274 Julian Washio-Collette

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/274

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

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Julian Washio-Collette. A writer and monastic spiritual seeker whose story includes the rarity of being relinquished and adopted twice. Julian shares what he hears when someone says the term, forever family.

How building community was difficult here when seemingly no one else has had the same experience of being a double adoptee. And we ponder what the spiritual implications of adoption may mean. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community [00:01:00] today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We also have a seven day free trial, so you can check us out. We wrap up with some recommended resources. And as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson. com.

Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Julian Washio-Collette. Welcome, Julian.

Julian Washio-Collette: Thanks, Haley. It's great to be here.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad we finally get to chat. I know you've supported the podcast. You've been a listener for a long time, and I would love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah, thank you. So I am a baby scoop era double adoptee. So I was relinquished and adopted twice. So first as an infant, I was formally adopted at 14 [00:02:00] months. I have no idea where I was before that or when I arrived at the house of my adopters. So that's a black hole. And so my first adopters also adopted a baby girl when I was five years old, which is a little confusing to me because sometime shortly after that they got divorced and my sister and I were with our adoptive mother and things really went downhill from there, things that I remember or have been told this was when I was around eight years old. She was certainly dating a lot. She was doing drugs, going out dancing, and on the other side taking us to what I would call fire and brimstone fundamentalist churches on Sunday, which is a really confusing mixture that left an imprint.

But at some point, [00:03:00] she decided that she did not want to have children anymore, and so she placed us for adoption. And what that process looked like was my sister and I were scooped up by a social worker and taken to the house of who would become our second adopters. I think there was two or three visits.

And then one day we were dropped off and that was it. And so it was another closed adoption. The dynamics mirrored my first adoption. Both were closed adoptions. My birth certificate was changed. Anyone from my first adoptive family could not legally have contact with me until I was 18. So I've been thinking about this a lot because, for many reasons, people [00:04:00] have to disown or repress or deny parts of themselves, right?

People who experienced various kinds of trauma. So for me I had to do that. I had to disown the first nine years of my life and on top of that, the whole world mirrored that. The whole, the whole world mirrored the role that I was forced to take on. I basically did not exist for the first nine years of my life.

And all the evidence was hidden. Anyone from that time period was not allowed to contact me. So again, it, that happened when I was a baby and my system internalized it at it as it did then. And then I underwent the same process again, this time at a very different developmental level. I had some comprehension of what was happening to me.

I basically had to deconstruct and reconstruct myself as a nine year old child. [00:05:00] So unfortunately, that was not the best family again. I feel like this is another systemic failure. This was not a family that had any business raising children. My second adoptive family. So my second adoptive family parents had adopted a boy as an infant. So they already had one adopted child. So my sister and I arrived and so there was three children and the dynamics of that family, I think are very common among abusive families, but I think my sense is even more common among adoptive families. So the mother had all the markings of a malignant narcissist.

The father was her enabler, their first adopted child was the golden boy who could do no wrong, and I was the scapegoat. So one of the common [00:06:00] refrains I heard was, whenever he got into trouble, he didn't do that until you got here, and I heard that up until I was a teenager. So on top of having my identity completely stripped from me in order to be part of this family, all of us.

There was no room to be a person in this family, all of us had to organize around my second adoptive mother and the emotional chaos that she constantly stirred up. And so that was basically my life until just before my 17th birthday, when I was thrown out of the house. Those parents also divorced, I think when I was about 16.

And so my mother, my second adoptive mother made it very clear that she wanted me out of the house. So as soon as I graduated high school and I managed to graduate a year early, not unexpectedly, she threw me out of the house and given [00:07:00] the, the childhood that I had, I was not at all ready for independence psychologically or practically. And I am extremely grateful that I got out when I did. So I've never regretted that happened, but I also recognize that like I was still a child, even today I'm in my early fifties, but I just feel like that sense of not being ready. for life is so deeply ingrained.

I was not ready when I was an infant. I was not ready when I was nine years old. It was not ready when I was 16 years old. And I still feel that, oh my God, I'm not ready. Like it's too much. So that's my adoption story in a nutshell.

Haley Radke: I'm so sorry. I've heard You share your story in other ways, and I still hear it, and I just think, oh, it's so unfair and difficult, so difficult.[00:08:00]

What do you hear when people say the words, forever family?

Julian Washio-Collette: Oh, God, I don't know. That's an interesting question. So what comes up for me immediately, I'm thinking adoption people use the, that terminology when referring to adoption, right? So it's already, it's a false narrative because there is no forever.

You've already, an adopted person is someone who's already lost part of their forever. So to me, being an adopted child is having to take on a false identity. And it certainly was for me, absolutely the language that we use such as forever family just obscures the reality. It creates a kind of false veneer over something very tragic and broken.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I've been thinking about that since knowing we were going to talk because I just, [00:09:00] whenever I hear that phrase, it makes me so upset because I know it's not true. And I think of exactly what you just said. This falsehood, really, that we're like putting someone in this like perfect home that is so much better than what they were originally intended to, live out.

And it's just not the case.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah. One thing I would add from my own experience is the, I think maybe every adoptees, but certainly many adoptees secret fears that they're going to be given up again, so there's always that, there's the promise of a forever family. And then there's that underlying anxiety.

And so for me, that was not just an anxiety. It was a reality. So I know that's not a guarantee. There's no security.

Haley Radke: So going out, launching into the world, unprepared, with [00:10:00] no support system behind you. What was that like? What were your next years like?

Julian Washio-Collette: Fortunately the mother of an acquaintance of mine gave me a place to stay.

I spent a week just couch surfing, and then I had a place to stay for about a year. After that, one of my cousins from my first adoptive family actually tracked me down because I had turned 18. So I have a lot of reunion stories. And it can get very complicated.

Haley Radke: Wait, how is that possible?

Julian Washio-Collette: I have a lot of stories. I don't know how true they are. But when I reconnected with members of my first adoptive family, namely my cousins, aunt and uncle, they claimed that when I was placed for adoption, they were not told until after the fact, or at least until it was too late to do anything to intervene. They claimed that they would have taken me in.

I do not know if that's true. But it [00:11:00] sounds like they had no say in that process. They also claimed that they just, they found out where we lived and they found the phone number of our new home, which happened to only be seven miles away and that they tried to call the house once and got my younger sister on the phone, but decided to let, just to back up back away and trust that things will work out.

So it sounds like they already had some information on us. I have absolutely no idea how they could have acquired that. So I don't know, but they tracked me down. I think they got ahold of my sister at our adopter's home. And then she contacted me. So that was a really gosh, so here I am.

I'm meeting my aunt, uncle, and cousins for the first time in eight or nine years. And, my God here I was, like, I had to disown who I was for the first nine years of my life and become a completely different person. And now I am with the people [00:12:00] who did not know me as that other person. They only knew me as the person I was supposed to disown.

And it caused, it caused such incredible internal turmoil. So during that time, my drug of choice was punk rock music. So I just remember like I would visit them and then I would just drive home and just have to turn up, just listen to this incredibly aggressive, despairing music at full blast just to know that there was something in the world that mirrored my insides. It was way more than I can handle and I didn't have any support or guidance. Yeah, it was very overwhelming.

Haley Radke: How do you get from there to I'm picturing you rocking out to this punk rock music to the simple monastic lifestyle that you live in now, that's is, I'm picturing like a wide gap, but maybe it's closer than I think.[00:13:00]

Julian Washio-Collette: Oh gosh. So just for the record, I don't live in a monastery now. I did. I was actually a Catholic monk for four and a half years. I also lived in Buddhist monasteries and my wife and I just moved from living in a monastery for five years. We were the housekeepers there. So I do have a lot of experience in spiritual community and monastic communities.

So yeah, so that is quite a big shift. I think in part because of the turmoil I experienced, I had a lot of big existential questions. that I had to face. And so I was very spiritually curious from a fairly young age, which is to say I also want to say there was no, especially in my second adoptive family, There was no real religiosity or spiritual or intellectual curiosity, so I really had, it really had to come from me.

And so in my early 20s, I was invited to [00:14:00] come to a Zen Buddhist meditation group. And so in my 20s meditation became a very big part of my life, to the extent that I eventually moved into a Zen Buddhist community, spent some time at a monastery. I do want to say I think when I think about the things that I've done in my life and the things that have been very meaningful, there's the sense of ambiguity about them because like on one level, I think I am a very, I have a strong spiritual orientation and I may have made similar choices if I wasn't a double adoptee and yet, for instance, like I had this strong interest in community living in part because I had this deep hunger for the holding environment that I never had.

I didn't feel ready to be an individual, to be an I, like I was looking for that foundation of we, where's the we to which I belong, to [00:15:00] whom I belong that can mirror me, nurture me so that I can be an I in the world. So I came to community living with this kind of dual consciousness. And one, part of that was like, hey fill up what I didn't get, right?

I think that was the kind of unconscious agenda. And of course that never works. It doesn't work in individual relationships. It doesn't work in relationship to communities. And so I struggled a great deal. I struggled in individual relationships, but I also struggled in community living because I was plagued with this sense of I don't belong.

I'm not sharing in what other people are sharing in. At the same time, I found it very meaningful and I found the spiritual practice very meaningful, and that eventually led me to becoming a monk.

Haley Radke: When did you, I don't know how to put this, because it's probably something going on in the background, right?

But when do you realize [00:16:00] I don't know who I am.

Julian Washio-Collette: Oh, God.

Haley Radke: And it's because I've had these disruptions. These familial disruptions,

Julian Washio-Collette: I lived that implicitly my whole life, obviously. And so that was part of, like part of, going from community to community and not finding on the surface I thought I wasn't finding my place in the world, but I wasn't finding me. I wasn't finding a mirror, a stable mirror that reflected who I was, I don't think that I got really explicit about that until honestly, discovering Adoptees On in 2020, when I really started to learn about how adoption impacted me.

I've definitely had other experiences and other understandings. Like I, I definitely knew I had a lot of identity confusion, but I didn't appreciate the depths of [00:17:00] it until I started learning about the impacts of adoption and working with an adoptee therapist in particular.

Haley Radke: So how did you find Adoptees On? What were you looking for?

Julian Washio-Collette: Sure. So again, this was in 2020, September of 2020 during the pandemic. I was about, gosh, I was about a year out of re, not out of reunion, but like I, my reunion started in winter of 2018, and I met both sides of my birth family, including my mother and father in 2019. My wife and I actually went, spent a summer renting a house in New York and the Finger Lakes region where I could be closer to my family.

And that was a big deal, obviously. And there's a lot that we can talk about there, but I just want to say, I was a year later and the dust had settled from reunion, so to speak, and [00:18:00] it was definitely it, it answered a lot of my questions. It really filled in something for me.

I feel it physically because for me, especially as a double adoptee to know people and to meet people with whom I'm irrefutably related to no matter what the quality of relationship is, was profound. Like it, it's almost, like it's almost a physical sensation. It's okay, like I actually exist on planet earth.

And there's the proof. And yet reunion was also in some respects disillusioning. Like it, it didn't fill the ache. It didn't give me that sense of belonging and identity that I craved. And so I was in that space, when I happened to be listening to another podcast, a storytelling podcast that had nothing to do with adoption, but this woman was talking about her experience [00:19:00] of trying to adopt two brothers, eight, nine years old, out of foster care, and it was a very painful story to listen to because it did not work.

And these two boys were just abruptly whisked away one day without any warning. And that, hearing that story just pierced me to the heart. And so it just opened up a whole other level. It's hey, I'm adopted. I'm still suffering. What do I do? Like I need community. That's the, that was my first thought I need to meet other people.

And as soon as that story ended I got on the computer and I googled Adoptee Podcast, because I was, yeah, I was actually at the monastery. I had a job that didn't ask for a lot of mental energy. I could listen to as many podcasts a day as I wanted to. And Adoptees On was the first one that came up.[00:20:00]

So I, I started binge listening. And I think I, I actually contacted you because I, and I do have this kind of, yeah, this kind of dual relationship to the adoptee community because on one level I relate to what people are sharing and that was incredibly inspiring. relieving, healing, and I don't hear stories that sound like mine.

So shortly after I started listening, I became a Patreon supporter and I went to an event. I don't know if you remember, but it was some kind of celebration. I think it was like 150, 000 somethings. And I was, I was conspicuous because no one knew me. So at some point someone asked like, what do you want to introduce yourself?

And I felt such a weight because I, on one level, I was feeling relief okay, I found my people. And at another level, I still, I have, and I had a lot [00:21:00] of shame. Like I have to say not only that I was adopted, but that I was adopted twice. And so that was really difficult for me. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I was trying to think if I've, if I know anyone else, I still don't think I know anyone else. Have you met other people that have been relinquished twice now?

Julian Washio-Collette: I haven't. I've met people who've been in multiple foster care placements, but to me that's a very different thing because when you're in foster, I wasn't foster care. I don't remember when I was a baby. When you're in foster care, they don't change your birth certificate. They don't make it illegal for anyone you've known to have contact with you. So I think, I do think that's a very different experience.

I

Haley Radke: hope that if someone listening has had that same experience as you, they will reach out to you. So you can, [00:22:00] unfortunately, relate to it. I don't know what to say, but I do feel like, I, I remember you asking me at one point did I know? And I'm like no, you're a unicorn. Oh.

Julian Washio-Collette: Did you know that Astrid Castro? Named me an adoptee unicorn. Okay. She actually, I was on one of Adoption Mosaics We the Experts panels. And it was, the topic was adoption, disruption and dissolution. And there were three of us on the panel, but even there, our stories were so wildly different, that she ended up naming us adoptee unicorns. So I do own that name.

Haley Radke: Can I ask you a speculating question, and I want to go back to your reunion.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah, sure.

Haley Radke: Do you think it's because, I know there's other adoption disruptions, I know that. And I know there's a lot of re homing situations. Do you [00:23:00] think that it's, we don't know more adoptees that have that story publicly because they don't know, these things haven't been done legally, they're really struggling people and are just not

online and in community because they're having other difficulties. What's your, if you had to make guesses on the reason why?

Julian Washio-Collette: I don't know. I re, I really don't. I think what comes up for me is how I carried my adoption story until I started connecting with other adoptees. Like I, In a way, I bought into the dominant narrative I didn't think it was a big deal that I was adopted as a baby, so I didn't think that I, I thought that my experience is very unique, which it is, but at the same, at the same time, I didn't think I had much in common with people who were [00:24:00] only adopted once, until I started understanding better the impact of relinquishment and adoption trauma. So that could be part of it. My attitude was like, Oh, you were adopted once. Like big deal. I understand better now but I ha I had to be educated and I had to face the impacts of my own adoption as an infant.

Haley Radke: I really appreciated you saying how reunion didn't fill in everything for you and there was still this longing.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah.

Haley Radke: You know what I was thinking when you were sharing that? I was like, Oh my gosh. How did you tell your birth mother that you?

Julian Washio-Collette: Oh, God.

Haley Radke: And did it take you a while to have the courage to tell her that you had two placements?

Julian Washio-Collette: When I, I found my family through DNA testing, and when my ancestry [00:25:00] results became available. My birth mother actually contacted me before I had the opportunity to contact her because she was already on Ancestry, which was really powerful, and she sent me like the sweetest notes, the sweetest messages, the kinds of things that I wanted to hear.

I, I've thought about you and prayed about you every day of my life. And so at first I was in that elation, I was just talking to my therapist about this, but I think what's really important, I want to say for us, but certainly for me is disillusionment because I lived with this I call it the prime directive, which is find mom. I can't survive without my mother, right? So I've had that in my system since I was a baby. And because of that, I carried [00:26:00] inflated expectations, inflated hopes, inflated desires of what a mother could give me. So all of that. Came out of the box, came out of the box when I discovered my birth mother.

That said, After those first few messages, it was becoming quite apparent that things were not ideal. So for one, sadly, because of social media, I knew her politics, I knew her religious convictions, I knew that she was a Christian fundamentalist, and that we were at very opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of our political, cultural, religious convictions.

And that was going to make it difficult. So I knew that going in, but. As we were communicating at first through email, it was becoming apparent that okay I'm not sensing [00:27:00] a lot of capacity for emotional reciprocity and availability. So those, that, that burst of elation quickly diffused, I, I would say and, and one of my frustrations was that she wasn't really asking questions about my life and to me, it was this incredible weight. Like I, I can hardly say anything about my life without opening up the fact that yes, like I had this these incredible ruptures that I endured and so one day I just frankly, I just got frustrated and I just wrote her an email kind of spelling it out.

Just telling her what happened and sent it and she did respond and the response was disappointing. But I was ready for that, because I, at that point I tempered my expectations, but she [00:28:00] heard it. She definitely understood what I endured to, to the capacity that she could, but that was hard.

That was definitely hard. And I'm sure it was hard for her. I don't know that she knows how to communicate that, but absolutely. I'm sure it was really hard for her to hear too.

Haley Radke: Again, thanks for sharing that the hard parts because we like so many of us have these glorified ideas of what reunion is gonna look like and it's just not always gonna live up to our ex it's maybe never gonna live up to our expectations actually depending on what you go in with, but thank you.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah.

Haley Radke: I'm curious, you said you have an adoptee therapist, and I know that you've done some other work in adoptee community. How has that been going for you, and what are some things you want to share with folks who might be [00:29:00] nervous about joining in an adoptee community.

Julian Washio-Collette: Two things have been really important to me since discovering adoptee community, discovering you and Adoptees On.

So very early on she was actually at that celebration where I met you, I met Sara Easterly and she's the author of Searching for Mom and her new book Adoption Unfiltered which I was interviewed for, but she was, she and I connected because we have some things in common and one day I started writing, I started a blog, and I really wanted other adoptees to write with and so I just sent her a Facebook message. Hey, do you know of any adoptee writing groups that I could join? And she replied funny you should ask because I've been thinking of starting one myself. And I think I'll do that. So [00:30:00] she started Adoptee Voices and I've been a part of every cohort since then. And so that, yeah, that surprises you.

Haley Radke: That's a lot of writing, sir.

Julian Washio-Collette: It is. Yeah. And I will say, so that's been really important. And for one reason I You know, I write a lot about some really difficult stuff that I experience. And one of the things that's been so healing for me is that people who haven't had the same experience, adoptees who haven't had the same experience of me, read what I write and say, yeah, me too.

So that's incredibly powerful. So that's been a really important part of my journey. Early on as I was binge listening to Adoptees On I discovered the person who is my therapist and she's a regular guest on your healing [00:31:00] series and yeah, so I, I just, I started listening to Adoptees On at the end of September by mid October I had my first session with her. And I've been working with her ever since. So I really hit the ground running.

Haley Radke: Oh, I didn't know it had been going for so long. Okay. Okay.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah, so for one, and I did send you a Facebook message about this it was so helpful to be able to get to know someone through your healing series, to actually develop a real appreciation and respect for a therapist and to know like oh, wow. Like I would love to work with this person before I even contacted her. So that was a great service and I'm very grateful to you for it. So yeah, we started working together and I'll say a few things like I've been in therapy a few times prior to this and it just [00:32:00] wasn't that helpful.

So on one level, those therapists weren't quote unquote adoption competent. So there's that. But I think it goes deeper than that. Like when I started working with my current therapist, I immediately had a sense that she sees me, she understands me, or has the capacity to see and understand me in a way that no one else I'd worked with can, and that she's really invested.

And that made all the difference, not just being adoptee competent, but that she understands the depths of my wounds, the depths of my pain, and that she's invested in making this journey with me. So that was really powerful. And then the other part that's really important, given all of that, she put [00:33:00] attachment front and center.

In other words I'm already deeply committed to inner work, I'm very articulate about my inner life, so I'm good at therapy, I can show up and present really well. And that's what I did with other therapists, and they didn't take it much deeper than that. And so it wasn't very helpful because I wasn't attached, I wasn't attaching, and I didn't know any better.

Because that was just how I lived. So with my current therapist, she would interrupt me and ask okay, like, where are you right now? Because I'm not feeling connected. And really dig into okay, where am I? Am I connected? If not, Where, so really paying attention to relationship, connection, attachment, and that is what cracked me open.

Haley Radke: She's a good one. Wow. My goodness. I love [00:34:00] your writing. It is, I do connect to so much of it and I've read many of your pieces over the last couple of years since you've been putting things out publicly. And, I get why they're so resonant, like it's like I totally get it, you're a beautiful writer and I think all the inner work you've done all through the years shows up in your writing now and whether it's just with your current therapist or all of your silent meditative time, I'm, I see your writing and I see you have come through a lot of things, and I think it shows. I don't know. Do you think that's true?

Julian Washio-Collette: I do, because writing is where it comes out. My writing is a really good reflection for things I might not be aware of. It's a place where I experience my own strength, [00:35:00] power, integrity. And get to see it reflected back to me, not just in my own reading of it, but in other people's reading of it.

Haley Radke: I have one more question for you before we do recommended resources, and it's a big one. So I know you're a very spiritual person, and I'm wondering if you have a thought about, where do you think the spiritual aspect what is the impact of adoption on spirituality.

Julian Washio-Collette: Oh gosh. Yeah. So this is a huge question that I could spend a lot of time talking about, but just to be brief I really do think of adoption, which includes relinquishment as a spiritual wound.

And by that, I mean that I believe that it disrupts our [00:36:00] spiritual capacity for deep trust in existence, in life, in, in that which holds us. So I think a, certainly a big part of my own spiritual journey has been seeking that deep holding, mending that rift that I experienced right after I was born.

And I also that's the relinquishment part. And I also believe that adoption in itself is deeply traumatic. Our systems have already been, have already internalized this rupture through relinquishment, through separation. And then after that, we have to adapt to something completely foreign to our systems.

So we become, there's a kind of falseness built into our developmental process. So coming back to ourselves, which [00:37:00] includes reconciling ourselves with that disruption of what we've lost, and then developing some kind of faith. And I don't necessarily mean that in a religious sense, but just a basic internal faith in existence is such a profound and difficult journey.

And adoption puts a lot on our shoulders to make that journey. I think it's very easily, it's, I think it's a real temptation or vulnerability for adopted people to spiritually bypass either through, I would say, maybe in a more theistic or Christian vein. God loves me.

Everything's fine. Or, I. In a more Buddhist or Eastern sense, I meditated all the time more than I should have, I would say because I couldn't find a sense [00:38:00] of connection, an adequate sense of connection and safety in life. So I wanted something else like I wanted another transcendent plane that I could exist on.

So to speak, so I, yeah, I think that temptation is very strongly present for a lot of us. So it's really tricky adoptees and spirituality. We have that deep wound. We have this fervent. Need to escape the pain that we're in. And it can, it can go toward bypassing or it can go toward really delving into that rupture and finding healing.

And it's, it can be very tricky.

Haley Radke: Thank you. So well said. I'm gonna recommend that folks follow along with your blog, which is Peregrine Adoptee, and we'll link to it in the show notes and I'm sure they can hear from hearing you and how you speak. You are so articulate, and you have this [00:39:00] beautiful way of expressing things that some of us haven't been able to express yet.

I was wondering, can you just read a portion of your piece, A Mirror Infant, for us?

Julian Washio-Collette: Sure. Yeah, and I'll give a little background. Lori Holden, who's an adoptive mother, and she has a podcast called Adoption The Long View. On her website, she has a blog, and I met her, and she appreciated my writing and asked me if I would contribute.

And I wrote this piece, I thought okay, like I'm assuming that most of her audience are adoptive parents. So what would I want to say to an audience of adoptive parents? And so this is I think this is the first or second paragraph of that piece. Oh, I should say, so I'm speaking as an infant,

Some say I'm a blank slate. That [00:40:00] biology is not so essential to identity and belonging. But I am already charged with the dreams of my ancestors, communicated to me through my mother's blood, bone, voice, inflections, moods, and the rhythms of her sleeping and waking, movements and stillness. I emerge from her womb, and I know. My senses reach for her like tuning forks seeking a common vibration.

My whole body aches for the living field of energy that has enclosed me since my conception. I am born full of my own being, still inseparable from my mother.

Haley Radke: Beautiful. Thank you. I know folks are going to go check out more of your work. I just thank you, Julian. Just wonderful. What did you want to recommend to us today?[00:41:00]

Julian Washio-Collette: I want to recommend an author. Her name is Susan Anderson and the book I have in mind is called The Journey from Abandonment to Healing. She is not an adoptee, and to my mind, to my knowledge, she doesn't write explicitly about adoption, but she writes a lot about loss and abandonment, and the impacts of loss and abandonment, even when we're infants.

So her work really speaks to me. And in particular, so I can say that I used to be what she calls an abandaholic, which means that I had this uncanny intuition to find women who would abandon me in some way or just not be available. And I would form these intense attractions to them. And so I had a relationship with one such [00:42:00] woman who abandoned me in a very painful way.

And I was just crushed afterwards. And I, that's when I discovered Susan Anderson and she helped me incredibly to understand why I formed these attractions, how I get out of these, how do I get out of this loop? And also helped me to understand that At the time, if I would have met someone who is just simply available to me without an agenda, without a push and pull, I would probably feel indifferent because I was so wired to recreate that abandonment experience.

So without her, I don't know if I would be happily married right now. She was incredibly helpful. And I would say, even if you don't have that relationship pattern, She talks about how when we experience a significant loss in our lives as adults[00:43:00] it reverberates all the way back through all of our losses, even into infancy.

And so she, she really walks the reader through the different stages that we go through which is really helpful because certainly I felt like I was crazy. Like I am losing my mind. Because I've lost this person. I am completely out of touch with reality. Surely I'm the only person who experiences this.

And so I've just found her incredibly helpful and I would definitely recommend her to other adoptees.

Haley Radke: Amazing. It looks so good. Yeah. I think I told you. I was like, I'm going to order it when we're done.

Julian Washio-Collette: Totally.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Julian, for sharing part of your story with us and for your wisdom. Where can we connect with you online?

Julian Washio-Collette: I'm not a regular blogger, but I do maintain a blog. It's called Peregrine Adoptee, and that would be the primary place to connect with me. [00:44:00]

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Julian Washio-Collette: Yeah, thank you. This was great. Yeah, I think of how much Adoptees On and you have impacted my life. And it's pretty amazing to be here after all of that.

Haley Radke: My honor. Thank you.

Julian Washio-Collette: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I really hope you will reach out to Julian if you have had a similar experience to him, or if you know of others who have been relinquished and adopted twice. I think it would be really amazing if you guys could find each other, so you could talk about your commonalities. I'm so grateful for this community, and I know it has shortcomings, and so many of us have had a multitude of different experiences. And yet, when we have one or two of those [00:45:00] things like for sure in common like it helps so much to just deepen our friendships and relationships if you're looking for community I'd love to have you join us we have a weekly podcast for patreon supporters on adopteeson.com/community and we have live events a couple every month.

So we have off script parties where you can get together with fellow adoptees and we give you some questions to think about together and chat together. We have book club events where you can meet fellow adoptees who are interested in the same things that you're interested in. And we have ask an adoptee therapist events, which were brand new last year and we're continuing them monthly where you can submit questions anonymously to our adoptee therapists and we will answer them [00:46:00] on air for you live in a zoom call so you can ask for clarifications and we always have a little time to hang out with a therapist and interact with them and ask further questions, follow up things. And then the audio recording is available in podcast form following those events.

So amazing resources for you guys. I'm so proud of what we've built over there on Patreon and would love to have you join us. That supports this show to keep existing in the world. So thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

273 SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/273

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I'm so excited to welcome professor and sociologist Dr. SunAh Laybourn. SunAh's brand new book is called Out of Place, The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants, and it is definitely one you're going to want to add into your collection.

Today, we talk about SunAh's research, the realization that heritage culture camps are prioritizing adoptive parents comfort, the public's perception of the still dire issue of adoptee citizenship, and I've finally get to ask the question I've wondered about for at least five years. [00:01:00] Is being an adopted person a distinct culture of its own?

Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Dr. SunAh Laybourn. Welcome SunAh.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.

Haley Radke: Fellow podcaster, listen, my favorite people Yes. I would love it if you would start out by sharing some of your story with us.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, I would love to. Haley, I've been thinking about this question.

My story and, for adoptees, we get [00:02:00] all these demands to tell our story, but it's something so special when we can share our story with one another, the way that our story and the storytelling that we get to do is a point of community and belonging, and it's not, a way for us to have to defend our existence or to make sense of, why we're here, and it's such a special moment I'm literally getting chilled right now, to be able to share in that storytelling, and so it's such an honor.

For me, I've also been thinking a lot about what is my story outside of the demands that people have made on me as a transracial adoptee, as a, Korean adoptee adopted into a white family, what is my story outside of just saying, Oh, I was, adopted from Korea when I was a few months old and adopted by a white American family and I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and I, don't have any siblings that I know of.

I didn't grow up [00:03:00] with any siblings. Oh, my parents adopted because, this reason, what is my story? What is a story that I want to tell outside of those demands to answer people's questions? And for me today, anyway, I'm thinking about, my adoptee story as how I've been able to come to this place of understanding that I do belong because for so long I felt that I didn't and not only that I felt like I didn't belong because people are always asking me, about my family or why are you here as Asian American person in the U. S. But thinking through, this idea that I can belong, that I deserve to belong. And that is how I'm thinking about my story now, as seeing all the ways and all the many communities that I am a part of. Which is a big shift for me. I remember having this conversation, an argument with my therapist about [00:04:00] that I could never belong.

And she was like, Oh, so that's a limiting belief that you have. And I was like, Oh, yeah, you're right. That is not a fact of my existence that I will never belong. But rather, that is something that I've come to believe through a lot of different experiences that I had, but that at its core was not true. And so that's where I am. At least today, how I'm thinking about, my adoptee story.

Haley Radke: I have a question for you before we go any further. Because you're a sociologist. And I've been, I gotta tell you, I've been thinking about this for years. And I think you're the perfect person to ask this of.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Ooh, okay. No pressure.

Haley Radke: Is being an adoptee, adult adoptees, is that a distinct culture?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah. This is such [00:05:00] a great question. I say yes. I say it's definitely a distinct culture. And when we think about culture, it's about the meanings that we share. It's about shared feelings, shared experiences, shared language, right? Shared way of seeing the world and interacting in the world.

And certainly as adoptees, and particularly as we come to consciousness, which for a lot of us does happen in adulthood. I see us making our own adoptee identity, adoptee culture, adoptee shared meaning making. And isn't it so beautiful to have a community to which we belong? That we have our own experiences, language, ways of feeling and seeing the world that we share among one another and that other people, they can't understand, they might be able to learn about and, try to imagine, but there's a feeling right that we share because of this [00:06:00] experience that we have that really can't be explained in words. It is felt and shared among us. And that's so beautiful.

Haley Radke: I suspected. Thank you for confirming. I wonder if you can take us down the personal a little bit, because am I correct in understanding that your first kind of toe into adoptee community was when you started interviewing adoptees that eventually turned into the book we're going to talk about today, which is Out of Place, The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants.

Yeah, that is correct. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and because of the way well, I don't want to say because of the way that I was adopted, but certainly it probably played a role in it. My parents adopted me when my dad was stationed in Japan. And so we spent the first couple years in [00:07:00] Japan on a military base, which meant that we weren't connected to an adoption agency, which also meant we weren't necessarily connected to other adoptive families.

And so for me, once we finally moved to the us, moved to Memphis where I ended up growing up, I wasn't connected to any other adoptive families, any other adoptees and I didn't know that there were other adopt I didn't know it was a thing, it felt very singular and very isolating and very individual.

And, I had so many questions, right? I think that's very common. People just have questions in general. Are people like me, whether you're an adoptee or, not an adoptee, are there people like me? And I found no validation, affirmation, confirmation that there were. And so as many questions as I had and as many ways that I tried to answer that question whether through the library there was not the internet okay people there was not the internet when I first was [00:08:00] having these questions. You know how old I am but there's not the internet as we know it today. So I couldn't you know, jump on Facebook and connect with people or

Haley Radke: Hold on a second. What year were you born?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: I was born in 83.

Haley Radke: Me too God no internet.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: We were not on the internet when we were like five, six, seven, eight years old, like we were on the Encarta CD, like pulling up some information, but not like the way the internet is now where you could like Google something or ask Jeeves or anything like,

Haley Radke: You're lighting up parts of my nostalgia area in my brain.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: I was in the encyclopedia set that we had in our house. That aspirational middle class encyclopedia set. And, I was using the tools at my disposal, but I couldn't find any information about adoptees. So this is just a long way of me saying I learned not to ask.

At a certain point, I learned not to look anymore, and I learned not to [00:09:00] ask, and I felt extremely betrayed after going to our local branch library, my safe haven, my place of imagination, all the things, and to find there were no books about adoption or about adoptees. Maybe it was a good thing that our local branch didn't have any of the published, studies that were about adoption at that time because that probably would have been even more isolating and traumatizing because of how adoption studies were carried out in early decades. But I just learned that there weren't people like me. Or at least that's what reality had confirmed for me up until that point. So you are absolutely correct. It wasn't until I started graduate school at the University of Maryland.

I knew I wanted to research and understand and connect with like with other adoptees. I think by this point, I knew that there were other adoptees out there somewhere. And that's when I actually got connected to an adoptee community. And like many adoptees, was both [00:10:00] excited about the possibility of connecting with other adoptees and also completely terrified.

Haley Radke: Oh, you have to say more. Terrified of what?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Terrified of this idea of okay, what if, these are my people, they're supposed to be my people, but what if I don't fit in there either? Or what if they don't like me? Or, just all the fears that we have about, rejection. And so it took me a while to actually really connect with the adoptee community.

So I mentioned being at the University of Maryland, so in the broader D. C. area. There's Adoption Links D. C., a Korean adoptee group in D. C. And I knew they existed but I was really afraid to get involved because again, that fear of what does it mean about me if these folks who are supposed to be just like me don't like me, or I don't like them, or [00:11:00] I still feel like an outsider, then it really is me.

Haley Radke: I know you've shared before that your adoptive mother passed when you were still a kid and I heard you talk about how, I think it was Kaomi on the Adapted interview. She was like, did you picture it as being losing your second mother? And you said no at the time. Do you think having lost a second mother has impacted your feeling of being very sensitive to possible rejection.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah. So many things happened during that time in my life that made it very, I didn't want to even take the risk of having relationships. My mom passed when I was 11 years old. She had breast cancer. I was the last [00:12:00] person to see her alive. Which as a child, I made sense of as like I did something right you know of course, she had been sick and she was in hospice care and so it was very much inevitable that she was gonna pass, but still even then as a child, you think like I must have done something wrong. Again, that idea of it's something about me, like there's something wrong with me.

And then shortly thereafter, my favorite uncle came to live with us. And then he passed right in our living room, right in front of me, had a brain aneurysm. So again, something completely unavoidable. But the way I was interpreting, these losses was that everybody who loves me leaves me. And so very much from that point, as a young child, I was like, it's not worth it to have, deep committed relationships of any kind friendships, romantic relationships, family [00:13:00] relationships, and as a protective measure, I was like, I'm just not going to allow myself to get that close to people. And I felt that way for a very long time.

Haley Radke: And what's changed for you? Because I hope something has.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yes, so bleak.

Haley Radke: No one will ever love me.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: I know, right? It's just I didn't feel like it was safe. It didn't feel like something safe to do. And, I did have a very big shift, thankfully, and it happens, I don't know how to make sense of it, right? I can't tell you this nice linear package story, but I can tell you that in 2018 I reclaimed my Korean birth name. And so I legally changed my name. I know sometimes adoptees change their name socially, or just in certain settings might change their name. But I [00:14:00] wanted to legally change my name.

Because there is something about that authority of saying I've legally changed my name. It's on my ID, like you will call me by this name. This is who I am. And that was really important for me to make that claim and have, proof or evidence or whatever, that this is how you will refer to me.

And this is how I'm referring to myself. And I think that set me on a path to be all of me. I like to say all of me all the time with everybody, instead of trying to hide parts of who I am or try to make it safe, not even for me, but for other people to not see parts of who I was and with that realization of wanting to be all of me, all the time with everybody and understanding my self worth, I think, and my whole identity and not wanting to hide parts of who I am or not [00:15:00] wanting or no longer feeling ashamed. I think that feeling of shame, that idea that something is wrong with me, right? Releasing that put me on a path to say, there's a big life for me that I have been not allowing myself to accept.

And part of it had to do with not wanting to be vulnerable, not wanting to have deep committed relationships and just something in my mind said the only way to have that big life that we all deserve and that big love that we all deserve was to have relationships to be vulnerable to let people in to believe that people love me to believe that I could belong.

And so now I'm all about the relationships and wanting to be committed. And it's been a major shift for me but [00:16:00] definitely has been worth it.

Haley Radke: Amazing. What part of interviewing adoptees for research? This is for research purposes. So you can build a line in your own self, I think, when you're asking them the questions.

But what part of having all these conversations with fellow Korean adoptees did you notice? Something in me is shifting, I'm coming into consciousness in some way. Do you have a moment you remember or something you identified with one of your respondents saying to you?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: I think what sticks out to me the most is connected to what you asked earlier about adoptee culture. Of seeing that and hearing that some adoptees who have been in the community for several years did think about adoptee as a culture and not [00:17:00] just this discreet, biographical fact, not just this thing that had happened was, and was in the past, but rather that being an adoptee was an ongoing accomplishment, something that was continually being wrestled with and created and grown in community, that was a very different way for me to think about.

Again, something that I had thought about is oh, this is just a fact of how I came to be in my family. And that was a new way of thinking that being able to define adoptee for myself, but also within community, which I think is just so key of again not it being something that was individual to me, but something that was shared and that it was meaningful and positive and expansive and something I could claim versus something that someone else used to say, you're different or you're less than.

And so [00:18:00] that, I think, was a big revelation that came both slowly, but also all at once, if that makes sense.

Haley Radke: And I'm just going to say there are definitely a couple of folks in the book that you quote or share some of the insights to say that don't identify with being a part of adoptee culture and are actually not necessarily against it, but are actively choosing not to participate in it for various reasons. Do you have a comment on that?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, I think we're all trying to find a way to belong and to feel safe. And it might look a lot of different ways for people, sometimes it might look like not wanting to have relationships and not being able to believe that you could belong. And sometimes it can be, that there is a shared source of feeling a shared experience.

And [00:19:00] everyone's experience is different. How everyone makes sense of being an adoptee is different. I don't think there's a right or a wrong way but I can understand and empathize with folks who are like, no, being an adoptee is just, this thing that happened in my life and it doesn't mean anything to me. And in fact, I think people who, find meaning in being an adoptee, there's something weird about them, which some of the people in the book do say. And I get that because for so much of I'll say for my life anyway, that's how it's made to feel. So why would somebody want to identify with something that for so long, so many people have said, that's what's wrong with you.

So I can understand why people would feel that way.

Haley Radke: And why would anyone make it their entire personality and have a show about it every week and just constantly talk about it for years and years? I don't know.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: I don't know! It's so weird![00:20:00]

Haley Radke: Okay, I have literal pages and pages of notes from reading your book, because I'm super into being an adoptee.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: So weird.

Haley Radke: This should not be embarrassing, because this is my whole job. Okay. First, I want to talk about you talk to some Korean adoptees who identify as white. And in my own personal relationships with fellow adoptees, like I've heard that from friends saying, I look in the mirror, I expect to see a white person.

And. For me, white woman, I'm like, okay, I don't understand, but there is this expectation that you're, look like part of your family and it's incongruent.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Can you share about what you heard when people were [00:21:00] telling you that? And did you personally feel that way ever?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, such a great question. It is such a common Korean adoptee experience for Korean adoptees who are adopted into white families to say at some point, yeah, I thought I was white, right? Like my mom and dad are white. Maybe they even had sibling grew up with siblings that were biological to their white mom and dad.

So it seems pretty normal. And of course, because of ongoing racial residential segregation, we often are growing up in communities, at least in the U. S. where it's typically folks who are of our same race. So if you're that adoptee in a white family, in a white community, going to a predominantly white school, you just begin to accept that, okay, I must be white too, right?

Not a lot of Korean adoptees continue to identify as white or to feel that they are white, though, of course, I talked to some adoptees who do, and the way that they're making sense of it is, again, tying [00:22:00] their, how they feel about themselves and how they think about themselves to how they feel a part of their family and how their family belonging has been constructed, that we are a white family, and by default, you too are white because that's what it means to be a member of this family. It means having this white world view and these white activities or part of these predominantly white communities. And so there's no space for the adoptees to explore their Korean ethnicity or their Asian identity. It's just not part of what it means to be in the family. And so again, that feeling of I want to belong. I am part of this family. So in order for that to be true, that means I also have to identify as white and to see the Korean and Asian parts of me as less than, or not desirable, or try to hide or minimize them, which of course we cannot, it is literally on our faces, regardless of how we might feel.

But again, it is that protective [00:23:00] measure, that feeling of belonging here forged through family, which is so important, right? For me, I never had the opportunity to think I was white. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, a very black, white city and it was very apparent to everyone around me that I was not white, and I was not black, and people made sure that I knew that.

It seems like it was a daily occurrence that people were asking me, what are you, or telling me that I was Chinese, right? That's the idea of every Asian person in America. It's you have to be Chinese. And so I never got the opportunity to think I was white because no one would allow me to believe that about myself, whether or not I may have, eventually developed that idea of who's to say, but I was never given that opportunity.

So no, I very much knew that I was not white. I knew that I was Asian, [00:24:00] even though I didn't really know what that meant. I wasn't part of any Asian groups, any Korean groups, any, I wasn't seeing Asian people on a daily basis in my community. So there was no way for me to make sense of okay, I understand this word and that I'm supposed to be this, but what does it mean for me?

I don't know.

Haley Radke: Okay, we're going to go to the adoptive parents. And this is going to really sound ridiculous, but I had a lightbulb moment in reading your book that I can't believe hadn't come to me yet. And I've spoken to many adoptees who have gone to heritage culture camps. You go for a week with your family and you experience the culture from which you were born, and you eat, I'm assuming here, you eat Korean food, and you do [00:25:00] whatever cultural things that the people who planned have in place for you, and you write, oh my gosh, this is so good. "Activities picked prioritized white adoptive parents comfort rather than adoptees racial or ethnic socialization.

They're safe and symbolic ways to engage with culture, and it's leaving their own understanding of race unchallenged." And I was like, Oh, yeah, because we'll just use the Korean adoptee example of Korean Heritage Culture Camp. All the adoptees are Korean kids who are being raised mostly in white families, and all the adults there are their white adoptive parents.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So again, you're not being immersed in Korean culture, you're being immersed in Korean adoptee, white parent culture. [00:26:00]

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Sorry, that was a lightbulb moment because I was like, oh, they're trying so hard, but they're trying to avoid it still please talk about that and how you are revealing that to us.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, absolutely. Heather Jacobson writes a lot about this as well in Culture Keeping and this idea exactly as you said, heritage camps. I think they're great. I think it's wonderful. But there are limitations because exactly as you noted, it is more of adoptive family culture, right? It's not in this case, Korean culture per se. Yes, there is Korean culture happening for sure but we're still maintaining this white world view. We are still not getting outside, particularly for adoptive parents, white adoptive parents, not getting outside of their white bubbles, right? It's still all very easy. Again, very symbolic. We go to this camp, we do the activities, and then we go home to our, our white communities, our white [00:27:00] world.

And we can check the box and say, oh yeah, we're doing culture. But are we? And for Korean adoptees, and for a lot of the adoptees I spoke with, they weren't necessarily making the connections between, oh, I go to this heritage camp and who I am as a Korean American, right? So it was still something that they got to do in within the scope of their family and even for adoptees who understood that, oh, this is something different.

This is something special. This is something, where I'm getting a sense of belonging and connection that I don't get in my other friendships or other relationships or other community groups that I'm a part of. For many of them, again, because it's a culture camp, maybe on the weekend or a week in the summer, it's not maintained.

And so still being able to cultivate an identity is very difficult when there are very few other ways that those connections are being maintained or that exploration can [00:28:00] continue.

Haley Radke: I think the other quote, sorry, paper noise. You say the parents made specific decisions to cultivate predominantly white social context.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And I think, that's still continuing to this day.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Absolutely. It's an uninterrupted process. And that's, it's unbelievable, but yet believable, obviously, that this has continued to be the practice. But the adoptees that I spoke with whose stories are at the center of this book, there are folks who were adopted or born in the 50s and 60s, as well as folks who were born in the 80s and 90s, and still the same experiences, the same thing. And I wish things could change and would change, but decades of the same experience show that not much has changed.

Haley Radke: Ah, but we'll [00:29:00] just keep talking about it.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: We will.

Haley Radke: Hopefully it'll change for somebody, right? There must be this hope. And I believe, reading your book, there must be this hope that your work will impact how little adoptees are being raised today.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, absolutely. I maintain that hope as well. I think I have to. And for folks who read the book, particularly for maybe adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents, hopefully folks can read it with an open mind and understand that, adoptees, we need more than just a loving family.

We need more than that. We live in a society that where love is not enough, right? We're still experiencing the world and all the inequalities that exist and you know having a loving family if you [00:30:00] have a loving family is wonderful, and that's beautiful and great but in a system where we are treated differently in a system where there are policies and also public attitudes that very much shape our experiences and life chances and opportunities. We need more than just love and good intentions.

Haley Radke: Let's talk about the adoptee as immigrant. And this is, again, I was like, oh my gosh, of course, this makes so much sense. You so amazingly tackle the adoptee citizenship issue, which is something we've been covering on the show for many years, and, I think people are still surprised that some adoptees don't have citizenship in the country they were brought to be raised.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And I found it really interesting, this observation you bring forward, that when we talk about the citizenship issue to the [00:31:00] public, one of the main kind of pushbacks is the public blaming the adult adoptee. That it's their fault they don't have citizenship as if they had anything to do with it.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Can you please talk about that? Because it's really silly and you elucidate it much better in your book. So please talk.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Thank you. Yeah, it is this weird kind of like inability for folks to understand that adoptees as infants cannot fill out naturalization paperwork.

Go figure. No, as an infant I could not do that. And so there's this weird process that's happening in people's minds when they find out adoptees don't have citizenship. Then we see this shift in framing. What I talk about in the book is, adoptees in our minds are these, children that are in [00:32:00] need, these lovable, cute children that, we can rescue and take care of and, fulfill that need of family for us or this idea of family.

But then when adoptees grow up, and particularly for those of us who are Korean adoptees or adopted internationally, we grow up and all of a sudden, we're not children. So people can't make sense of that. Wait, you're an adoptee, but you're an adult. That doesn't make sense. And so now they're like, okay, how am I making sense of this?

And they're like, oh, and particularly for Korean adoptees, right? We're Asian in this nation where Asian is seen as the other and not American. And so now they're like, Oh, okay immigrant, foreign, you don't belong here. You're trying to, again, like you're lazy or you're trying to steal from the system or you're you didn't do it the right way, right?

All these arguments that circulate about immigrants in particular quote unquote illegal immigrants And so then we get seen through this framing that americans can very easily pick up on [00:33:00] right this idea of like immigrants being bad and you know all these stereotypes and racist beliefs that we have.

And so you see that in the book, I'm thinking about, one of the quotes that one of the adoptees I talked to was explaining like, oh, people say, they should have done it. They should have taken care of this. And we're like, but we're talking about someone who was adopted as a child.

Like they were supposed to do this. And out of sight, out of mind are adoptive parents, the government, legislators, just all of this personal responsibility, right? Something else that we really emphasize in the U. S. Personal responsibility is oh you should have done it. It doesn't matter what the circumstances were. It's your fault.

Haley Radke: And then the next shift that is here is that you mention there's this idea that citizenship should be earned while the rest of us are born into it.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Absolutely. It's just it's really phenomenal [00:34:00] how our mind just shifts to all these different arguments that really make no sense.

And that's the point this whole situation of adoptees being undocumented makes no sense. And so people are relying on these other ways of thinking or explanations that also don't make sense. Without just looking at the kind of obvious answer in front of us, which is like, okay, this was a policy failure and we need policy to address it. It's not about can I earn citizenship? It's not about I should have done this myself as an infant, but it is a policy failure. And guess what? In this case, the solution actually is derived from the problem. Of course there are many problems we could also talk about, but in this very small piece of it, we're talking about policy oversight and we in fact could enact policy to change it.

Haley Radke: Maybe someday somebody will be listening to this interview and they'll be like, there I did, they fixed that.[00:35:00] That's the hope. What a dream.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: What a dream.

Haley Radke: So you wrote a book, you got your degree you have a lot of podcasts, you do radio hosting you got a lot on the burners SunAh. There's a lot going on. Are you ever still, do you ever pause and think about the impact of the work that you're leaving in the world?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: No. No. I don't think anyone has ever asked me that question. No. And I don't think it's any of my business, the impact. I think it's my business to do the best work that I can and how it's received is not really I don't know. It's yeah, that idea of impact such a great question because I'm really like, ah, [00:36:00] I just I don't think about it. I think about can I have I done the best work that I can do have I done the best work that I know I'm meant to do or feel purpose to do and just release that out into the world and know that it'll go to the places it's meant to go.

And that it'll do what it's meant to do. I think sometimes when we're too, when we're too focused on impact, that it can cause us to do things in a way that might get more visibility, but might sacrifice the goal or the purpose or the. I don't know, I'm at a loss for words right now for what I'm trying to find, but no, I don't think about the impacts.

Haley Radke: Has [00:37:00] delving into adoptee rights and studying the impact adoption has had on fellow Korean adoptees, has it impacted your family relationships?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Mmmmm. Oh, this is juicy. It has in a lot of different ways. So once I talked earlier about. wanting to hide parts of who I am and my work is all about race and racism and adoptees and adoption.

And I never talked to my family about that. Granted, they never really asked oh, what are you? What are you researching? That's not something that they would ask, right? That's not a way that they would ask. It's more like how school going, that type of thing. And I very purposely never shared [00:38:00] that with them, that, hey, actually, I'm a sociologist who specializes in race and ethnicity, my dissertation is about Korean adoptees, and identity development, and citizenship, and yeah, I never shared that with them.

And I think that was part of me wanting to hide parts of myself, whether to make it easier for me whether to make it easier for them. My, as a professor, as a teacher, I teach classes about racial and ethnic inequality, but these are not conversations that I have with my white family, or I have very minimally.

I guess I learned, not I guess, I learned that talking about race and racism in those ways was not an acceptable way to be part of the family. And I'm saying that now as I'm like, okay, you literally probably wrote that exact sentence in the book because that's what the [00:39:00] adoptees I spoke with, that's what they were learning.

But that's what I was learning too, that there's a way to talk about race or racism. And then there's a way to not talk about it and within our family, if you're part of our family, this is how we talk about race and racism, as if it doesn't exist or as if people are responsible. Again, that personal responsibility piece, right?

My family is very conservative, so that's how it's learning that it was acceptable to talk about race as a member of this family.

Haley Radke: What would you say to other adoptees who might feel the same way? I don't think it's even safe to express this. Do you think it's, I want to say, I was going to say better.

Like It's, is it safer to not address those topics? Is it, it's tough, right? There's not a good answer here. Let's, why don't you spitball? And we're not saying you're [00:40:00] necessarily giving advice, but would you do things differently? I know that these conversations can be family breakers, if it's unsafe for the adopted person to express this intrinsic part of themselves to the people who are supposed to have loved and nurtured you and cared for all the parts of yourself but have failed in one really important way, it can for sure feel unsafe to address that.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, this is a difficult question to answer because on one hand, we could say, oh, like people are who they are. I firmly believe that our families are not very likely to change their ideas about race and racism because of what we say. Now, I know there are wonderful examples of adoptees and their adoptive [00:41:00] parents who are learning alongside each other, and I think that's beautiful. I don't think it's the common experience. I think it's more likely that our families will change their mind about race and racism because of something that their peer their friend, or, someone else says, but not what we say.

For a lot of different reasons. One, just family dynamics, right? If we're the child, right? And depending upon how your family feels about, elders and children and, all that they're not going to change their minds because of us. They're more likely to change their minds because of their own friends, right?

In the relationships that they choose to have. And so I think it is an uphill battle. On the other hand, I think, is it safe to not is it safe for you to not be who you are? Because there's a cost that we pay for hiding parts of who we are and not speaking up when we know we need to speak up and for remaining silent. There's a cost to that. And are we willing to pay that cost? I think regardless of [00:42:00] the choice or the strategy that we decide, there's a cost that is going to be paid, and it has to be the cost that we can live with.

So for me, I'm thinking back to, I guess this was 2012. Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown or maybe even after Tamir Rice and Black Lives Matter was first forming. And I had posted something on my Facebook page, Facebook, ugh. Facebook and, talking about police brutality. And one of my aunts was just extremely dismissive.

And it ended up in lots of private conversations about her just telling me how police brutality didn't exist, and racism didn't exist, and, all these things, and I just eventually had to tell her we can't have these conversations and I'm not going to have these [00:43:00] conversations with you and several other similar examples with family members where they were either gaslighting me or being intentionally antagonistic to me around topics of racism and race to where I had to say, I'm not engaging in these conversations with you.

And if this is how the only way you're going to engage with me, then let's just not. And that was something I had to do because yes, you're my elder, but there is still a level of respect that I deserve to have. And so really being firm on this is how you're going to talk to me and this is how you're not going to talk to me.

And there's a way we could still have a relationship but not like this. So I think there's a cost and we have to weigh. What those costs are.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that and I agree that the adoptive parents [00:44:00] changing their perspective on race and or just ultimately that maternal separation is a trauma that adoption is a trauma.

I think it's uncommon yeah, and it definitely takes it takes a long time when you're not the one that's lifted. Oh my goodness I cannot recommend your book enough. It's called Out of Place the Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants and for sure fellow Korean adoptees will get a ton out of this book, but all fellow adoptees, I think there's so many relatable points in the story, and especially for folks who are passionate about adoptee rights and activism, you lay out some really concrete points for us in terms of giving us the ammo for [00:45:00] our arguments.

For adoptee citizenship, for example, as we discussed earlier, and for pointing out that white adoptive parents of children of color are not maybe doing their best work. And I really just appreciated so many of the snippets of conversation you share from the interviews with fellow adoptees.

And it's just so wonderfully done, SunAh. I really enjoyed reading it, and

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I mentioned at the beginning you're a sociologist and a lot of, I minored in sociology. I'm like, I love sociology. It's so fascinating and so much of what is written about adoptees is more in the psychological realm and so this is a different framework that people can really look at it from a different way.

I don't know. How do you say it? It's not like necessary. It's not like it's just a step back. It's like a step back from the personal to more of the [00:46:00] structure and framework of it. Would you say is that more accurate?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Definitely. So thinking about that group level again. So that question of adoptee culture, right? It is personal, but it's also very much, again, made in community. And so while there are a lot of personal voices in the book and voices of individual adoptees, it is that lens of how are adoptees collectively creating identity and collectively creating culture.

Haley Radke: Very powerful. And we didn't even get to this, but there's this piece of language you gave me, which is the biculturalism. Can you explain that? Because I think that's probably really helpful for a lot of adoptees to hear.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, absolutely. So we think about biculturalism in terms of assimilation or in terms of folks, from one culture, living, growing up or coming to live in a different culture. And so we [00:47:00] could think about biculturalism in terms of having and holding two different cultures.

So maybe it is Korean culture and maybe it is American culture and being fully immersed and well versed in both cultures, so having that biculturalism. In the book, I talk about, how some adoptees, they might develop some biculturalism, right? We learn a lot about our birth cultures, language, culture, et cetera.

But then also for adoptees, we might be creating something completely different. An adoptee culture, for example, that might be drawing upon a heritage culture or birth culture, but also the culture we grew up in, but not to the same intensity or the same degree, but instead merging different pieces of those cultures into something else.

Haley Radke: See, look at all the stuff you're going to learn when you read SunAh's book. Okay. It's so exciting. It's out in the world. If you're listening when this episode is dropped, [00:48:00] it's just out and so you can grab it wherever you get your books. And what did you want to recommend to us?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yes. So my recommendation for folks, if you aren't already familiar with or following Patrick Armstrong, he's Patrick In The World.

I know this will be in the show notes. Another Korean adoptee, but someone who has very publicly been able to share a lot of his journey and a lot of the ways that he has grown. And I think it's so beautiful for someone to share with us how they're learning and as they're learning and so even seeing them change their minds.

And for Patrick, I know he's been a guest on the show and for him. To say like the ways that his own thinking has changed and maybe the ways that he was wrong or the ways that he's grown in thinking about his own identity or adoptee community or adoption. And so that is who I would recommend. He has a podcast. He has a newsletter. [00:49:00] He has all the things everywhere.

Haley Radke: He's on LinkedIn, posting up a storm. I love Patrick. He was on episode 233 and his show his Conversation Piece is Patrick's standalone show. And then of course he has the Janchi Show and some other podcasts he's working on.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Yes. I agree. SunAh he's really putting himself out there. And that takes a great cost when you're sharing your in real time learnings, but it's really powerful. And I think that he's helped a lot of adoptees examine a little deeper. Some of the impacts adoption has had on us. So I love that.

Oh my goodness. I am so sad. Our time is coming to an end because I've had so much fun with you. Where can we find your book, connect with you, and if you loved SunAh's big energy and all the [00:50:00] things, I know we can hear from you in places too, so tell us all the stuff.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Absolutely. The book is Out of Place The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants. I would love it if you shop local and bought it from your local bookstore. I think that's so important for our communities, wherever your community may be. So please shop local, buy the book. You can find me, I'm most active on Instagram @sunahmarieonly and, you can catch up with me and see what's going on in my world, and we can stay connected.

And that would be wonderful. And of course, the easiest way to find all the academic things that I'm doing is on the website, sunahmlaybourn.com, and we could definitely stay connected and continue to learn from one another.

Haley Radke: And you have a radio show, which is also available in podcast form. Yes. Yes. And there's several episodes where you interview fellow adoptees.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yes.

Haley Radke: And you never hear it [00:51:00] here, but you interview authors of books that have adoption as strong themes. But if they're not adopted, they don't get to come on Adoptees On. But SunAh will interview them. There's some really great episodes, we'll link to those in the show notes. What's the name of your radio show and where can people find that?

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yeah, it's called Let's Grab Coffee on WYXR, which is our local community radio station here in Memphis, Tennessee. But as you mentioned, available in podcast format. So go ahead and subscribe. And again, more opportunities for us to learn together.

Haley Radke: And I so appreciate that you bring your adoptee lens to your listeners.

And you're, yes, you're doing adoptee activism in a multitude of places, and I thank you for that. Thank you for sharing your story with us and your wisdom. I really enjoyed our conversation, SunAh.

SunAh Laybourn, Ph.D.: Yes, thank you so much.[00:52:00]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness, she is amazing. So fun and knowledgeable. Definitely one to follow. I want to let you know, if you're listening the day this drops, you still have a chance to join us for our discussion of the brand new YA anthology, When We Become Ours. We are talking about it on the morning of January 20th, 2024, with editors Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung, and a couple of the contributing authors.

I hope you will join us. It's going to be a fantastic discussion. If you're listening after this has already aired, we will have the recording for you up in Patreon, so you can enjoy it that way. That is one of the ways you can support the work of Adoptees On and help continuing to [00:53:00] pay for production of this podcast.

If you go to adopteeson.com/community, you can find out how to join. There is a seven day free trial. We would love to have you with us and all of our live events are adoptee only. So it's a good vibe. Yo, I'm so thankful for every single one of you that supports the show and continues to help us do this work for you.

I am so grateful for each one of you. Thank you so much for listening to Adoptive Voices. Let's talk again next Friday.

272 James Cagney

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/272

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

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Welcome back. We are in our first episode of 2024. Happy New Year. Today's guest is award winning poet, James Cagney, author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory, and Martian, the Saint of Loneliness.

James is known for his absolutely dynamic live poetry readings, and we are honored with a reading in this very episode. We discuss how James came to find out he was adopted. And as usual, I've got questions about why parents keep these things a secret. Before we get started, [00:01:00] I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson. com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, James Cagney. Welcome, James.

James Cagney: Thank you, Haley. It's so awesome and great to be here with you. I'm honored that you invited me to come do this show.

Haley Radke: I am so excited to talk with you. I'd love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.

James Cagney: I was born in in 1968 as an only child.

And had, I guess I have to come out and be honest and say I had a really positive and pleasant childhood. I was an only kid. And I guess if anything, my issue was I was mighty lonely. I did bond very [00:02:00] strongly with this youngster when I was very in elementary school. And it was one of those situations where his family ended up having to move out of town.

And I guess I bonded with him. So when he left, my mom got a different kind of kid. So my mom biologically could not have any kids. My mother and father, when I was born in 68, my dad was working as a longshoreman, a mechanic for the Naval shipyards in San Francisco. My mom was working as a supervisor and instructor at beauty schools here in the East Bay.

And when I was born, they were both in their in their mid forties. So what I was going to say is that my mom's sister. As I mentioned, my mom biologically couldn't have any kids. Her only other younger sister had 12. [00:03:00] So my, after my friends just sort of, went out of my life, my aunt would come, would occasionally send cousins down for me to play with or whatnot.

Because loneliness, I guess, was my only issue. There was this moment that I distinctly remember where my mom turned to me and she said, cause I guess I was whining about, playing by myself or something. It's not like I'm an outgoing man now, and it's not like I was an outgoing kid then, but she turned to me and she said to me, do you want me to take you to where other kids are?

And the way she placed it, the way she said that particular sentence at that particular time when I'm standing with her in the kitchen made me massively uncomfortable because it almost sounded like she knew of a place where she could drop me off if I wanted to. And I was horrified by what I didn't understand in that sentence.

And I was like no, I'm good. I'm good. [00:04:00] I have no issues. I'll go back and do what I was doing or whatever. It was like that. I had a fair, good childhood in high school about when I was like in the 11th or 10th grade or so. My father came to to pick me up as he often did. And at that time I was friends with this kid at school named Michael.

And. My dad gave Michael a ride back to our neighborhood because at the time, Michael supposedly lived near us. And Michael's one of those, I'm saying kid, he was a 10th, 11th grader, but I would like you to understand that Michael was also one of those young people that kind, that instead of wearing, taking a backpack with him. He was one of those kids that would use a briefcase or a satchel. One of those, okay? I can't define that any better. aS he and I are sitting in the backseat just kind of like chatting and whatnot, he just boldly and blindly just turns to me [00:05:00] and asks me if I was adopted, which just blew my mind away a moment.

Which just didn't even make any sense to me because I was like, why on earth would you even say a thing like that? You know I'm not adopted. Of course not. And I'm chatting with him about this while my dad is sitting right there driving the car. And I'm looking at the back of his head and that eternal cowboy hat that he's wearing.

And then Michael explains, he says, Well, it's basically because you and your dad are just so very different and I don't know what my response to that was I possibly may have just shrugged that off and just you know let that be whatever it was just like an oddity or so's that but he just asked the question and let it go dropped off and we went home and yes hey, I'm about to say a few years later at that time, I've graduated high school, and now I'm just getting in, I guess, to Laney College and just then starting [00:06:00] to figure out who it is I wanted to be or where I wanted to go.

I'm 19 at this particular point now, and one, it's a Sunday afternoon at this point, and I'm in my room as I am at just hanging out with with me, and, what I'm hearing in the house, actually, is these women have come to visit. And this didn't strike me at all unusual. In fact, I just shut the my bedroom door so that they can have their conversation, because I was barely interested in that.

Because what it was, is that for the bulk of my life, my mom's students at the beauty school where she worked after she retired, they would often come visit and hang out with her and check in on her because she, I will say was an honored teacher at that school and by her students. And it was on a regular basis that people would come by and hang out and chat and visit.

And I'm like, I have no, no game in that.[00:07:00] So I'm just going to sit in here and watch television. And then my father did something. I'm 19. He did something he had never in my life had ever done, which is he knocked on my bedroom door and came in. And he said to me why don't you come out and visit with the people.

And that strikes me. Very strange, but I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm halfway scared because he just did something that was extraordinarily unusual for him. Him being a very stoic, very Texas kind of man. And I go into the living room and the living room and the dining room with these open two rooms adjacent to one another.

And what I'm seeing is my mom sitting at the edge of the dining room table talking to a woman sitting in our rocker, that gigantic, lounger that everybody adds. And I'm seeing another woman on the [00:08:00] couch. with two children on each side of her, a little boy and a little girl. And I grab a chair from the dining room table and sit in on this conversation where they're chatting.

Turns out, this woman in the rocker who's come to visit is one of my mom's former students. And so I just sit here, hey, hello, how are you? And they just continue this sort of conversation about, family and life and whatnot. Two things happen. Let me say this one first at one point, the woman who was visiting had taken out her photos because this is, those photos would not be on the phone.

It's funny how my mind is trying to rewrite that moment, but women used to carry these little purses that also had photos in them and she took this out and she showed me some photographs of her son, her other sons of which she. Yeah, of course. I didn't even ask what that, why you were even [00:09:00] bothering sharing this with me.

Maybe just proving that there's other boys around in the world. She shows me a photo of a man in a military outfit. She shows me a photo of another man participating in a marathon. And she doesn't really explain anything about them. She just showed them to me and wanted me to look in that. And I'm obediently paying attention to the conversation and listening and whatnot, and hanging out and listening to these two older ladies talk. And I'm just waiting for my release to be able to go back to my room and listen to music or whatever. Then my mom says to me why don't you take the kids that the second woman was sitting with why don't you take them and give them some cookies?

And look I've mentioned not being an only child. I don't know how kids work. I was a I just had no I wasn't that gregarious with kids, but I'm like, all right, come on you guys let's go and I take this container down and open it and offer these [00:10:00] two some cookies the boy is my blood nephew, Joshua.

The girl is my blood nephew niece, sorry, Brandy. Allow them to take what they wanted and place the thing back on and we go back in the living room. These two kids sit with the woman who came with them, who is my sister next in age next in age above me. A couple of years older than me, if one or two or so.

And during that time, during that process, she said all of nothing. As a PS, her mother asked her not to say anything because she was just going to explode in conversation and chat. So it was almost like she was doing this purposeful Buddhist meditation of silence while she was there with us. The part of me that almost rang that I thought I knew her before was true.

Not only [00:11:00] because she looked very much like me. But when I would think about it later, I realize these two women have been to this house before, that they visited, and as a kid, I remember playing with her once in the backyard. But that was a hell of a long time ago and, and it's whatever.

Yeah, all of us, my dad sitting there quietly, I'm sitting there quietly, my mom's doing the chatting, the woman in the chair whose name is Rosie. She's doing the chatting. The woman on the couch is not chatting. The kids are not chatting. They're all just talking and we're just witnesses. The afternoon, sort of, comes to its natural conclusion.

I guess we better go. Goodbye. Maybe I they decided to hug everybody as they were leaving. I kind of don't remember that I just remember going out on the front steps as they went and got in their car parked directly in front of our house and just got [00:12:00] in it and waved and we all sat on the front steps of the house and watched as they pulled away and then my father turned to me and he said, do you think you look like either of them?

And my immediate answer here is, of course no, why would I think that I look like, a couple of strangers? I certainly did not at that time see or perhaps even wanted to see any resemblance. Beg your pardon to, a strange woman that I just was introduced to a few seconds ago or whatever's like that.

And that, Haley, is the only thing either my mom or dad said to me from that Sunday afternoon. And I'm going to give you another chapter to that. I'm going to say that Sunday afternoon went on because I remembered us making a trip to go get some [00:13:00] furniture or something or look at a case or something.

And I remember going to school the next day of taking classes at Laney and just feeling massively distracted because that question kept rolling back through my head. Why on earth would he say that to me? Why would he even ask that of me? And my dad was out when I got back and it's just my mom and me and I'm sitting on the floor next to her and we're both watching, Wheel of Fortune.

And I am just sort of not really being present with that. I'm just sort of trying to put together what just happened. And I just spontaneously then turn to my mom. In this space, if you're looking at it in your head, I could pretty much put my hand on her knee, on her on her leg from where I'm sitting on the floor.

And I just turn up and look to her and I say, Are you really my mother? And what she does [00:14:00] is she just takes this huge inhale of breath and she tells me this story.

She explained to me that the woman that came, that was sitting in that rocker was one of her students many years ago. She had, at that point six kids. And she was in that college, in that beauty school, trying to learn a trade, to make some money or whatever's like that. And she was going through a lot of hard times.

My mom, because she, had gotten into her mid late forties or so, was okay, the word would be den mother to all of her students. It's like all of them could come to her and she was a supportive heart. She was a hard, good teacher, but she was also just very generous.

She taught me the open hand [00:15:00] policy in that she once illustrated to me and said to me, if I put my hand out like this in a fist. You can't put anything in it, and you can't take anything out of it, can you? And then she said if you can put as much as you want in it when my hand is open, and you can't really take anything more from me than I'm willing to give when my hand is open. And I'm like, that made like a lot of sense to me, and it turned out to be that was an actual deep Buddhist philosophy, that there was no way that she could have learned on her own anyway. That was just how she lived. And she ended up giving and sharing a lot with this particular woman, and she said, that the woman had gotten pregnant with me and was going through this weird relationship and breakup with my biological father. And there was just like an issue with having enough money to take care of all of these kids. So she ended up distributing and sharing some of her kids to her sisters. Cause she had four or five brothers and sisters of her [00:16:00] own, so she would send a couple to Louisiana from the state where where she was from, and so on and so forth.

The dude in the military outfit that she shared with me, she sent him to military school. It was just there was just a lot of drama and stress, and she felt I guess, if I can talk for her, she could not be present. for, raising a brand new kid. What her plan was and what she asked my mom was to take care of me for a few years until she got her life together and then she would come back and claim. And my mom agreed to that. And what do you call it? When then I was born, what my mom told me is that she and my dad was both getting ready to go to work. They were dressing and whatever it was like that. And the phone rang. The phone was a nurse at Highland Hospital who basically said to her my mom had told me that she said to her something To the effect, [00:17:00] Ms. Cagney, your baby is here and ready. And my mom was almost like what are you talking about? Seeing my dad go down to the hospital to go see me and basically, in a way, and then, and a truncated story basically can sign me out of the hospital. And I stayed with them for the rest of my life. The addendum to that is that she told me that when I was still in arms, that she visited the house again and asked to borrow me to take me to the, for the day to at least show the rest of her family me and who I was.

Haley Radke: Your birth mother.

James Cagney: Correct. Because, it is possible, and after meeting her, it is totally possible that she thought that a shared child was reasonable, but she thought that would actually be a plan and could work. And she just wanted to introduce me to the other side of my life. And the way my mother explained it [00:18:00] is that when Rosie, my biological mom, then took me and left the house, from that moment, I started crying and did not stop for the entire trip until Rosie brought me back to that house and put me back in, in my mom, whose name was was Juanita. Placed me back in her arms and then I stopped. And if I'm not mistaken, I think that was one of the last times that she just kind of physically came to visit me. But to answer a phantom question I do believe that the two of them remained in continuous contact throughout my life off and on and just made a decision to sort of leave me out of their conversation and or, periodic check in relationship.

Haley Radke: Did you ever ask them why they didn't tell [00:19:00] you? All of them.

James Cagney: I did not have. Which I'm going to describe here as this wonderfully brave soap opera moments of turning to anybody and saying, why didn't you say something beforehand? And I sitting here thinking about that, strangely, I don't think that ever would have occurred to me. I don't know. And, and it's I've listened to a couple of your podcasts and I've heard a couple of stories from other adoptees or whatnot.

And there is this consistent sort of thing about, at least being confronted by the idea of adoption and then feeling a need to close this sudden mystery as to who is this mysterious person then that left me with you? Or, what was the circumstances of why did this happen? The why of [00:20:00] it, honest on everything I can tell you, just never, ever occurred to me because there was never, even after they left the house when I'm an adult, there was never a point when I felt unhappy or dissatisfied where I was like, I feel like there's some other story going on here. There was never a moment where I felt separated. There was never a moment when I felt uncomfortable. There was never a moment when I felt that something was wrong with the relationship that I had with my parents.

I was fat and happy as far as I was concerned. And there was never a trigger for me to want to chase that car and answer any questions. I had no questions. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Do you know, that's, I'm sorry to say this to you, that is so strange to me just in the fact that they knew this huge secret about you.[00:21:00]

They had her over and sat her with you in the living room. And if you hadn't asked your mother, were they ever going to tell you?

James Cagney: And you know something? Later. Later. I'm actually, I may not watch the screen depending on your response to this, but later sometime later, how long later was this? I don't know what weeks, months maybe a year or something.

At some point, my father sort of explained to me that they must have reckoned. Let me say it like this. They wanted to prevent me from meeting and falling in love with a relative I did not know. That I guess that was the trigger that possibly made this happen. No one, my father, for example, never ever circled back to that moment with me and Michael and him in the car and said anything to me ever [00:22:00] about that, positive or negative.

My read of it now as a middle aged man and then looking back at the details and the patterns of how all that works. I'm pretty sure that he and my mom talked about that and then they had to figure out how exactly and when exactly to introduce this concept to to me. And that apparently, from my understanding, that was how they did it.

They decided to just have this big meetup and see what would happen.

Haley Radke: So it was like bread crumbing you? So you would ask instead of them outright telling you that was the plan.

James Cagney: Correct. Because, they've been, that does take all the pressure off of them, because I guess, and you may have a better insight on this than I would, I guess there is then this certain pressure for the parents of adopted kids, because then you have one of two kind of adopted kids.

[00:23:00] You have a kid that you purposefully went out and adopted as an older kid. And you have a kid that you may have purposefully went out and adopted as a baby. And your decision becomes, do we raise this infant with full knowledge that we are taking care of this infant for someone who is missing and not present?

Do we wait for this kid to ask us about certain things and then we just tell them the truth. I don't even know what the sort of familial family ethics about that would be. I don't even know what a lot, what has happened in a lot of other families where a person has been adopted as an infant and then needed to have it revealed to them that they were adopted.

I don't know what that percentage worked out. I don't even know what kind of stories those are.

Haley Radke: There, we definitely have more late discovery adoptees than we should, in my opinion. I'm curious [00:24:00] because I've talked to a couple of other late discovery adoptees who are also black, same race adoptions, and there's, there was a couple of thoughts that they've presented to me over a couple of conversations.

So one is there was still stigma and shame surrounding adoption for infertile black couples. And then, what you were sort of describing with your biological mother having, oh, it's kind of a difficult time, so my sister's going to raise these kids. Sort of the communal family is sort of like a normal thing, kind of passing around kids to, what do you call that? Just, it's a, like kinship situations, right? Which sounds more like kind of what your situation was, but you were legally adopted, right?

James Cagney: Correct. Thank you. Cause that conversation triggered a memory that I [00:25:00] think there was this long time when the two mothers didn't talk. And that was when I guess they somehow Went to an attorney at some point. My, my adoptive parents went to an attorney or something like that. And they explained to me that they somehow worked it out for me to be, a legal child of theirs on paper, on documents. So they, so I could get access or to, to their records or whatever. That's so that I'm acknowledged as a child and part of their family.

And I do believe that caused a little bit of a rift then between the two moms for a while, just really because they decided to claim me. I guess in that process, or maybe even from the first day, that was how I got my name, because my father was legally a Cagney. His name was James. And when I was given to them, that got placed on me as well.[00:26:00]

Haley Radke: Can I fast forward you a little bit? I know that you had a period of time where you lived with your biological mother a few years down the road. What was that like getting to know her? What was that experience like?

James Cagney: I listened briefly to this wonderful story that you recorded with another guest earlier this year, where this man explained that he went down this elevator and, to meet his particular mother.

And when the elevator door opened, there was this moment of them just falling in and just recognizing and sort of loving one another, instantly in a way that he had sent her, photos of him and his family and stuff so she knew what to look for, but yet when they saw one another that first time, there was this wonderful click that happened in these and [00:27:00] something made sense for him and perhaps her.

I never felt comfortable with that particular story because it felt. And I learned this as I was going through the process, but it felt very much like I was cheating on my family. Like I was cheating on my mother with another mother. There is no better way to really explain that metaphor to you. And and to fast forward through some stuff, so when my, the mother that raised me then finally died, and then I went and spent full time with my biological mother, and, and she kind of then went back and explained certain things to me and so on and so forth.

There was never actually a particular trigger. Where I was like, I am happy about this. There was never a moment when I was like, when I felt like I [00:28:00] am really honored to meet you and to figure any of this out. There was not a moment of a particular thrilling joy for me. What there was admittedly was this level of performance, this level of, I don't really have a choice here for where I want to go or want to do, especially after, after my family finally, died out, there was a sense like I have to figure out and develop a part of my personality that is okay with this because admittedly, I don't really think that I was and I don't believe not that I feel like they could have or that I blame them for that or, or whatever.

I don't really think anybody in the family when I finally met everybody together, I don't really feel like anybody really saw me in the sense that,[00:29:00] okay, I'm an artist. I'm about to say something weird. That I realized over time that the eyes are both a camera, and they're also a projector because I realized that you also that you not only just take in information from what you're seeing and experiencing, but there's a time where you're laying over information based on what it is that you're seeing and what you assume about it.

And I feel when I got into my biological mother's house, I felt myself kind of wrapped in this sort of weird plastic where people are looking at this creation that they have thought about for the bulk of their lives and have been told about. But, I never truly genuinely felt like anybody was curious and interested in me.

I don't know if that's a, that almost feels like a selfish narcissistic thing to say. And maybe it's kind of foolish to be dropped into this room full of people and expect them to ask me [00:30:00] anything about what's been going on with my life before, before meeting them and what that was like. But it always felt a little bit to me like I had to perform through this like everything is okay.

Like I'm not sort of confused. Like I'm not sort of in this weird panic, like I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with myself that I don't exactly know then what identity I'm supposed to have here to you. It was like this weird little thing I had to figure out for myself. And that became especially, I guess, looser or more easier for me.

After my mom died because I realized their death then just finalized and closed this major chapter on my life and technically in theory their death freed me to just fully embrace being now instead of a only child, the youngest kid for under seven[00:31:00] with these seven brothers and sisters. And then all of this, you know, huge collection of nieces and nephews.

And that is a huge difference for me to kind of figure out how to navigate and to be in. Because, I will say to you, I mentioned that my mom's aunt had 12 kids where my mom could not. When my mom died, my aunt invited and asked me to go with her to Los Angeles and live. And she just blatantly just stood there and stood in my face and invited me to come with her.

And it was almost like, because the rest of her family were out in the car and they were about to drive off and she was saying her final goodbyes to me, and she said that. And it was almost like, if you just want to shut the door and come with me right now, you can do that. And because of how I had been raised as an only kid, I guess I was so used to the isolation. I just didn't know how to be in that circle of 12 people. And consequently [00:32:00] I had to figure it out with being dropped as a adult into this circle of six. And then, yeah, to wrap back around respectfully. Yeah. There was never a moment when I had this great connection or had these great stories or had this great sense of sharing with my biological mother.

It was always a sense of me performing as a sort of. Just listening a lot allowing her to tell the story, observing a lot I don't want to seem like I was completely, a closed shell of a person, I'm not speaking, because I was speaking and talking, but it was just like there wasn't a lot that I could present, because I was at a level sort of confused as to what I'm supposed to do and what I'm supposed to be, both, to them as a family, And then to myself, who feels bifurcated [00:33:00] when I even hear now the word mother.

It's to drop that word for me, my brain goes into two different places. And I feel if you ask me about my mother, I suddenly have to feel like I need to explain something to you. And there was no real sense of gaining love being introduced into that other family. More than there was a sense of losing my identity and losing love when my the family that raised me finally admitted this story and then became sick and died away.

It's just sort of a pretending to be okay with all of this. Because I guess technically and deeply, I was not. Not that I was angry and not that I was, hateful or frustrated or anything like that. I just suddenly didn't know what my own ID was supposed to be.

Haley Radke: I think there's this thing in reunion too, where [00:34:00] there's a fear of revealing our true selves. First of all, yes, we got to figure out our identity. Adoptees have trouble with that. Most of, I would say, most of the people I talk to do anyway. But there's a fear of revealing our true identity because are they going to reject us again? And it's, that's really scary to look at.

James Cagney: Yeah, because I don't think, I didn't think of the math of I guess I did, and I'm denying you that I did think about it, because I guess, I must have spent some time writing in my journal about it, but it was that I didn't really think about the concept of feeling rejected. I don't believe I shared with you that I was the only one or made clear that I was the only one of her kids that she gave to someone outside of her immediate family.

But it never was like a worry to me and it was never a thing to [00:35:00] me where I felt like, I hated or had issues against her for doing that. To be completely honest, now standing here after she has been passed a few years ago. And then looking at the entire landscape of all of that with the grace and the apology and the support of God and whatever entities want to support me in that moment, I just didn't get to value a good relationship with my biological mother that really made me wish that my childhood was different, that I felt kind of mildly relieved after I really got to know her. I felt mildly relieved that I was not raised under her. There are assumptions on my part as to what would have happened to me if she had kept me and if I would have stayed there. And there's a lot of things that I assume never ever would have happened. I don't presume there would ever be poetry. I don't [00:36:00] presume I would be like a published author at all.

I don't even see how I would have had the time or the inclination to do any of that or maintain it. And again, as I mentioned, my parents were good to me. You know what? If I would think I was spanked like three times and I had it coming and, as a baby.

Haley Radke: Okay.

James Cagney: Honest to goodness. I was, I was raised really well. If I went to bed hungry, that was my fault because I was being a rat for whatever was cooked on that particular day. But you know what? I had a good life. I was happy with my parents. And I guess maybe that's what it was, is that my story got engaged with a touch of resentment because I'm living here in this life and someone touches me on the shoulder to basically tell me that the life I have been living is not exactly mine.

That it's this kind of creation that in a strange way doesn't exist yet. That's the role I've been playing since I've been born.

Haley Radke: [00:37:00] I kept thinking when you were talking about your like living with your mother and what was that like that the words blood strangers, which is the title of one of your poems but I mean I'm unhooking it from the title and I'm just thinking about that phrase and I've heard you talk in other interviews about your relationship with your siblings and those kinds of things And what you wished for or what could be different in those. And I thought, Oh yeah, blood strangers. I bet a lot of people will resonate with that phrase for struggles and reunion.

James Cagney: It's funny, because that was almost the title of my that first poetry collection. And I was in a circle of writers, and one of them was a transracial adoptee. And she had mentioned to me that there was this book written by a doctor, a psychologist, or something like that was out there, that was called Blood Strangers.

And you know what? And there was no [00:38:00] on that end, it was sort of like it, it pushed me to try to be a little bit more creative with what that title was, but that's absolutely how I felt for a very long time. I kind of recognize my face in some of these some of these folks. Yet at the same time I don't fully, truly recognize myself in this picture or what I'm supposed to do or be.

I just kind of I remember at the time just sort of feeling like I didn't really know how to do it. I just rode with the, I just rode with the wave. I also want to be clear that when I did finally go live with my biological mom and her family, everybody was very kind and very sweet to me.

I do want to wink at you and say that I feel like I ended up having a better, more comfortable relationship with my mother's sister than I actually did with my mom because I felt like she was when I told you that story [00:39:00] that she felt like she could give birth to me and then maybe in a couple of years come back and pick me up, that basically is her personality.

You know that she is just disaffected and just I just sort of watched her just do a lot of really interesting things. and that was what really sort of soothed me and made me think, maybe I got a much, much better deal than to staying here.

Nobody was ever awful to me. Everybody was very sweet, including herself. It was just It was just kind of, after I was placed back in her family, back in her, collection and after the honeymoon period wore off, it just sort of, then everything returned for them to normal and then I had to figure out how to be in this new normal.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I hope that was an answer. You should ask me if I, for clarity.

Haley Radke: I think we have clarity. I think I appreciate you saying the real feelings of your experiences, right? Because I [00:40:00] know you're not alone in having that situation. I know there's other adoptees that have experienced that.

I was wondering if you would read something for us. Which poem do you think will be the most linked to what we've talked about?

James Cagney: I want to talk about one poem and then I'm going to read another poem.

Haley Radke: Okay. Yep.

James Cagney: I'm going to ask your listeners to go pick up my book to find out what it is I'm talking about when I mentioned the Empty of Apologies.

And then I'm going to read, I Am Adopted. Cause I haven't read that in public in a really long time. What I remembered is one weekend when I went up to go visit, I at the time I think I was living in San Francisco, I had moved out of staying with my biological mom who lived in Sacramento, and I was back in my apartment after, hanging out for the weekend or holiday perhaps [00:41:00] with them and I was back and I was standing in the mirror shaving. Looking at my reflection, and I was thinking of watching her bake bread and explain to me what her life was like during the time when she gave me up that when she put me up for adoption. And she actually apologized and said that she was sorry for everything that it was that she, put me through in the context of telling me this story.

And I listened to and accepted all of that and dismissed it. I didn't really feel at that moment when she was even saying that I was even edging out for a for an apology of any kind. But when I was standing there looking at myself in the mirror I almost became a touch offended because I really, truly did not want an apology.

I guess as I mentioned to you earlier, I feel extraordinarily blessed with how my life turned out to be and how it [00:42:00] was. And there was a tiny bit of me that was almost grateful that it happened in that way. And I kind of realized, I just didn't want her or didn't need, thank you, maybe that's the thing, I didn't need her to apologize and cover for my childhood and cover for that choice that she made.

That, I guess it was alright to me, and we didn't really need to go back over that. And for her to be clear. I appreciate it, I accepted it, and thanked her, but when I'm standing here just sort of reviewing, that story she was telling me and looking at myself, I was like, I just don't want this apology.

And for the bulk of my life, I've been told by random friends and heard in random stories, don't say sorry. It's oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. I hate the word sorry. Don't you say anything, but don't say the word sorry. And then I just decided to turn towards that word and really look at it. And that tension was what the poem [00:43:00] Empty of Apologies was all about.

But what I really wanted to do for your show is this poem called I Am Adopted. Every so often, my dad would tell this joke, uh, that he and his, and my mom would, went fishing one day and they saw a baby on a log floating down the river. And my dad cast a fishing line out and grabbed the log and reeled it in. And his, and the end of his story was, and then we had a baby. He found this very funny. My mom found this slightly embarrassing. I kind of found it funny not really realizing that the joke was about me and that, that was kind of how my story got dropped into me.

That was the rawest seed of truth that they ever told me as a kid, as an infant. That they gave me a key, but they [00:44:00] had never ever indicated to what lock that was supposed to really open. I think this is the first clear time, I just turn towards the mic. Said it,

I am adopted. I am carrier of all stories and owner of none. At my birth there were no storks, just an armada of perch and sunfish, guiding me naked, unmoored, down river on driftwood. The name of that river, flush with butterfat free range babies, astride floating trunks like a colony of frogs, was never said, just this. The tale of how I came to be in your family without love's drunken regret or teenage impropriety, but rather a fishing trip where the big one was me, as huge a surprise as a tsunami.

Imagine Plato, a glitter in Vegas, or touring the Chitlin circuit as a stand up. [00:45:00] This was how my truth was revealed, couched in a drunken comics aside. I am the conjured one, and my life story is his big closer. Think it's easy making this [censored] up? Try inventing a real life. You are reflection of every previous face and posture.

You are reflection of every memory recalled, every shot of generational juice exchanged. I am the dust on your mirror. I am the crumpled receipt in your purse. I am adopted, from the Latin word meaning, to pencil in, to opt for. I am carrier of the virus of story. Along the fault lines cracking my heart are inherited memories like viral jingles for products they no longer make.

You are my cousin, my brother, my niece. Yet I apologize that every time I see you, I [00:46:00] must renew my vows. I hold the stories your ancestors are too busy with death to explain. If you can put your phone away long enough, I can recite their ungooglable stories. Stories you'll soon learn the hard way. I knew your grandparents and I ushered their funerals.

I collected empty bourbon bottles during their bid whist games. I can remember them planting the fruit trees crowning your yard. I can remember your aunt Effie saying, you can hollow out the people, but they still carry the seed. Blood knows the memory and ancient songs will play through the pinch rollers of your children's bones and habits.

I am keeper of the stories falling under the table. I am keeper of the virus of memory. I am adopted. Too often my dreams are full of strangers and my pockets [00:47:00] full of someone else's keys. My burden is to know everything and be asked nothing. I was born anyway. A kind of bastard with a license. I will have to be penciled in at the corners.

My mugshot will have to be footnoted in your family album. I will be recalled like a ghost, haunting the smallest real estate of your unused rooms. I will be fed everything you can't stomach. My mask is made to resemble your father, who taught me how to build a house of bottles and fish bones. But not how to keep it warm if I'm the only one in it.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. I, in preparation for our conversation today, I watched many of your readings and listened to interviews, read a bunch of interviews you've done. And you're just [00:48:00] like, I mean, electricity is what I got. And so amazing to hear that from you. Oh, I know we're not in the same room, but I just, oh, that was so amazing.

James Cagney: I'm so honored that, I so thank you for that. I feel like one of the main reasons that I finally pushed myself to publish a book is because as a younger person, especially after this got revealed to me when I was 20, and then I started being introduced to the world of poetry, I never heard anybody talk about being adopted.

I never ran into poems or stories that covered this. It was like there was a sudden conversation that I felt like I needed or wanted to really have about this. And strangely enough, I couldn't do it with the only person I trusted, which is my mother, because it would suddenly make her feel a little bit different.

So it was there was nowhere for me to really go to process this. And there was no obvious places of conversation or any place I could turn for this. And I realized what an incredible, [00:49:00] blessed resource you're providing by doing this podcast. That it may have been a help to me as a 19-year-old finding this show if it existed back then, and hearing different conversations and different perspectives would've been a great help to me because I felt so massively isolated.

Yeah, I really thank you for for doing and producing this show because, in sitting here talking about this with you now which I haven't really done in a really long time, there really is no forum for me to clear my head about this kind of story, and I just want to give thanks to you for even, thinking to come up with a way for these stories to get out.

And to be shared. So thank you for creating this and doing this process. It's a, it's an incredible thing.

Haley Radke: Thank you, James. That's very kind. I want to make sure people grab your books. You've two award winning books of poetry. And so what you read from and the other poem that you talked about are both in Black Steel Magnolias and the Hour of Chaos Theory.

And I'm going to link to a blog [00:50:00] post where you describe coming up with the name for this as well. And then your latest is Martian, the Saint of Loneliness, and your poetry is so vibrant. It feels alive. It's narrative poetry and you have this I'll just describe your word choice as luscious. You're, it's just tremendous.

I've heard you say, you've called Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory the stand in for your autobiography. And for adoptees there's so much that resonates I think, in this first one. And then you have this really tremendous poem in Martian, The Saint of Loneliness, called The Mask, that I hope folks will also read because I really, yeah, that really spoke to me.

James Cagney: Thank you for that.

Haley Radke: I hope you might consider joining us for a book club.

James Cagney: We should talk about that. I don't know about the [00:51:00] book club.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. I think we'll choose one of your books of poetry for our 2024 book club. That would be really amazing. What would you like to recommend to us?

James Cagney: Here in the Bay Area, and as I said, a couple of minutes ago, when I was, 19 I guess that was Yikes, the early mid 90s or something like that or late 80s or wherever I was.

There were no real resources that were obvious for me to turn to, to figure anything out. I did eventually get to sit with a therapist and he ended up recommending to me an organization called PACT. here in the East Bay area, which is for adult adoptees. And I guess some youth adoptees as well, because I guess, they do a lot of work in adoption services here in the East Bay.

That is the organization that I really appreciate that exists. And I feel like it is extraordinarily rare and I give blessings to what they do. I actually went to one of their adult adoptee open [00:52:00] circles cause I guess they do a regular meetup of people to go and visit and talk about what's been going on with their situation.

I went to one of those and, couldn't go back because my own introversion and my own sort of dislike of being in public like that. But I really love and support what they are doing and I feel like that was an extraordinary thing. And I do wish that was available to me when I was a 19-year-old versus when I was in my 40s, when I ended up actually getting to go and finding out about it.

So that's what I would like to recommend back to everybody in your audience, especially those here in the Bay Area.

Haley Radke: Amazing. I'm just on their website, which we'll link to in the show notes, but it says we serve adopted children of color and their families. Honest, child centered, anti racist, lifelong education, support and community for adoptees of color and the people who love them.

So they have got lots of resources on their website, which is pactadopt.org. [00:53:00] All right, James, what a wonderful conversation. I wish we had more time but perhaps we'll discuss more of your poetry in book club.

James Cagney: Yeah, I'll be back.

Haley Radke: Where can we find your books and connect with you online?

James Cagney: You can connect with me online and certainly email me. That's been very successful at jamescagneypoet.com. Because if you're not careful, if you don't add poetry or African American, you're going to get the movie star if you try to Google me.

Haley Radke: Who is ironically, I think, an adoptive father.

James Cagney: Yeah it's very funny. It's very great. That's the whole conversation in and of itself.

Black Steel Magnolias and the Hour of Chaos Theory is available through a Black Lawrence Press which is this great, wonderful press. It's been doing lovely work. And Martian, the Saint of Loneliness is available through North Atlantic Press. And you can get that online yet and still

Haley Radke: Perfect.

James Cagney: I need to get more copies for myself, to be honest.[00:54:00]

Haley Radke: I wish I could reveal to you and maybe I will once we're done. My bookshelf behind me has over 170 adoptee authored books, many of which are poetry. And huh. I can't wait to show you my collection. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, James. I really appreciate it.

James Cagney: Thank you for having me. It was a wonderful conversation.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited. James is going to officially join us for Book Club in March of 2024. So we are going to be reading his poetry book, Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory, which has many themes about adoption and what it's like to be an adoptee. This month in January 2024, if you're listening, when this show is released, we are [00:55:00] talking with Nicole Chung and Shannon Gibney, editors of the brand new YA anthology, When We Become Ours, along with two more of the contributing authors for Book Club.

You can join us for our live Zoom by going to adopteeson.com/bookclub for details. Patreon supporters are welcome. We also have a scholarship program, and if you want to just check it out, check Patreon out. What is this thing I'm always talking about? There is a seven day free trial.

So you can register and join us for that this month. And we are so grateful for every single supporter of the show. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you so much. I won't ever stop saying thank you because you truly make this show possible. Thank you. Thank you for listening. And let's talk again next Friday.[00:56:00]

271 Healing Series: Ask an Adoptee Therapist with Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/271

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

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's episode is our last one before our holiday break, we'll be back with brand new weekly episodes on January 12th, 2024 for you. I wanted to bring you a healing series episode to make sure we all had a little extra support before the holiday rush takes over.

And this year we started a brand new event for Patreon supporters called Ask an Adoptee Therapist. It is monthly. It has been absolutely amazing for our community, and I'm [00:01:00] really proud of this offering. And today's episode is a compilation of some of the really helpful conversations we've had together this fall with Marta Isabella Sierra, one of our favorite adoptee therapists.

So I'm going to be posing some questions to her that have been submitted by the community and she gives us the answers and some really great advice. And before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We have monthly events called Ask an Adoptee Therapist just like this episode. Except for once we're done recording, we hang out with the therapist and get to chat with them and ask them questions off the record or ask for clarification. And it's just a really special time. We also have our book clubs and off script [00:02:00] parties and adoptee hangouts, and we'd love to have you join us.

There's a seven day free trial if you're interested. adopteeson.com/community has those details. All right, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.Com. Let's listen in.

Welcome back to Adoptees Off Script. I'm Haley Radke, and we are here with a special episode of Ask an Adoptee Therapist with one of our favorite adoptee therapists, Marta Isabella Sierra.

Marta is a qualified therapist and licensed, but they are not your therapist. Our conversation and any advice given is for education and entertainment Only. Welcome back, Marta! That's your thing now. You got it. You've got your catchphrase. I love it. Okay. We have some great questions today and I thought we could spend a little extra time on our very first one because it's one of the most common questions I get.

I even did an episode myself on [00:03:00] it super early on in the healing series because I'm such an expert at that. But here is our question. I am looking for a therapist who specializes in or has experience with adult adoptees. Is there anything I should look for or ask them before starting? Marta, what are your thoughts on that?

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: First of all, like those just seem like such different things potentially, right? Like adoption competent versus experience with adoption. So I guess just like a, really knowing what are you comfortable with. Sitting with that. And you may not know, and you may have to, try out a therapist and see is experience with adoption enough for you or do you really want someone who specializes in this area?

That's so individual. Of course, I can't name that for you, but really knowing what are you. Looking for what are you hoping for? What are non negotiables for you? It's such an [00:04:00] intimate relationship. Whatever you need, whether that's like a therapist, who's also a mom, a therapist, who's a person of color a therapist who identifies as queer, all of those might be factors in addition to the adoption piece.

And so just always want to be encouraging people to, sift through what you might need and to just honor what you need. And then there's, of course, the finding piece. I mean, resource wise of course the 1st thing I always go to Chaitra's list of adoption, competent therapist.

And, of course, not everybody's on there. I'm not on there. What's left after that, I think, is like community networking because we all know a lot and reaching out to people, maybe even if you've heard their full and just asking if they know anybody else, there's therapists that are either like done with training, maybe not licensed, but have done work in a specific area.

I, of course, get asked a lot for IFS. And [00:05:00] sometimes I have someone that I've actually had a hand in training, but maybe isn't licensed yet. So you're not going to find them on any forum, but it might be open to private clients. So you, I don't know, you just have to be relentless unfortunately, in this current mental health crisis climate of asking anybody that you think might know anything about anything and just following the path where it goes.

Haley Radke: I think a lot of people don't know too, right? You can ask questions of your therapist in advance. Yes. You can email them questions.

If they don't have time to get on the phone with you, you can preemptively sort of screen them in advance before you book a session. And what are some of the things that you think we should be sort of asking before we ever meet with somebody?

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, definitely, what's their experience and training with adoption? Have they worked with multiple parts of the [00:06:00] constellation, right? You could ask all of those things. I also think you're just, I would like, encourage at least a conversation, whether that's a short zoom or phone, or some people will do a whole session for free to see to assess fit. And so you can get to know them.

For me it's also in my own history of searching for therapists has sometimes also been about how what I'm bringing is being held so I'm like flashing back to like when I was pre estrangement and I was looking for someone to support me through that in some of those like 15 minute phone calls I would just say what I was wanting to work on and the response told me everything that I needed to know about is this person safe? Is this person going to be able to help me with this? So some people were kind enough, but I was just like, nope. Okay. Just everything in my body said nope, it's not you. Okay, thanks for your time, and just keep going. But yes, and you can ask a provider anything [00:07:00] you want to know.

Again, anything that you feel like you need in order to trust this person. Some people might be like, I'm not willing to share that with a potential client. And again, I think then you have your answer. There shouldn't be anything that you're scared to ask because it's your care and it's important and it matters who it is.

Haley Radke: I know we have that amazing list that you mentioned Dr. Wirta-Leiker's list, Grow Beyond Words with all adoptees who provide adoption, competent therapy, and a lot of them are booked. If we were looking for a therapist and couldn't find one, that was an adoptee, do you think there's other providers that can adequately care for us?

And what are some ways that they could demonstrate that? Because we've talked about before we don't want to be giving our therapist lessons in coming out of the fog.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: In my own [00:08:00] professional career working specialized in adoption, not everybody that works at the nonprofit that I work at is an adoptee and they know what they're doing and they do incredible work and they've been doing it for a really long time.

So I'm not a person that believes that a therapist has to be adopted to be able to work with it or do or do a good job. My own therapist right now is not an adoptee. She's Latina. She does EMDR. She's super trauma competent. And what she does get that I think got my buy in the beginning was she understands intergenerational trauma and she understands racial trauma.

These are things for me that are non negotiable. And so those were really important to me. And I again, I would say a mix between interviewed her about that and also just said some things and watched and waited to see how she handled them. And that was enough for me in that moment.

So I think I've seen [00:09:00] really trauma competent therapists be able to just understand it to understand the separation trauma. And again, whatever other maybe trauma layers you have on top of that to just understand the severity of it. Of course, there is always going to be a moment, right? That's true of me too.

As an adoptee therapist. I don't we're not a monolith, right? We say this so much, but I can't assume that just because of my lived experience, I'm going to get everybody that sits across from me and understand exactly how that's manifested for them. So I think there's always that risk of not being understood in a certain moment, right? But overall do you feel that this person sees what happened to you, sees the severity of it?

Haley Radke: I think that's all excellent advice. Thank you. Any thoughts about age and coming out of the fog? I'm a 50 year old lesbian and only recently discovered this adoptee and adoptee therapist community.

[00:10:00] Everything is resonating, even things I never imagined. I'm questioning my life from so many new angles. To have those dense 50 years stacked up in my face and discover a gigantic laundry list of coping mechanisms that I thought were just life experiences and emotions. It's shocking and overwhelming. I was already exhausted with my life, which is how I found this community in the first place.

So now it seems I need more strength than I can muster to be patient a bit longer to let this all in and finally show up for myself. 50 years is a very long time to reflect upon. Ooh, that's a. That's a big spot to be in. And I think just right, the question writer I think a relatable to a lot of folks in our community.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Yeah, it's so interesting. I do think that it is such a widespread experience of whenever you come out of the fog to feel like it's too [00:11:00] late. I hear this will be laughable probably to most people in this zoom room, but, I've had 18 year old adoptees say that to me, like, how come I'm so late to this? What am I going to do? I didn't figure this out soon enough, and I have to not laugh. Yeah, it's hard. Like we figured out ups through clients in their seventies that are newly coming to this, there is no timeline on when we come out, but I think it is a very common experience to, to have grief about the when, whenever the when is and that feeling of lost time, not having the map and what came up for me when I read this question too, is I feel like I talk about this episode all the time. Someday I need to look up which one it is Haley, but one of this episode that made such a big impact on me that was one of the late discovery adoptees and he was in his fifties [00:12:00] and talked about the Lincoln Logs, I use this with clients all the time.

He was, to my memory, he found out that he was an adoptee when he was cleaning out his adoptive parents house. They had both passed and he found his paperwork in the basement. And he talked about feeling like his whole life was constructed out of these Lincoln Logs. And that in that moment, when he found his paperwork, The whole structure collapsed and that he spent about three years sitting, I get emotional every time I tell the story, sitting in the middle of all the logs, just sitting on the floor, right?

And picking them up one by one. And really looking at it, is this mine? Is this really me? Is this, was this something else? Is this meant for me? Three years, right? Of course, we know in that time, he was also paying his bills and being a [00:13:00] person and, but we have to do both. That's what we're tasked with to continue living somehow.

And also have this side project of who am I? How did I come to be here. And how do I feel about all of that? So I'd love that, like the patience a bit longer. I mean, and there, there truly is no race. Like we are on this train for as long as we are on this earth. Like it's and we make sense of it as we can.

And I think there's that initial urgency sometimes when we come out of the fog of I want to know it all right. And that comes from, of course, I'm sure so many different parts of us that want it to be different and it will and it won't. And I think, what also struck me about this was that this person has found [00:14:00] the community.

And yes, do you need more strength to hold what. We hold. Yes, and we don't have to do it alone once we get connected. And so don't, again, it's becoming quite the Marta quote, but don't be alone with it.

Haley Radke: What are some things you tell clients to do sort of in that very first stages? I can't really remember.

I feel like I was pretty gradually, like a gradual, I didn't have this big awakening. But I can just imagine like the overwhelm as you described, but let's talk about the first month what are some things like people will binge my show and I'm like, whoa, that's too much, I don't know if I think that's a good idea or not.

Things not to do, things to do. What do you see people doing and what do you wish they were [00:15:00] doing?

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: It's funny, right? I think we go in one of two directions. So that's one. So actually, I would say more often than not. And again I'm seeing this subset of our community that is wanting to lean in.

And so I'm often the playing the role of the brakes more often than not of please don't binge that. How about this week? We don't watch a film about adoption trauma and take the week off and let it start to filter down. And then in other case, and then I would say there is the other direction, right?

Have I, I feel parts of me that want some of this knowledge or yearning, but I'm terrified about how I'll feel if I read X, Y, Z, watch this, listen to this. And so at the other end of the spectrum, I might invite someone to do that stuff in session again to not be alone with it. Okay. Primal wound is terrifying. Let's read it out loud together and talk about it as it's happening. And you say, stop, we stop. [00:16:00] So I think in both directions pacing. Because the feelings are so intense, so our desire to go 90 miles an hour or stop an armadillo in the middle of the road can be very intense.

Haley Radke: I think this is the kind of situation where I would really want, if they're wanting to lean into therapy you don't want to find someone that's not adoption competent, adoptee competent.

Because if we're uncovering like, oh my gosh, adoption, my maternal separation is responsible for this trauma. We don't want to go to someone that's okay. I mean, maybe and someone that's not going to validate those things for us because they don't know.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Any other thoughts on that one?

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I think also just making time for either writing or talking, however you express yourself, right? Again, I think we have this [00:17:00] looking out thing, right? Like I'll, I want to look outside of myself to figure out how I feel. And so that some of coming out of the fog is being with ourselves, our own thoughts and feelings and being a witness to our own process.

Yeah, it's a great to read a memoir and see like where your feelings and thoughts and lived experience lines up with that person's. Absolutely. As a means of shining a light on where you're hurting and then maybe you take a break and you journal for a little while so that it's not just that external mirror, but that you're really mirroring yourself and giving yourself some time to think hard things, feel hard things, be in the confusion that not knowing

Haley Radke: I like what you said about this discovery of Who am I? And I guess the piece for me is, when you're diving into community, we know the adoptee community contains [00:18:00] multitudes. Do you want to join up with us radicalized adoptees? Do you want to just be nice to yourself and just take care of yourself first? There's a lot of different ways to go. So I love that reflecting to yourself I think is super important.

On to the next question. After 28 years in reunion, I'm estranged from my biological mother. We met when I was 20. Looking back at our relationship now through therapy, etc. I can see how unhealthy it was. Talk about attachment trauma. Before coming out of the fog this spring, hard and fast, I might add. Oh, that's very recent.

I was the perfect grateful adopted in reunion. Now, I'm effing furious about the whole thing. Because my adopted parents have passed in the last five years, and I'm also estranged from my adopted brother, I'm hearing, but she's the only family you've got, way too much, and I'm having a hard time not losing my cool with each conversation.

[00:19:00] There's a lot of grateful being tossed around, if you know what I mean, and I'm just getting madder. Okay. This is pretty relatable Marta, what are your thoughts on this?

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, first just, I'm so sorry for this adoptee, like the, that sounds all like a really rough unfolding, both the long term reunion and then for it to go that way at the end to end up, needing to set those boundaries. And so I just want to say I trust that person really did what they had to do and now how to sit with it.

I think that a being really protective about who we're talking to about this stuff is like a first one and I know that can be hard and maybe there's just like questions that are out of this person's control.

But it's okay to just say I'm just, I can't talk about that anymore today or any more this week, or, maybe we can circle back when I have the energy, but right now I'm fresh out. If you feel like you can't even hold a [00:20:00] boundary in a conversation, I think what jumped out to me like the most was this but she's the only family you've got piece.

Which also just made me think about, I know a barrier to estrangement sometimes for people is I don't want to feel family-less. And so again, like what I know about that then is that this had to have been tremendously painful for the decision to have been this much space and so to hear that, I think there is this like assumption that goes like way past relationship, right? That something is better than nothing, but something that hurts you all the time is not better than nothing. It's just not and loneliness is painful, but we again, I think there's this black and white view. Of like relationship equals connectedness and solitude equals loneliness, but you can be [00:21:00] incredibly lonely in an unhealthy dynamic and that can be more piercing and the loneliness that you might experience in solitude, while painful can sometimes also be extremely peaceful and the reference here to like the attachment trauma, the attachment wound, I'm going to just make an assumption that there was a lot of like push pull, right? And that is so exhausting when we're like, never sure what it's going to be. We're never sure what we're gonna get so to get off of that ride and choose peace, even if, again, that means more grief, more loss, more loneliness definitely can be the right thing and is something that not a lot of people are going to understand.

Haley Radke: It's hard to avoid the topic. So I liked what you said at first about some responses you can give. Do you have [00:22:00] some language that you can say to someone that like maybe, a friend that kind of is constantly on the topic to just be like, this is a no go zone for me if we're going to continue to be in relationship.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Yeah, I just again, you could try to get in front of it with the pieces about if I'm going to talk to you about this you have to understand how sensitive this is for me right now and how much I'm hearing about how grateful I should be in this situation. A I just cannot hear that word from you. You'll have to take those feelings somewhere else if you have them, because it's. You can't bring them to me and then if, if one gets thrown at you from here you didn't see coming. I think it's and this is a vulnerable choice, of course, but to say, ouch, right? To say, you can literally just say, ouch. If that's all you can get out, but to be transparent about the impact that was really hard to hear. What you just said, like that [00:23:00] landed really rough on me. And I'm feeling like more unseen and I don't, and then you can maybe set the boundary right there. Maybe we can come back to this later. Maybe not. But that wasn't it for me. That was not what I needed. This is so one of my favorite lines from my favorite series, which I've been referencing that I've been rewatching is. This is so not how I need you to be right now, which I think is just like a really lovely general like reflection of you're not attuning to me.

This is so not what I need from you right now. You're not seeing me. And so like until you can approach this theme or this topic with me from curiosity, I'm not going to be able to engage with you about it.

Haley Radke: Can you make a comment on this feeling that this person has about being [censored] furious, getting madder?

Because I don't want to shame someone for being an [00:24:00] angry adoptee. We all have stages we go through, so I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I mean, I love rage. But I mean, there's just so much of it. I think even in the healthiest of reunion, there's so much rage that comes up about even the original like situation, relinquishment, separation.

Sometimes there's multiple separations in there in the first year, two years. And never mind, on top of that, to maybe not have been aware of how I'm hearing that this person was maybe disconnected from their anger, and so it wasn't just like reunion anger and like primal wound anger, but like all mixed in together, plus whatever anger about whatever was going on in the relational dynamic during the reunion.

It sounds as happens when we come out of the fog one tile gets pulled and then the whole thing comes crashing in. Yeah, of course it's big, right? Cause it's really, [00:25:00] it's rage over time. It's not like rage about today. It's really has such depth of, like, how long this anger has been there and been untouched and unseen and unvalidated.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you. All right. Our next question is, I hold a lot of anger inside for obvious reasons related to trauma as an adoptee and double trauma of being a transracial adoptee adopted by a white family. The white family has no idea about white privilege. How can I release this anger in a healing way so the anger doesn't eat away at me? My health is affected by this trauma.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I'm just going to be a broken record around this. I feel like this is one of my new catchphrases. Don't go through it alone. Don't go through it alone. Check out resources in your area or get connected with other adoptees of color specifically given this question. It seems like the racial identity piece is really important for this person.

And get around other adoptees of color who [00:26:00] are dealing with white privilege and racism and white supremacy culture in their adoptive family systems, carrying the weight of that, whether or not they're estranged, right? There's a heavy weight to it either way and to be in spaces where you can just really talk about that with the safety of knowing that everybody else understands.

I run some POC groups, and it's just such a sacred space to name some of this stuff.

Haley Radke: Can I interject a little question here? Yes. What do you see happens to adoptees of color when they take on the job of I'm going to teach my family that they're racist?

That last line, my health is affected not only by the trauma, but also by the explaining, right? And by the desperation, I think, unless you have willing listeners, like curious adoptive parents that do want to learn[00:27:00] but if you're trying to make somebody care about something that they don't already care about, every time you knock on that door and it doesn't get answered, you're deepening the wound.

And it's getting like more and more infected because you're feeling unseen. Which is so central for us. And so you're really not saying can we talk about racism? You're saying, do you see me? Do I matter to you? Does my experience in this world and the way that it's different from your experience in this world matter to you?

So that's an incredibly painful question to ask over and get a no. And the how to release it in a healthy way again also connecting to people of color who aren't adoptees necessarily, who again are also holding this wound of racialized trauma. I'm [00:28:00] reading one of the books I'm reading right now is My Grandmother's Hands.

It's an incredible book around racialized trauma and healing from it. It's full of exercises that literally help you. It's the answer to this question, right? Move the trauma out of your body because it's physical, this experience of being raised in white supremacy is physical. And again, that's people of color who aren't adoptees and who are, and so it does need movement.

I mean, my other answers were all movement based. Like you have a somatic therapist you're talking to. So rage rooms, if you have one in your area are a great resource.

Haley Radke: Okay. Wait, tell people what that is. If they haven't heard of that, I just learned about these this summer.

Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: Oh, cool. Yes. So you go and you get to sign up for a room and usually they have different packages, things you can destroy, whether that's like a bunch of glasses and plates, or they usually have a dummy that you can beat on if you want to.

There's like office set up [00:29:00] sometimes with printers and old TVs and they're all a little bit different, but I think a, it's, really safe. They give you a lot of safety gear versus just going off in your own space one night and that can be really physically unsafe for your body.

So you get like all the good gear and then you also don't have to clean it up after. Which I think is like also an act of the self love, right? Of I'm going to break all this shit and you can deal with it. It's their job, they're consenting, but, then you get to just have that lightness after and I'm personally really passionate about boxing.

I box most days and I really feel the brain chemistry is very different when I don't get there or, martial arts, any kind of movement that feels strong and empowering and also has that impact.

Haley Radke: I didn't know that about you. We learned a new interesting fact about you If you need a little extra [00:30:00] support for holidays we have our surviving the holidays episodes linked in the show notes for you and Lesli Johnson has been on several times where we have talked through some of your holiday themed problems, I guess you would call it.

So you can go all the way back in your feed to episode 14, 126, and 166 for those themed shows. Oh my goodness. I'm so thankful for our amazing Adoptee Therapists Marta Isabella Sierra has been on, Lesli Johnson has been on, Pam Cordano has been on with us, Janet Nordine, so many amazing therapists with tons of wisdom.

And if you ever have a question you want to submit, you can go to adopteeson.com/ask and our questions will always be asked at the next Ask an Adoptee Therapist event. I'd love to have you join us at [00:31:00] adopteeson.com/community, which would be an amazing holiday gift to me if you would join us.

And thank you so much for listening this year. It has been a wonderful 2023. I hope you have a nourishing and restful break if you get one. I hope you find some ways to add joy into your holiday season. And I will see you in 2024. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again soon.

270 Sara Easterly

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/270

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

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Sara Easterly is back with us. She's the author of Searching for Mom and the founder of Adoptee Voices. Today you are talking about how Sara became friends with an adoptive mother and a birth mother in order to write a book called Adoption Unfiltered.

It's a hard conversation because when I got asked to endorse this book, I had to say no to a friend who I value and deeply appreciate for her contributions to the adoptee community. So we got together to talk about it. We address the power dynamics when interacting with adoptive parents. We talk about whether or [00:01:00] not adoption really is always going to be around and what adoptive parents need to be doing now that they know that they participated in a terrible system.

Before we get started. I want to tell you I have a puppy! And you might hear little puppy snores in the background. I'm excited, but, you may hear him showing up from time to time. And if you want to see him he's on my Haley Radke Instagram. He'll probably be on the Adoptees On Instagram stories too.

Anyway, he's a very cute little pug named Spencer. And sorry about the snuffles, but He's sleeping right here. I also wanted to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.[00:02:00]

I'm so pleased to welcome back to AdopteeZone, Sara Easterly. Welcome, Sara.

Sara Easterly: Haley, I'm so glad to be back here again.

Haley Radke: I love seeing your face. This is your fourth time on the show, I think.

Sara Easterly: It is. Yeah. Although one was with my Adoptee Voices crew.

Haley Radke: Yes.

We'll link to all of your previous appearances on the show in the show notes for folks. But if they want to go back to 143, that's It's when you really share your full story. And we talk about your memoir, Searching for Mom. And that was in 2020. And we're like reflecting on oh, it's pandemic times.

We're both scattered. And I'm coming to you today with a new puppy, very tired. So also feeling a little bit, it's like, when does Sara get my best? I don't know.[00:03:00]

Sara Easterly: You're at your best all the time, even through all the chaos. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I believe.

Haley Radke: So we're fellow adoptees, of course, and you have a book that is now out called Adoption Unfiltered.

And two of your co authors have a very different adoption experience than you. Can you talk about that and how you guys came to connect and be friends and do the work you're doing together?

Sara Easterly: Yes, I'm happy to and I appreciate you having me on to talk about it. Just want to say that. Thank you so much. So we met. I met Lori in January of 2020 when I was in Denver for a book event for Searching for Mom and she attended and introduced herself to me and that was lovely. We even took a picture together and, I met lots of people and in. Many of whom [00:04:00] I actually have still have relationships with today, which is fantastic.

Just a nod to in person events and how those things go. And I ended up doing a little bit of writing for Lori on her blog. She often was she and she still does elevating working to elevate adoptive voices. So having adoptees right on her blog and I pitched a couple of things to her and she took them and posted them and.

Haley Radke: And this is Lori Holden, who is an adoptive mother.

Sara Easterly: Thank you for the background. Yes. And and so we, just built an online relationship and it was later in that year, I remember seeing as you and I both know Haley, just there can be some contention in these spaces when you're out there in adoption advocacy work.

And she was taking some heat and I just. Because I had a relationship with her, I reached out and just said, Hey, are you okay? It just, it was, I don't even remember the exact details around it, but it was really like a [00:05:00] very, I felt just harsh reaction, the kind of thing someone wouldn't say in person as happens all the time online.

And we ended up hopping on the phone together and. We were like, why is it so hard to talk to each other and we get keep getting misunderstood and we kept having these realizations in this conversation and I think I just kind of cheekily said we should write a book together and she's okay, and it's one of those things you put out there and we put it out there and then we were like we want a birth parent and who would that be?

And we just kind of have this conversation going for maybe two months. And then we were both at a conference. We didn't even know, like we weren't really close friends still. This was just kind of a, those things you say. And then we were both at an online conference again, because the pandemic and we saw Kelsey presenting.

I saw that Lori was there and I chatted her, Hey, Hey, hi, good to see you. And then we were both in a presentation that Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard was [00:06:00] presenting and Lori and I both chatted each other, the birth mom we want because she was so articulate and she'd been doing work. She'd been looking at adoption in a really great deep way.

That struck us both immediately. And I already knew that Lori had been for many years. She way preceded me to the adoptions at advocacy spaces. And so we just reached out to Kelsey and she did not even know who we were. And she said, yes, I'll write about, basically sure. And then the next, we were meeting weekly and having it took us that was January 2021.

So a year after Lori and I met, and then it took us another few months to figure out what are we going to do together? What would a book look like and start envisioning it? We did some practice writing together. We took some heat for some of the things we, some, some things we wrote.

And so we learned from that of, okay, what are, how does this work with communicating between the three of us as a team, as co [00:07:00] writers, and then so that people can hear what we're trying to say and that we can get points across and hopefully by this unique configuration model, what it's like to work together across aisles to take advantage of power dynamics.

And educate in a different way, so it took another year, basically, like that we started in January 2021, and we weren't even ready for the book to be out there pitched for another year, so it took a full year full calendar year by December, I think was when it, October, maybe October, November, December.

I'm trying to remember exactly. But when we finally we're getting it out and then we got the book contract, we got an agent, we got a book contract, and then I had to write the book and now it's out as of December 1st.

Haley Radke: Out in the world. I only talk to adoptees and occasionally I'll talk with first parents and I have a really hard time engaging with adoptive parents.

[00:08:00] Because most of the engagement I get from adoptive parents is trying to correct me, and I don't appreciate that, and it's hard for me to dialogue with folks who are not able to listen and understand my perspective. Especially because I'm a grown adult and I've been doing this for a long time now and we were just kind of joking before we got on like how many hundreds of adoptees, right?

Both of us have spoken with over the years and so it's I don't think you're going to change my perspective at this point. And what's the point of me trying to change theirs? How has it been navigating these relationships with Lori and Kelsey? Like you guys getting along all the time?

What's going on there? It sounds hard to me.

Sara Easterly: So glad you asked this question. Yeah. I mean, [00:09:00] I am so lucky. I mean, we were the three of us were just talking yesterday because. We really didn't know each other that well, and we, you just don't know, and we feel like we each, I think, feel really lucky for the ways the people that we are, that we, because I've never felt like Lori or Kelsey have ever tried to talk me out of anything or tried to change my mind.

I'm just really lucky. And I, I know exactly the people you're talking about because I've had them in my DMs or a Facebook post or whatever, and or in conversations and it's so activating and I feel really thankful that's not what happens. They're both really good about centering adoptees.

They're both really great about not asking me to do emotional labor for their personal situations. We never really had to say here's my boundary and you can't cross it because they already kind of they already had an awareness about that because they were already [00:10:00] in these spaces. For so long that they've done enough work to know this is how you do and don't interact with an adoptee and a fellow human being, some of the way people interact, it's kind of to the point I was saying earlier when you when I felt bad for Lori, it's like I feel bad for you, Haley for the stuff that people drop in because they wouldn't say that. Maybe some of them would say it to your face. As it's coming out of my mouth. I've had that.

Haley Radke: You know what? I would love that. That would be really interesting. I get to know who I really am if they said it to my face. Yeah. Okay.

Sara Easterly: But, all that being said, I mean, We've had some hard things. It's been hard. Like it's not like super easy.

We've had hard, we've had some challenges to work through.

Haley Radke: Can you tell me one topic that was super challenging and that you guys batted heads on?

Sara Easterly: I'm, I can tell you one topic [00:11:00] in the book and then I can also tell you one just way of working together. Yeah. But the topic that was challenging was on attachment.

And Lori had written a chapter on attachment and of course, I I say, of course, the listener hasn't read my book yet but my whole kind of focus of study since becoming a parent and since looking at my own adoption is all about attachment and looking at attachment and studying attachment dynamics and how we relate to as people, how we love, how we grow, how we trust, how we, how vulnerability affects us and our emotional responses to separation.

And so that is my entire section is about attachment minus my chapters on classism and racism and religion, but everything else is all about attachment. And so Lori had a chapter on attachment and she hadn't read yet my chapters. [00:12:00] And because we had different working styles and so my work style is to wait until the deadlines right in front of me and then with that pressure I will write and Lori we found out has a different style where she was drafting she had I think all the framework for all of her chapters drafted before Kelsey and I had even started. So

Haley Radke: That's unrelatable. I don't understand that either. Sara. This is how I work like you work. There you go.

Sara Easterly: What was so interesting about this whole thing there's so much I could talk about just on that whole thing alone too because you've got the adoptive parent As the adoptive parent already drafted and she's waiting on me for my feedback, but I can't give feedback to her because I need to get my own thoughts out before I'm looking at her content because I don't want that influencing me.

And so there was that whole dynamic at play. And then when I turned my head to look at it, I'm like wait a minute this [00:13:00] doesn't make sense for you to have a chapter on attachment when my entire everything I'm going to write is about attachment. And what you're saying about attachment is kind of different from my view of attachment.

And I see what she was doing, but I have a different perspective. And so that was our first interaction with collaborating in our writing. And I read it and I got to tell you, I didn't react in a way that was like real attachment friendly. I sent this long email and I was like, I disagree with this. I disagree with this. I disagree with this. I had red lines all over. And I said, in fact, I feel so strongly about this. If this is not, if this stays in the book, I can't be a part of it. So it was kind of like a, that adoptee, it was my adoptee. Like I see the exit doors and I'm out, and I also felt really strong.

I also knew I [00:14:00] have a pretty clear boundary on that, like that, that I was like, I see that I have some dealings here. So I sent the email and it was wounding. And for a couple of days, Lori did. I'm feel very comfortable saying this because we talk about this all the time with each other. But Lori did respond in a way that was kind of unkind, she sent a note and it wasn't kind her response.

And I didn't say anything. We let the weekend go. And then we scheduled time. We both came back on Monday and talked because we're both really committed to the project, ultimately. And we came back and we had a phone call and we heard each other. And I think we both saw how our own adoption related dynamics were at play there and we could talk about it.

She's I'm really sorry. I never should have said that to you. And it wasn't like it was, I mean, I'll just say it. I don't think she would have a problem with me saying it. I think she said. Something about. And you're right. [00:15:00] You're the expert on attachment.

Haley Radke: Oh,

Sara Easterly: It wasn't. And those are not her exact words.

Haley Radke: Yeah, but, yeah, actually, I am. I'm like, yeah.

Sara Easterly: No, I'm not, clearly. Yeah, it doesn't come alongside you at all. It was funny. We learned from it. And then we also learned about our working styles and I learned, I need, I can say that now, but at the time, I didn't have the insight to be like, I need to get my stuff out on paper before you do it like you and I'm sorry, I can see how that's really frustrating for you because you've got all this energy and organization and you're it's not fair, but I can't, I got to write my stuff first and then you can respond and go after me.

And so it did light the light of fire for me. Okay. I can't wait until the very last deadline here because we're, I've got colleagues and we have a process we need to go through. And then the other piece of that was real that other big aha for us was like we're writing about coming together and [00:16:00] we were off in our own silos writing and we thought we would just dump it all together and then it was like, Oh, we have to actually do what we're saying to what we're saying we have to do we have to go back and forth.

We have to bounce off of each other's words. This isn't just we all go in our corners and write the book and just. Place it in it's not going to work that way.

Haley Radke: So one of the things that I bumped up against when I was reading wasn't quite the final, I guess. You asked me if I would endorse the book, and this is a long time ago.

And I was like, sure. And so I read a giant chunk of the adoptee section, which was first good job, . And then I was like flipping through towards the end knowing that I'm gonna come up to the adoptive parent section in particular. And I saw some of the chapter [00:17:00] titles and things and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't think I can read this.

It really felt like activated and I was like, I can't finish reading this and I have a rule that I only endorse things that I've fully read and actually want to endorse And I had to email you and tell you I couldn't do it. And I felt so bad, Sara, because, I mean, we've had a really good connection all these years.

And I'm gonna cry just thinking about it, but my dog died. You were one of the people that... you sent me this really thoughtful gift and I still have your card on my wall. I can see it from here, and I know how much work you've done for adoptees and helping them unlock their writing and through your writing classes and all of those things.

Right. I was like, Oh my God, I'm really going to let her down, but I can't do [00:18:00] it. It was so scary to send that email to you.

Sara Easterly: I appreciate you saying that. I knew that. I mean, when I got the email from you, I, that was my first thought is, Oh, I hope I didn't put her. I'm. I just, I felt bad because I was like, Oh, I put I just figured I know you and I know that it would have been a really hard to write.

And I think you even said that in your note, it was a lovely note. And I totally understood. And I want you to know, I feel like I'm going to cry too. I mean, I am so thankful. And so are Kelsey and Lori that you spoke up because we needed, it was a really key moment in the development of this book because they go through so many drafts and you get to a point where you're like, I'm sick of this book. It's done. And there were some things that I know were not really working. And a part of me was like, an editor is going to fix this. Our [00:19:00] editor will get this, like we'll get this down the road and then it didn't happen.

And a part of that, I think it's an important part of the conversation that I'm just going to flag for maybe later is when you're publishing traditionally editors don't always. They're not adoption fluent, so only in here can we do this. So what your feedback was a pure gift. I have goosebumps, truly because we realized that we have this book title and this idealistic vision of unfiltering adoption and not, and bringing out into the open the things that have been swept under the rug and not addressed, or we gloss over and pretend there's no loss and pretend all these things. And that works for adoptees and for birth parents.

We think it does. And then we realized, wait, adoptive parents are the ones who've been in power and we can't have the full unfiltered perspective. If [00:20:00] we want everybody to read this, that's a different book. Like this book, we're trying to reach all the audiences. And so we do need to be like really aware of those power dynamics and how it affects every reader and your honesty meant so much.

And by the way, if it also makes you feel better, you weren't alone because I had a second adoptee come forward and someone I'm very close with and a mentor and said the same thing. So I was like, okay. And in writing groups, they always tell you, if you're in a writing group and you're getting feedback, if you get something critical from one person, you can decide what you're going to do, you do or don't have to listen to that.

But if you get two or more and they're saying the same things. You have to listen. And so you and the other, I was like, I really, I've been in writing groups for 20 some years. So I knew exactly this is what this is. It's this. And I had been hoping it would get fixed and kind of just ready to be done with it.

And it's nope, we're not [00:21:00] done yet. Go back in and we've got to pick this apart and figure out what is palatable. And I know it's not the same thing at all. But we, when you make the metaphor of race, so it is, it's easier to see like we would never expect people of color to listen to all the backstory of why white people are racist, a racist some something hurtful that we did out of our unconscious or conscious racism.

And it's the same dynamic. We were like, okay, that we can't that chapter on baby fever. I think may have been the, that was a title that was in there. It's gone. That chapter is done, but we don't need to understand that adoptive parents can have their spaces for that. And I think. I will say, that was good for me too, because I think just being, I had the luxury of three years in relationship with Lori and Kelsey, and I know their full work and I know the end.

Like for Lori, I know her [00:22:00] character arc that yes, she started with baby fever. And she has modeled a different way and she was trying to that was what she was trying to do with that chapter is model how to get past that and not have that mindset and model for hopefully prospective adoptive parents not to get it get myopic on baby fever and.

It's too uncomfortable. We don't, we don't need, that's not the point of really what we're trying to do in the book is unfilter everything. There's still a place for some filters and you got me.

Haley Radke: I have read it in full the new version that everyone else is going to be able to read and I did get through it and I didn't feel activated.

Of course, I was reading with a different lens this time. With the purpose of us having this conversation, and I really appreciated first of all, we already talked about this, having the [00:23:00] adoptees be the first voice in the book, and your really cool diagram of the adoption constellation with the adoptees at the center.

And it actually looks like I just was at this event. It's like a Canadian adoption event thing. And they call it the galaxy instead of the constellation and I was like, oh yeah, okay.

Sara Easterly: And that,

Haley Radke: Yeah, so I could see both of those in the in the diagram. So when I was reading through the, at the end, I thought, okay, this book still isn't necessarily for someone with the full lens of full family preservation, I was going to say at all costs. It's not that, but there is a line I think that is in your section where it's like adoption is still going to be a thing. [00:24:00] And there's many of us who really fully believe that abolition is possible, and there is a different way to call it permanency, I guess, give kids permanency who are unsafe, and we know that is a very small minority of what we're talking about in adoption with permanent legal guardianship or those kinds of things.

And so coming to it with that and thinking of how Lori does work with adoptive parents and Kelsey is working in the adoption field still, these are things that I thought, oh, okay. That's hard for me. That's hard for me to see adoption still, what do I say, perpetuated, I guess. What are your thoughts on that?

Sara Easterly: Yeah, I mean, I don't, what we say, and I'm sure you read this, but what we say is if you are, [00:25:00] if you, the reader, are adoption is love, it's beautiful, or if you're on the other side of that, adoption has to be abolished, then it probably isn't the book for you. You're right. I mean, it may not be. And that's okay.

I mean, I think every book has its market and its audience and that's okay. We are not pro adoption in the book. It's not like we're adopt. And I want to say Kelsey does tremendous work. Her work in adoption is all advocacy. She just was presenting to the House of Representatives last week, and it's all for stopping harmful practices in private adoption and getting regulation.

So it's not that she's out there. When she's working, the way she's working in adoption are for the good and for the better. Now I will say I have my own mixed feelings, and I think I've had some conversations with one of my interviewees and they lately just, we were just talking, I mean, it's.

I mean, I have now, this is my second book on [00:26:00] adoption and this one's more of a teaching educating book than of course, my own story, but my writing and my essays are all trying to teach. And, then what is the, I think there's a real philosophical question of that I like talking about and thinking about and having in the back of my mind, because I don't want, are we teaching so much that we're now saying, okay, do X, Y, Z, and now you get to go do go forth and do adoption, and that's not my vision.

I really appreciated Lori interviewing two people who decided not to adopt.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Sara Easterly: And why they decided not to adopt. And I have a little bit of a, a part of me is I hope we can get prospective adoptive parents to read this book. And maybe we will talk people out of adopting. And I don't know about you, Haley, but I have had friends who struggled with infertility and they've said, I really appreciate your work because I'm not going to pursue adoption. And I'm like, wow, I thank [00:27:00] you, because, and if you do still, then you got to have your eyes wide open and not think this is just your answer to your prayers, and so I do, it's important to me to tell the truth for that reason. But I, I do, I wear that.

I keep that in mind and it's complicated. It's complicated for me. I still want to teach. There are still adoptees out there. Who need support who are being raised by parents who need to know how to raise and better support those children. And there are birth parents who need to do a better job of stepping up and supporting their kids in different ways.

And I really appreciate the ways that Kelsey models that in her section of recognizing that you didn't, you might have legally signed your rights away, but you are still a parent. And I love that she models that for other birth parents to see that the other piece that I want to say that's complex of the whole thing. And this is another thing I really value about Kelsey is she's [00:28:00] because her adoption took place only seven years ago. Because of the advocacy work she does, she's very well versed in what's happening today in adoption. And I think a lot of us and myself included we are basing what we know on adoption of our experience of whatever era our adoption took place and the landscape is changing.

And I think the when I look at it from the decades, I see how it's kind of the same thing over and over again. When you read The Search for Anna Fisher, it's like, what I thought this was all fresh, but that was in the seventies. And so it's, there's a lot of the same undercurrents, but things are changing.

And so I think it's really important for us to know that and be aware of what, how it's changing and why, and then to be able to kind of fill in the pieces now to apply with what's going on. So that definitely informs. Forms my perspective and all those [00:29:00] things are at play and I, it's adoption, right?

We live with complexity and not ever fully reconciling everything to this nice, tidy. Tidy package. And we just, I think we're kind of, that is a strong suit of adoptees, right? We can live in those things that are both.

Haley Radke: Yes, live in the middle. Okay. I appreciate those things. I want to touch on a couple.

First, let's talk about openness in adoption. I told you I was just at this event and one of the people that I connected with told me they had just done this, finished this research comparing adoptees who experienced closed adoptions with adoptees who've experienced open adoptions. Because now, right, those folks are becoming adults and we've, we can look at their experiences and they've had the decades and comparing their, the psychological outcomes and if there was a difference or benefit.[00:30:00]

Her research lines up with what I've heard anecdotally is that adoptees from open adoptions in whatever capacity openness means from a full connected relationship ongoing with one or both of their biological parents, they still have the same issues that the closed adoptees have. So I think there's this idea that like we're doing all these things so differently and openness is really like the fix and that's the one thing that was missing that I'm gonna have to just roll my eyes at when folks say that because I'm like, okay, but have you talked to adoptees that have experienced that? Because that's not their experience.

Maybe some. Not my friends and I really, I liked how Lori laid out some of the what does openness mean, right? Does that mean a postcard once a year versus [00:31:00] a full relationship and, having your adopted child go for full visit with bio parents without them there and those kinds of things.

Yeah, you have any comments on that piece of it? I mean, this is what we hear, right? It's the fix. Open is the fix.

Sara Easterly: Yeah, we hear it. Yeah. Yeah. And it is so great that we're getting, starting to get research and that those adoptees from that era are growing up. They're adults that can say, wait a minute.

Yeah. And because it wasn't the fixed end all be all. And I mean, it kind of gets to what I was saying earlier too, like just even for adoptive parents to have knowledge of attachment and what happens to us? That's not the end all be all either. Like it's still, there's still going to be pain and hardship and loss.

You cannot get around that. There is loss and in adoption open or not. We can make it easier for the adoptees. And I think I would have loved, I mean, when I read Lori's section on openness, I love [00:32:00] that because I, there's that part of me that was like, Oh, I wish I had grown up with openness, even if it wasn't an open adoption.

Of course, there's, but I would have loved to have openness where I could just talk about adoption and how I felt openly. And, anything I, the other piece of that too, that I wonder about as a thought that I think about often is. What's it going to be like another 20 years from now when today's adoptees are grown up I mean, will they feel like all my parents would do was talk about adoption, because there was so much openness.

I don't know. Either way. I don't think. There's no quick solutions. Adoption can't have a quick solution. That's, I think that's the, that for me was the challenge of writing this book too. I was like, anyone who's not an adoptee reading this, it's going to be feel so hopeless when I finish my section, because I wanted, that is one of my key points.

You can't fix it. [00:33:00] You can't, you can understand better, but you can't fix it. And I think that was the trap that people fell into with open adoption is thinking this is going to make it and it didn't.

Haley Radke: I mean, I was at a conference last year, the year before, and one of the keynote was like one of the pioneers of open adoption and the way she talked about it because she'd been in adoption for years like working in adoption and the way she talked about it. I was like, oh my gosh, you don't have a clue you don't have a clue like and you're a keynote speaker. What is? So I mean that's one of the great things about your book right is you're really saying the hard things like if there's a book about adoption that's all positive and is purporting to have the solution it's [00:34:00] not real.

Those these are the real conversations, like the ones we're having now, that you guys talk about, right? In the book you're like, look, we've been glossing over this for so long. I think I even wrote down the... Oh, yeah. On page 18, there's a quote from you, putting a happy face on adoption doesn't serve anyone, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Sara Easterly: I also I've been really lucky. I've been in, in this happened almost shortly after Kelsey and Lori and I embarked on this book project. I joined Adoption Mosaic's Better Together group, and it's a group with adoptees and adoptive parents and a birth parent. I think we only have one birth parent right now.

And I've been in this group the entire time. And there are a lot of different kinds of adoptions. And these are parent, the adoptive parents are actively parenting right now. And I see, it really helped inform for me a lot of [00:35:00] remembering to see this. That open adoption is not the end all be all because I see the complexity.

I hear when you talk with even the parents, it's really complex for them to, and you put yourself in those shoes. If I was well aware that my birth mother had three children when I was younger, even as an adult in reunion, that can be hard for me. I feel the, even as an adult, I'm 51, I feel there's jealousy or there's hurt that why did she keep them and not me.

And and put that like a child growing up, seeing that, and that's really complicated to navigate for parents and the children alike. Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways, maybe it even adds complexity. Not that I'm saying don't do that either, it's just, everything's complex. There's just, there's no way around the complexity and the loss.

Haley Radke: No, there isn't. Okay. I want to make sure we touch on the Kelsey's section and the [00:36:00] birth parent section. I, one of the stories of one of the moms that she interviewed talks about how She didn't, she wasn't getting into trouble until after she had placed her child. And I think that was that was one of the key moments for me.

I'm like, yeah the trauma of placing your child for adoption. Even if it's in an open adoption, even if you sort of have some idea of what's going to happen to your child, like that can be just full of so much brokenness. And I think that the stereotype is that the birth parent is already having these sorts of issues, which is what led to this unexpected pregnancy.

Can you talk about some of your... insights and things that you know now about the birth parent experience from your [00:37:00] relationship with Kelsey over these last few years.

Sara Easterly: Yeah, I'm trying to think of how I can do this because I don't want to I so badly want to talk and tell you what all the things she said, but I learned so much from her section.

There's so much that heals my own, heals and informs my own relationship and the way I view my own birth mother, because there's understanding. That's the good and the hard of working across. About, across the lines of both, I will say, because you kind of are aware of your loss in a way to when you're like, Oh, look at her, like doing her work and understanding the impact and that can be painful.

So there's the grieving that I have to do in that and the yearning that someday, I might encourage those people in my closest circles to dive deeper [00:38:00] and look a little closer. So there's that, but there's the healing in that too. There's the healing and even knowing that grief is there because I might not have even paid attention to that before.

It brings it to consciousness and then there's just the understanding and the compassion that I can offer. And it's beautiful and it's heartbreaking, it's all those things at the same time, again, the dualities that we have to sit with all those things. But I've learned a lot and I've been able to put myself in Kelsey's position in a lot of ways to just as a young woman and I had an unplanned pregnancy myself and I went a different direction, and I can. I could have gone that could have been my situation. So there's a lot that's relatable of and I think in both cases, there's a lot of Kelsey writes a lot about the religious pressure and the pressure and [00:39:00] her family and the ethics and the feeling she had no say and I think, when you're young and you're vulnerable and you find yourself in a situation, an unplanned pregnancy, then your choices get limited and get distilled and set the course.

And so I, I could see my story turned out differently, but there's so much that I could relate to through Kelsey's story.

Haley Radke: I'm not necessarily expecting an answer. I'm sort of just kind of putting this out as an observation, I guess, is when I see her still a young woman in my mind,

oh, this will be the last time I say it. I turned 40 this year. So seeing that and knowing she's in relationship with her child, and just a couple years down the road she's in a position where she could be a parent, and, it's, oh, that's tough, [00:40:00] that is so tough and this is what leads me to this observation is, I really wish we were working at the upstream problems, versus having these again, this feels like a downstream conversation, where we're like, It's happening. It's happening. It's already happened. We're dealing with this versus setting those mothers up for success in parenting. Even in an unexpected spot where they're in,

Sara Easterly: I agree completely. And so does, so would Kelsey feel safe in saying that. I mean, she's in a community with a lot of birth moms and doing that in lots of different ways.

But it's, yeah, it's, that is where it needs to happen and, Kelsey and I both have been talking a lot and and she writes about it in the book too, about informed consent and what that means and birth parents do not definitely do not get informed consent. They're not told that, they're and Kelsey was [00:41:00] too.

And again, this is where I want. I just want her in the room to say this stuff. But, like we talk a lot about just the complexity of not being told that this will hurt or you'll be running from the hurt for the rest of your life. There will be guilt involved. And your adoptee will be your child will be in pain for potentially the rest of their life. There's, that's not, if that information is not given to them when they're being told they're selfless and doing the right thing and making the right choice and which, she writes about. So it's really important. And that's where I feel strongly that adoptive parents aren't given that, that informed consent either.

This is just the answer to your infertility or your, this is will help you make the family if it's not in, if it's not fertility related, but not told, again, like I said that's why I feel like it's a win when I have people who are coming to me and saying, yeah, I don't think we're going to adopt like knowing how hard this is.

Either hard, it would be a hard journey as parents, or it would be really hard on the child. Whatever their [00:42:00] reason, like that they're able to see this isn't what culture tells us it is.

Haley Radke: Okay. Last thing before we talk about our recommended resources, there is a section towards the end about talking about some of the things that adoptive parents can do.And I think, let's go there, let's go there. You've mentioned several times power dynamics in our conversation and, well, not me, a friend got into it with an adoptive parent during November and was asking them. What are some of the things you're doing to help adoptees? And their answer was highlighting adoptee voices and re sharing their stories and this is a conversation on Instagram, where they all are.[00:43:00]

And so my friend and I, we're like rolling our eyes at this thing, okay, that's the least you could do, the very least. And so what I see concrete things adoptive parents should be doing is like the bare minimum, right? Advocating for original birth certificate access. Advocating for mental health supports for adoptees.

Like, where's your money going now? Do you have thoughts on that? And what do you want to challenge adoptive parents to be doing versus just resharing our Instagram stories?

Sara Easterly: Yeah, or building platforms, just building their own platform.

Haley Radke: Yes, and making money off how to braid their black child's hair. No, thank you.

Sara Easterly: Yeah, I know. I like, there's a part of me that wants to start naming names and taking people down right now.

Haley Radke: Our listeners know, they know. They know.

Sara Easterly: We know. Yeah, we know. We all [00:44:00] sometimes I'm like, why do I keep them in my feed? Just to like. But it's my fuel.

Haley Radke: Oh, no, I just block them.

Sara Easterly: I keep a few in there. I really do. I keep them in there for my fuel. What? Okay, now I got all fired up, Haley. What?

Haley Radke: Okay, boss the APs.

Sara Easterly: Yeah, okay. I do. I got a little nervous. There was one, one point in, I think you're talking about chapter 21 on supporting adoptee maturation. So I think it's okay. I'm not quizzing you, but I think that's the chapter. And in that chapter I did feel like I was kind of saying, here's what you have to do, make space for us to grieve. There's kind of the practical in terms of supporting adoptees today of. But then I also I have under one of those points was, and I snuck a whole bunch of things in, but, assuming a leadership role and I have a lot of stuff under leadership, but one of my sub points under that is don't make everything [00:45:00] about you and, I wrote and I was like, again, sometimes as I'm writing this stuff, I'm like, as it is when you're in on Instagram and you feel so brave when you're writing and then I'm like, okay, I hope they can handle this because I'm leaving it in, don't take our instincts personally, don't make us responsible for your emotions, don't expect the adoptee to take care of your emotional needs. Even if they try to do it, don't take advantage, don't overshare our stories. And then overshadow, don't, and don't even blast your story 'cause it overshadows our stories. So

Haley Radke: You have that memorized. Sara, that was

Sara Easterly: I do it's important to me .

Yeah. So there, that's my bossing . There's probably more.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's good.

Sara Easterly: Yeah. And don't, yeah, I think I've written about this too don't go on social media. I mean, come on. Oh, it's so painful. It's so painful. And then even saying my child gave the [00:46:00] permission, they can't give permission.

They cannot do that right now. Their children, understand it could take 40 years. I'm raising my hand. That's how long it took me to realize the little kind of nodding permission I gave was not permission.

Haley Radke: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I really appreciated that you even put you say this overtly in the book that the adoptees that you talk to for your section are all a bit older and have processed their adoption thoughts.

I thought I might bring this up earlier, but I'll say it now. I commented on this viral post of this baby being placed with their new adoptive parents. And this was like, had to be at least a month ago, maybe more, maybe six weeks. And I'm still getting replies to me about how stupid I am because my comment was like, you're looking at this as this [00:47:00] beautiful moment, but this is a really traumatic event for the child, right?

This means they're losing their connection with their biological family. And so I'm just like, okay. And the ones that really, I feel are the adoptees commenting and saying, Oh, what are you talking about? What do you know? Because I didn't identify myself as an adoptee in the comment. I love that I'm adopted. This is the happiest moment of this baby's life. And I was like, Oh. Okay. I don't think you've examined fully the impact adoption has had on you. And that's fine. That's how nice for you. But I appreciate that you really did talk to folks who have. And I recognize some of the names, some of the people I know, some have been on the show before.

And so that was really beautiful. So I really loved your section on adoptees. [00:48:00] I learned so much from Kelsey. And I'm going to say, who is this book for, Sara, who is this book for? Will our listeners benefit from reading this? I think so. I do. I think so. I think there's things that you point out to us as adoptees that could help us in our healing journey.

Some things that may be unexamined for us. Who do you want to read this book when you're talking to, our listeners here on Adoptees On?

Sara Easterly: Okay you mentioned the adoption constellation visual that I made and I want anybody who sees themself in that visual of the constellation to read the book.

I mean, that is ultimately our audience when we were writing the book and again. Pay back to you when we, when you came back and said, Oh, I can't read that 3rd question. We really went back and said, okay, let's, well, who are we writing for? [00:49:00] We had to get the clarity and what we came to is that each of us are writing to our own people.

Me to adoptees, Kelsey to birth parents, and Lori to adoptive parents, and we're writing to, we're writing to help, like for me, I was driven by feeling like I was crazy for the first 40 years of my life, on some level, because I didn't understand all the different ways that adoption affected me, and then becoming a parent so I guess it wasn't quite 40, I exaggerated, but, becoming a parent, In my 30s made me start realizing I just started a waking up and realizing, okay, and then I got into, I started studying attachment and I'm like.

Oh, my God, all the ways I was responding were normal ways humans respond in the face of separation. And I pretty strongly believe there isn't much separation greater than adoption. So because we face it for our entire lives, it's constant in so many different ways which I write about in the book. So I [00:50:00] wanted to explain us to us, and I wanted to explain us to the people who are constantly not getting us. And getting it wrong it the timing was perfect again sometimes triggers are great I went to a conference a retreat and I had I was. I was at an author table with an author who had a book about it was totally pathologizing. She was a foster parent and adoptive parent, both. And she's writes books about these raising traumatized children.

And I'm like, Oh my gosh, the whole thing was pathologizing. And I'm like, I get, I'm tired of that. But it was my fuel. It was my fuel. Okay, I'm explaining us to us and I'm explaining us to that author and any person who read that author's book and all the other people who pathologize us. We don't have reactive attachment disorder. We have a human brain that responds to separation in a certain way. That's [00:51:00] what we do. and we aren't crazy, we're doing what our brains do and we've got too much separation to bear. And so that for me was my driving fact factor behind the book for the audience and Kelsey the same way. Birth parents, sometimes there's, I think it's like for adoptees, it can be so painful to look.

I, as you experienced, it's really hard when you get, when those adoptees are at that point in their journey, because, we're sitting in a different place now, you're in your forties, I'm in my fifties and I keep talking about that too. These milestones are big because you have new perspective, and you don't want to take away where they're at right now. It's part of the journey that we've all been on. And and you don't want to shut them down. You don't want to tell them, you don't want to tell them how their journey is going to unfold. That's not right either. But yeah, it's hard.

And I think that happens for birth parents too, was where I was going with that. Is I think that happens to it a different. It may not be quite by a year, but it happens for birth parents as well. And so that was a, Kelsey has talked about wanting to explain [00:52:00] that. And I think for Kelsey, she said this a lot is wanting to show the full well rounded three dimensional aspect of birth parents to others too.

She is not only a birth parent. She's a lot of. A lot of roles and a lot of she's a human being. She writes a lot and speaks, says that a lot. And for Lori too, I think there's the less about, because of that whole filtering and unfiltering exercise we went through.

But I think for her, it's, she said sometimes adoptive parents don't know that they're doing these things. And she also wanted to help kind of show, show that they're doing that. How to model thinking beyond certain stereotypes, how to model looking at your own situation only from your angle and then, of course, we hope that people are making policies and looking at what's best for the child will read this and come to some of those same conclusions of, Whoa, this goes deeper than we ever knew.

Haley Radke: I want to link to a video, you all have a podcast on, it's available on [00:53:00] YouTube and there's a video that released pretty recently. If you're listening when this episode is released it's called Adoption Constellation Roundtable: What is Hard About Adoption? And I really appreciated the comments from everyone.

I think it's a really great discussion that helps add to the conversation you and I've had today. What did you want to recommend to us Sara?

Sara Easterly: It's so hard when that question is so hard. It's so hard. I have so much I want to recommend.

Haley Radke: Your first time. You practically tried to. Recommend my show. I was like, but you're on it. They're already listening.

Sara Easterly: They're here. I remember struggling with this on that one. And the other one I did with Donna. I have two. Can I say two or is that cheating?

Haley Radke: Okay.

Sara Easterly: Okay, so I, the one I said in my, when [00:54:00] I emailed with you, I said Adoptee Voices E-Zine. But then it felt so self promoting, but it's not because it's other adoptees. It's the adoptee writers in my writing group. And I dedicated the book to my portion. Each of the three authors of adoption and filtered had a dedication and mine is dedicated to Adoptee Voices, writers that their stories matter and their voices matter. So, and that's why the E-Zine is so near and dear to my heart.

And I like to lift it up and point people to read it whenever they can, where I'm working on the next issue right now. We've had 11 issues and just some tremendous writing of adoptees, but then the other thing I wanted to highlight is the Adoptee Consciousness Model from Susan Branco and JeaRan Kim and others.

If you're not familiar with it, it's just such a, I'm really loving it. And I just keep returning to it. And I just I just love that it's a spiral and it's not, I just like the metaphor in so many ways. And I think, it kind of speaks to how, this work in [00:55:00] adoption for all of us, we are all building and growing and getting it better and better.

And the more we all, it, all of it adds value. And I like the evolution of kind of going from out of the fog, which I still use sometimes, but I also like the evolution of speaking to adopted consciousness. So much richness there.

Haley Radke: Yes. JeaRan Kim was on the show talking about that model in 235 if people want to hear her elucidate on it and perfect timing. The, I don't know if you heard that jingling. That is probably the first public jingling of my new puppy.

My editor is going to be so happy about all the little puppy noises, but is what it is. Okay. I wanted to say it out loud because you grieved with me for my old puppy and now you get to you too see my new puppy [00:56:00] in a minute when we're

done.

Sara Easterly: Yeah, you have to, I have to have a viewing.

Haley Radke: Yes. Okay, let's do it right now.

And then you've got to tell people where we can find your book, books, and where we can connect with you online.

Sara Easterly: Okay. Yeah. If I mean, I might, my heart might melt here. I mean, you have no brain capacity after that. Oh, what a beauty. Oh, I love the bow tie. Oh, big yawn.

Haley Radke: If you want to see Spencer, you can go to my personal Instagram. Videos and pictures of him. Okay, Sara.

Sara Easterly: That's a sad to be set up. I just want to reach through and cuddle him. Yeah, he's on Haley's shoulder here and it's the sweetest thing ever. Oh, he's going back to sleep. I love it. I've got a puppy right now too, Haley, and he's at the naughty stage. He's a teenager now, six [00:57:00] months.

Haley Radke: There's another naughty stage. . Great

Sara Easterly: Let's not talk about that. Yeah. Okay. .

Yeah. So to find a book probably the best place to go is adoptionunfiltered.com. That links to our podcast, that links to information about the book. And it's available every anywhere. Bookshop.org, Amazon, you can request it through the library, anything. So it's published by Roman and Littlefield.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sara.

Sara Easterly: Thank you, Haley. I appreciate being back and I loved having this hard conversation like talking. I'm glad we could do this.

Haley Radke: We did it.

I so appreciate when friends can have different perspectives on things and we can still get along and do work together. And I [00:58:00] mean, Sara and I both kind of talked about this. In email and sort of off recording, but I really don't think we have very different perspectives on adoption. I think we both really highly value adoptee voices and I mean, she started a whole thing to help adoptees storytell and write their thoughts and get things onto paper in order to elevate adoptee voices, which I think is amazing, incredible.

I know so many people that have gone through. One or more of their writing cohort groups, and I think it's amazing. But the value I see in folks like Sara, who can work with adoptive parents and hopefully coach and lead them to a better understanding of adoptees is enormous because [00:59:00] I don't want to do that, it's a lot of you don't want to do that either and so I feel so grateful for someone like Sara who has the patience and the compassion and the patience and the patience to deal with some of those ongoing shenanigans. I really appreciate that. And I think these conversations are really good. And I also, they show me some of the areas I still need to grow in for sure. I love hearing from birth parents. Because it helps me gain a better understanding of my mother and why she won't have contact with me and where can you get that? Where else can you get that? And I've had so many mothers sit with me and be very generous with their stories. And I hope we can do the [01:00:00] same for them. And I always like to say adoptive parents are welcome to eavesdrop here. So listen, but we won't be taking questions. Thank you. Anyway, if you were like worried that all of a sudden I'm going to start interviewing adoptive parents on the show, no, don't worry about that. Adoptees On. Adoptees only. We're good with that.

I want to thank my Patreon supporters for making this show possible. When you are a patreon supporter you are paying for the costs of Adoptees On to be produced Sara has been a patreon supporter and I really appreciate everyone who has donated in some fashion towards the production cost of the show and if you join patreon we have levels where we have online events monthly with book clubs and Ask an Adoptee Therapist events.

[01:01:00] And there are so many good things about being in our community together. It's just really special for me. And we have scholarships available if you would like to come. You can go to adopteeson.com/scholarship and find out how to apply there. We would love to have you. Thank you so much for listening.

Let's talk again next Friday.