109 [Healing Series] Self-Compassion with Kristin Jones, CMHC

Transcript

Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/109

Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye

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This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees, by going to AdopteesOn.com/partner.

(intro music)

You’re listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I’m your host Haley Radke. And this is a special episode in our Healing Series, where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Today we are talking about self-compassion. Let’s listen in.

(upbeat music)

Haley - I’m so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On today, Kristin Jones. Welcome Kristin!

Kristin - Thank you Haley, it’s great to be here.

Haley - I’m so excited to talk with you, Kristin today, and since it’s the first time that you’re on the show, can you share just a little bit of your story with us?

Kristin - Sure! So, I was adopted in 1968, it was a closed adoption as so many were back then. And I went for a long time in my life with every once in awhile, I would have questions or wonder about my birth parents but I didn’t really pursue that too much. I was pretty sensitive to my adoptive parents and didn’t wanna hurt feelings. And then about 8 years ago, I had been toying with the idea for about maybe 15 years about you know, I’m gonna go search and see if I can find these people. But I didn't really have any good leads. And then about 8 years ago, my dad, my adoptive father was retiring. And he cleaned out a file cabinet and it had some paperwork from the hospital that they weren’t supposed to receive. And on this paperwork was my birth mother’s full name, and address at the time that she had me. And oh, and also my birth father’s name was on this paperwork too so –

Haley - Wow! That’s amazing!

Kristin - Oh, very much so. I feel very lucky, a lot of adoptees don’t have that kind of information to start with. And so we were able to use her address, my birth mother’s address to kind of, suss out what high school she may have attended back then. She was 18 when she had me. And we found her in the yearbook. And this high school a website for their reunion page and it had all these addresses and contact information for their graduates. So I was able to send her a letter. And she did respond, and she requested that I not contact her again, and that I not contact anyone in the family. And so I, you know, it was one of those secondary rejections that so many of us experience. And it was devastating. And so we haven’t had any contact for the last 8 years. And then my birth father, we kind of tracked him down in the same way. He went to a high school that was not the same high school as hers but nearby. And so we found him in the yearbook and then found an address for him and sent him a letter. And he responded and we have kind of one of those lukewarm reunions, you know? So we talk occasionally, we’ve met a few times. And that’s kind of the extent of it.

Haley - Okay. So you know what we go through. You are very much an adoptee that understands, I’m so sorry for the secondary rejection. I know that intimately.

Kristin - Yes.

Haley - Okay, well, you’re the perfect person to talk to us about today, about self-compassion. So you know that we’ve talked briefly about self-compassion before on this show, we’ve mentioned Kris Neff’s book about self-compassion and a few people have mentioned it here and there. And I feel like it’s kind of a buzz word online. But like, what is that? What is self-compassion? Sounds kind of elusive.

Kristin - Right yes. Completely. So I would say that self-compassion is the act of treating yourself in a kind way, much the way you would your best and dearest friend. A lot of us really struggle with that, we aren’t very kind to ourselves. The other element of self-compassion is that, it really is an action. It’s an active practice. And we can talk more about kind of, ways to do that as we go along. But when I was, so I’ve been incorporating self-compassion in a lot of my therapy work for about the past year and a half. I've really brought it into focus in my therapy work. And then I also teach yoga part time, and I was preparing a yoga and self-compassion workshop, and I read this quote by Tera Brach, and she says that when we feel held by a caring presence, by something that’s larger, our small frightened fragmented self, we can hold that in loving kindness and kind of repair those fragments. And when I read that, that’s a summary of that quote, and when I read that, it was almost this aha moment for me that really resonated in terms of adoption specifically. Because I think so many of us, that’s what we’re seeking, right? There’s a young part of us that wants to feel held and loved and cared for by a nurturing parent. And so it was kind of this, everything from then on, that I read about self-compassion, I would see through this lens of adoption.

Haley - Oh my gosh, well when you say fragmented, I mean, of course. That’s how we feel.

Kristin - Right, exactly.

Haley - Wow, okay. So this sounds like, of course, adoptees need to have compassion for themselves, but what does that look like in practice, being kind to yourself?

Kristin - Yeah, so, maybe I can back up. You know, we all have experiences, all of us as humans, have early experiences that kind of shape our core beliefs about ourselves. And many times these experiences are even pre-verbal, you know so when we’re very, very young. And a lot of times, these experiences, these core beliefs are things about ourselves and then things about the world around us and others. So for example, through adoption, some of my core beliefs are that I’m unlovable, that people always leave me, that you know, I’m rejected. Like those are some of those core beliefs and those get triggered. You know, we talk about triggers a lot, another buzz word. And those beliefs often get triggered by experiences that are happening in the present moment that aren’t necessarily aren’t related to that belief. And so, through self-compassion, we can first recognize that those emotions are being triggered and those beliefs are being triggered.

Haley - Okay I know a lot of adoptees feel those ways and have those you know, core beliefs about ourselves. Like, we’re unwanted, and just feels like such a big huge thing to overcome and that yeah, we get triggered all the time. And so how does self-compassion this kind of fit into that?

Kristin - Yeah, so I think most of us are pretty aware when we get triggered, like we notice some kind of flare up of emotion. And that awareness, if we can step back from that with mindfulness and just observe ourselves experiencing that emotion. That’s the first step to being self-compassionate is you have to have that awareness, that mindful awareness, that you know, I’m having this emotion brought up, or this belief brought up. And to be curious about that, what is this really about, is this really what’s happening in the moment. Or is this something that’s you know, past. And then from there, we can take a moment to just remind ourselves that, pain and suffering are a part of everyday experience and many adoptees have a lot of pain that they deal with. And we don’t feel so alone and isolated in our pain. And then to continue that, is to take a breath, to talk to our self in a kind and caring way. So I might say to myself, this is a moment where I’m feeling some pain, I don’t feel lovable and that’s painful to me. And so I’m just gonna hold myself here, metaphorically speaking of course, and show myself a little love and compassion for my pain, and my suffering. And I might even say things to myself that I would want to hear from a parent like, I’m not gonna leave you, I’m right here for you. And really kind of trying to fill that need that we have. And then, we can go on to do activities that really help us kind of soothe ourselves in that escalated emotion.

Haley - Okay, it sounds like there is a big gap between the parts of ourselves that are really critical and very hard on ourselves, to getting to the point where we can just hold ourselves and speak kindly. So can you fill in, fill in the steps in between that? What’s a first step towards that? Okay, so we have awareness in the moment?

Kristin - Yep.

Haley - Then?

Kristin - So then the next step would be, okay, I’m aware that maybe this isn’t, how I’m feeling isn’t necessarily related to what’s happening right now. And then to kind of turn that lens, I think one great way to think about this is, if a dear friend were having this experience, this emotion, or this belief, if a friend was saying to you, Haley, I feel really unlovable right now. Like you probably wouldn’t say, suck it up. You probably wouldn’t say like, oh that’s no big deal that you feel that way. Like you would probably take some time with them and say things like, you know, but really, you are lovable and you’ve gone through hard things in your life and it’s understandable that you feel this way, I get it. ‘Cause I would feel unlovable too if I experienced that. But really that’s just an emotion that you’ll have that passes and just know that I’m never gonna leave you and that I’m here for you.

Haley - Well it’s a lot easier to think about saying that to someone else--

Kristin - Yes!

Haley - Than ourselves. Okay, so would you tell a client that? To like, practice talking to a friend if they were experiencing this?

Kristin - Yes, absolutely. And there’s a lot of different writing, like journaling you can do about this. So you might take one of those beliefs that you know is a common belief of yours, like mine is I’m unlovable and that’s kind of a belief that gets triggered a lot for me. And then you might sit down and write a letter as if you are writing to a friend who told you they were unlovable. So you practice this way of you know, talking, and it really is easier when you think about it in terms of you know, something we would say to a friend. Because we really would never talk to our friends the way we talk to ourselves.

Haley - Yeah, no kidding. Or we would have no friends.

Kristin - Yes. Exactly right. And that’s actually something really interesting about a self-compassion practice, because when we’re triggered, what triggers is the fight, flight, or freeze response. And there’s research that shows that when we have self-compassion, that the reaction that’s triggered in us, is the system called the tend and befriend system. And that really is the system of attachment. So if you think about adoptees, we have severed attachments when we’re born. And, or sometimes later if you’re adopted at a later age. So we have these severed attachments, so our attachment system has been wounded in this way. And so when we engage in a practice of self-compassion, we’re really engaging that tend and befriend system. And in that way I think we can heal our own attachment wounds.

Haley - So over time, building this scale, your brain kind of retrains itself to not necessarily to go to be like, oh my gosh, I’m the worst.

Kristin - Right.

Haley - And then you learn to have a kind response to yourself.

Kristin - Yes.

Haley - And so if I say that over time, like, how long does it take to learn to do this? Like, to me, I mean I’m kind of laughing about it, but this sounds very stretching and very challenging, especially for people that are very wounded. And like, could very well like not believe any of these things about themselves. Like yes, I actually am unlovable. So it feels like a longer path than just okay, now I know this tool, I’m gonna write myself some letters and I’m good.

Kristin - Right, that does sound so easy, but it’s not easy. I really think of it as a practice and I think for a lot of us it’s a lifetime practice. You know, it gets easier as time goes on. But I think we’re always gonna have moments where that stuff gets triggered, where we can’t be kind to ourselves, where it just kind of, you know sometimes we go back after. After that period of self-loathing, or self-hatred, kind of is over, we can go back and readdress it. But I do think it’s a practice, I don’t think it’s ever something that, you know it’s not a checkbox that you can check off a list and say oh okay, now I’m always compassionate to myself, I’m always kind to myself, check. Did that. I like lists, so, I’m a big checklist person.

Haley - Me too! I’ve never thought of putting kindness and like my healing on a checklist.

Kristin - Well you’d never check it off fully, probably.

Haley - No, so why would I put it on a list if I know I’m not gonna get to it.

Kristin - But you’d work towards it. It’s a work in progress, we’re all works in progress.

Haley - Yes, very good. Okay, why don’t you just walk us through again, just another example of what this looks like? Like a, experience in your life maybe, that you had that you’re like okay, I used self-compassion and this is how this benefitted. Just to give us a picture of what this looks like in day to day life.

Kristin - Oh yeah, I have many of these experiences, they come up all the time. Last summer, my family and I, we were vacationing on the beach and my husband and the kids were down at the beach and I was walking down to meet them. And I sent my husband a text message and I said hey, where are you guys? I’m coming down, and he sent back a picture of the kids in front of the ocean.

Haley - With landmarks?

Kristin - No, landmarks, just ocean, right? It was a great picture, but I was like, okay, you know, just could not fathom where they were from this picture. And almost instantaneously I had this thought of, he’s sick of me. Like he doesn’t want me there. Like we’ve been on this vacation for 5 days now and he needs a break from me and so he’s being intentionally vague so that I can’t find him. And because I’ve worked on this issue for a long time, I kind of recognize, there was a part of me that was sort of observing this happen, that’s the mindfulness piece, when you can observe yourself kind of from a distance a little bit. And so there was part of me that was really feeling it, feeling rejected and like, oh he doesn’t want me here anymore, he’s sick of me. And then there was another part of me that was like, okay, wait a minute. Like, you know, he usually doesn’t handle that. If he needed a break, he would probably just tell you. Like, this is, so I’m noticing that I’m feeling this way. And I even, and this wouldn’t have gone this way, you know, 10 years before but, you know, I even said to myself, ugh, this feels like adoption stuff. Because anytime I have that thing of, oh people don’t wanna be around me, that’s that rejection. And so there was a part of me that kind of wondered if that’s what it was. And so I was able to take a few deep breaths and send him another text and I said, hey, like, did you mean to be vague? Because I really can’t tell where you are. And he said, oh no, like of course not. And then he sent me another picture of a building, which I think normally would have been a good landmark, but I just wasn’t aware of where this building was. And so I was still kind of like, clueless.

Haley - So I walk left or right? Just give me a direction.

Kristin - Yeah. So but I could tell that I was still really worked up. So in the past, what I would have done in that situation, because my way to handle triggers in the past was to kind of get passive aggressive. I think a lot of us can relate to that. And so for me what I would have done in the past is I would have just been, I would have text something like, oh forget it. And then I would have gone back to the house and I would have started cooking dinner for my family but with a lot of like, cupboard slamming and like, you know.

Haley - I don’t know anyone that does that. I don’t know anyone else that does that. Yeah.

Kristin - Yeah, and you know, and then probably our old pattern would have been, he would have come home and said hey, like, is everything okay. And I would have been oh yeah, it’s fine. And then I wouldn’t have spoken to him for the rest of the night. So that’s you know, 10 years ago, maybe even, 2 years ago sometimes. But you know, because I’ve been working on this, there’s a part of me that said, and in this moment I said, oh, I’m still feeling really awful. Like I just feel icky. Like I had that triggered feeling so I really felt, I still felt kind of abandoned and alone. And I didn’t think it would be good for me to join them because I thought I might stay in that dis-regulated state. And so I text him and I said, hey like, and I had told him that I was feeling kind of triggered. And I said I’m just gonna go back to the house, and I’ll see you when you get back. And so as I was walking about to the house, I was saying to myself like, this is just a moment where you’re experiencing some pain. And you know, it’s okay to feel this way. But I need to also take care of myself in a way that’s going to make me feel better. And so I was able to go back to the house and do some things that I do for self-care, you know I journaled and I do meditation and so by the time they got back and I had started cooking dinner. I wasn’t slamming cupboards anymore, and I was able to reconnect with my family. Which is kind of where that attachment system piece comes in, right, that tend and befriend. Because I showed myself kindness, and took care of my needs, I was able to be in that place of relationship. And you know, that helps to foster these relationships with my family. Whereas before I wouldn’t have been in that place of relationship and I would have behaved in a way that no one really would have wanted to be around me. I would have made my own belief come true because I, you know, they wouldn’t want to be around me when I’m slamming cupboards and I’m saying oh I’m fine.

Haley - Right, ‘cause you were like, oh they don’t even want me there. And later you act like it and then they literally don’t want you there.

Kristin - Exactly. And I think that’s how we sabotage ourselves as adoptees all the time.

Haley - Yeah, okay. Guilty.

Kristin - Right? Me too, clearly.

Haley - Okay, yep. Well I love that example. It’s a whole picture of that. Is there anything else that you just want adopted people to know about this? How it can benefit them or how they can put this into practice? How beneficial it is? Anything that you wanna say to us?

Kristin - I’d actually love to do, just kind of a really quick self-compassion exercise. Your listeners could do it at home, and you could do it. If you’re up for it.

Haley - Okay! It’s an experiment for me. I’m ready.

Kristin - You’re the guinea pig for everybody.

Haley - Yes I am. I’m okay with it.

Kristin - Okay, good. We’ll carry on. Okay Haley, I’d like you to just take a minute and close your eyes. And take a couple of slow deep breaths. And everyone at home can do the same, close your eyes and take a few slow, deep breaths. And then call to mind a time when you felt triggered. Where you felt a very painful thought, belief, or emotion come up. And notice how that feels in your body, when you’re feeling that pain. And notice any other thoughts that might bring up, without judgement, just notice them. Now, take your hands and rub them together, generate some heat between your hands. Rub them fast. And then take your hands and you can place them over your heart or over your, on your cheeks. And then, just allow that warmth to permeate into your skin. And say to yourself, this is a moment I’m hurting. And I care about this pain that I’m experiencing. I’m not alone in my pain. I’m here, and I love myself. And I’m not ever leaving. Now notice if anything has changed in your body. Has anything changed with the thoughts that you’re feeling, or the emotions that you’re having. And take one more deep long inhale and exhale. And then you can slowly blink open your eyes.

Haley - Okay. I, okay, so here’s my full disclosure. I think that’s gonna be a very powerful moment for people to work through that. And I feel like I had it halfway, ‘cause my brain is still like, in podcaster mode and thinking like, okay, what am I gonna say to her right after. So I was having like, half the experience and then half, so I’m torn. I’m gonna replay this to myself ‘cause I have the recording. And I’ll do it after. But I did notice a shift in my body, which I just thought was so funny because I wasn’t totally paying attention. So I got half the effort but I still felt the shift.

Kristin - You know, Haley, that’s an example of something that you can do for yourself in any moment. Sometimes now I’ll just place a hand over my heart, as I’m going through my day. And just kind of take a moment to say like, I care about myself. I love myself. And it definitely is a practice, it’s not something I’m great at all the time. But it’s also something that a therapist could do in a therapy session for you, something that could last a little longer. That was really brief. But I think sometimes that can be really powerful experience. But you’re right, sometimes when we’re half in and half out.

Haley - I’m pretty sure I would have cried had I been all the way in. so in case you’re waiting for tears, I think that’s why there weren’t any. But yeah, there’s just something about literally, for me, it’s saying that you love yourself is hard. That I would say I love myself. Like even though word choice I used right away, putting it in the third person, right?

Kristin - Right.

Haley - Thank you. That was very special. Anything else that you wanna leave us with?

Kristin - I think my heart goes out to all of us as adoptees. It can be really hard sometimes and we really do sit and carry so much pain. But I do take comfort in the fact that we aren’t alone, that we’re kinda in this together, you know? And so, yeah.

Haley - And I mentioned it before, but you wanna just tell us a little bit about Kris Neff’s book?

Kristin - Yes! So her book is called Self-Compassion, the Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. And it’s a wonderful book, it’s filled with exercises that you can do, which I think are great and it kind of outlines these three steps in more detail of you know, how to be mindful. How to recognize that this is, that we all, humanity, we all experience pain. And then how to kind of treat yourself in a kind and caring way. So, it really is a great book. It’s pretty easy to read and not too technical or stuffy. So I love anything with a practical exercise and it’s just filled with those.

Haley - Same. I totally love the practical, so I often, in the Healing Series, I’m like, okay, you have to tell us something helpful, that we can do ourselves. So I love that little, I keep wanting to say meditation. It was kind of like a meditation.

Kristin - Yeah.

Haley - Yeah, that you shared with us, so thank you. Okay, how can we connect with you online, Kristin?

Kristin - I have a website, professional website. It’s tradewindscounseling.com. and then on Facebook I’m just Kristin Jones, my personal Facebook, but I love to connect with adoptees. So that’s something really great for me. And I have an Instagram that’s Adoptees Connect Salt Lake City, actually the handle is @adopteesconnectslc, and anyone’s welcome to follow that. It’s specific to our Adoptees Connect group for Salt Lake, but I post on there about adoption.

Haley - Fantastic. I love Adoptees Connect, of course.

Kristin - Yes.

Haley - Perfect, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing with us today and I’m just so grateful for you, for your wisdom in this area. I think it’ll be really helpful for a lot of us.

(upbeat music)

Haley - I wanna say a huge thank you to my monthly supporters without which I wouldn’t be able to do this podcast every single week. So thank you, thank you, thank you. If you want to join them and say, with your dollars that this show is important and you’d like it to keep going and you want it to reach other adoptees around the world and help support them and grow our community, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to find out how you can sign up to support the show, and some of the fun bonuses that you get for signing up. There is a secret podcast feed just for you, Adoptees Off Script. And there’s another level where we have a secret Facebook group for supporters of the show, and that group is pretty awesome too. So, I’d love to have you as a supporter, thanks so much for listening. Let’s talk again, next Friday.

(exit music)

108 [Special] Live Recordings from the American Adoption Congress Conference

Transcript

Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/108

Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye

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This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees, by going to AdopteesOn.com/partner.

(intro music)

Haley - You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 108, live special recordings from the American Adoption Congress Conference. I’m your host Haley Radke. Today’s episode is just as the title suggests to you. We are doing a recap of the AAC conference that happened the first week of April 2019, in Washington D.C. which had amazing weather, beautiful cherry blossoms, and my husband and I were able to be in the city for one full week. It was amazing, I had so much fun exploring the city and checking out museums and eating really delicious food, and meeting incredible people at the conference. And so today we are gonna do a bunch of different things. And I’m gonna kinda take you through the conference with me. And I’m gonna introduce you to some people, you’re gonna hear some familiar voices, I’m gonna share a clip of my keynote speech, we are gonna talk about the highs and the lows, and I think it’ll give you a really good picture of what any conference like this could be like for you. If this is something that maybe you really wanna connect in person with other adopted people. Would this be a good fit for you? Maybe you are an adoption professional and you’re like, I don’t know, I really wanna listen to adoptee voices but is an event like this for me? Maybe you’re an adoptive parent and you’re kinda like, oh my gosh, I get a lot of adoptee voices on Haley’s show, is this really something that I would want to attend? Maybe you’re a first parent and you wanna start doing some legislative work and you don’t really know how to start. There’s something for everybody at an event like this. It was a really, really, there was a jammed packed schedule. So many different sessions and I think you’re gonna get a good picture of that as I talk to different attendees and presenters. And so let’s get to it. Okay, these first couple on the spot interviews, one is a familiar voice to you, which we’re gonna start with first. And these ladies are both adopted people, both presented and we talk just a little bit about their experience at the conference, what they were sharing and why they think you should attend an event like this.

(upbeat music)

Janet – I’m Janet Nordine, a Marriage and Family therapist from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Haley – And why did you come to this conference?

Janet – I wanted to come and present on disenfranchised grief because I think it’s something that in adoption land, we don’t normally talk about. We all feel it and we all experience it or we don’t know how to name it, so I wanted to come and share my thoughts and experiences with that topic.

Haley – And you’re presenting today, so you haven’t –

Janet – Yes.

Haley – Okay now.

Janet – In an hour.

Haley – You’ve been on this show before so you told us that you’re also a play therapist. So what did you bring along?

Janet – I brought bubbles, I brought toys --

Haley – Which you blew in my face.

Janet – I did! And you popped with both your fingers that you brought with you. I brought some fidgets to put on the chairs for the attendees of my class so in case feelings get brought up, they can do something with their hands and fidget around a little bit.

Haley – Okay, I love that. Okay, cool. So what is the fidget that, like give me an example, like fidget spinners?

Janet – I have some squishy balls, there’s some things that you can manipulate with your hands, there’s some clicky buttons.

Haley – I could have used that in some of the sessions already.

Janet – I can get them out for you if you wanna play with them.

Haley – Okay, cool. So what are your impressions of the conference? You’ve been, gone to different sessions and keynotes.

Janet – You know overall I’ve been really impressed with the conference. The workshops I’ve attended have been applicable to my personal life and my professional life which is what I would hope a conference would do for me as an adoptee and as a therapist. I’ve learned some new techniques, I’ve learned some new statistics, I’ve learned about adoptees that struggle. You know, and the serial killer.

Haley – Oh my gosh.

Janet – That was the best, I had no idea.

Haley – So interesting.

Janet – So now I want to research more about that and learn some more.

Haley – Okay, that was Dr. Tracy Carlis, her session. Look her up, she’s really interesting.

Janet – So overall it’s been really great, the food has been good. The location has been great, it’s been fun to be in D.C.

Haley – Yeah, so we went out to dinner last night with some friends and that was just like, so fun. So it was 5 adoptees all at the table, and we did not stop talking.

Janet – We didn’t, it was awesome. We didn’t have to explain anything to each other, we just could say what you’re thinking and feeling, experiencing and nobody had to ask questions, it’s awesome.

Haley - And I love that we, we ran the gamut of topics. And I won't break confidentiality around the dinner table.

Janet – What happens at the table stays at the table.

Haley – That’s right, yeah. But like we were laughing together, making fun of each other, telling stories where we almost cried, it was the whole thing. So special. What would you say to someone who has not been to a conference?

Janet – I would say, give the American Adoption Congress Conference a chance. I've really been impressed with what I’ve learned here, the calibre of speakers, the quality of what they had to bring. Next year, they’ve already announced it’ll be in San Diego, so I’m really excited it will be on my coast and I can drive there. So yeah, just come, and enjoy.

Haley – Okay.

Liz – I’m Liz DeBetta and I’m from New York City and I live in Salt Lake City now.

Haley – Okay, and what do you do there?

Liz – Teach English at a University.

Haley - And so what brought you to the conference?

Liz - So I’m an adoptee and I was really interested in connecting with other adoptees and people working in adoption and other members of the constellation. And also sharing some of my own work that I’m doing with regard to helping adoptees heal from some of the trauma.

Haley - So what did you, you presented at a session. What did you present on?

Liz - So my session was called Expressing the Primal Wound, Poetry as Healer. And so I talk a little bit about the research that’s available, about how expressive writing and poetry in particular can be a way of restructuring different emotions and giving them a place to live outside of our bodies. And through my own story, which is that I started writing poetry when I was 14, because I was in a lot of pain, and a teacher recommended that I think about writing poetry. Which I thought was dumb at the time, but then actually started writing and it became a way for me to articulate things that I didn’t have a way to say otherwise. Um, and so I’ve written poetry for many, many years. And if I go back to all those early poems, I can see very clearly all the themes of feeling lost, and alone and confused and like something is missing. And so, what I like to tell people now, is that I was writing my future. ‘Cause now that’s become a big part of my work. I do a lot of research on adoption and writing about adoption in order to help myself heal but also to help other people heal.

Haley - I totally wanna talk to you more about that, we’ll have to do another show. Can you tell me, of the sessions you went to, I know I saw you around, you were going to lots of things, was there anything really memorable or really valuable that you’re gonna take home with you?

Liz - I think, I’m gonna sort of defer to my session that I presented this morning, just because at the end of it, we did, the group did some writing, and I asked people in the room to write. And then to share their writing and it was, it was really powerful for me because we had adoptees in the room, we had adoptive parents and we had first parents. And so we got to hear these really incredibly powerful poems from all these different perspectives, that helped some of us who are adoptees, realize how much love adoptive parents have. And that sometimes we don’t accept it. And that, for some of, a couple of us, we had a moment of like, oh it’s okay to accept that much love, right? And then we, so just hearing these different perspectives was just really profoundly moving for me.

Haley - Right. And I know you had a special moment last night, what was that?

Liz - So, last night I got to meet my sister for the first time. We have the same mom. And we’re only a year apart in age and she’s only, I’ve only met my birth mother. So she’s only the second biological relative that I’ve met. And it was, I think I’m still processing it, I don’t, I think… we spent like 4 hours at dinner and we have, we have some very similar personalities. We like the same food, we even ordered the same meal.

Haley - Love that. Love the synchronicity things. That’s so special. Okay, last question. For another adoptive person like yourself who hasn’t been to a conference like this before, what would you say?

Liz - I would say do it. Find a way to connect with the community, with other people who might have something to teach you, you know? I know I’ve learned a lot from so many people this week and just listening to stories. And I think that other adoptees could really benefit from being in a space where there’s so much openness and generosity of spirit and people willing to share their experiences as a way of transmitting truth and knowledge about the realities of what we all live with on a daily basis.

Haley - Right, thank you so much.

Liz - Thank you!

Haley – The conference began with a keynote speech from Sharon Kaplan Roszia. And she gave us a tour of the history of the American Adoption Congress and she took us through the past, present and future, looking at the AAC and adoption and why the AAC was formed in the first place. And the big part of that is, opening up unrestricted access to adopted people’s original birth certificates and adoption files. There was a big theme throughout the conference at many different sessions of how to do that legislative work. I was able to go to a session by Erica Curry Van Ee and Melissa Nicholson, both of whom who have been on the show before, and they shared some of their work, what they’re doing in Michigan and it was a really, really fun session. There was lots of brainstorming about why the adoptee voice has been silent for so long, and what we can do to change that. So I’m really looking forward, Erica promised me, that she will be compiling some of those responses and sharing it in some fashion in the future. So when that comes out, I will let you know. But right now we’re gonna hear from a couple of attendees and presenters that were really there to focus on the legislative tracks presented at the AAC. This first clip is from the keynote and Q&A given by New York Assemblyman, Robert C. Carroll.

Robert – People still deserve to know where they came from. And it doesn’t mean that you know, there are gonna be big family reunions, doesn’t that mean that it’s gonna mean that people are gonna have relationships or, it’s gonna fix you know, old problems. It just, you know, I’m a lawyer. The law’s supposed to be fair.

(upbeat music)

Shawna - My name is Shawna Hodgson, I’m from Houston Texas.

Haley - And what brought you to the conference?

Shawna - Well, friendship and community, people I work with year round. I get to see them once or twice a year, so that’s a huge motivator for me.

Haley - And are you an adopted person?

Shawna - I’m an adopted person, yep.

Haley - So did you go to any of the sessions this weekend? Did you enjoy it?

Shawna - I did! I did. Yours, I did. I presented with Tim Monti-Wohlpart on legislation, we are from York and Texas. Gregory Luce, Clair McGettrick was awesome.

Haley - So you work to move legislation forward for OBCs.

Shawna - I do.

Haley - So where you able to connect with a lot of people who are doing like-minded things?

Shawna - A few. Yeah, a few.

Haley - Did you learn anything from Claire’s session like what they’ve done in Ireland, and your work here?

Shawna - Absolutely.

Haley - Like what?

Shawna - Just the way that they focus on the systematic discrimination against adoptees. Just the way, even just in the language that they use. Their presentation and how they kind of encapsulate that discrimination within the system, it really spoke to me.

Haley - The other thing she said that I thought was fascinating was, taking out the personal psychological impact from our arguments.

Shawna - Absolutely, thanks for bringing that up.

Haley - Do you have any thoughts on that?

Shawna - No, I totally agree. I don’t think she said that do diminish the, what we experience regarding trauma or anything like that about our adoption. But I do agree with her, that needs to be separate when we present the issue of human and civil rights violations.

Haley - Well how she set it up, was right, we say those things, they’re like oh, they’re broken people, there’s something wrong with you, we don’t wanna listen to you.

Shawna - Right, we’re pathologized.

Haley - Yeah. Okay.

Shawna - I agree.

Haley – What would you say to someone who hasn’t been to a conference like this before? What would you say, would you encourage them to come?

Shawna - Absolutely. Absolutely. The more of us here, the more of us together in one room, the more impact we’re gonna have in the community. And we have to know each other and meet each other and talk. For that to happen.

Any other thoughts?

Haley - Thanks for being here, no I’m just grateful that you’re here! Thank you.

(upbeat music)

Gregory – I’m Gregory Luce from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Haley – And what brought you to the conference?

Gregory - The big thing is I’m a D.C. adoptee, was born and adopted here.

Haley - Oh!

Gregory - Also I was presenting on the history of adoptee rights.

Haley - And tell me about your Twitter handle.

Gregory - My Twitter handle, AdopteeLaw? Yeah.

Haley - What made you start that?

Gregory – It’s just part of when I started my law firm in the law center, I just wanted to, these days you have to have social media as a presence.

Haley - I think you’re really fun on Twitter.

Gregory - I like to have some fun, and you have to have fun on Twitter. I even tweeted out a photo today of the crowd that was at my presentation. It was just like a stock photo of some concert crowd.

Haley - Okay, I haven’t seen that I’m gonna have to go look at that.

Gregory - So I mean, I think you have to have humor in the work that we do. And I think we lack, there’s a lack of humor in all the stuff that we do, both in the advocacy work but also in the just the day to day work you have to do as an adoptee.

Haley - Yes.

Gregory - And so the more humor we can have, the better.

Haley - Yeah, totally.

Gregory - And I think people understand the issues much easier that way too. Typically.

Haley – I mean, interjecting about myself, that’s you know, one reason why I took a standup class.

Gregory - Right, exactly, I can totally see that.

Haley - Okay, back to conference stuff. Were there any sessions that you went to that you found really helpful?

Gregory - Yeah, Claire McGettrick’s session was, it kind of blew my mind. It made me think bigger on the issue as opposed to smaller. I mean, she, which, and I think she’s right to shift the focus from a psychopathological focus of who adoptees are and recontextualized it into social, sociological. How we’re categorized, and how because of that categorization, how we’re treated.

Haley - Right.

Gregory - Which I thought was phenomenal, especially in the world of, and she’s talking about with legislation. In that world of access to original birth certificates and adoption records.

Haley - How about just connecting with other people? How is that?

Gregory - Well that’s really the strength, I mean that’s why ultimately you come, because you’re hanging out in the lobby or you're going, taking a walk, and you’re meeting people that you typically only interact with on Facebook messenger or Twitter. And you get to see their faces and maybe even people that you’ve disagreed with pretty strongly in the past, but you get to see more context to their experience, who they are and where they’re coming from. And you go back with that, in trying to figure out how do we find common ground?

Haley – I love just having conversation with another adoptee I’ve never met and you just instantly go to the deeper stuff. That’s what I’ve felt.

Gregory - True, very true. To the point sometimes that you need to walk away, not walk away from that conversation, but okay, let’s talk about like, how the NCAA tournament or—

Haley – Are we gonna cry in front of each other? Is that like, too soon?

Gregory - Yeah, but no, I agree. But it is, it’s something that you’re, I think with any group that comes together that have a commonality that’s very true. You’re comfortable talking about things that you find aggravating to talk to people about who don’t understand. And I had that conversation with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law here who live in Maryland. And it was a very different conversation about adoptee rights than when they could sit down with someone here. They just didn't fully understand it and were asking some of the same questions that you get so tired of hearing. And tired of answering.

Haley - What would you say that’s never been to an event like this?

Gregory – I’d give it a chance, come. Because as with all conferences, especially one that’s around and has a real good focus on what I’m interested in which is adoptee rights, but there are other focuses as well. You’re gonna meet people that are gonna make you, especially my case, think bigger and think outside of what you’ve been thinking in the past. You always get something out of it. And it’s either, and it’s always typically in one or two presentations, not all of them are stellar, they never are.

Haley - Ouch!

Gregory - No, but that’s true! Some are, I mean that’s just the way it goes, some are clunkers and some are, and it’s just, it may not even be how the presentation, it may just not resonate with you.

Haley - Yeah.

Gregory - But those that do, you take those away.

Haley - There are some lines and things that I’ll probably remember forever, because it had such impact.

Gregory - Exactly.

Haley - Thanks so much!

Gregory – Thank you!

(upbeat music)

Claire – My name is Claire McGettrick and I am a PhD scholar at the school of sociology in University College Dublin. And I am also a cofounder of Adoptions Rights Alliance.

Haley – And what brought you to the conference?

Claire - So I wanted to present a paper on the preliminary research findings and also to kind of introduce my research to the American adoption world. To exchange ideas with adoption academics and adoption activists here and see what we can learn from each other.

Haley - And how has your experience been?

Claire - It’s been fantastic, it’s been really interesting to have a meeting of so many different minds and different perspectives and yes, I’ve come away with a lot of food for thought.

Haley - Yeah. Well I was in your session, it was excellent. And no joke, I’ve talked to a few adoptees who said that yours was your favorite.

Claire - Oh thank you.

Haley - And they learned a lot from you. And so I would echo that. It was so interesting and one of the funniest things you presented, I thought, was how they advertise DNA testing as Find Your Criminal Ancestry. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Claire - Yes, so one of the points that I make is the, you know, in sort of Ancestry, Family tree DNA, Find My Past, all of these genealogical, some of the DNA-based sites, they advertise to find your ancestors. But I don’t know what it’s like in the US and Canada, but in Ireland and the UK, certainly, a big part of that is people are encouraged to find their criminal ancestors. And if you can find skeletons in the closet, it’s a really sort of, it’s considered a bonus, you know? You know, you find a criminal in your past. And I just think it’s extraordinary that you know, when that’s juxtaposed against adopted people, who simply want basic pieces of information about themselves. That, that is denied of them. So it’s, I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition we’ve got going on right now. It’s still happening and it’s very, it’s interesting to see those contradictions play out, certainly in Ireland and presumably here in the US.

Haley - Yeah, absolutely. I thought you framed it so well. And I don’t want to get into too much of your presentation, because I’d love to have you back to talk about it. One last thing, would you say to other adoptees, would you recommend coming to a conference like this, what’s been your experience that way?

Claire - I think that meeting others with different perspectives is always important. It’s you know, and I think it would be very difficult to come away from a situation like this not having fresh perspectives. So I would encourage anybody who is in the world of adoption to certainly come to conferences like this, around the world. And because we all have something to learn from each other. We’re all coming at it from our own angle and I think each of us has something to bring to the table.

Haley – At a conference like this, there are all kinds of reasons for people attending. There are adoption professionals coming who actually want to do adoption in an ethical manner. There are adoptive parents coming who really want to learn from adopted people and first parents what their experiences have been and how they can best raise their children who have now been adopted and what can they do to best support them. There are other professionals that work with adopted children or adopted adults or first parents. Or any member of the adoption constellation, and they want to get new techniques, they wanna know the latest in neuroscience, they want to be cutting edge of their practice so that they can help people the best way they can. So in addition to adopted people and first parents and legislative work, all kinds, all kinds of reasons for people to attend. So we’re gonna hear now from someone who is actually working in the adoption field, who has great concerns about the ethics of adoption that is practiced in her state of Florida. And we had some off the record conversations that were very illuminating to me. But I trust that Audra is really invested in knowing the other side of adoption and how she can help impact the industry to make it better and more ethical. And we’re also gonna hear from an adoptive parent who is super invested in hearing from adopted people. And you guys, he flew all the way from Israel to Washington D.C., to hear from adopted people. And it’s just amazing. So we’re gonna listen to them and their experience at the conference. And whether or not they think that you should attend.

Audra – My name’s Audra Coons and I’m from Tampa, Florida.

Haley – And what brought you to the conference?

Audra - I think there’s a few things that brought me here. One was to connect with professionals who are practicing ethical, are doing ethical practices and who are up to date with research and what we need to be telling the world about adoption.

Haley – ‘Cause you’re a social worker.

Audra - I am a social worker. And so that was a big part of it. The second part was definitely to hear adoptee voices. And I think that was very helpful in this conference to hear that voice and also from birth first mothers. And those were the two biggest reasons for attending the conference.

Haley - And you also presented a session.

Audra - Yes, so my colleague and I partnered in a session on how and when to talk to your child about adoption. And so a lot of our work is within preplanning, and education and support from the beginning before we’re deciding that that’s a choice and as we go through that process, really as a goal to promote healing and giving that reinformation, since with the history of adoption, we’ve seen that was not how things were going. And so we, in our presentation, we talked a lot about ways to talk about adoption from a developmental perspective. So from infancy, all the way up to adulthood.

Haley - And I know you attended a lot of sessions, I saw you around. Do you have any favorite things you learned or really great takeaways that you wanna share?

Audra - Yeah, for sure. I think some of the reunion topics were very, very valuable. But I think a combination of those real life stories with the scientific aspects, so there were definitely other conferences on trauma, or neuroscience or different things that I think it’s really important to have both of those.

Haley - Any other like, things that you’re like, we’re definitely going to incorporate this into our practice or we need to be thinking about this or?

Audra - Yeah, definitely, I think that you know, one of the reasons why we come to conferences is kind of rejuvenate, is to get our brains thinking and you know, new ideas and what are we missing? And so we’ve recognized and know that birth mother’s voice is not being heard enough. But as well as adoptees, but I think this conference really allowed us to say, you know, our support and education that we’re doing has to be child centered, completely around that. And while our work has been that, I don’t think it was presented in that way enough. And so really to come back to the adoptee because then we can help everyone and we center around that.

Haley - Okay, so talking to another professional like yourself who’s not attended an event like this before, what would you say?

Audra - I would definitely say, I think conferences are very valuable for a lot of the reasons that I just shared. It rejuvenates us, it motivates us, it helps us come up with new ideas. On the other hand, researching and looking at the conferences that you’re going to and making sure that that’s the audience and content that you’re looking for. Because you know, it’s a lot to come to a conference and be here for 3 days, so really to do the research on, and there’s so many conferences. Which is gonna be the most beneficial for me?

Haley - Great, thank you so much!

Audra - Thank you!

(upbeat music)

Benny – Okay, my name is Benny Saville, I’m from Israel, and I’m an adoptive parent.

Haley – And what brought you to the conference?

Benny - Well, in my private life, I’m the chairman of the organization that represents the adoptive community in Israel. Adoptive community I mean, birth parents, adoptees and adoptive parents. I think we’ve reached the stage that we have to reach out to them more things about adoption. And I’m very happy I came to the conference because I got a very broad variety of views from even from different countries.

Haley - So what were some of the sessions you went to or some of the memorable things that you’re gonna be taking back with you?

Benny - Well, I can’t pick out one. Take the last session that Sue gave.

Haley – Just to interject real quick, this Sue is Dr. Sue Green from Australia and I heard nothing but great things about her all weekend. People loved her session, learned a ton from her, and I hope to have her on the show to share some of her expertise with us in the near future.

Benny – Which was very exciting in the way Australia relates to adoption. And gave me a new perspective of a permanent family without adoption, or maybe without given a new birth certificate. And I said I think the meetings, I had a very, very long session with Sharon Kaplan Roszia, a 2 and a half hour talk with her which mind blowing.

Haley - She was the first keynote, yeah.

Benny - She was the first keynote.

Haley - Yeah, fascinating woman.

Benny - Lot of knowledge and a lot of experience and a very clear perspective of adoption. Even though she’s old school, very, very up to date.

Haley - So you must have lots of plans brewing in your head.

Benny I really have to digest everything I’ve got, I hope I’ve digested it before I come to San Diego.

Haley - Okay, so you’re planning?

Benny - I’m planning, talk to my wife about it.

Haley - I mean, that’s quite the trip. So talk another adoptive parent who hasn’t come to an event like this, why is it so important?

Benny – First of all we’ve got to understand our kids. When we adopt kids, and I’ve got 6 kids, 4 biological, and 2 biological in another way, that we’ve adopted. All kids are biological. But parenting an adopted child is different. And we’ve got to realize and know, and understand better how our kids and what they’re going through, what they might go through. And first it makes us better parents. And the other thing is I want to make the world better so I want to try and change things in Israel, I want to change the way we treat adoption, the way we treat adoptees, the way we treat birth parents. And these are things we’re doing. And we just have to get better practices.

Haley – Thank you, anything else that you wanna say about the conference or your trip here? How’s Washington, how’s Washington, D.C.

Benny - Washington this time of the year is fabulous.

Haley - April, and the cherry blossoms are out, did you get to go outside?

Benny - Yes, I had to take that. Wednesday I went out, but otherwise I was here, attended every session I could.

Haley - Oh my goodness, yeah, there’s so much. Great, thank you so much for sharing.

Benny - Thank you.

Haley – So hey. I’m in my hotel room and it is the night before my keynote speech. And my husband Nick is out at a hockey game because we’re Canadian and apparently that’s what we do. So he, let me think, he’s gone to a Capitals and a Montreal Canadians game. And that, he popped back in because we had the meetup this afternoon. And I wish I had counted. There was, I mean at least 20 people. I’ll have to go back and look at the pictures. And count, but it was a really good turnout. Of course there was some people from the conference that came down, but also a bunch of local D.C. adoptees came. Which was such a gift to be able to meet them in person, several of whom have been on the show and a couple of Adoptees Connect leaders. It was just so special. You know, I met several Patreon supporters, so thank you again for those of you who donate through Patreon. I was trying to tell each person, thank you. So if I forgot that, thank you. But I literally couldn’t do the show without supporters like that, to pay my editor. So I just had this overwhelming sense of gratitude and okay. I’m hesitating to share this but I’m going to. ‘Cause it sounds like a little bit self-involved. But it was so surreal. Because people lined up to like, talk to me. Which was so funny. It only happened like a few people, it wasn’t like a huge lineup or anything. But we, I tried to take pictures with everyone, we took a big group picture. And I tried to make sure to talk with each person. It was just so cool. I mean, there’s nothing like being with other adoptees in person. But like to have them be in person, listeners of the show, it’s just so special. And over and over and over people say, you know, the show changed my life, I’m so glad to know I’m not alone. And that’s just the biggest praise I could get. One of the reasons I started this show was because I felt so alone. And so to be able to share these stories with you, and let you know that you are certainly not the only one experiencing whatever adoptee thing you have going on, hopefully we’ve talked about it on this show or we’ll get to it soon. And you will feel heard and seen. So yeah, I’m, it’s like quarter after 9 and I’m gonna try and go to sleep. I feel like I might not sleep well ‘cause I’m nervous and excited about tomorrow. And I’m just even more fired up about the message I’m gonna bring because I’m talking about Our Voices Are the Tipping Point. And I mean, how much do we need to hear from adoptees? More than ever. It’s just critical. And so, I wonder, if people will come away tomorrow feeling like I pushed their buttons or made them angry a little. Because we need to be talking about it and there’s no room now to be complacent. And I wrote a couple of really strong calls to action and I’m hopeful it will be motivating. And not condemning. Okay, I better get to sleep but I thought I would just record real quick to let you know what I’m thinking the night before. Oh, I can’t believe it’s here.

Haley - Okay, that was fun, right? Okay, here it is. Here is a few minutes from my keynote.

Haley - Every time you let an opportunity go by, where you could have shifted the focus from “oh my gosh, adoption is the best” to “actually, it’s kind of complicated, it’s a little bit nuanced. I can tell you a little bit of my story if you’d like.” Every time you let an opportunity go by, it’s a real shame. I have those opportunities daily. I mean, based on the people in this room, I imagine you have them daily also. But minimum once a week. But you are complicit if you come from a position of power and knowledge and you choose silence. I’m asking you to stop being complicit in allowing the happy adoption narrative to continue. And I’m going to say that again. You are complicit if you come from a position of power and knowledge and you choose silence. Everyone in this room is coming from a position of knowledge because you have been in sessions all week and weekend about the whole truth about adoption. So you know, you know the stats, you have seen the impact adoption has on adoptees’ lives. So you have no excuse. When you stay silent, you are complicit in allowing the fairytale, happy clappy, story of adoption to continue.

(audience clapping)

It’s going to come at a cost. I’m not saying that you’re not going to get pushback, because that’s not true. That is disingenuous, it will come at a cost. You are going to get your feelings hurt. You are going to feel like you’re talking to a brick wall sometimes. I’m gonna guarantee right now, you’re gonna get mansplained. But guess what, it’s your job now. It’s been my job, it’s gonna continue to be my job, but it’s your job now too. Our job is to change the narrative. And if we in this room, watching at home, listening on an Mp3 later, if we aren’t brave enough to talk about the whole truth of adoption, who is? Stop pretending like everything is awesome. So whether you have adopted a kid, whether you have birthed a kid who is now adopted, whether you are the adopted person, whether you are the therapist that works with adopted kids or adoptive families or both, it’s your job now, it’s your job to tell the whole truth about adoption. And we cannot take that lightly. Every day there are people that go to meet with legislators, in the U.S, in Canada, worldwide. And they don’t understand. Why would we want adoptions records open? What’s the big deal? Why do adoptees want access to their original birth certificates and medical records? And we get denied constantly? What’s the big deal? Closed adoption was promised. We need to know where we came from. It’s a human right to know who your parents are. It’s imperative that people understand that. Adoptees are getting deported because their parents didn’t apply for citizenship. Adoptees are struggling with chronic illness. Because they don’t have their medical records. We are addicted to food, alcohol, drugs to numb our pain. Adoptees are killing themselves because we don’t know who we are. So it’s your job now to tell the whole truth about adoption ‘cause we’re dying.

(upbeat music)

The last thing I did at the conference was a session with Caitriona Palmer who is just such a dear friend and I asked her to do it as a favor to me. And we were presenting on secondary rejection. Because her and I both have experienced that from our first mothers. So our structure of our presentation was, we shared our personal experience of reunion and secondary rejection. We looked back and talked about what we could have done differently and last we wrapped up with things we’ve done to help us cope with this obviously very painful loss.

Now I’m not going to dwell on this because as I told several people. Actually what happened in this session was, one of the most challenging and painful moments of my entire life. And a first mother who I was already acquainted with, interrupted our session and gave a very difficult and personal attack on both Caitriona and I, more than once during the presentation. And then at the end during the Q & A. Why I wanted to bring that to you, was after my keynote of challenging people to tell the whole truth about adoption, knowing that we likely will get pushback, how do we address this with our friends and family? And really change the narrative at a very grassroots level with our personal connections in person? Not online. How do we do that? How do we change the narrative, how do we build our community and skills and abilities to be able to do that? Looking back on what happened on our session, and how that’s not the way to change someone’s perspective. Because of the fact that this incident happened within the community who are already working to try and change the dominant adoption narrative to one of truth and transparency and highlighting the challenges, it was on a whole other level. And was discussing this with my best friend Jacqueline, and she sent me an Instagram post right away. She’s like, you have to read this because it so applies in this situation. So my best friend is a registered dietician. And she has seen, as you can imagine, there are many debates back and forth in that community on what’s the proper way to eat and what’s healthiest, et cetera. And this post is on Andrea Hardy’sInstagram and it’s a quote from Susan Watson. “Call people in instead of calling them out.” I’m gonna repeat that for you. “Call people in, instead of calling them out.” In the adoption community online, can you tell me if we are united? We as adoptees are not united, first parents are not united, adoptive parents are not united, people that are in the constellation that represent more than one member of the constellation are not united. How do we unify and build the bridges and have productive conversations and move things forward when we are eating each other alive? Online, in person, with competing events? How do we build bridges and move the work that is critical of sharing the whole truth about adoption? How do we do that? When all we’re doing is calling people out and attacking, instead of listening and sharing with the intent of also listening and learning from the other party? How do we do that? I’m not coming to you with this because I have a solution, I wanna challenge you to bring a solution. And to be a person of such high quality and integrity in the way you interact online and in person that people will want to listen to you and honor your words and learn from you. To learn the truth about your story, and how adoption has impacted you. I wanna challenge you to be that person. To call people in, instead of calling them out. Because as much time as we can spend in sessions working on legislative strategy, and learning from other countries who’ve done it before, who are doing it now, who have thought of more creative ideas and have bigger leverage and expertise than we do yet. If we are not the people of integrity in the way we carry ourselves and speak about ourselves and to other people, guess what we do? This. We hurt people, we burn bridges, and nothing gets done. And we go in circles. I’m asking you to choose to be the person that can forgive and move forward and help build the bridges. So together, we can move forward on adoptee rights and activism, sharing the adoptee voice, challenging the dominant cultural narratives, opening up records for birth certificates, for the human right and dignity that we deserve to have answers about where we came from and our medical history. I need you. I need you to step forward and be one of those people that doesn’t call people out but instead we call people in. Be mindful about how you are listening to others when you disagree. And vice versa. We need to spend more time listening and learning from each other and less time attacking. I almost walked away. I almost walked away because it was so personal and painful to hear criticisms of the same actions I beat myself up for regularly. That I almost walked away and thought, I’m never doing this again. But I’m not gonna let something like that break me and I’m hoping that if you’ve had something similar happen to you, that you will take this as an invitation to come back, come back, and help me build the bridges going forward, we’re in this together. Let’s listen and learn from each other in a productive way. We can do this, I know we can. And Adoptees On will continue to be a safe space for challenging topics, for conversations that haven’t happened before publicly, and will continue to build the bridges going forward. I’m asking you to join me in that. Tell the whole truth about adoption. We need you to. I need you to. And I need you to be mindful of how you do it. Thanks so much for listening, let’s talk again next Friday.

(exit music)

107 Dear Adoption,

Transcript

Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/107

Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye

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This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to AdopteesOn.com/partner.

(upbeat music)

Haley - You’re listening to Adoptees On. The podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 107, Dear Adoption. I’m your host Haley Radke. Today we are doing something a little special and different, and I’m not gonna spoil it. So let’s listen in.

(upbeat music)

Haley - I’m so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Reshma McClintock! Welcome, Reshma.

Reshma - Hi Haley! Thanks for having me again.

Haley - So we’re doing something new and fun today, I’m so pumped.

Reshma - I am too.

Haley - And you are here as Dear Adoption, right?

Reshma - I am here as Dear Adoption!

Haley - So Reshma is the creator of Dear Adoption and we’ve talked so many times on the podcast about just how amazing Dear Adoption is. And you brought a letter today that I’m gonna read for us. And then we’re gonna talk a little bit about it and kind of explore adoption on another level, just adoptee to adoptee. How about that?

Reshma - I love it.

Haley - Okay. Alright, I’m ready. I’m gonna read it. So first this piece was submitted anonymously by a domestic adoptee compiling a book of poetry focused on adoption. “Dear Adoption, you are the wave. Powerful and roaring, dangerous and deep, the wave rushes in with high energy, full of thrill, full of delight. There’s a baby coming, type of thrill. The wave sends chills down spines, there is joy found in its tumultuous rise. I was never above or outside the wave to enjoy the thrill. I never felt the anticipated rise. I was beneath the wave, pummeled, tossed, gasping for breath, toked, terrified, lost, confused. But I’m told about the beauty, adoption. I’m told about the beauty of the wave. How majestic it is, how it could only be a wave God ordained himself. In thinking about you, about the wave, I recall screaming and dying. Perhaps I died at the command of the wave and was given another life, a different life. Death is losing, yet the wave which killed me is highly praised. While I violently swirled in the depths of the wave, I was polished and shined. I was forced out with no visible signs of trauma, no rough edges, no flaws, a smooth round stone, weighty and indestructible. The wave, the one that produced me, petered out and more waves came and went. The wave is still praised. I appear to be solid, stable, beautiful, but I was beaten by the wave. I was tortured. When I gasped for air, the wave was praised. When I screamed, the wave was praised. When I was traumatized repeatedly, the wave was praised. I was the perfect stone and the wave produced exactly what it promised, fear of waves live within me. The wave is not faultless in its striking rise. The wave destroyed the very thing which supported it, the surface, the foundation. The waves cannot touch me now. With my smooth shiny, impenetrable exterior, I stand steady footed and clear of the waves. I’m wisely cautious to avoid their grandeur because I know something fragile, beneath the surface is dying because of the wave. You are the wave, adoption. I am who died in order for you to rise.”

Reshma - Oh, that is, the first time I’ve listened to someone read it. And it’s hard to hear. I read all the pieces that are submitted, obviously, but I’ve never had them read to me. And so hearing your voice, you know, say those words is really, impacting.

Haley - What about having a voice to it makes it more impactful?

Reshma - I think that, well to be totally honest, and this may not be as interesting as an answer, when adoptees submit their pieces to Dear Adoption, there are some checks that we have to go through. And there’s a submission form and the guidelines, essentially. And one of the things I look for obviously, are any errors. I don’t do any editing, freely without the inclusion of the writer. But I do read the pieces thoroughly, I mean, you know, 10, 20 times before it’s posted. But I’m looking at it kind of from a more editorial aspect. Just to make sure that nothing was missed that needed to be there. So sometimes I’ll go back and say oh, it looks like, did you mean to say this or that, is a word correct, or is there a typo, something, even just silly and minor. And you know, a lot of times people say nope, that’s exactly how I wanted it. Or sometimes they’ll say, oh but I want this part in italics and those kind of things. So I'm just thinking about how the process of taking their words and presenting them so that there aren’t any distractions, so to speak. I have a really hard time managing Dear Adoption, to tell you the truth. And I’m not trying to make this about me, let me just get through this part really quick. But because of that, I do sit with the words and honor the words, but I have to stop myself at a certain point. Because I hear so many adoptee experiences and it can be really overwhelming. So to sit and have this piece read to me and to really just let the words, pun intended I suppose, wash over me. You know, it’s different, it’s a different experience. And I think as you are reading, I thought, this is brilliant. You and I talked about having some pieces read on Adoptees On a couple of years ago, and I liked the idea then, and then you know, we’re both doing 8 million things and trying to raise our children and be good wives. And we have all these going so it’s just kind of taken us this long to get to this point. But when you were reading I thought, yes, this is good. This is really important to hear. And not just have to take the time to read.

Haley - Well I, when I was reading it, I realize too, these words are so powerful and impactful, just as you said. And there’s just something about hearing it and slowing down, right? You’re not just kind of skimming it and oh, okay, I wanna read the latest piece or whatever.

Reshma - Right.

Haley - And before we started recording, I asked you, okay, what are some things that we really wanna highlight about this piece? And one of the things you said was, the fact that it was submitted anonymously. And I want you to talk a little bit about that. And it’s so interesting to me and I think to you too but, that we can identify so much with this. Can we not?

Reshma - Yes. So much. And you know, so one of the options that Dear Adoption is always to be anonymous. And I, I really love that option. I will tell you I have been very surprised how many people, well, let me back that up. Initially I was very surprised at how many people wanted to be anonymous. Now that I'm further into this, I really do understand. And I’ll tell you really quick, the top couple of reasons that I hear from adopted people, why they wanna be anonymous is because they don’t want their families to know how they feel about adoption because A, they have already received pushback or B, they’re too afraid to even begin the conversation about their true feelings surrounding being an adoptee. Or a lot of times people just don’t want to have their face with the piece because they don’t want to be totally identified by being an adoptee. It’s just one aspect of who they are. And they don’t wanna be, their face there with adoptee stamped on their forehead. And then the other reason is because when there is the pushback on the pieces, on, you know, people can comment on Dear Adoption’s website, on each individual piece or on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. It feels like maybe there’s a little bit more protection there, an added layer of protection because when people are criticizing, which they do so frequently, it still surprises me. And I don’t know why, it shouldn’t at this point. But I just think it is the absolute rudest thing to have an opinion on somebody else’s experience. I mean, you can have an opinion, but to put it out there so boldly, it just blows my mind. But anyway, so yeah, so I, some of the most powerful pieces at Dear Adoption are anonymous. I think they’re all powerful in their own right. I love every piece at Dear Adoption, truly. There’s just nothing like this format of writing a letter to adoption. I just think it’s just so good and that’s not to pat myself on the back at all. That’s to say there’s something, we’ve talked about this before. That we really can let go when we’re writing a letter, and people do, and I’m so happy they do. So I love the anonymous pieces because I think they don’t care. They’re gonna say everything that they wanna say. I still write about adoption personally and I still feel like I have to edit myself. And I have to, you know, I have to be so cautious about what I’m saying in case someone misunderstands what I’m saying, or in case somebody, God forbid, thinks I don’t love my adoptive family. Or that I’m not grateful, right, we have to give all these explanations. And when the pieces are anonymous, it just kind of flows. So I’m just gonna jump in and let you know one of the things that really struck me and that I find so relatable, closer to the end it says, “The wave is praised. I appear to be solid, stable, and beautiful, but I was beaten by the wave. I was tortured. When I gasped for air, the wave was praised. When I screamed, the wave was praised. When I was traumatized repeatedly, the wave was praised.” And what I find, the thing about this being anonymous is, I don’t know this person’s whole story. I don’t know if they’re talking about physical abuse, or emotional abuse or what they’re talking about. Or just even the way they feel about being adopted. There may not have been any abuse. I relate to that one line so much that says, “But I was beaten by the wave, I was tortured.” And I grew up in this idyllic childhood. Was never abused physically, emotionally, or otherwise. I was never in any kind of an abusive situation. But I relate to that line. I was beaten by the wave. Because obviously the point here is that the wave is adoption and anyone who’s not adopted, just talks about how wonderful and how good it was. But for me it was really a piece of, it’s hard for me to say. But a piece of torture. This torment where, I feel like I love my family that I was adopted into and I am happy with this life. But I also feel like I'm missing all these other things that adoption took away. And so I really, that part of it really resonates with me. And I think that people would find that shocking to hear from you know, a happy adoptee.

Haley - And they do find it shocking, right?

Reshma - Yes.

Haley - They find that shocking, because that’s the pushback. That’s exactly it, ‘cause it’s still praised, no matter what. Yeah, you know that’s interesting that you pulled that part out ‘cause that’s a section I had underlined as well. And when they write about the smooth, round stone, weighty and indestructible, and no flaws, and I’m picturing sea glass. I follow a few Instagram accounts that are just pictures of sea glass, so help me. Confessions, right? Confessions.

Reshma - Yes, I love it.

Haley - And there is such beauty in sea glass and some of the special colors that are found, like the rare stones that they show. And yet to understand what that piece of glass from likely, like a broken bottle or dish, how long it was in the water and where it came from.

Reshma - What it endured.

Haley - Exactly, exactly. And it’s, I mean, what a metaphor, you know? For an adoptee and to come out on the other side and what do you do with that? What do you do with that beauty, I’m putting beauty in quotation marks, which you cannot see on the podcast.

Reshma - Yes.

Haley - What do you do with that on the other side of it and how do you tell people the process that brought you to be this piece of sea glass at the end? Yeah, so impactful. Okay, the other thing I had underlined. “In thinking about you, about the wave, I recall screaming and dying. Perhaps I died at the command of the wave and was given another life, a different life.” And I think, that’s kind of the language that we repeat now, isn’t it? We didn’t get a better life than we were promised, we got a different life. And yet, we’re still screaming about it, screaming and dying. I don’t know, that part just resonated really a lot for me. And I think it again, speaks, I mean, I don’t wanna speak for all adoptees but I think a lot of us can identify with that.

Reshma - Yeah, and you know what’s so interesting about that is you know in order to get this new life, so even if you aren’t gonna call it better. In order to get this new life, you had to have an old life. And so, I mean, if we’re talking, regarding, we weren’t born to be adopted. We were born into families and then whatever circumstances happened, a multitude of things obviously. And then we were adopted. So you know, I love that part, “Perhaps I died at the command of the wave, and was given another life, a different life.” And then the next line says, “Death is losing, yet the wave which killed me is highly praised.” And I think, isn’t that interesting? Because our society, we’re so, I mean it’s such an obvious thing to say, that we understand death. And that, I mean, maybe not understand it, but that we acknowledge that it’s this very, very sad, difficult thing. Anybody who’s ever lost someone to death, we acknowledge that. But we don’t look at adoption that way, we don’t look at the death of the former life, the death of the other life, the first life. We just keep praising that wave. We just keep exalting it. And so this person is talking about screaming and dying, this person is saying they died, perhaps they died at the command of the wave and were given another life. And that in that death, they lost. But the wave that killed, it says, “Yet the wave which killed me, is highly praised.” And it’s just like, when you think of it in those terms, I don’t see how you could read this, with an open mind, I guess that’s the precursor, and not see how difficult it is to be an adopted person and not have people acknowledge the pain and the loss.

Haley - It’s that, it’s the disenfranchised grief, right?

Reshma - Yes! Exactly. Well said. And even to go on, I mean we could probably talk about this for hours, but “While I violently swirled in the depths of the wave, I was polished and shined. I was forced out with no visible signs of trauma.” And that’s the you know, this blank slate baby. That, you know, a lot of us, a lot of adopted people talk about all the time. I’m not a blank slate. I didn’t come to you as a blank slate, but that’s how I appear to be. My history, everything severed, roots severed. You know, just before you, I belong to you now, I’m yours, putty in your hands, make me what you want me to be. And man, you know, if Dear Adoption has taught me anything, it is that a lot of adopted people who are sharing their experiences will say, I felt like I was being molded into something that I could never be. Or I felt like that even that blank slate, no visible signs of trauma. Obviously they are saying there was trauma there, but nothing could be seen. So ignoring it became a thing from the beginning. It’s just like, well there’s nothing here so it doesn’t exist. So I don’t know, I’m gonna carefully say this next statement. I think this piece is so beautiful. I think the words, I think the way that it is written is so beautifully written and I think it is also one of the most devastating things I have ever read. And I don’t know, it just all points back to, this is why we have to listen. If this is the experience of an adopted person, then we need to listen and we need to do things differently. But you know, I think that with every piece I read. At Dear Adoption, or anywhere, you know. Whenever I listen to your show or I read articles or blogs from adopted people I just think, you know, why aren’t we listening? If this is what’s being shared, why aren’t we listening? Because we’re all, it’s the not all, hashtag not all.

Haley - Well and, I think I agree. It’s so beautifully written and it’s, I think you said this maybe earlier before we started recording. That it’s so relatable, even though we could have vastly different stories than this person, because it’s anonymous. I have no idea who this person is, if it’s a man or a woman, if it’s, you know, their age. And yet when I read this I think, yes. Yes, me too. And same as when you’re describing are these things actually referring to abuse or not? All those different sections, I mean we can read so much into this piece and yet all of it is valid. It really does express what I think is the adoptee’s experience. So profoundly.

Reshma - Yeah, and you know what’s interesting is, obviously I’m behind the scenes, I get the emails, this was emailed to me at the Dear Adoption email of course. And sometimes a reader, sorry, rather a writer will go back and forth a bunch of times trying to decide if they wanna be anonymous or not. And so we just kind of go through those steps. And I ask questions, I have never once pressured anybody to not be anonymous. In fact, I would prefer if somebody’s even, you know, a little uncertain, I would prefer they share anonymously. Because actually in the last 3 or 4 months, I’ve had to take 2 Dear Adoption pieces down that were, had writers contact me later. One was saying they were being harassed by their birth family and adoptive family. And another writer asked that their piece be taken down because they're going into a new career and many of the people in their company are adoptive parents and they were worried that if that ever came up, even with a Google search or something, that that would come up and could impact them negatively. Which is just, I 100% respect both of those people, wanting them taken down and without hesitation. I don’t ask are you sure, immediately took them down. And I will always, Dear Adoption is about the writers, and their experience and their comfort in sharing it. So you want it gone, it’s gone, no problem. What’s interesting is so, when people usually mention that they're thinking of being anonymous, I usually say, unless you feel lightning strikes you the other direction, let’s go with that. Because I want you to be comfortable and that’s most important. And I don’t want them to get into a situation where they feel it needs to come down because they’re associated with it and people aren’t respectful or understanding or you know, being harassed because of it? Because they’re sharing their experience? That’s just terrible. But this piece, it took me a long time to get where I was going with that. But this piece, I didn’t exchange a lot with this person. They had their piece written. They completed the submission form. I don’t know who they are. They gave the information so I actually don’t have the background, where a lot of times I will, on an anonymous piece. You know, I may be connected to them on social media or you know, their email has their name or whatever this person did not and was very basically, all the information I have on them is written in the bio. Which is, a domestic adoptee, writing a book of poetry, focused on adoption. And that was it. So that is what I love about it because I don’t know so much here and I agree with everything written. I have felt all of the things that this piece touches on. And I have no idea, well I know one big difference is that this adopted person was domestic. And I’m obviously international and transracial. And that’s a big difference. It really is, I mean being adopted is being adopted. And then you start adding all the other layers and pieces in. And so I don’t know if this person spent time in foster care. I don’t know if they were adopted as an infant, I’m assuming, it kind of seems like this person was adopted as an infant. But we don’t know all those things. And yet I think so many adopted people, when reading this, are thinking, yes, yes, yes. Whatever their experience may be. And that is fascinating.

Haley - It is fascinating. I was thinking, I was like, oh my goodness. How can one piece be so—

Reshma - All encompassing!

Haley - Resonant for us, yeah. Just, yeah. Alright. Any final thoughts on You Are the Wave?

Reshma - I think just that last line which is probably a great place to end it. “You are the wave, adoption. I am who died in order for you to rise.” And I think that is really telling. And it’s one of the big problems we have in adoption. That adoption is supposedly for the benefit of children. And so many adopted adults are saying it didn’t benefit me. Or, I would have been, I guess I need to be careful because I’m not trying to speak for all adopted people. But many adopted people are saying they didn’t get the better life. They had a different life. Many adopted people are saying, you know, so I sacrificed. I was sacrificed on this so that adoption could be praised. It’s a financially lucrative business. And I just think that’s really powerful. “You are the wave, adoption, I am who died in order for you to rise.” It’s just like there’s no regard for us, as adopted adults. And it’s so frustrating. In some sense I’ve gotten used to it, I know you have to, it’s like, big surprise, people aren’t listening. Or people are pushing back. But it is so frustrating. And that line kind of builds something up in me. I am who died in order for you to rise.” It’s like, at least give me a little bit of acknowledgement. You did this on my back, right? I carry around those weights with me.

Haley - Yes, I can't end any more, I can’t add anything to that.

Reshma - Yes.

Haley - Well thanks for bringing this letter, Reshma, it was so good. And a big thank you to the anonymous writer. I hope that they will listen to us chat about their beautiful piece. Okay, so now we’re gonna do recommended resources. And I know I’ve recommended this before, but I promise I have a new one for you right away. But Reshma’ documentary is going on it spring tour. And I wanna make sure that you know about it so you can go and see Calcutta is My Mother. So you have a few dates coming up here, they’re all listed at CalcuttaFilm.com. And so where are you going? We’ve got Denver and then?

Reshma - Denver, Seattle, Dallas, and Phoenix.

Haley - In April and May. So exciting. Awesome.

Reshma - Super exciting.

Haley - And if you wanna hear more about Calcutta is My Mother, go back and listen to episode 100, Reshma and I talk, deep dive, right? We talked about your documentary, we talked about how you had feelings after the world premiere. And I believe I mentioned your sweaty back. And why did I bring that up again? That was so rude.

Reshma - Oh, but the sweaty, it was good, because the sweaty back opened the door for us to talk about my big bottom going up the stairs. And all of those shots that Michael got from behind.

Haley - If you wanna go see very, very, very flattering shots of Reshma.

Reshma - Wait, I'm gonna interrupt you really quick. So I have to tell you something funny. Michael, director of Calcutta is My Mother, listened to the interview and he text me and said, oh my gosh you keep bringing up you going up the stairs. I’m gonna take at least one of those scenes out because you keep mentioning it. And I was like, thank you! Is that all I had to do?

Haley - How many scenes are that he’s gonna take another one out? Okay!

Reshma - There’s 2, and at least one of them’s got to go.

Haley - Oh my gosh, okay. So you better go during the Spring tour. Because if you wait til it’s streaming online, you might not have any shots of those. Sorry okay, CalcuttaFilm.com, you can buy tickets there. And I’m so envious of all you people that are close by in those cities, that you can go and see.

Reshma - More to come, hopefully.

Haley - More to come, yes. Okay now, my recommended resource, it’s a podcast. Who is surprised? No one. Okay.

Reshma - Not me.

Haley - So I love true crime podcasts. Which, I just do. I love true crime podcasts and one of my very, very favorite shows is called Criminal. And the host is Phoebe Judge and she has this really distinctive voice and she’s amazing. Now this is a highly produced, wonderfully done show. And I’m recommending one episode, and it’s called Baby Snatcher. And I bet you can guess who the criminal in this episode is. Famous baby snatcher, child trafficker extraordinaire, Georgia Tann. Yes. That’s right. So they go through with the author of The Baby Thief, the untold story of Georgia Tann, the baby seller who corrupted adoption. They talk to the author of the book and they tell some of the stories about Georgia Tann, about some of the babies she sold. And also how she really normalized infant adoption and made it more socially acceptable. So I really recommend that you go and listen to this. Because this is good, can I categorize it as that? These are powerful stories you can tell, to people in your life that aren’t related to adoption but you wanna tell them about the shady underbelly? This is something that they could relate to and feel, have a little step into understanding child trafficking and the corruption behind the adoption industry. Again, this episode is Baby Snatcher and the podcast is called Criminal. Have you heard that one yet?

Reshma - I haven’t but, I’m going to listen, like today.

Haley – Yeah, yeah. It’s very good. Okay, what did you wanna recommend to us?

Reshma - I wanted to recommend a blog that is written by an adoptee, it is called The Ungrateful Adoptee. And the website is theungratefuladoptee.blogspot.com. And I think she’s an incredible writer, she’s an incredible truth teller and I say this, I feel like I’m not disrespectfully at all. She’s very blunt and very bold. But in writing about her experience, I think that we have a lot to learn, if we will listen to her and her experience. And I get very frustrated with adoptees being labeled as happy or angry or grateful or ungrateful or whatever. Although her blog is called the Ungrateful Adoptee. But I just appreciate what she has to say about her experience and I know that what she says resonates with a lot of people. So I am for all adoptees to share all experiences and this is one I definitely think is very educational and a lot of insight there.

Haley - A very candid and honest—

Reshma - Yes. And you know, it’s like some of the pieces at Dear Adoption. Not easy to read, it might not be everybody’s flavor. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in hearing adoptees’ experiences so that we can do better moving forward and that means that we’ve got to listen to the wide range of experience.

Haley - That’s right. Looking at the reality, right? There’s no sugarcoating.

Reshma - Yes. Not at all. Which is good, we could use a little less sugarcoating.

Haley - Yes! That’s funny because in some of my descriptions for my show, is this is, not the usual adoption talk. There’s no sugarcoating here.

Reshma - Right. No there isn’t, that’s good.

Haley - Reshma, where can we connect with you online?

Reshma - You can connect with me on Facebook at Reshma Mcclintock, and then on my website ReshmaMcclintock.com, and you know, I’m kind of everywhere.

Haley - And in person at CalcuttaFilm.com. If you go to one of your spring screenings!

Reshma - Yes, I would love to see you there! Thank you.

Haley - Wonderful, thanks so much for sharing this letter with us today, and for you know, just talking through it with me. I really appreciated your insights.

Reshma - I love being here, thank you.

(upbeat music)

Haley - So as of the time of releasing this episode, last weekend was the American Adoption Congress Conference and the Indiana Adoptee Network Conference, Reshma showed her documentary there. She got a standing ovation, people cried and laughed and just loved it. So if you are near any of the upcoming locations, I implore you to go and see it because I can’t. Because I’m so far away. And I know you will be so, so glad that you did. And speaking of the other conference, I am planning on doing a little update show next week about the things that were presented there and I got some on the spot interviews with a few of the conference attendees and presenters which I thought were really interesting. And I have a couple stories to share, personally. I was able to give my very first keynote speech. And some other interesting things happened. And I’m not sure yet what I’ll be sharing specifically about those items. But tune in next week to find out. And I really, you know my favorite part of any of these events, is connecting in person with fellow adoptees. I was able to have a meetup with Adoptees On listeners, Thursday night. And it was just magical and special and I loved it and there were some people that came that lived in the D.C. area and other people that came that lived in the D.C. area that didn’t know each other and we were able to connect them and that was just the best. So hope that some new long term friendships were born of that event. Anyway, I’ll talk more about that next week. But as always, I just wanna say a giant thank you to my monthly Patreon supporters. Who I got to meet some more of at the conference which was amazing. And I would not be able to continue making this show for you every week without your very generous support. So thank you so much. You are making this show possible. Thanks for listening. Let’s talk again next Friday.

(exit music)

106 [Healing Series] When Adoption Is Not the Only Trauma with Janet Nordine, MS, LMFT

Transcript

Full show notes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/106

Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye

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This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees, by going to AdopteesOn.com/partner.

(intro music)

Haley - You’re listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I’m your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series, where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience, what it feels like to be an adoptee. Today, we are talking about when adoption is not the only trauma. Let’s listen in.

(upbeat music)

Haley - I’m so pleased to welcome, to Adoptees On, Janet Nordine, welcome back, Janet!

Janet - Thank you for having me!

Haley - I’m so glad to be speaking to you again! We really enjoyed our conversations last time and today we’re gonna go back into adoption trauma, most unfun thing ever to talk about. But you know, we had been talking a while ago about how adoptees, we kind of acknowledge now that being separated from our first family is a trauma and it has a big impact on our brains and our systems. And then we’re still living life and have imperfect families that have adopted us or maybe we were in foster care or there’s all sorts of situations that can come up, you know? Abuse, assaults, all kinds of things in childhood and into adulthood. So there’s other traumas that come into our lives. So that’s kind of what we’re focusing in on today. Adoption is a trauma but then there’s also other things that kind of impact our lives. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what trauma does to us and just especially to adoptees, what you want to say to us about that?

Janet - I sure can. I’ve been working in the field of trauma, I’m here in Las Vegas, for about the past 20 years. I’ve been a therapist for 10 years, and 10 years before that I worked at the local rape crisis center, I worked for a family resource center so I was engaged with lots of families in lots of different situations that involved trauma. And what trauma does to us, is it leaves a fingerprint on our brain Our brains are made of plastic which is the good news because that means they can heal. So our plastic brains have had these things happen to us, where the neurotransmitters in our brains are sending us all these chemicals and we’re having all these responses. And the good news about that, and I like to talk about good news in trauma because it is such a heavy topic, the good news about our brain is that it has this response. It has a fight, flight, or freeze, and sometimes even collapse response, and that’s to keep us safe. So our brain is made to keep us safe. So when we’re experiencing those moments of disassociation or we’re experiencing those moments of, we can’t figure out why we’re so angry and what’s happening, it’s our brain’s response to keep us safe. And safety is what our brain wants the most.

Haley - I like that reframing for us. The flight or freeze, say it again, fight, flight, or freeze.

Janet - Fight, flight, freeze, collapse.

Haley - Okay, it’s a tongue twister.

Janet - It is, it is.

Haley - It’s seen as such a negative thing usually, but you’re saying this is what your brain is supposed to do.

Janet - It is, and I really feel like these emotions, that’s information. What are they telling us about ourselves? How can we focus in on those and say, oh I’m having this anger response, what is this about today? And sometimes when we’re in that anger response, it’s really hard for us to have that kind of a thought. But afterwards, in the 20 minutes that we’re in recovery, we can think back , now what really was the trigger, or the thing that caused me to feel that angry? And we can really work on resolving that and looking at it in a different way.

Haley - Looking at person who was not adopted. They’ve had trauma in their life. We’ve had at the beginning a trauma, plus life trauma. What would you say would be the difference, is there one?

Janet - Well I think the difference would be is, for adoptees like you and I that were relinquished right at birth, our trauma started at that moment. Our trauma started the moment we were removed from our biological parent, our mother. And we didn’t know where we went. In my case I went for the first 7 months of my life, I have no idea where I was. Until I ended up in my family that I’ve been raised with. So for those first 7 months, I have a picture of myself that my parents took the very first day I was with them and I look frozen. And I’ve heard that from many adoptees, that they have this frozen look on their face. So that was my brain’s response to all of the things that had happened. I had frozen. So the difference I believe, and this is just my thought process as a therapist, is adoptees, their trauma starts at the very moment of birth, or even maybe before because maybe we know we’re going to not stay with our mother and there are studies about in utero trauma as well. But other people that experience trauma, maybe the trauma happened as an adult or maybe the big trauma happened in their childhood with domestic violence or abuse from their parents, and so they had maybe a year or two or more before the trauma started to kind of have this normal type of development. And then the trauma occurred so our trauma started very early, where maybe other children and adults, it happens later. So we live in that place of fight, flight, freeze, collapse from the moment we’re born.

Haley - And then some of those things happen to adopted people as well. So there’s, I mean, we’ve both heard terrible stories.

Janet - Yeah.

Haley - So we don’t need to explain those things. But what happens when it’s compounded? Trauma compounded? I don’t know, what do you call that?

Janet - Complex trauma. It becomes complex.

Haley - There you go, that’s the real term, good job. Okay.

Janet - That’s the term, yes. What happens when we have complex trauma, those responses from our brain, they become somatic, they become stuck in our cells, in our body, and we really have to find ways to heal our whole self, not just our mind. I work with the, lots of different children in foster care that are moving towards adoption. And I’ve have kids that have witnessed horrible, horrible things between their parents and I have children that have been sexually abused. And I've worked with children that have been horrible neglect. And the most interesting thing to me is that the children that have had neglect, where they’ve been left sitting as infants in a car seat, they're really struggling to just cope in life, and to make relationships and to make those connections. Because early on they didn’t have that intimacy with a parent or a caregiver, where other children may have had that. And then they witness these things. And they’re able to vocalize and verbalize some of the things that they’ve experienced, but that preverbal trauma, that developmental trauma, it’s really the most difficult part to work with and help children heal from. And I believe adults as well. You know, we’ve had that preverbal trauma so we’re trying to figure out how do we explain that? How do we talk through that? How do we work through that?

Haley - Can you tell us about the, what ACE is? And that—

Janet - It’s the, ACE stands for Adverse Child Experiences. It’s an ACE questionnaire. And it was actually thought of by a doctor by the name of Vincent Felitti and he was doing, of all things, an obesity study. And he was looking at why these people were dropping out of this obesity study. And the people that he was able to contact that had dropped out, they all had these adverse childhood experiences, these traumas in their childhood. And he started to correlate some of the food insecurities and eating difficulties of these study participants with their childhood trauma. So a lot of adoptees, myself included, have food insecurities, because they were undernourished or whatever happened to them at a young age. And he started to look at that and then he talked to another doctor by the name of Robert Anda. And he worked for the CDC and the two of them together came up with this questionnaire and it’s a list of 10 questions. And you answer them and then you have your score. And this is something that gives the person that’s taking the questionnaire information about themselves. Now if you can go online and you can find everything on the internet, and you can go online and you can take this test and you can score it. But a note of caution, some of the questions are difficult, and filling out the questionnaire can cause distress. So if you choose to go online and you choose to take this questionnaire, keep in mind that to keep yourself safe, and if you start to feel that discomfort or that anxiety just close your browser and come back to it, or work through it with a trusted therapist or a trusted friend. But some of the questions, and the one that I really wanna focus on, that’s adoption related, is number 6. And it reads, “Was a biological parent ever lost to you through divorce, abandonment, or other reasons?” and for adoptees, I think most of us would say yes, if we were removed or abandoned by our parent. Other questions, “Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you touch or fondle you in a way that you did not want?” So that’s a sexual question, sexual abuse question. Talks about, did anyone ever hit you, did anyone ever act in a way that made you feel hurt or afraid? Your family didn’t look out for each other or you didn’t feel close or supported by each other, some of these questions are innate to adoptees because maybe we didn’t feel supported by the family that we were adopted by or maybe we did have some of those things happen to us. One of the things I was thinking about as adoptees, we’re always looking for acceptance, we want somebody to love us. And if we didn’t feel we were getting that in our adoptive family, maybe a perpetrator or another family member came along and they offered you that love and support that you were looking for. So possibly you were, and I don’t like this term, but you were easily manipulated to be abused. An easy target is the term I was thinking because you’re really seeking that. Some of these questions as an adoptee bring up a lot of feelings. And a lot of concerns.

Haley - Well I know when I was reading it, I was like, I think a lot of adoptees can say yes to these things.

Janet - Yeah.

Haley - Even if, it’s bad. Even if you weren’t in a really horrible situation, like, I think yeah. Even, “Was the household member depressed or mentally ill?” Like, those kind of things a lot of us would say one or both of our adoptive parents have, if they were infertile they might have unresolved grief from that. You know, like there’s a lot of things that I think just come with adoption for all of us. Not just the adopted person.

Janet - Yes. And that question number 6 that I shared with you earlier about being separated from a caregiver, biological parent, specifically causes some physical problems. And the specific ones are, that it listed, cardiovascular disease, lung disease, diabetes, MS, headaches, lupus. And we’re three times at risk for me than the regular person for depression. So just that question number 6 come with a whole package of prizes that you get if you have had those things, that particular thing happen to you.

Haley - Just, prizes, that’s good.

Janet - I say that with sarcasm.

Haley - I get you, I get you. Okay, so this feels, this feels also depressing. To fill out this form and be like, yep, traumatized at the start and it just keeps going. So where’s the hope in knowing this?

Janet - Well I am always a person that I believe knowledge is power. And when we know what our score is, we can do something about it. You know, there’s lots of adoptees wandering around going, oh I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t know why I feel this way. This particular question where it gives you information and then you can take that questionnaire to a trauma and adoption competent therapist and say, help me and here’s my score. And I really think that having that knowledge and that information, leads you to the next step which is getting help which leads you to the next step which is healing. And it’s possible to heal because like I said before, our brains are plastic. And we can heal some of those difficult things that have happened to us in the past.

Haley - So we’ve talked before on this show about a variety of healing modalities that therapists can use, trauma informed therapists can use. Like, EMDR, and brain spotting, and neurofeedback, those are probably the most common ones that most of us have heard of. Can you tell us about, I know that you are really trained in this because of your work with foster children. Can you tell us what makes a trauma informed practitioner, what kind of things would we be looking for, to find a therapist that has those skills? And I know it’s more than just, can you do EMDR?

Janet - Right. Right. You know, EMDR is an excellent modality for therapy, with trauma. And the thing you want to make sure that your therapist understands is they understand the neuroscience, how the brain works. Why the brain responds the way it does to trauma. And they would understand the brain chemistry, how things are put together. In my office I have a little model of a brain and it’s squishy and it comes apart and it has all the parts. And the kids love to pick it up and say, what part of my brain is making me feel this way? And I can show them and it really helps them understand, I’m not a bad kid, I just, my brain is acting just how it’s supposed to. So you wanna find a therapist that understands that part of human development and why your brain is acting the way it does. You wanna find somebody that has some tools in their tool belt. Not just the EMDR, but you wanna have, ‘cause not everyone responds to EMDR. Not everyone can manage the big emotions that sometimes comes with that. I do sand tray and sand tray is a form of therapy where you take several different characters and put them in the sand and it tells a story about really what’s going on in your subconscious. And it’s amazing to me the healing that comes from the storytelling, the narrative of the trauma. Some people are talkers. And they wanna be able to tell you the story. I do some narrative storytelling with children where we recreate the story in a book form. And sometimes we’ll change the characters to animals and sometimes we’ll change them to make the story turn out in a different way and it helps them be able to understand what’s happened to them and be able to tell their story. And I think adults need that too. We need to sit down and tell our story. I mean how many adoptees have you had on your show and they start out by telling their story and that’s a huge part of healing. Somatic experiences, being able to feel it in your body, because a lot of us are numb to those emotions, we just shut down, we’re in that freeze mode. Steven Porges in the polyvagal theory talks about collapse and actually people can die from that. Like it’s such a shock and such a trauma that their body just shuts down completely and that can occur as well. So there’s just lots of things you wanna make sure that therapist knows about. And also they need to understand that adoption is trauma.

Haley - Okay, I wanna pause you there ‘cause I really wanna hear. I know you do play therapy. And that you’re trained in it. Can adults do that?

Janet - Absolutely. I’m actually at this moment, while we’re speaking, pending my application to be a registered play therapist. I’m 6 weeks into the 8 week process, so just waiting for that to come through. I’m really excited about that. But absolutely adults can do play therapy. I’ve done sand tray with adults. I have this funny thing I do with pool noodles where we joust with them, and we hit each other with the pool noodles and we step back and we breathe. You step into that aggression and then you step out of it. And you can prove to yourself that you don’t have to stay in aggression, that you can breathe through it. I have musical instruments I play and we do matching. So you have that matched beat with another person and adults do that with their kids and adults do that with me as well. It’s lots of fun. And I build Legos all the time.

Haley - To me that seems like a more easily accessible, especially for someone who is really not super interested in going for talk therapy or you talk about brain spotting and they’re like, that’s a little woo woo.

Janet - Right.

Haley - It’s kind of like an easier step in, I don’t know.

Janet - It is and the thing that’s amazing is, in the process of that, you’re changing the wiring of your brain. You’re changing how your brain is thinking and feeling because you’re having those good chemicals released when you’re playing, you’re have these good things happen in your brain. And you’re able to also speak through and share some of the thoughts that you’re having. And a lot of adoptees, they weren’t real playful as children. I was one of those kids that was like, out of sight, out of mind. And quiet and stayed in the room with my cat. And played with the cat, and put the doll clothes on the cat. So for me to be an adult and playing with children and enjoying that, it’s just really amazing to me, because I didn’t really access that part of my life as a child.

Haley - Same. Totally same for me. I remember, it’s a little churchy reference, but I remember going to youth group and they would play all these different games, just like really crazy made up games, whatever. And I always was like, this is the lamest thing, why are we doing this. Like, we’re practically adults, this is so. But you know what I’ve even noticed, that you’re language includes this. For example, while we’re recording this, we’re going to be seeing each other very soon. And so every once in a while, you’ll say, oh I can’t wait to play. And you use it in your everyday conversation.

Janet - Absolutely. And I can’t wait to play. I may bring bubbles so we can pop them.

Haley - Well I do have two teeny boys at home, so bubbles are a regular part when it’s not winter. Going back to having this complex trauma and you know, you taught us about the ACES questionnaire, is there anything else that you think that we need to know as adopted people that is hopeful and you know, even for people that are like, I don’t even know if therapy’s right for me. Yes, I might have this complex trauma, but I feel like I’m getting by okay. They don’t necessarily want to go too deep into this yet. What do you wanna say to someone like that?

Janet - Well, you know, the musician Pink?

Haley - Yes.

Janet - I love her and I got to see her this last year and one of my very favorite lyrics from one of her songs is, “Change the voices in your head, make them like you instead.” And I think about that and I think, how many years have we all spent like thinking negative thoughts about ourselves? So if we can spend 5 minutes of our day loving kindness about ourselves. You know if we treat ourselves as if we would treat another person who maybe our best friend or somebody that we really care about, what would that be like? Self-compassion, one thing that I do when I’m feeling especially stressed, is I’ll put my hand on my heart. And I’ll think, good heart. Kind heart. And I pat it. I’m doing it right now. And it really calms me. And it gives me that good feedback about myself. Touch is a big deal. A lot of people don’t like hugs or they don’t like to be touched. But if you can find somebody that you’re safe with and you get that normal steady diet of touch, it’s really critical for your healthy development, for your healing. You can get a massage, maybe a reiki, I try to do that once a month. If you’re not a person toucher, get an animal, get a dog and touch a dog. We have one of the therapists that has a therapy dog within our office. And the therapists all love to pet the dog. We all just look for him all the time. Having good nutrition is really important, making sure you’re adding some omega 3s, some fatty acids, that’s really good for your brain. Write a story for yourself or write yourself a love letter to that little child inside of you that maybe didn’t feel accepted or loved. Write ten reasons I love you to yourself, that little child. There’s lots of things you can do to be creative and maybe draw pictures of something that reminds you of joy that you felt in your life, a sunset at a beach or something. Be artistic. Other things you can do is some mindfulness. Bringing those good thoughts into your mind. Doing that every day. Focus on your breath. Sometimes in session when I’m hearing an especially hard story, I have ten toes and I can squeeze 10 toes, 10 times as I’m in my shoes. Nobody sees me do it. But it helps me stay grounded and focused and that's something you can as well when you’re starting to feel that stress. Get release in your body. I just love, we can have loving kindness towards ourselves not just other people. And I think that’s a huge part of our own healing.

Haley - I have said to multiple friends when they’re talking down about themselves. Like, hey, don’t say that to my best friend.

Janet - Right, I love that you do that. That’s awesome.

Haley - It kind of shocks people into being like, oh wait.

Janet - Don’t be mean to my friend like that.

Haley - Yeah, exactly. We need that reminder to ourselves. I have the critic. I understand.

Janet - That inner critic that we all need to remind that critic that we love the critic as well, not just get away. Embrace it, validate it. I get why you’re there. How can I be your friend?

Haley - Okay. Okay. That is a different twist on it to for me.

Janet - Tell your brain to quit being so judgy about yourself.

Haley - Yeah, you know, and this kind of takes us back to what you were telling us at the very start. That the reactions that our brain are having, it’s like, it’s out of protection, and it’s supposed to be doing those things. So how do you train it to not feel scared?

Janet - It’s kind of like when you’re on a diet. And you’re on McDonald’s 20 days in a row. And then you decide to go on a diet and you’re not gonna drive to McDonald’s anymore. And your car still thinks, oh I need to drive to McDonald’s and you have to really steer it somewhere else. It’s just like that.

Haley - Yeah, the ruts are deep, right?

Janet - They are, yes. For sure.

Haley - Oh thanks Janet. Is there anything else that you wanna tell us, teach us, or anything before we close out?

Janet - Well I think something that’s really important that we need to know is that we are resilient. Wave been hurt in relationships and the way that we heal is in relationships. This show is building relationships between you and million, I don’t know, a lot of adoptees.

Haley - It’s not millions, it is not millions.

Janet - Not there yet.

Haley - No.

Janet - Someday millions. But just think about the impact this show has on one person who talks to another person as the ripples in the sea. But we are resilient people. Our brain is made to heal, it’s plastic. You know, I am not perfect at this, I have days when I fall apart. I have days when I want everyone to get out of the pool of my life and leave me alone. And then I have to like, kinda repair and repent and make up for that day that I had and it takes time and it’s difficult. But as I said, if we have been damaged or hurt in relationships, we can heal in relationships, and that doesn’t mean reunion. It means relationships with other people.

Haley - Wonderful, thank you. Where we can we connect with you online?

Janet - Well I have a blog. It’s ExperienceCourage.com and my email is experiencecourage@gmail.com.

Haley - Alright, thank you so much Janet.

Janet - You’re welcome.

Haley - It was just a pleasure to talk with you as always.

(upbeat music)

Haley - Did you know I have a monthly newsletter? I mean, it’s almost monthly, but like, sometimes I have nothing to write about, so I don’t send any. So that’s fine. I don’t fill up your inbox. It’s just when I, the feeling, the mood, when the mood strikes, I will often write an essay about something that’s happening in my life or something that I’m noticing that’s happening in the adoption community. And I will write a little something and send it out. Nothing spammy I promise. Sometimes I let you know if there’s like, a listener meetup happening or something where we can connect in person, a conference, things like that. So if you wanna stay connected and know what’s happening with the podcast, AdopteesOn.com/newsletter is where you can subscribe and stay connected with us. And of course we’re on all the social medias at Adoptees On. Thanks so much for listening. Let’s talk again next Friday.

(exit music)

105 [Update] Becky Drinnen

Transcript

Full show notes: http://www.adopteeson.com/listen/105

Episode Transcription by Fayelle Ewuakye. Find her on Twitter at @FayelleEwuakye

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This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees, by going to AdopteesOn.com/partner.

(intro music)

Haley - You’re listening to Adoptees On. The podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 105, Becky. I’m your host, Haley Radke. Today we are welcoming back a guest from season 1, Becky Drinnen. Becky shares some life and reunion updates with us, including some tears and very special moments. And then we shift gears and talk about what adoptee activism and advocacy really look like. If you’ve ever wondered what you can do to get involved, this is the episode for you. We wrap with some recommended resources and as always, links to all the things we’ll be talking about today are on the website, Adopteeson.com. Let’s listen in.

(upbeat music)

Haley - I’m so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Becky Drinnan, welcome Becky!

Becky - Well thank you Haley, it’s great to be here today.

Haley - You were one of my very first interviews in season 1, episode 4 and I asked you back because you have some big updates. So I'm gonna give Cliff Notes version as best as I can to catch you all up to speed on Becky’s story. But I do recommend that you go back and listen to season 1, episode 4, because Becky’s a great storyteller. And you’re gonna wanna hear it from her words, but here’s my Cliff’s Notes. And you’re gonna have to tell me how I do, Becky, okay?

Becky - Perfect.

Haley - Okay, so Becky was born in the baby scoop era and as far as she knows, her birth mother didn’t even see her when she was very first born. Becky was adopted and she was the first child adopted in the family and they had planned to adopt again, but they actually had bio kids after. So you’re the oldest in your adoptive family, and in the 1980s, you found some records that you had access to because of a crazy law and now records are open in your state that you were born in. But in the 80s you did have access to your first mother’s name, and you had a friend call her and the first, some of the first words that you heard her say was, “What is she trying to do, ruin my life?” And so that was really challenging, we talked about that secondary rejection and how hard it was. And then later on you did have a conversation with her a number of years later. That was a little bit more lengthy and you had some answers from that. But you were able to get some answers from an aunt, you saw things on Facebook from your bio mom and her kept children. And you had this really amazing in between 6 degrees separation but it wasn’t 6 degrees with your brother. You had a friend that actually knew your brother. And he worked really close to you at the time that we talked. And from your understanding, your birth mother had never told her husband or her kept children and that was likely the reason for the secondary rejection. And then we also talked about, your amazing searching skills of how you found your first father. And you talked briefly about your reunion with him and your other siblings and then I think it was even weeks after we had talked, he passed away. So we did a little update on the show with that. I think it was a couple episodes later. And so that’s where we left your story. And I know you have big updates since then, but again I wanna pass on my condolences to you for the loss of your dad and that was a couple years ago when we talked. So here we are.

Becky - Yes, well, you did a great job with summarizing that. It was kinda hard to summarize a lifetime worth of searching into a couple of minutes and you did a great job with it. So thank you.

Haley - I tried to be under a minute, but I don’t think I did it.

Becky - So yes and probably you know, one of the things that did happen since I was on your podcast the first time was, that my father passed away, three years and eleven days after I first met him, he passed away. And that has been very difficult. You would think that it wouldn’t be so hard after you didn't spend a lifetime with him, and I understand that my grief has not been the same as the people who have been around him all of his life. But in some ways it’s almost I think, more intense because I think a lot about what I missed out on. And what could have been if I had had more time to spend with him and get to know him. But that said, I'm very, very grateful that I have the opportunity to get to know him because you can’t get to know somebody the same. There’s so many adoptees who have found parents after they have passed away. And it’s great to hear stories, it’s great to hear all of the stuff, but I feel very fortunate that I had that opportunity to actually connect with him and get to know him for the person that he was, myself.

Haley - And you are still in touch with his other children? His existing family?

Becky - I am. It’s not frequent contact, you know I had hoped for a little bit more frequent contact than what we have, but our lives are very different and there’s enough distance that we don’t see each other a lot. But yes, I am still in contact with 3 of my 4 siblings to some extent and with my stepmother and with aunt and cousins and some other extended family. And that’s a good thing.

Haley - Well I am so glad you had those 3 years and 11 days but I understand that, the grief of you know, we hope for more time and especially when you’re like, so looking forward to reunion and it’s, and it goes well and then it’s taken away. So yeah, I understand that. Okay so what’s your other update, Becky?

Becky - So that was my sad update. And now I have an extremely happy update and it just goes to show you, that you just never know what’s gonna happen in this whole journey of search and reunion. So as we talked about in the previous episode, I've known who my mother was since I’ve been in my early 20s. I've made contact with her back when I was in my early 20s and then again later. And though we stayed in a little bit of touch, in touch a little bit, I never, I’d always held out hope that we would meet. But really was trying to be realistic about those, the chances of that happening. So over the years, in the adoption community, people have expressed to me that I had the right to reach out to my siblings regardless of how my mother felt about that. And while I've always acknowledged that I had that right, and that we had that right to knowledge, it has always been my choice that I was not going to do something that I knew was expressly against my mother’s wishes at that point in time. I always reserved the right to change my mind. But I always have respected that desire of hers. Even at the cost to me. What I did do though, is I spit in tubes and put DNA out in databases and I did that for a number of reasons. I actually didn't need to do the ancestry DNA kits for search purposes, but first of all I thought, maybe I could help somebody else make those connections by having my DNA out there in those databases. And I’d always figured it would help me learn more about my family. When I first got those results, I had a few distant matches, but nothing close. So last year, in 2018, in March, I was looking at my email and I got this email notification from Ancestry that I had a close family match. So I logged into Ancestry, I was at work, so I was doing this on my phone. I logged into Ancestry and I see that match that I recognize as my sister, my half sister’s name. This would be my birth mother’s youngest daughter. And you know, I got excited but yet I wasn’t allowing myself to get too excited because I knew there could have been a lot of different reactions from my sister. And the way Ancestry works, they don’t really recognize half sibling relationships. They look at it as a first cousin match or close family. So there’s a lot of ways for people to try to not acknowledge what those relationships could be, especially when they have no idea. And I was pretty sure that my sister had no idea that I existed. Then shortly after that, I get another notification and I have a message in Ancestry’s system. And that message was from my sister, she was saying that we had, we were a close family match when she got her results. And she wondered what our relationship would be and wondering if I could help her with that. You know the excitement took over at that point but I was also very aware from other people that I had talked with who have had these DNA matches, that it has to be handled sensitively. And so I took some time, I took most of the rest of the day, I don’t think I got a lot of work done the rest of that day. But what I was trying to do was figure out how I wanted to respond to that. Because one thing I knew, I wasn’t going to respond back in email and say, well you’re my half sister. You don’t know it but your mother had a child before she got married and before you guys were born. Wasn’t gonna do that. I had kinda formulated a response that let her know that I knew what the connection was and that we should probably talk about that by phone rather than back and forth through messages. But before I had a chance to send that. I got another message on Facebook messenger and that message read, “Hi Becky, I received my DNA results today. We came back as a close match. I’m quite the sleuth by nature and discovered we are actually sisters. I cannot emphasize enough how excited I am.” And at that point, I’m probably gonna get a little bit choked up a little bit here, but being the person who was actually reached out to and to find out that somebody that I had sought after and had wanted a relationship for so long was actually reaching out to me and sharing her excitement to find out that she had a sister that she didn’t know about, was overwhelming to me. I remember standing in my living room and telling my husband about it and just I just broke down crying. Because it was, it’s been a long path. And I could have never written that type of an answer, because it really could have been a much different response from her. It could have been, leave our family alone, we don’t want anything to do with you, I'm not going to acknowledge who you are. But what she had done is she had searched for me. She told me later, that when I didn’t respond to her message to me on Ancestry within about 15 minutes, she started digging around on Google. And she found quite a bit of information that I had been public about that she was able to figure out that I was adopted and put enough pieces together. But it made sense and when she played out all of the options, the only option that made sense to her was that her mother had given this child up for adoption and so before she had messaged me, she actually left work and went home and asked my mother and had gotten that information confirmed before she reached out to me.

Haley - Whoa!

Becky - That was like, one of those days that, after all of those years, I never expected it to go as well as it did. And what’s even better is, in that, in the almost year since that has occurred, we still, I’m in contact with both of my sisters, my brother, and my mother. Pretty amazing.

Haley - Wow. That is pretty amazing. I am, I am dumbstruck. I also love in her message to you, “I’m quite the sleuth by nature.” I believe I called you Sherlock Holmes the last time we talked.

Becky - So you think there’s a biological basis for having sleuthing skills?

Haley - I guess there is! Wow. Okay, do you know how that conversation went between your sister and your mother?

Becky - I really don’t. I think it was, I think that my sister had a pretty good feeling that it was going to be something that was difficult for my mother to talk about. And I think that she wanted to make sure that she was pretty sure of her facts before she asked her about it. You know, as much information as she could have. So you know, I think it was more of a conversation that said, I'm right about this, correct? That type of thing. I don’t know. I can only imagine what was going my mother’s mind at that point in time. I don’t know but, clearly it was time for that to come out. And the super interesting thing about all of this is, I think that my mother is really happy to be in touch with me. So it hasn’t been, I think it was more that the fact that it had been a secret for so long, certainly not that she did not want to know me or be a part of my life.

Haley - She didn't know how to tell everyone, right?

Becky - Think about that. You keep a secret, I was 55 years old at the time that that connection happened. I mean, think about that, having that for 55 years, having social workers tell you and parents tell you, we’re never gonna speak of this again. And then all of a sudden it’s out in the open. I mean those secrets fester and I don’t think they’re ever good for your inner life. To have secrets that are eating away at you. And I think it was pretty clear to me from my first conversation with her that she was interested in me, and it had certainly had a major impact on her life that there was a child of hers who was being raised by other people and she had no idea where that child was or how that child was. But I really can't speak for her, I don’t know what was going through her head. But I can imagine it had to be pretty emotional.

Haley - Well I remember we talked before about how important having in person connections are with adoptees and you also said, “and also with first parents so we can have a passion for them and an understanding.” So I think that your work in investing in those relationships has probably brought you to just a real greater understanding of what she experienced and you know, even in our last episode when you talked about that first, when your friend called her. And it was like this shocking message from her. You still were so you know open and had this real desire to connect with her and you didn’t really hold that against her I feel like. I don’t know if I’m putting words in your mouth. I think that your work, your healing work really is evident in all this whole process. What are your thoughts on that?

Becky - I would agree with that. I think that I've never, I mean you go through phases where you know, there’s the anger and all of those different emotions that you have to process in this journey. Especially when there’s rejection and secondary rejection. I think that learning about baby scoop era in general, learning about the impact of adoption on first parents, about learning about how adoptions were handled by social workers and by society in general in that period of time does give me a level of compassion. Because, and even when it comes to adoptive parents and some of the things that adoptive parents say and that level of possessiveness and sometimes a lot of adoptive parents have a lack of empathy towards first parents. So many different things. It’s just the way things were. It’s not really an excuse. But that can’t be changed. A period of time in history that happened, I would like to think we know a little better now, but I hear enough stories that it doesn’t always work that way. So yes, I think that healing work is absolutely key. And I think everybody has a responsibility to do that to be able to be fully present in a relationship with anyone for that matter. For first family member, any family member.

Haley - Okay, so you know adoptees. I know you do, you do work with them. Let’s talk about that a little bit later. But you know what I mean, legislative work and et cetera. So you know there’s a honeymoon period in reunion. And you're a year in and you say the relationships are good. What are you, what do you think is gonna happen in the future? Are you guys really similar? Do you have similar things that will keep you in touch longer do you think? Building close relationships, what do you think? I know you can’t tell the future, but what are your hopes for your reunion with your siblings?

Becky - Well I do think that these relationships that will continue with each of my siblings. I feel like I can find some connection with them whether it be temperament-wise, interests.

Haley - Detective work.

Becky - Yeah, detective work, yes, there’s always that too. We connect through our love of our grandkids and family. We really were raised similarly, similar type homes. It’s amazing how you know, adoption is supposed to bring you too something that’s so much different and better, but in my case what I've found is both my adoptive family and my birth mother’s family, there’s a lot of similarities in how we were raised. And so I think that helps with that connection. I feel comfortable with each of my siblings. I feel my comfortable with my mother. And I think what’s really interesting, and I don’t think we touched on this at all when we talked before, Haley, but one of my sisters and my brother both have places at this prive campground that’s in the same state where we live. And my husband and I actually bought a private lot with a camper and all of the, everything that goes along with it over at that same campground last fall. So you know, it’s a great opportunity for us to be able to, it’s something we do. We’ve camped for years, we’ve camped most of our marriage. And to find out that there’s that connection with my birth family that they also like the outdoors, a little bit different style of camping than my husband and I have done in the past, that we decided that we were ready to go that permanent camping route instead of hauling a camper around. Anyhow, and we actually loved the place where they're at, so it’s really been a joy to be able to go over there and be able to have our own place but still be able to connect and be in close proximity with my birth family. My mother comes and stays with my brother at his cabin, pretty frequently, so I get to connect with her there as well.

Haley - That is so fun! I love that. Oh that’s so good. I just want to give you an opportunity to give us some advice. You know, for people who were in your situation and had secondary rejection and I know other adoptees who have gone ahead and reached out to siblings with mixed results. But you were very patient and even in replying back to that connection on Ancestry. You waited and she reached out and do you have advice about that? Or thoughts, something that you wanna say to other adoptees that have been or are in your secondary rejection situation?

Becky - That’s a super interesting question. And one of the big pieces of advice that I remember being given a number of years ago that has guided me a lot is that, as adoptees, we have a right to knowledge, but relationships are a two way street. So I had the knowledge, a lot of knowledge without having the relationship. I knew that a relationship was what I desired so I feel like what my desired outcome was, really guided a lot of the choices that I made. I think that everyone should, needs to do what they feel in their heart is right for them. That’s what guided me is, a very strong sense that I was doing the right thing even though it was painful for me to know that there were people out there that I knew that I was connected to biologically that didn't know about me. That’s a tough thing to live with, it really is. But I tried to keep focused on what was important to me and what, how I would want to be treated if I were in that situation. And I think that’s, it’s kind of that golden rule, do unto others. And it’s easy to think about lashing back when people aren’t treating you the way that you would wanna be treated. But as difficult as it is, that’s what I've always tried to do. And I think that, that basic human decency and how, treating the other people in the way that they deserve to be treated, regardless of how they treat you, that type of thing is really important for adoptees to keep in mind. And we are a lot of times, we react out of hurt. And that rejection’s a hard thing to take. And taking your time and reacting in a measured way instead of just a knee jerk reaction, I think is helpful to keep in mind.

Haley - And you have these relationships with your siblings on the other side. And that are not as close and I think maybe you have said last time that one of the siblings was not super impressed that you were around.

Becky - That’s a fact. Still isn’t, as far as I know.

Haley - So how do you deal with that when you have the happy welcoming and we have things in common versus the not sure about you or not as many things in common, not just to like compare and contrast relationships, but you’re in a unique position where you can see kind of both sides. And how do you manage that emotionally? You know, do you want more from them or are you okay with where things are? I know you touched on that a little bit before, but just for advice purposes, again, for adoptees that are in your situation, kind of navigating the trickier relationships.

Becky - For me it goes back to what I mentioned a minute ago, that the right to knowledge is very different from the fact that relationship is a two way street. And you know, I will always keep the door open. I still have hope that at some point, my sister who’s not thrilled that I exist, will want some level of connection. I think some of that has to come about naturally. I don’t want, I’m not gonna force a relationship on anybody. As far as advice, I think we have to be open and we have to be clear about what we look for in a relationship. But we also have to take those cues from other people as well. I enjoy the time that I spend around my siblings from my other, on the paternal side. They're nice people, I like them. I think if we were closer in proximity, I would hope we would spend a little bit more time together. I don’t know how that would go. But it again, it just goes back to that, the treating people as you would want to be treated. And to be honest, I could probably do a better job of being the one to reach out and to them, instead of waiting for them to reach out to me. I could grab a birthday card and put it in the mail or something like that. So it goes both ways, you’ve gotta look at where, what you’re investing in that relationship as well as what they're doing as well. You have to acknowledge sometimes it’s really, it’s not a natural type thing to find out that you had a parent who had a child that you didn’t even know about so many years ago. It’s a weird kind of thing. You know, we look at it from our perspective as an adoptee, but how does that feel to be on the other end of that too? I think about that sometimes.

Haley - Okay, I know that you are very involved in adoptee activism in a variety of ways and you’ve, you know taught me some of those things just for me watching you go to different events. And so I want you to talk to us a little bit about that. You know, a lot of people come and they listen to this show for the first time and they’ve just done a Google search to find adoptee support and that’s how they came to the podcast and they don’t necessarily know that there are people working all the time to open up birth certificate records to us, or support adoptees in different ways, to become activists themselves. So can you talk to us about that? There’s a whole other side to being an adopted person, if you wanna like, get your hands dirty.

Becky - Well there is, and there are a lot of different ways that you can become involved in different types of support for people that are impacted by adoption. A couple of the things that I've done are, well first of all just let me say, I think this Adoptees On podcast is absolutely a gift to the community of people who are touched by adoption. And not just adoptees, I know that you speak mostly with adoptees, but I think a lot of first parents could really learn a lot from listening to a lot of our stories as they are portrayed through your podcast. I think that you’re a voice for adoptees, your podcast is a voice for adoptees in this community. But as far as the ways I've been personally involved, since I have been connected to adoption network Cleveland, I've done a few things. I did some work on the bill that Ohio eventually got passed that came into law in 2015. I've also been a co facilitator for a support group for people that are affected by adoption. It’s not just for adoptees, but for all members of the adoption community. And that’s actually, when you think about it now, some of the things that are coming out, people that are donor conceived, with DNA testing, people who are finding out that they have unattributed parentage, I think is the official term for it. But finding out—

Haley - NPE, right? Not Parent Expected.

Becky - Right. So there are a lot of different ways. And if you find out you're donor conceived or you find out that the parent who raised you isn’t your biological parent, it’s some of the same feelings that an adoptee would deal with. That those people would deal with. So I co facilitated a support group for about the last four years or so. And then I've also been connected with the adoptees rights coalition. The Adoptee Rights Coalition is a very small group that’s not all over the place. But what we do, do each year is, we have a presence, a booth at the National Conference for State Legislature so I’m not sure I have that acronym right but it's for all of the state legislators come together for a conference each year to learn about all kinds of legislative things. And we have a booth there where we talk about what model, what legislation should be for unrestricted access to birth certificates. We’ll talk with legislators and some of their aids about what it takes to get a bill passed. And to try to connect them with other people who have done some of that same kind of work.

Haley - So wow, that’s a lot. Okay. I would like if you can, can you break down, this is gonna be a big ask, what it takes to change legislation in a state. And now I'm in Canada, and so we have similar kind of styles of government but not exactly the same. What does it take to bring attention to the rights of adoptees to have access to their original birth certificates and we talk about clean bills and those kinds of things. Can you just talk about that like, process?

Becky - Sure and I think I’ll talk about that because Ohio’s law change is what I am most familiar with. I think I’ll talk about it in those terms. And I think the first thing I will say is it takes a committed group of people who are in it for the long haul. This is not.

Haley - And how many people?

Becky - So Adoption Network Cleveland was actually formed by an adoptee who like me, had the right to her birth certificate but did not feel that it was fair that adoptees who were born after her were faced with sealed records. And she actually formed an organization to support people by adoption. And then she moved it into advocacy. So she built a coalition of people of volunteers. And some of those volunteers came and went over the years, over a 25 year period of time. That’s how long it took from the time that she formed Adoption Network Cleveland until a bill was passed that with a few restrictions, gives everyone who’s adopted in the state of Ohio, access to their original birth certificate at age 18.

Haley - Okay, so you’re not kidding about a group of people in it for the long haul.

Becky - Absolutely. Now, hopefully there has been some advancements that make that a little bit quicker, but, to be honest, right now, there are still only 9 states in the U.S. that have unrestricted access to, for adoptees, to their original birth certificates when they become adults.

Haley - And that means they can just apply and they get it. And nobody can like, a first parent can’t like put a veto on their record? What other kind of restrictions have you seen?

Becky - Well first, in Ohio, there are a lot of different levels of restrictions. And part of this comes about because a lot of the argument against opening up records for adoptees has been birth parent privacy. And one of the ways that, because the way a legislature works, they are, it’s kind of that give and take, so everybody gets a little bit of what they want. And so one of the ways a number of states, because there are now 11 states that offer access with some level of restriction. And in Ohio, what that meant, was that for a year’s period of time after the bill was passed and signed into law by the governor, a birth parent would have the right to say that they didn’t want their name on the birth certificate that was released to the adoptee. If they did that, they had to put out, they had to fill out a complete social and medical history that would be given to the adoptee. Now the adoptee would still get their birth certificate. The birth certificate would still have their name at birth, the only thing that would be redacted on that, would be the name of the birth parent. Which is, it really is ridiculous, but what I will say is, we had a clean bill. We had a clean bill that went all the way through the house. We had a clean bill that made it out of the senate committee and it made it to the senate president, it was ready to be brought out to the floor for a vote. The senate president was refusing to bring it to a vote without, with it being a clean bill. So you know, at that point, the options were, do you try to negotiate the smallest possible restriction to access or do you stop and you know, do you just say forget it and start all over again? The environment that Ohio was faced with, is that there were 4 cosponsors of this bill who all had a connection to adoption. One was an adoptee, one had adopted siblings, one was an adoptive parent, and one had birth parents in her family. So being able to pull that together again and then you know it just, it was a very tough decision because to take something that had been a clean bill for so long and then get these little bit of restrictions added in at the last minute, was very disheartening. But starting all over again, how long would that have taken and how many birth parents and possibly adoptees would have died in that period? Because the period covered in Ohio that weren’t open yet were from 1964 to 1996. Some of those birth parents you know, depending on how old they were at the time, could be passing away. So that’s one of the, the goal is unrestricted access and while I would prefer to see unrestricted access everywhere and I think that states that have restricted access should go back and try to make those changes to get it unrestricted, sometimes it just doesn’t always work out to be what you would like to be in a perfect world. But when you look at it from our standpoint, it’s really frustrating to think, everybody else in the world has a right to that document. It is an official record of their birth without any—

Haley - When you’re talking about this birth certificate. Well, you can have it, but we’re gonna white out the first parent’s name. Like, I already have a birth certificate with my adoptive parent’s names on them, I don’t need one with nobody’s name.

Becky - Right!

Haley - Okay. So that 25 years, that’s a long process. What are some of the ways that people start doing this? So you start building you know a connection with other people. And then what do you do? Like how do you

find someone to sponsor a bill? That sounds like that’s pretty far down the road in the 25 year period.

Becky - Yes, well and it is, you know I think in different states, there’s probably a lot of different ways to getting a bill in place. Really the key is having a group of people who are committed to working on it who have a connection to adoption in that state. Either they’re, and I think it’s really important that they be constituents of the people in the legislature who are willing to come in and testify for this bill. It’s important to have first parents, it’s important to have adoptees so that they can speak about the impact that having open records would have on their lives. And I think it’s really important that first parents are willing to speak up about that because in most cases, they may not want the fact that they gave a child up for adoption public. But statistics will show over and over and over again, the greatest majority of women do not want to be kept a secret from the child they gave up for adoption. So you know, having people who are willing to testify to that is important. But to have to be able to testify, what you have to be able to do, is get a bill on the floor. And so what that takes is, finding cosponsors who are going to be passionate about records access. Senator Bill Beagle in the state of Ohio was that voice for the Ohio law change. I think it was probably one of his favorite bills that he worked on. But it takes the sponsors that care enough about it who are willing to do the negotiations and you know, work with their colleagues to get the, to get the adoptee access bills put before the senate and the house in their state.

Haley - So finding people that are in the state, or province, and have a connection to, or are willing to build a connection to legislatures, politicians, that have the power to do it.

Becky - Absolutely. And I think that everybody, there are states like, I think New York is an example right now. They have a number of different groups that are working on access laws and I don’t think that that’s helpful. I think that if there are a number of groups working on access law changes, that they need to figure out a way to work together so that they’re presenting a united front to the legislature and do the congress people that they reach out to.

Haley - Yeah, it’s interesting in the online community to watch some of those things, it’s frustrating because I'm not, I'm Canadian and so I have no say in any of those things that are happening in the U.S., but I'm trying to build connections in Canada, but looking on as someone who feels that they can't do anything and to see the behind the scenes, like the fighting, it’s sad. It’s really sad. I understand, I'm sure there’s reasons for some of that, that I'm not privy to. But it’s really, it’s sad to watch when, if you could work together, I don’t know, maybe things could go faster. It feels like a lot of wasted energy goes into that, behind the scenes fighting.

Becky - Well it does. But when, you know the larger group of people that are working for that change and everybody being on the same page, I think that’s always gonna benefit the effort.

Haley - Okay, so it sounds like if this is something that people want to be, get into, you wanna be looking for other adopted people or other members of the adoption constellation in your state. That sounds like the most effective way to be working on this. So how can you do that?

Becky - One of the ways that you can do that is if you reach out to, if you look on Facebook, the Adoptee Rights Coalition has a page, a Facebook page that you can send a message through. And by doing that, a lady, there’s several people who are administrators on that page. But there’s a lady named Gaye Tannenbaum. And she is, I mean this is, she’s very passionate about getting this work done. And she has a lot of resources and a lot of information about what states are working on what bills. And who in different states is working on a bill for access. And you know, somebody will get back with you fairly quickly to be able to tell you, if in your state there is something that is being worked. If you’re starting from ground zero in a state. Like for instance, I know right now that New York state and Texas have strong coalitions and there’s a lot of work being done. There’s other states like California that I don’t think as much work is being done. A lot of it is going to be, you’ll have to be a networker and a, and a community builder to be able to build that type of thing if you’re starting from scratch. It’s work that’s important, it needs to be done, but I don’t wanna make it sound like it’s, you can just snap your fingers and pull together a group that’s willing to work for this.

Haley - Absolutely. And I mean, that’s, it’s nice to have a realistic picture. Like is this something I wanna get involved in, and you gotta be passionate about it, because I know people burn out really quick on some of these things.

Becky - Absolutely.

Haley - But also, you know, if you're gonna be the one to start the group and start the networking in your state or province, it’s amazing to just be connected with other people who’ve done it before you and can, you know, give you more in depth advice than Becky and I have gone into today. Because I kinda wanted like, the overview pictures so you could kind of get an idea of what it looks like. So what are some of the things that you have done? I know you said you, you’ve actually worked a booth at a trade show for legislators essentially. What are some of the other like, practical things, like what does it look like to do work on this? Putting work in quotation marks, it’s real work, but like what does work mean?

Becky - So work is really about, in many ways, telling your story, just like you ask people to do on this podcast. One of the things that is important is, to, you can submit testimony. When there’s a bill that’s being heard in the state legislature, you can submit testimony either in writing or by going and submitting it in person to a committee that is hearing testimony. So I've done that, for the state of Ohio. I've also written letters of support for bills in other states. It’s really most effective when you are a constituent of the state where the bill is being heard. So what I would say is, if you’re aware of an effort in your state, the state that you live in, even if the adoption that you’re connected with happened in another state, get involved. because any state legislator is going to want to be doing things to make constituents of their state happy, their voters, the people that are gonna potentially vote for them happy. I think it’s also important just to show support for efforts that are happening in other areas. Because really beyond writing some letters and showing support and maybe sharing some Facebook posts for an effort in California, if for me, living in Ohio or for you living in Canada, there’s really not a lot that you can do. But I think that the more our stories get out there, and the more people hear it, you know for instance, you can’t go a week in the media today without hearing a story about a reunion somewhere. A lot of them, that are coming about form DNA testing or, it’s just been amazing to see the people who have been able to connect because of that. And you know, that’s I think, another place, and maybe if you wanna talk about this a little bit later, or if you don’t have time for it, that’s fine too, but the fact that the DNA databases are so large today is really making a difference. That really should have an impact on how, how legislators look at these laws. From now going forward. Because the whole privacy argument really doesn’t hold water when you’ve got people that are finding a second cousin match and starting to ask questions about who in your family might have placed a child for adoption in 1972. So I think being vocal about that and making sure that you’re talking about how DNA testing changes that argument that have kept records closed for so long is important too. And you can do that if you’ve got a blog, you can do it when you’re talking to somebody, you know, in a conversation. You can do it in a church setting, there’s just many ways that you just need to be willing to make your voice heard.

Haley - Definitely agree with that. I think it’s so important to just be talking about it all the time because we don’t realize the influence our stories, even small snippets of it have on people’s perspectives who have no relation to adoption. I've been witnessing that firsthand in my own life. Before we go do recommended resources and I wanna give you a chance to do one more plug for DNA and talk about the importance of that. And also is there anything else that you would tell adoptees like, okay, here’s your chance. Why is it important for adoptees to get involved in activist or advocacy of some time?

Becky - So if you’re an adoptee, nobody else knows other than another adoptee, what it is like to live with all of the issues that come out by being adopted and living with all of these unknowns that you grow up with. So by being vocal about that, with state legislature, or just somebody who has been against open records, maybe they’re not a legislator, but just feel that it’s the wrong thing to do, they’re never gonna have their mind changed unless they hear from the people who it has impacted.

Haley - Yes! I agree.

Becky - Do you wanna talk about DNA more?

Haley - I wanna, well I do wanna ask you about DNA because I think you were the first person to say this to me. I don’t think we recorded it on the air, but maybe we had a conversation on messenger or something, just about the importance of DNA testing even if your search is complete and you didn't need DNA. Why is it important for people to get tested?

Becky - So DNA testing is something, and I think, I’ll put a little bit of a disclaimer out there, because I know a lot of people have been uncomfortable with it a little bit lately because of some of the criminal cases that have been solved using basically the same methods that we use to find birth family. I'm just here to say that, if somebody that I’m related to genetically is able to be convicted of violent crime because of that, I’m okay with that. That’s just, I mean, they need to be, I don’t see that as you know.

Haley - Well you know what.

Becky - I’m gonna skip all that.

Haley - No, no, no, I'm not, I’m going to say, if you haven’t heard about the Golden State Killer and what’s going on with that, just do a google search for that, and DNA and you’ll understand what Becky’s talking about. And why there’s controversy with that.

Becky - Exactly. But every little bit of a connection, I mean it’s typically not what happened with me and my sister. When people don’t have access to their records and they’re using DNA to be able to try to find family, it’s like putting a puzzle together. Where you’re taking lots of connections and you’re trying to figure out where they all intersect and come together to try to figure out the identity of a parent that you’re looking for. And every little, every new DNA match that you get is all part of putting that puzzle together. So even if you know the identity of both of your parents and your family, by putting your DNA in that database, you may help somebody else with that connection that they need to finally get in touch with somebody. And I think you can see, I’m sure you don’t hear all of the stories of people that weren’t happy to be in contact because they’re not gonna be one of those stories that’s on the front page of media. But you see how many lives have been impacted for the better because they have been able to connect with somebody that in some cases, they didn’t even know existed, ,that they’re related to.

Haley - And even if it’s not for the reunion story, even if it’s for you know, medical purposes, like, there is a reason why so many of us advocate for open records. It’s a human right. So.

Becky - It is.

Haley - That’s what I’m gonna say about that. Thank you, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us on all of those different topics, I’m so honored that you would share that with us and hope that you, I know, I know you’ll have inspired some people by some of the things that you shared. Let’s do our recommended resources. And I’m gonna go first. And this is, I've talked about Adoptee Reading before, we’ve had Karen Pickell on the show before, she runs Adoptee Reading. But she has a blog post on her site that is 24 adoptee authored books published in 2018. And these are some books that have recommended on this show before but you can find anthologies on here, memoir, there is even fiction. There are a verse novel, there’s poetry, all kinds of different types of books and I just, I recommend you go and check it out, order a couple, support your fellow adoptees in their work to get their stories out or their creativity out. And that’s a great list to go check out. And then you’ll be like, I just read this and it’s brand new, I mean, published last year, so you’ll feel like you’re in the know. On trend, on adoptee trend, is that a thing? I really appreciate Karen and the work that she takes to curate Adoptee Reading and this list is great, so I’ll link to that in the show notes. And Becky, what do you wanna recommend to us today?

Becky - I am really excited about the resource I have to recommend here today. And I think it’s really appropriate because we have talked about legislative efforts to change laws. And so what I wanna recommend today is a documentary about adoption called Adopted For the Life of Me by adoptee and filmmaker Jean Strauss. She has generously made not only that documentary but about 50 other documentaries that she has made about adoption available on Vimeo, on the adoptee film channel. So I believe that Haleyh’s going to put the url for that in the show notes.

Haley - I will.

Becky - There are so many nuggets of wisdom that Jean pulls out of people, she has followed efforts to open records in a number of states. She’s just an amazing individual and the generosity that she has shown the adoptee community by putting so much of her work out on, for free public view, I think really takes legislative efforts. It’s a help in the effort to open records in different areas of the country.

Haley - Fantastic. And you also, you mentioned here, I want you to talk about it. That she has an adoption memoir as well, Beneath a Tall Tree.

Becky - She does. She wrote this a number of years ago. It’s not in print anymore, but you can still find used copies on Amazon. And it is just a very insightful, it’s a pretty big memoir. But it’s just very insightful in all of the things that she learned about herself and about others and about adoption as she went through her journey. And how she closes it all out, I think is the most powerful part of the book. And she likens putting all of these pieces together as starting with a blank canvas before she knew anything. And then over time, of what she’s learned, she’s been able to paint that canvas with stories of her ancestors and you know, and therefore of her. And it’s very beautifully written. And there’s just a lot of insights that, it’s not new, like the lists that Karen Pickell have so graciously put out for us to have ideas of books to read. But it’s an absolutely beautifully written memoir.

Haley - Thank you for sharing those and I had no idea that all of Jean’s work was up on Vimeo. When you sent me the link and I was like, oh! And there’s more! There’s more, there’s more. It’s awesome, such a great resource. And also says that this documentary was shown on PBS, like these are like legit you know, awesome things to check out.

Becky - Absolutely.

Haley - How can people connect with you online?

Becky - Well you can find me on Facebook and that’s where I’m most often on social media. I'm Becky Conrad Drinnen on social media. I also have a very neglected blog at this point at puzzlesandpossibilities.com.

Haley - Perfect, I will link to all of those in the show notes. Thank you so much Becky, again for coming on the show and sharing your story with us, part 2.

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Haley - This time next week, I will be in Washington D.C. at the American Adoption Congress Conference. And I'm so excited to be sharing a keynote message there that highlights adoptee voices and the importance of us telling our stories. Very much in line with what Becky and I just talked about. I would love to have you come and join us there. You can check the American Adoption Congress website to see if you can still register online or it might be just in person now. And check the Adoptees On Facebook page for information about the meetup, the listener meetup, I’d love to meet you in person. If you’re coming to the event, please let me know so we can make sure to say hi. And I’m probably bringing along some stickers, so you can grab some Adoptees On swag. And I just wanna say a huge thank you to my monthly Patreon supporters, I couldn’t do this show without you. And I have been recording special episodes. If you love the podcast and you just can’t get enough, there’s a whole other podcast happening over on Patreon that is called Adoptees Off Script. And every week I talk to an adoptee and we deep dive things that we maybe wouldn’t talk about on the main feed. But of course, we share with our listeners over on Patreon. So if you would like to sign up and help support the ongoing costs of producing this show, Adopteeson.com/partner has links and details for all of the levels of support that you can tryout. Thanks so much for listening, let’s talk again next Friday.

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