articulate why are we separating this child and how is that [00:15:00] actually not as bad ... how is the safety so much more that it would actually be greater than the trauma of separating the child?

So they actually have to articulate that at removal. And that's been really advocated by first parents, adoptees. AIRE is actually I don't know, we're an advisory, so if we- if they ever need us to say something, we can. So I think there's a push in general in child welfare around family preservation and the harm of separation.

But I would say it's still not there. So there's not a class on adoption. I talk about this all the time with JaeRan who teaches at UW Tacoma, and I'm like, "Why don't we ... You should teach a class." I know she actually has the curriculum. But there's always this tension around who's gonna take the class, the money.

And so I just, I don't think ... it's not where it should be. And so many social workers, especially people that are working with children, youth, and [00:16:00] families, they actually have a connection they'll be working with young people that were in care or were adopted. So it really should be more integrated actually, I think, into all the classes, but it's not.

We did start a group in the School of Social Work when I started BAC now, BIPOC Adoptee Collective. And so we do, one of the things that we do if the students wanna do it is psycho-education. So we brought in Angela Tucker and JaeRan to talk. So we try to do it on our own through these workshops, but it's better the child welfare community in general is, knows more about it, but there's always pushback too.

"Oh, but it's better actually for the kids to be with this other family that can provide them with the picket fence." So there's always pushback, especially if something happens and they say, "Oh, that's because of this policy." There's always the tensions, I think, of child safety and family preservation. But of course, it's in the context of capitalism and white [00:17:00] supremacy culture.

Haley Radke: Thank you for your thoughts on that. And I find it interesting, like of course an organization like the one that you've been working for, like you have adoptees working there and teaching there, and so there's some influence there.

But like, how much can you do that? And that's your personal life and, you don't wanna, put your professional life at risk going too you don't wanna be seen as that one that's pushing too far. So I can see the balance needed, especially when it is your career on the line.

And then I think about all these other organizations all over the country, your country, my country, who have no one there to just put their hand up and be like, "Wait, why are we still doing this?" Yeah, sounds like it's slow. Slow to change.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: It's slow and I think a lot of adoptees, some of us talk about it. We're like, "Why is it exactly the same now that it was 10 years ago? All of this work [00:18:00] that we've been doing?" And it's interesting in social work, I think there's 10... maybe that's an exaggeration. When you look at the faculty and staff, I think there's eight of us that are, adoptees, and then there's actually also a lot of adoptive, some adoptive parents. But we're overrepresented in social work, for sure.

Haley Radke: Yeah, just gotta get in those helping careers.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Why would you do social work?

Haley Radke: Classic. Classic. Okay. Let's talk about Beth as therapist, and you mentioned that you started doing EMDR because of this show. That's wild. What do you mean by that?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I love it. I refer people all the time to your podcast. I love the attachment series. But yeah, so I remember I was working with adoptees and I was doing, a lot of mindfulness and somatic ther- so I love somatics and, just becoming embodied. I think for us as adoptees, so much is held in our body.

So I was [00:19:00] listening to your podcast, I was on my way to work, and the therapist, it was the therapist series, she was saying, "EMDR is an amazing modality for adoptees because it gets to the pre-verbal trauma, and our trauma is pre-verbal." And I think I ha- I had another friend who was an adoptee who had started doing EMDR, and that was all I needed.

I was like, "I'm doing it." I think I signed up maybe a few weeks later, and I've been doing EMDR since. And I actually love it. And it is true. It really does help get to that pre-verbal trauma, because you can reprocess feelings. It really is an incredible modality, and it is really powerful for us as adoptees.

Yeah, so I'm really grateful for that. And I tell people that all the time. I say, "EMDR is great. You should do it, and this is why... how I learned about it."

Haley Radke: Oh, cool.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: And I have people listen to your podcast. So adoptees, when I give them information about EMDR, I actually [00:20:00] send them that episode and I say, "Listen to this episode, and then we can talk about it, and kinda what, our process is going to look like."

Haley Radke: That's awesome. I love that. I still use EMDR when I go see my psychologist, as a recipient of that, and it's been really impactful for me personally. So- yeah.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, I love it. I actually started doing it. I was working with my therapist, my non-EMDR therapist, and I was starting to do EMDR with people, and I was witnessing all of these incredible foundational transformations and I was like, "What is happening?"

And I'm like, "I have to get into EMDR," so then I did it myself. I kinda moved it up and it's been incredible.

Haley Radke: Can you talk about what you mean when you say ancestral healing? What does that even mean? It's Haley from the future. Beth wanted to add a little bit to her answer to my [00:21:00] question, so you're gonna hear a slight change in audio while she does and then we'll get right back to the interview.

Here's Beth.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I think that this is a really difficult question and complex, and also partly because I'm learning this and I am a new student, but I can talk about what I believe it is and really what my experience has been. It's also really unique to each of us, and so I encourage people, if they're interested, to seek it out on their own, because really I think it's important.

That whatever we do when we are thinking about ancestral healing or healing in general, is that it feels aligned for us and that it resonates with us. So no one can really tell you what it is. I think we have to feel into it what it is and feel that alignment. But for me, I think about it as the healing that's done through connection and building relationships to our ancestors, learning about them, their practices and beliefs, like our [00:22:00] connection and relationship to the land, and also the healing that occurs on an individual, ancestral, and collective level.

So for me, this has looked like learning about my ancestors, who they were, what their experience was, what their practices and beliefs were, our origin stories, and then allowing that to impact my life and the way I live. So really incorporating those beliefs and practices into my life and just talking to them.

So as part of the Korean diaspora and an adoptee, a big part of that has been first believing that I have ancestors and that I am connected to a lineage. And I've learned that it's a lot larger and deeper than just blood, but the connection to our ancestral field and making this connection, which really anchors me to the land and the people.

A part of this healing also is through making these [00:23:00] connections, is the healing that we do as descendants of our ancestors. And actually, for me, this has been the deepest but also the most difficult part of it, and where a lot of my liberation and freedom has come from too. So the best way to explain this, I think, is when we talk about we talk a lot about generational trauma and how it's passed down.

This is part of it. It's held in our bodies and also other ways of knowing that, that trauma. And so it's a healing of that trauma and pain that occurs that's not just ours, but it's been passed down through us, so through many generations. Our mothers, fathers, grandparents, and way further back.

And again, it's not just our direct lineages, but the ancestral field. And I think this has been a big part of me learning about our people and what they've endured and also their resistance. So as we [00:24:00] metabolize this trauma, it means, the healing is that it isn't held in our bodies anymore.

It's not held by us anymore. And another big part of it is it means it's not passed down, so we don't pass it down to our children I think that as an adoptee, this is really significant as we already ... First, that we're connected to anything, but also to know, as adoptees, we already know that we've inherited some ancestral trauma directly through our parents being separated.

For many of us also, if we just, read about our histories, we know that our communities and countries have also experienced a lot of trauma. And so there's so much healing to do that has been inherited. And as I move through this, honestly, I have felt resentful, like kinda mad. Like, why am I the one healing up my family lines when they're the ones that, in my mind I would say rejected me?

It really feels [00:25:00] like that, and I had to really, and I still sometimes really grapple with that. But now, a lot of times I'm in a place of awe because there's also so much joy in the healing especially my last recent trip to Korea, that I as an adoptee have this opportunity and have been the one to come back and begin the healing for my ancestors, after I don't even know how many generations.

And it feels not only like an honor, but a miracle. As for many of us, it's a journey just to get to that place of healing, so it took me so long to even go to Korea, and then it took a long time to learn about healing and spiritual healing, and then to come to this point of going to Korea and doing this healing work, it was a miracle in itself.

I think for many of us that's true. And there's also so much joy and resilience that we inherit from our people. That's part of the healing as well, and I've [00:26:00] learned that this is so big and so joyful, but connecting to the resilience and joy of the people, many that have survived, we're proof of that as their descendants, that they're strong.

We're here, and we are proof of the resilience and joy and strength of our ancestors by being alive, and that we had to do a lot of work to get here. And we were led to this, so I believe that when I went back to Korea, it was, to do the ancestral healing work, it was because I had been led and guided by my ancestors.

And Daeyeon talks a lot about reclamation, and I believe this is a big part of it. It's part of the healing. It's also reclaiming of what was lost, our inheritance, what was severed, not just for us, but for our people. And she recently reminded me and talked about, the reclamation, the healing I think too is a process, and this [00:27:00] also resonated with me.

And I think what's so great about it is- We don't have to have access to our first families. We can still do this work. The healing that comes from connecting to our ancestors, our ancestral field, which is bigger than just our lineage, but it's the collective ancestral field, so our histories, our spiritual practices, and reclamation of that, especially as adoptees.

But the healing that can come from that connection. So that could be like doing an altar. It could be, and if that's healing for you because you feel like you're honoring or calling in your ancestor, your well ancestor. So if that's healing for you, that's a ancestral healing. If it's asking for support.

So sometimes I just, when I first started, I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna give it a try." So I would literally be driving and I would say, "Fine, can you help me teach this class?" Or, "Can you help me figure out this [00:28:00] issue?" And I would feel supported. And the healing that comes through that by being like, oh, there is someone, there are...

There is this entity, whatever. If you call it spirit, the universe, I think that's healing to also feel like we have something in our past or in our lineage or that is somehow connected to us that isn't connected actually to our first family, our bloodline. And you can of course have ancestral healing through your bloodline, but that is difficult for us as adoptees.

So the healing that can come from that, I think it's even connected to the land. So if the land is here, and like getting energy, that's ancestral because I think if you go far enough, all of our ancestors were connected to the land, and actually were connected to their bodies. And so I think any healing that comes from that connection, I would consider ancestral healing as well.

Haley Radke: I think I like the idea of this so much because [00:29:00] many of us feel like we were just, dropped, I guess- from the proverbial stork or just from out of nowhere into our adoptive families. And that can feel very disconnected. Like-

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes ...

Haley Radke: and so whether reunion is even on the table you mention that you were able to find birth family through a birth search, but for many Korean adoptees, I understand the stat is 95% don't or something like that.

It's very unusual. And for a lot of us, we maybe did get a reunion, but there's no connection now. And so there's this longing for information or just I'm gonna keep saying the same word, connection, that feels like it's not possible.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes.

Haley Radke: And so I like this idea of maybe I can build it in a different way.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. And that is what I'm so glad you said the word [00:30:00] longing, because ... So I have two thoughts. So the first one is actually, I was talking to Daeyeon, the director and founder of Ancestral Korea, and my friend and teacher. And one of the first things she said in her, in one of the workshops that was so powerful for me and multiple people that I talked to after, is she said that longing, which I think for us, it feels like an untethering.

We're longing for connection. Yeah, I think sometimes I think of myself, I used to think of myself just literally in space, like with no connection. It's ... You talk about that, too. It's called, there's a whole episode that, on the un- the nothing place, the nothing-

Haley Radke: The nothing place, yep.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: The nothing place. And Daeyeon said the longing is evidence that we are connected, and this can be seen as an anchor. So there's this reframe. The longing is evidence that we are connected, and we are being called to be connected [00:31:00] to our roots, our ancestors. And that reframe was so powerful. So instead of thinking of it as this emptiness for me, it actually, I had this vision of it becoming like a light, like this connection.

Why else would I have gone to Korea and done this gone on this mountain? It was this longing. And actually, that longing has always been there, but it has felt so empty because I didn't have an entry point. And I think that the other thing is it's so powerful for us as adoptees, and I used to always say that "Oh, we can connect to our ancestors," because the way that Daeyeon, I was sharing this with her, I'm like, "This is so powerful for adoptees."

She's not an adoptee. And the way that she described it that I now share with others is she says it's most people have acce- if there's an ocean, think about an ocean, and that's actually our collective ancestral field. So not just our lineage, but the whole field of all of our ancestors.

Adoptees maybe don't [00:32:00] have access to five feet of it, but actually, there's this whole ocean that we have access to, and it's just as hard to get to for us as other people. And so the other thing I share with clients and people I talk to is I say, "It's the great equalizer." We're all on the same ... it's just as powerful and also just as hard for us, actually, as it is for non-adoptees.

And that feels actually really great. And then you know for native adoptees, there's research, for indigenous adoptees, the power of finding, connecting to their origin story. Suicide ideation goes down and ... But it's the same for us, and I think we're so used to thinking like, "Oh, indigenous practices."

I remember looking a long time ago for- what are the indigenous practices for Korean people? But it's just been wiped out on purpose. It's political. But we all have it, so it's the same. We can all do it as adoptees, even, BIPOC adoptees and non-BIPOC [00:33:00] adoptees, we all have those.

We just have to seek it out. So if you feel that longing and it resonates, just ask for guidance and see what happens. I really believe you'll find it.

Haley Radke: The other thing I feel like is connected to this is I've had a few different conversations with adoptees over the years that mention in some way they've gone back to somewhere they knew their biological family had lived, or either literally a house or just the area they were or those kinds of things.

And of course, I think of transnational adoptees going back to their country of origin and just having a shift, just... You were talking about this connection to the land as well. And I know it kinda sounds woo-woo, but I don't know, I think there's something to that. A lot of people have had this big mental shift happen when they all of [00:34:00] a sudden are in the same place that they know someone literally connected to you by your DNA also was here before you.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. Yeah. It's so powerful. I'm just thinking how we went to Taebaeksan. So one of the things that we did in this reclamation is we go to this mountain. I'm not athletic. We climb this mountain that is the spine of Korea, and it was so powerful. I... because you f- I felt like when I returned, when I went to that mountain, I had returned to Korea I don't know, 17 years before that and have gone back, but I felt like I was returning for real this time.

I don't know. I had been open to being received by my ancestors and the land, and I think that what Daeyeon says is that actually they're waiting for us. The land, if you think of the land as something alive, which I do, and even those places, they still have the [00:35:00] energy of our ancestors and the people who cared for us.

Even if it's going back to the place where our orphanage was or our group home there's something there. Yeah. And so I think it calls us back. Yeah, it's an embodied experience and a spiritual experience. It is woo. I love the woo. Actually, I live, I kinda embrace the woo.

Haley Radke: Can you share with us what was it like when you moved to Korea as a 30-something?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I re- I think I was, like, so brave and maybe a little disassociative because I wasn't- ... as I am now. Because I really, I struggle to cry even now. I really... So I, that actually might have helped me get through it. This is so significant. I think about this. When I left, some of the people that showed me off were actually Amy and Saul, who I talked about.

And Amy's husband is a [00:36:00] musician and was singing this Somewhere Over the Rainbow song on a ukulele, and I'm waving, and it's I feel like I'm in a movie. And I literally get through the gate and I start bawling. I'm like, "What am I doing?" But then I got on the plane, and I remember eating Korean food, like bibimbap, which I've gotten every single time now since I've flown.

But the first time I ate it, I'm like, "This is amazing." Everything felt so sensational. Like, when I moved there, it was hard. Sometimes I say it was, like, the hardest thing I did in my whole life, and after doing that, I feel like I can do anything. But also, it was so heart-wrenching to be there, and it was really hard the way I was treated sometimes.

And also, on the flip side, I received so much love, and it was so powerful and transformative, and everything feels special, I felt. And I built a [00:37:00] community there. So when I look back, sometimes I don't know how I did it, actually, but I think the orphanage helped. By the time I left Korea, I was going there every day after school and just hanging out with the babies, and then hanging out with the Wonjeong.

I didn't speak good Korean and she didn't speak that much English, but we would just sit there together. And I think for her, she saw me as maybe a child that she raised kinda coming back. And I think what's... I think about now as I'm, as I go back now, I have a landing place. So I call it my Korean hometown.

So when I go back to Korea now, I will go there and I have places to stay and I have friends there, and I realized, oh, I created a life there. And I feel so privileged by that because it is so meaningful for me. And then I also think about other adoptees who go to Korea, which I've also done, and you don't know anyone, and I know what that's [00:38:00] too.

And my yearning is actually for all adoptees who want it to be able to go back and have some sort of landing place. It was the hardest thing I did, but it was one of the most beautiful things I did, and made me feel more Korean, actually. Which is bad, because you say, "We are Korean," but I felt so adopted there, and when my birth mother- kind of stopped talking to me because what happened was when I told her I was moving there, before when we first made contact, she was, she wrote a lot of letters. And then when I told her I was moving there, her letters actually stopped, which was strange to me, but now I understand it.

And then when I moved there, we had some contact, but what happened was I, as I was living there, I realized, oh, there's these ... She had told me my first father had passed away. So as I lived there, I realized, oh, I actually wanna go to his site, his grave site. That's a thing. So I asked her about [00:39:00] it, and then she didn't talk to me I think for six or nine months.

And then I saw her right before I left, but what I realized is her family didn't know about me. So I found this out through my cousin, my birth cousin. She said, "Oh, yeah, we didn't know about you." But she told me stuff like my birth mother couldn't have a child, so my sister who I met, who was 20 years younger than me, she is actually adopted domestically in Korea.

So she told me that my first mother, she couldn't have any children, so she ended up adopting, which I heard actually is not uncommon of, the trauma of the separation of your child. But I just think it was so hard for her, and she was scared, I think, of me derailing her life. And so I kinda just let it be.

And I understand adoptees that don't, but then I just immersed myself in the orphanage. And since then, I think after I left for [00:40:00] Korea, I went back and I think I saw her one more time, but she hasn't responded to emails or anything recently. And I just sent an email maybe a year ago because one of my friends, we were talking and she said, "You know how adoptees, we're, like, ready for rejection, so we're like, 'Oh, if you're gonna reject me, I'm just gonna let it go.'"

And she was like, "Are you..." She didn't say, "Are you doing that?" But she brought it up and I thought, "Okay, I wanna make sure I'm not doing that." So I emailed her again and I didn't hear anything, I'm okay. It's that secondary rejection, and I had to process it when I was in Korea, which was intense. But I don't know. It is what it is.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I experienced secondary rejection as well. This is interesting. Do you know much about domestic adoption in Korea?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: A little bit, because I volunteered at the orphanage, but that was 15 years ago, and I was a child welfare worker already.

I'd already worked in child welfare. So I was like, "What the heck is happening here?" There was, like, no court structure. [00:41:00] Here we go to court in the States at least every six months. We have to say, "This is how the child is doing. This is what we're doing to try to reunify the child with their families."

But there it wasn't like that at all However, now, with everything that's happening and the new child welfare agency, the federal agency, the orphanage, there actually is a lot more structure for the kids. I don't know that they're really going back to their families often, and I also don't think they're getting adopted as much as here, but it is increasing.

I don't know the statistics, but I do know, adoption internationally has basically ended in Korea, which is good. But I think it's hard because there's so much emphasis on the bloodline. You even have to give your gajog your family bloodline when you go to school. So I think it's really around the old Confucius.

So I think it's the cultural piece that prevents adoptions. But [00:42:00] one thing that is interesting that's changed in the last 15 years is when I lived there, they were telling me a lot of the children, some of the kids had family still, so they would go to their families for holidays, which I thought that would be so difficult.

And they were adopted, they were in the orphanage being single parent, a single mother. And so I was thinking, gosh, these are all this could be prevented. But now they were telling me it's a lot of times from abuse or neglect, so it's actually changing a little bit. This is just from the story I heard a month ago talking to the new director of the orphanage.

But I think it's changing, and hopefully the kids would be less kids being really, separated from their families and then more adoptions for those that have to be adopted.

But there is more oversight, which is good, because I remember thinking, "I could literally take one of these kids with me and nobody would know."

If I could get them through customs, the court wouldn't know. The orphanage would know, but there was just no [00:43:00] oversight, I felt, and that was interesting for me and hard for me to see as a, as a social worker.

Haley Radke: Think about all the years of them just making stuff up on forms, and let's just name this kid the next, name down our list that we just rotate through, and what day were they found on? I don't know. Which police station steps were they found on? Oh, my God.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, and it was sad to see the kids still there. So a lot of the kids that I saw in the baby room are the k- I just watched them grow up actually and age out. Yeah. And that broke me.

Haley Radke: God, there are just so many downstream issues from upstream problems that I really hope we can work on as society. Geez. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you wanna make sure we talk about today

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, what about [00:44:00] my name? What do you think about the name and the saju?

Haley Radke: What about your name? I think your name is changing. What? Tell me more.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Okay, so the name change is connected to the ancestral Korea, but first, it's connected to my birthday as well.

So I'm in transition, I believe, and my friend Daeyeon said, "It's like your process of reclamation, like the reclaiming and healing." And also part of, I think, what you asked around ancestral healing. But when I was in Korea last time, through ancestral Korea, I was able to get my saju read, which is our birth chart, which has always been a trigger for me.

I've heard you talk about it. I think adoptees, it's like one of the table talks we have. It's "Oh, what-"

Haley Radke: Do you know your real birthday? What's your horoscope?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, and what time were you born? And so I actually said, "I don't know my time." And she said, actually, in the saju, which is the Korean birth chart the time is later, so she said that's okay.

But she read my saju, and she, through reading the saju, because, I'm [00:45:00] 45, she was able to figure out when my birthday was. So that's actually part of the process of reading the saju, for adoptees at least, is I said my birthday, I was always told my birthday, my legal birthday is October 26th."

But when I met my first mother, I was asking her about my time. I said, "Oh, do you know what time I was born?" Because of course I wanted to get my chart read. And she said, "No, I don't, but, you were born on October 28th." And I, my Korean's not good, so I was like, "Wait a minute, what did you say?" And she said, "Oh, yeah, you were born on October 28th."

So I always wondered, who do I believe? My birth mother, my first mother, who was probably very traumatized, or, the paperwork. So I've always wondered. So part of the saju was we went through the dates, and she... you can tell which date is yours. So I think for October 26th, the characteristics were, like, you have a lot of siblings, which I don't.[00:46:00]

You are really harsh, like your words are, they slice, which definitely is not me. So she went through the days, and actually, we went through the whole week, I think. But October 28th was definitely me. In my saju, in this... So not only did I find my birth date, but what can be healing about the saju is it makes you realize a lot of the things that you've experienced, it's actually part of our healing and journey.

So in my saju, it ha- it shows the endings of my mothers. It actually shows- endings with my first mother, my adoptive mother, and then it actually shows this coming in of the mothering I received from my mother-in-law and then actually I think Tracy's mom, my best friend's mom. But it's in my Saju.

My adoption basically is in my Saju. So I found my birthday. So now on the 28th I get Korean food, and that can be really powerful for us as adoptees. And then the other thing that we can do as adoptees is our names have always been, I think, tricky. I [00:47:00] actually asked my birth mother, "Did you name me SooJin?"

And she said, "No, I didn't name you that." And I said, "Oh did you name me?" And she said, "I didn't name you." Which is so sad, right? But what you can do in your Saju, there's actually a tradition in Korea, it's called a Ho, and it is a new name you get. I think it's like a spiritual name, but it's a name that's actually supposed to support you in your journey and whatever you wanna support.

And the Ho, the idea with your Ho is when you say your name like Yu SooJin, when I say that I'm calling in the energy of that name, which I think is connected to the elements. So what your name holds, you're calling that energy. And so what she does is she reads your Saju and then you can get a Ho.

You can get a new name that actually supports your Saju and supports you in what you need. So they do it so it's completely balanced and your name is balanced. So actually it's interesting, she said Yu SooJin is actually a really balanced name, so I didn't change my name. [00:48:00] And she said it seemed like the orphanage, it was intentional.

And I thought, "There's no way that was intentional," because it was through Holt, which is Christian. But I was watching my friend Michael Tessier's talk, and he said that actually the social workers in the orphanages, they do, they did create our names. Some of them did create our names on purpose using our Sajus.

So I think whoever created my name put a lot of intention in it, and so I'm actually continuing to use my... I'm not changing my name, but I'm in process of slowly, I think, starting to go by SooJin.

Haley Radke: Okay. Interesting. When I was making light of the list of things before, I didn't mean workers were thoughtfully, choosing based on these different things. I meant that they used to have these spreadsheets where they'd be like, "Oh, baby number two this one, this year gets this name."

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: I [00:49:00] think a lot of them do.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: But I think some, maybe they didn't. And I think it shows you how actually even though they're Christian, it kinda shows you how our ancestral and indigenous practices are actually really mainstream and they, it's just like- intertwined.

But yeah, that surprised me actually. And I didn't believe it, and then I actually had to verify with my friend. Did they? They told him that at Holt. They said, "Oh, no, they do that." I had no idea. I wouldn't have thought. And that might have been a very rare thing, and I don't know how much they did it, but yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. SooJin. I like it.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, yeah, I, yeah, I think it rings nice.

Haley Radke: Lovely. We didn't talk too much about AIRE, but for recommended resources, I wanna make sure people know a little bit more about your organization. So can you tell us a little bit about it and why you started [00:50:00] it?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yes. AIRE Roots. So AIRE is my therapy, and also AIRE Roots is the community mobilizing leg of it.

And so this is a group of adoptees, BIPOC adoptees, and we started it to support other BIPOC adoptees. We realized that we have so much privilege and knowledge, a lot of us as Korean adoptees, so we wanted to support other organizations or upcoming organizations or individuals with capacity-building to actually create their own organization or mentoring program.

Or even if it's we're an indigenous group of adoptees, or I'm an indigenous adoptee and I wanna just do a potluck and see who's out there, we wanna support that. And we can support, we support that through agenda-making, promoting, but we also have some money. So we received a grant through Asian Counseling Referral Services, and they so they've supported us to get [00:51:00] started.

We're also fiscally sponsored, so we can get grants, but we're not at that point yet. We need to start fundraising. But it's actually capacity-building for individuals or organizations. So if you're interested in, we're actually looking for projects. So if you're an adoptee, and it's BIPOC adoptees, but if you're interested and have an idea, we're open to it.

We're based in Washington State, but I think if it's something online, just please contact us. And we're also doing affinity group. So we're starting one for QTBIPOC adoptees and parenting adoptees. But really, our goal in it is to fill whatever gaps if there's any gaps that we see. So I think there, for me, I kept saying "There's a need for this," and it actually came out of a focus group.

But anyways, we do capacity-building affinity groups, and we're bringing in some speakers this year, I think two speakers. We're trying to find speakers that are representative of m- like, more marginalized BIPOC [00:52:00] adoptee groups though. So maybe not Korean or even Chinese But we're really trying to help other adoptee groups find one another and actually highlight the voices.

And then we are also, we did some work with JaeRan and Angela Tucker. We're doing a SAM project. We did a SAM project, so we looked at mentoring programs and what the training needed to be. So that was something we did. We try to collaborate also with other orgs. So the biggest thing coming up is the BIPOC Adoptee Conference in Portland.

We're working with Adoption Mosaic and the TIES program to do some events together. So we're also really supportive and try to collaborate as much as possible, because I think our community sometimes is really siloed. And so we're trying to collaborate, because we're stronger together.

Haley Radke: I love that. And you never said, but it stands for Adoption Identity Race Exploration, which I love that.

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: And the AIRE Roots comes from the monstera. It was a [00:53:00] monstera, but the idea is I thought of it before Roots is so popular now, but it was this idea of air roots, because I think of us as trees and we're growing, but actually later on in life, we create these roots with community and we get stronger.

And that's how I think of us as adoptees, growing these air roots. And so we're hopefully helping to support that. Yeah, 'cause we played around with AIRE Roots. We were almost AIRE Space AIRE Talk. And then I was in the kitchen and I was like, "What are those?" And my partner was like, "Those are air roots."

And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what it is. It's AIRE roots."

Haley Radke: That is awesome. That's a great story. Amazing. What do you wanna recommend to us?

I love, love, love the Adoptee Consciousness Model, and actually it's from JaeRan Kim, Susan Branco, and Grace Newton. If you haven't looked into the Adoptee Consciousness Model, they have a website now that is so great.

You can just look at the model and click on it and click on each of the stages [00:54:00] that are not linear, and it'll show you what it looks like, what support. But I love this model and I actually use it with clients all the time. I think it helps normalize our experience and it gives us a starting point to talk.

The other thing that can be found on JaeRan Kim's website, Harlow's Monkey, which I also love, because it's just this amazing website with tons of resources. And so I use that also. There's research, there's books, there's media, and I use that with my clients as well. Sometimes we'll go on and we'll pick a book to read together off of that.

But I think that those are great starting points for adoptees, and also not just starting points, but actually places that we keep coming back to with Adoptee Consciousness Model.

Yeah, totally. Totally. We've talked about those before here, and I loved hearing you're using them with clients, which is-

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Oh, I love it. I use it ...

Haley Radke: I think what they intended, right? To help us navigate This [00:55:00] be all these different layers to our experiences, especially over time. Thank you so much. This was such a good conversation. I really enjoyed speaking with you. Where can folks connect with you online, follow your work, and see what AIRE Roots has to offer?

Beth Yu Simpson, MSW, LICSW: Yeah, so you can just go to aireroots.com, and that's for the ther- I, I actually am full right now, but I'm really committed for any adoptee, not just BIPOC adoptee. If you're seeking therapy, I'll help you find a therapist. So I do consultations for free for adoptees. So even though I'm not open right now, you can reach out and I have a list of adoptees and we'll just work together.

So aireroots.com, and then I would also check out The Ancestral Korea. I think it's ancestralkorea.com. So that's where you can find us. We're on Instagram, AIRE Roots. We're not super active. We're working on it. But yeah, that's where you can find me, and you can reach out to me through the [00:56:00] AIRE Roots, and I'm always open actually to talking to adoptees.

Yeah, especially helping connect and find resources.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you.

Friend, I have been talking about this all year, and it is finally here. If you are listening to this when it drops in real time, then please watch your podcast feed on July 1st for a special 10-year anniversary show before we take our summer break.

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