280 Svetlana Sandoval

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/280

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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. Oh, we're back and I'm sick again. My voice is only going to be like this for the intro because luckily I was healthy when I interviewed this week's guest Svetlana Sandoval. Svetlana is an international adoptee adopted from Russia at about six months old.

We talk about what sparked an interest to search for her biological family, how she navigated the language barriers using technology and a friend of a friend. Svetlana also shares about her decision to reclaim her original name. Due to the sensitive nature of her reunion during the war, [00:01:00] she will not be commenting directly on the conflict.

Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon Adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com. I'm going to leave that in. Because, listen, my dog just licked the microphone. That's Spencer. He's busy chewing on my hand, being a rascal, and keeping me company as I have my sick day here.

Okay, supporting me on Patreon helps support the show and supports more adoptees around the world. And it also supports my brand new podcasting project I'm working on. I'm keeping mostly everything pretty secret right now but we'll be excited to share more news with you soon. 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 [00:02:00] pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Svetlana Sandoval. Welcome Svetlana.

Svetlana Sandoval: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Haley Radke: I would love it if you would share some of your story with us.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, absolutely. So I am an international adoptee. I was born in Yaroslavl, Russia. It's about a five hour drive northeast of Moscow.

I was born in March 1997 and then adopted six months later the same year to my family in northeast Ohio. I had a pretty quote unquote normal childhood. I'm a same race adoptee. I was adopted by white parents who look enough like me that people looking at our family didn't assume that I was adopted. I always knew that I was adopted.

I think I primarily knew about my adoption through my parents telling me their bedtime story version of how they wanted a child so much that they flew across the ocean to get me and here we were, [00:03:00] happily ever after. And it seemed simple in those terms and that was the only way my child self could understand how I came to be here.

As a young child, being adopted was something I was really proud to share with people. Sometimes I would introduce myself and be like, and I'm adopted from Russia. It was like my fun fact or, go to. When I was little, but I remember pretty early on, maybe around first or second grade, that pride started to shift when my classmates would ask me questions like, but who is your real mom?

Or they would ask me something about Russia that I honestly couldn't answer because I didn't know much about where I was from. And I think those interactions formed a shame that made me not want to talk about my adoption anymore. And those questions that I couldn't answer definitely shaped my own disinterest in my heritage throughout my childhood.

Then, throughout my preteens and adolescence, I had many mental health [00:04:00] crises that stemmed from what I now see as an obvious series of identity issues that stemmed from my initial loss due to adoption, and I didn't necessarily, again, look adopted to others. And in a way that kind of erased my own sense of self and curiosity of who I was outside of the context of my adoptive family.

Haley Radke: Did you have siblings growing up?

Svetlana Sandoval: So I grew up pretty much as an only child I have three half brothers from my adoptive dad, but they were all pretty much grown and out of the house by the time I was adopted.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah,

Haley Radke: So lonely.

Svetlana Sandoval: It was lonely. And then the identity issues I had just intensified through my late teens and early twenties.

By the time that I was in high school, I remember saying things to my friends like I must have been discarded after I was born. I think that like core belief formed pretty early on, even though my adoptive parents never said anything like [00:05:00] that to me. I was always told the typical narrative, your birth mother must have loved you so much that she wanted you to have a better life.

But I think as adoptees, we tend to assume the worst and we have no definite information where, how we came to be where we are. And then getting into my early 20s, I started to question more where I came from and I slowly collected information from my adoptive parents from their time in Russia. And then over the winter of 2022, I was looking at this document that I believed was my birth certificate.

I had it in my fireproof file box under the label birth certificate. But it was in Russian, so I couldn't read it. And I just happened to have a friend who had a friend. She offered to translate it. And in fact, it wasn't my birth certificate. It was a completely different document. It was a certificate of my adoption.

So when I had that first translated document, that's when I really started to more critically question my adoption and what my truths [00:06:00] were. And around that same time is when I found Adoptees On and started searching for adoptee community. And then I continued asking my parents for any information that they had, and they collected everything for me and gave me this Talbots box filled with all of the court documents and paperwork from Russia.

And among all of the documents was this tiny yellow folded up lined paper with my birth name written in Russian cursive handwriting. And wrapped up in this paper was this little silver Orthodox cross necklace that had been left for me. And that necklace gave me more information than all of the documents.

Just knowing that something had been left for me immediately changed that internal narrative that I was discarded. And then in the documents, I also had access now to my birth mother's name, her date of birth, some other identifying information. [00:07:00] So I started searching for her on Russian social media sites.

She passed her name on to me. So we share our first name. And unfortunately, Svetlana is like the most common Russian name. And at the time, I didn't really have understanding of how common, commonly used like their nicknames are and didn't have a good grasp of the language and how the names are listed on social media.

So I didn't have luck finding her on my own. The day after then I had all of these documents and started searching. I found a private investigator and a Facebook page for Russian adoptees that some others had success with. And within a few hours I was in contact with my birth mother. It happened so fast. I wasn't expecting it.

Haley Radke: How old were you then?

Svetlana Sandoval: This is a year ago. So I, yeah,

Haley Radke: This is new.

Svetlana Sandoval: I was 25 about to turn 26. I'll be 27 next month. Yeah. So it's all real new [00:08:00] still.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Okay, so to slow down just a little bit.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: The Russian it's, there's a different alphabet, right?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And how's Google Translate when you're trying to because you can't look at it and type something in, right?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. I now can because I've downloaded the keyboards and everything.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: Then I had no knowledge. I had never explored Russian language before this. So I'm just like copy and pasting. They have the feature where you can hold your camera up and it might pick up all the letters.

Haley Radke: Uh huh.

Svetlana Sandoval: I was typing things in English on social media because they also use English somewhat on social media. It wasn't great. And Google Translate is not good for Russian.

Haley Radke: Okay. I didn't know.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, no, I didn't know either.

Haley Radke: I'm thinking if this had happened, say 20 years ago.

Svetlana Sandoval: Oh gosh, yeah, I know.

Haley Radke: You'd need that friend of a friend to come and help you translate it into English [00:09:00] and then who knows if you could find or not. Oh my goodness. That's a lot. That's a lot. So this is going really fast. The investigator finds your mom and

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, within a few hours, I was in contact with her. I had her phone number. I had her picture. And, I sent her my introductory spiel. My name is Svetlana, my birth last name, I was born March 1997, I'm adopted, I'm looking for my birth family. And her response was totally skeptical. She thought I was a scam. Until I sent her a photo of the necklace and the paper it was wrapped in, and she immediately recognized my grandfather's handwriting, and our connection was verified.

Haley Radke: Wow. Did you ask your adoptive parents why you had to ask for those things from them?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. I think it's like we were in this cycle of I was disinterested. [00:10:00] They didn't inspire the interest. I was also getting these external signals of being grateful. My parents did this wonderful thing.

So I had all these signals that maybe I shouldn't really think about this. So therefore I didn't show interest. And they're they've sometimes had you didn't show interest. I'm like, yeah, I didn't show interest. So it was just like in this cycle of they weren't nurturing the interest. So I wasn't showing the interest.

Haley Radke: I have this obsession with objects that were given or left with us and finding out how folks eventually even find out these things exist because often they're not given to us.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: It's interesting that they did have it waiting for you for when you asked.

Svetlana Sandoval: A lot of it I really do believe too. It was just put away. They didn't have to worry about it once they had me here, so I don't think they honestly remembered everything that they had, or the details of the information. It really just sat in the [00:11:00] closet, and we didn't have to look at it, so that's where it stayed. Till last year.

Haley Radke: So you said it's your grandfather's writing?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So do you know your story now from your mother?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yes.

Haley Radke: Oh.

Svetlana Sandoval: Since then I've been in this like virtual reunion with I have a babushka, grandma, dadushka, grandpa, I've got a little brother, he's five years younger than me, an uncle, cousins, aunts.

So we've spent the year just trying to catch up and make up for our lost time. And yeah, I have gotten their side of the story. So to give a little bit of context here, I've heard some other Russian adoptees refer to our adoptions that happened in the 90s in post Soviet Russia as like refugee cases.

My family has certainly verified the economic hardship that they faced following the collapse of the USSR, but I don't necessarily identify or agree [00:12:00] that I am a refugee of the situation. My grandparents and mom have expressed that they had every intention to keep me. I was with my mom for four days in the hospital before I was relinquished.

They ultimately made the decision because they were told that I was so sick, there would be no way for them to afford the care that I was going to need. But that really wasn't the case, according to my documents. After I was relinquished, I got a round of antibiotics and shortly after was sent off to the orphanage that I was placed in to be adopted out of.

And I see the adoptions that happened and came out of Russia in the 90s as a much broader issue that the international adoption industry that was booming at the time took advantage of the economic hardship that was happening in Russia after the USSR collapse. And I really believe my family. was somewhat victim and coerced by the system.

There was a lot of like [00:13:00] misinformation and false diagnoses happening and Russian adoptee cases.

Haley Radke: So I don't know a ton about Russian adoption. I was researching a little bit before our conversation and I've seen different figures like there's 60, 000 Russian adoptees from that sort of time period in that decade.

Many of which went to the United States and, the big news a while ago was that Russia closed adoption to the United States.

Svetlana Sandoval: 2013.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And it's interesting, the medical diagnosis, I've heard that from a few adoptees. I don't think that's too unusual, sadly.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Including current day in the United States, domestic adoptions. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that happened. Yeah. You're super new in reunion.

Svetlana Sandoval: I am.

Haley Radke: And it's far [00:14:00] away, long distance. What does your communication look like?

Svetlana Sandoval: We mostly message and text. It's easy to copy and paste through a translator, Yandex. Russian adoptees is a much better translator than Google Translate. I've also, spent some time learning introductory Russian before I decided to go back to college. I spent last summer doing tutoring. We do video call, but, with the language barrier, what could be a five minute conversation takes us an hour. It's difficult.

Haley Radke: Okay, yeah.

Svetlana Sandoval: I don't know that I'll ever, really feel like I can ask the questions and get the answers that I want until several years from now when I can speak with them fluently and there's also this fragility of trying to communicate these like deeply personal intimate questions and feelings with a language barrier and with the cultural differences woven into that there's always this fear that I have that it's going to be misinterpreted.

Haley Radke: Yeah, [00:15:00] and I started what I was thinking in my head is I'm like and it's really easy to stop communication when you're so far apart.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: It feels less consequential. I don't know.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, no, that's definitely been a fear. I think it was a fear more so earlier on and now The fact that we've continued to be in communication and plan to meet one day when that's possible. They're still as involved in my life as like we can be virtually today as they were a year ago after I found them.

Haley Radke: Can you mentioned cultural differences. Growing up. You knew you were from Russia, but did you know what that meant, where Russia was, like, anything about Russian culture?

Svetlana Sandoval: No. Yes. Yes. Okay, so I knew where I was [00:16:00] born, and I could point to that on the globe or on the map.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: I knew about Russia the way I think most Americans know about Russia. It's matryoshka dolls, it's vodka, it's bears. Or it's the bad guy in the movie. That was the general understanding that I understood. Because that's all that I really was exposed to.

Haley Radke: Mhm.

Svetlana Sandoval: My parents did have some things in the house. A lot of my like children's books and fairy tales were like U. S. adaptations of Russian fairy tales. My favorite one was The Little Snow Girl.

Haley Radke: What's that?

Svetlana Sandoval: It's, oh, I'll have to Send it to you. It's a, I think, I don't remember the author's name right now, but The Little Snow Girl is this Russian fairy tale.

It's very Americanized in the book that I had, but it's a story of this little girl that's made of snow and her parents aren't made of snow and they bring her inside and make these things for her and one day she melts, but then she becomes a real girl and that's not [00:17:00] really the story of The Little Snow Girl in Russia, but it had these like illustrations that had some of the Russian folk art in it Little Snow Girl in Russian is they have a different version of our version of Santa and she's like his sidekick and she has like different backstories depending on what era of Russian folklore you're looking at.

Haley Radke: So the Americanized version is that you're made of snow, your parents are not, so you're adopted and you are brought into the house to melt?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yes. Literally, yes.

Haley Radke: And be formed into what they would like you to be.

Svetlana Sandoval: The little girl that they wanted. Yes, you heard that correctly.

Haley Radke: Oh, good. Yeah, okay. Okay. Interesting. Having, the, let's call it the [00:18:00] Americanized glasses on for a view of Russia up until you're, say 24. Now that you're like, oh my gosh. I don't understand the differences. What does that feel like? I feel like I'm imagining this pressure to fast forward, must learn so I don't say the wrong thing or offend or.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, I absolutely have just felt like I cannot grasp everything fast enough. And I remember when first found them, I was like, just so upset.

I'm like, why can't I learn all of this right now? And I also have to accept that there's some things with my family, nothing is that I learn no matter how much time I could spend the rest of my life learning about my history and culture. It's not going to be the same as if I had grown up there with them, and I'm still going to have this Americanized version of [00:19:00] it.

And it feels like I don't totally feel like an imposter in some ways, like I'm grasping on to everything I can to learn about it, but it's still just never going to be enough or authentic enough.

Haley Radke: Do you have a sense, this might be too early to ask about, but do you have a sense of what your Russian family thinks of your American perspective?

Svetlana Sandoval: They think it's American. They say that. They're like, Oh you're purely American. But, I think I'm, I don't know if this is like unique, but my family and my birth mom has been really, open and accepting and willing to hear my side for the most part and is more interested than shut down or that's wrong. And I think, they just accept that. I didn't get to grow up with them. You have a different version.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I know you can't speak for transracial adoptees because you [00:20:00] are internationally adopted, but same race and could blend in your white, beautiful, blonde, like your beautiful, traditional American beauty too, right?

So I'm curious. if you have heard from fellow international adoptees who are transracially adopted, and if you can relate to their stories on a cultural barrier.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: You know what I'm trying to say?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, I think so.

Haley Radke: I'm trying to ask you this, but okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yes and no. I always, I feel like I relate to other international adoptees a lot more in those respects of this loss of language that makes it hard and the loss of culture and literally being displaced on another continent and like in some ways we've had to like physically adapt to being [00:21:00] on the other side of the world. But I don't know I guess I feel like I respect that like my and understand my experience because I am still a same race adoptee is not comparable in that way so I don't really feel like it's my right to take up space in their specific adoptee groups.

It's, it has been hard finding like an intersectional space for me of like international adoptees and adoptees that are over here exploring consciousness and want to talk about all of the feelings and things, cause, in my experience, I haven't found a lot of Russian adoptees that are over here on our side of adoptee land.

Haley Radke: Exploring the complexity of adoption and the ethics and such. I am curious and let's talk a little bit more about that. Because in the ethical, and we're unethical side of adoption. I know that many adoptive parents [00:22:00] have pursued or did pursue international adoption from Eastern European countries, especially in the decades we're talking about here in the nineties, in order to have white children, at a good rate.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So have you thought a little bit about that?

Svetlana Sandoval: Oh, totally. And my parents have verified that for me. And part of me is thank God you didn't try to adopt another race adoptee, because that just would have been such a horrible environment. And now we know like the outcomes and extra trauma of like transracial adoption.

And then there's added complexity of yeah, I was white, so I could blend in somewhat. More of this blank slate, not adopted daughter.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I I know there was a lot we've criticized Korean adoption many times on this show for their exporting of children, but I know that was happening a lot in [00:23:00] some of the, those countries too. I won't speak specifically to Russian adoption because I don't know, but.

Svetlana Sandoval: I think there's a same level of white saviorism in international adoption. It was like we were being saved no matter where we were coming from. We were being saved from a like I said, I've seen others refer to us as refugees, like it was saving us from Russia.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: The same way it was saving us wherever else the other international adoptees were being done.

Haley Radke: So from the collapsed USSR, the poverty,

Svetlana Sandoval: yeah,

Haley Radke: All the tropes, stereotypes that you can think of. Okay. I know you're one adoptee. You're not speaking on behalf of all Russian adoptees. Why do you think that there are fewer Russian adoptees speaking publicly and critically about adoption?

Svetlana Sandoval: I think there's probably several [00:24:00] reasons, but I guess my most general, guess Is I know that I really rejected my heritage and culture when I was little because it was just these like really broad stereotypes that I mentioned earlier and there was no curiosity there or really any redeeming qualities or places that I saw my culture being portrayed in a positive light that made me want to explore it.

So my guess is maybe there's just this internalized shame and I mean for me that also made me like ashamed of like adoption and being adopted and I just wanted to not be adopted and I don't know I can only assume that maybe that's a big reason that they're not exploring all of that because I think if you start to explore your heritage and identity then you it's goes in hand but then you have to the next part of that maybe is exploring the adoption piece and how that has formed you.

Haley Radke: So as you've unpacked [00:25:00] more and more of this, are, have you, how do you unhook this skewed view? you've had from the constant diet of American media about the Russian stereotypes like you listed off before. Like, how do you unhook that for yourself?

Svetlana Sandoval: For me, my family, just knowing my family has just humanized this before what was just an idea of Russia and like getting to know them and having connection with them and sharing recipes with them and cooking their food. And that's really, they're my bridge to humanizing this part of me that before was just stereotypes.

Haley Radke: And now that you've shared a little bit publicly about being a Russian adoptee [00:26:00] and we're in a time where Russia is not only portrayed as from, movies as the big bad, it is in the news all the time. Because of the war. So how are you able to interact with people who may criticize you personally for the fact that there's this world event going on that you live in the States you have nothing to do with? Like it's, you're very separate from.

Svetlana Sandoval: It's, fortunately, I haven't had any big confrontations yet so far.

I know some people that have, but at the start of the war, it was like, couldn't be a worse time to be, like, reclaiming my heritage and being like, I'm proud of who I'm from and I'm, want to explore my heritage for all these things, because literally no one wants to hear [00:27:00] how excited I am to be Russian right now, and it's tricky, and I definitely have evolved and have come to a place to allow myself space to explore and celebrate my heritage, but it does still feel like, I have to be sensitive and careful what I say and how I express my pride because of what's going on.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Svetlana Sandoval: But yeah, it's just so out of my control. It's just horrible timing.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Svetlana Sandoval: To be excited.

Haley Radke: Worst timing. And speaking of travel there, like I went and I was looking on, I'm like, oh, restricted. It's not recommended.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, you can't even. You can't even buy plane tickets from like the main, if you just search plane tickets and go on Delta, whatever the major airlines are, it's no flights, sorry, no flights available at this time, it's like absolutely restricted.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Svetlana Sandoval: There are ways, but in general, it's a big red flag, don't do it.

Haley Radke: Right. What's the [00:28:00] recipe that you got, were shared that you made, or just one?

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, so for my birthday last year, my, Grandma and I both made her Miedewijktoort. It's this honeybee cake. And I know this is common for a lot of adoptees, like just hated my birthday. Didn't really know why for a long time, but just hated it.

And since my reunion this year, like everything has been a big first celebration. So it was like my first birthday since finding my family and really felt like the first time I could celebrate it. And I made her recipe, and my babushka made the recipe in Russia, so we got to be, virtually connected through that, and that to me was just so sacred.

And it also, it was early on in our reunion, and it also just verified for me that it was as equally important for them, finding [00:29:00] me, as it was for me to find them.

Haley Radke: And what do you think of the cake?

Svetlana Sandoval: Oh, it's delicious. I love it. It's like a, the Miedewijktoort is it's a traditional recipe and her version's a little bit different than what you would buy at the Russian deli.

But for me, that's makes it even better. That means it's, my grandma's.

Haley Radke: Authentic. Yes. Oh, that's so special. Okay. So your name at birth was Svetlana and now it's Svetlana.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Did you grow up as Svetlana?

Svetlana Sandoval: Absolutely not.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: No, they, my adoptive parents changed my name. I was Elizabeth.

And somewhere around high school, I started going by Lana. It's like I was like trying on this like more Americanized version of my Russian name.

Haley Radke: Okay, so you knew?

Svetlana Sandoval: Oh, I knew what my name was. And then I like, started trying it on in high school, but I totally denied it. People would be like, where'd Lana come from? And I'd be like, I don't know. I think I [00:30:00] heard once that Lana Del Rey's name is Elizabeth. So maybe Lana is a nickname for Elizabeth. So I totally tried to disguise it and whatever, but it was, I was totally just trying to try on this part of me. My friends called me Lana. My teachers called me Lana. My family made fun of it and it didn't feel good after a while and then by the time I was like getting married and I just didn't want to explain my name, so I was like, I'm ditching this. I'm going back to Elizabeth. It's easier for everyone and now I'm like, I just want to hug my teenage self and be like, no, you knew who you were.

I wish I had felt supported to explore what my name meant to me at that time because I decided to take back my birth name after I found my mom and you know she passed on her name to me and it's like I can feel a change in my nervous system in the places where I only [00:31:00] exist as Svetlana. There's only a couple of those places right now because I'm still navigating the, I'm still new to the name change within the last year, so there's plenty of places where people don't know what to call me.

But in the places where I'm only Svetlana, like it just calms me and soothes me and I feel it in my core and it's this is who I am. And it's really frustrating too trying to explain to people they, when they look at me and are like, oh, that's so radical. You've changed your name. Like, how do your adoptive parents feel about that?

And I'm like, no, that's not the crazy part. I'm just taking back what was mine. I've always been Svetlana.

Haley Radke: I've always been Svetlana. I love that. You said you knew what your name was. How did you know what your name was?

Svetlana Sandoval: My parents told me. They shared that. Like, when I asked, I really don't remember the conversations were short and not too in depth, and I think they would tell you it's because I didn't ask more, and I would say I didn't feel like I [00:32:00] could ask more.

But that was just one of the things I knew along with being adopted was that was my name.

Haley Radke: How is your relationship with your adoptive parents?

Svetlana Sandoval: Continuing to evolve and change.

Haley Radke: You're a mid twenties girly married reunion. It would be anyway.

Svetlana Sandoval: Changed a lot just in the past year, I'd say, since my reunion.

I was you know, I'm pretty typical terrified to tell them that I was in reunion, but they've mostly been they have been really supportive. There have been moments where, I wish they had have could have shown up for me in a different way or asked more about my family primarily is like where I feel the gap sometimes is it feels like two separate things.

And if I don't volunteer information, they won't ask about it. It feels I don't know. If you don't talk about it, we won't talk about it because we don't want you to feel like you have to talk about it. Again, it's this cycle [00:33:00] sometimes. But, it's been interesting for me, too, because I always felt like I had a pretty strained relationship with my, particularly my adoptive father.

But, recently, it's really been cool because he's connected with me and has seen my story as an immigrant because he's a first generation immigrant. And so it, I just it's totally been a surprise for me that he has, understood and I feel really seen and heard from him in my need to go see my family eventually and he's just yeah, of course. Absolutely. Like it makes sense to him. And we've, connected in that a little bit over food too. And yeah, that's

interesting.

Haley Radke: So you talked about this desire to go and meet your family. And I've heard this rumor that you can keep [00:34:00] your Russian citizenship if you're an international adoptee from Russia.

So they've sent you off abroad somewhere, whatever country, that you have Russian citizenship until you turn 18 and then you either have to accept it or deny it. I don't know.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. So this was. This is news to me.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. I'm going to give you a little bit of background here on my adoption agency.

My parents were told when I was naturalized as a U. S. citizen, my Russian citizenship was renounced, so I was only a U. S. citizen. Wasn't the case. I'm going back here. Again, to give a little context, like my adoption agency was actually shut down on a federal case in 2016. Most of the charges were fraud related.

I've talked to some other adoptees that were adopted through them too. And we have a lot of shared accounts of like our parents stories of the blatantly unethical practices and [00:35:00] bribery that was done at the time.

Haley Radke: Whoa.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. So it's not really surprising to me that my parents were not told the truth about my citizenship status.

But it's you know, there's no handbook. So I'm just figuring this out as I go along. So you are we have like birthright citizenship. You are still a Russian citizen. No one else can renounce it for you so it's like literally impossible that anyone else could have done that only the individual can do that over the age of 18 or to travel you would have to confirm your Russian citizenship with the embassy or consulate that your state's assigned to, and then go through another, once that's confirmed, process again of renewing your Russian passport, because neither place right now recognizes the citizenship in the other.

So I can't travel to Russia as a U. S. citizen. I can only travel as a Russian citizen with my renewed valid Russian [00:36:00] documents.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: So if you're a Russian adoptee, you may want to look into this if it's of interest to

you.

Svetlana Sandoval: I am, and all the forms have to be completed in Russian. So I'm working with this agency in Chicago and they're helping me fill out all the documents and everything, but it's such a long process and there's no definite timeline here. The citizenship portion can take three months, it can take six months, it could take a year, and then when you fill out another set of forms, again all in Russian, send it off to the embassy, then you have to make an appointment and go in person to the embassy or consulate, and then again you wait another three months, six months, a year, so there's no definite timeline.

And that's, devastating and frustrating to not know when I'm ever going to see an end to it.

Haley Radke: And just doing that impact in any way your U. S. citizenship?

Svetlana Sandoval: No, not [00:37:00] at all. U. S. citizenship's pretty, I don't know, simple. We're, as long as you're actually, naturalized as a U. S. citizen, not, Russia can't do anything to change your U.

S. citizenship. I just can't travel legally there as a U. S. citizen, which is, it's wild to me, like my husband, he was born in the U. S., he could technically, political situation aside, get a visa and travel tomorrow, because he was born in the U. S., so he's only traveling as a U. S. citizen, and I can't, because my passport says I was born in Russia, so.

It's wild.

Haley Radke: Okay. Yeah, that is very interesting. I've heard from a few different adoptees who are trying in some way to get citizenship in their country of origin and for reasons it's always so complicated.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, I know, especially with the language barrier. It's I'm so nervous to go to my appointment at the embassy because I have to be able to at [00:38:00] least request a translator, which I hear they're supposed to provide for you.

But I'm like I should be able to explain myself a little bit and ask for the translator at least.

Haley Radke: And there's still a, there's a Russian embassy in the States or more than one.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, there's a couple consulates. One was shut down a few years ago. There used to be one in Chicago, but I believe there's three altogether now There's one in I think Houston then New York, which is the one I my state's assigned to so I'll have to go to New York and then there's the embassy in DC.

Haley Radke: Wow. All the things I never knew and we're recording in 2024.

Svetlana Sandoval: Could change.

Haley Radke: And we're not lawyers. We actually, I don't know what you do, but I'm not a lawyer.

Svetlana Sandoval: I'm not a lawyer. No.

Haley Radke: So we're not giving advice here, but yeah. Okay. So you had assistance with your search, but now I understand you are connecting with other Russian adoptees and helping with what you can now that you've navigated some of this.[00:39:00]

Svetlana Sandoval: I have found some Russian, there's a couple, a few, maybe Russian adoptees that I've really connected with. I think maybe this is repetitive to what I said before, but the specific specifically Russian adoptee spaces and communities just have been a little disappointing for me in that not a lot of exploring the adoptee consciousness and I have to remind myself there's no right way to be adopted. It's all different. It's all nuanced. You're not supposed to feel any certain way. But for me, I find more community and validation of my experience in the general adoptee community. But I have a handful a couple of Russian adoptees that I've been able to share that with, which has been cool.

And then I am also, I haven't done a lot yet, but I started volunteering with Adoption Network Cleveland and helping them because they do search volunteering. So helping them, like providing all the [00:40:00] information I can to help Russian adoptees specifically navigate starting the searches now that I have a better grasp of the language and how names work and how some of that searching can be done. On their own.

Haley Radke: Again, I know you're not an expert in all things Russian adoptee. Just throwing it out there because I'm curious. Do you find that a lot of Russian adoptees would have paperwork that has a birth parent name on it? How are people mostly finding? Can they DNA test? Is it? No. Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: No DNA testing. I'd say most of the time, from what I have seen, people have some document with a birth parent's name and date of birth,

Haley Radke: whether or not they can read it.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Svetlana Sandoval: And then there's also in Russian names, you have the first name and then the patronymic name and the last name. So there's a whole, this whole other part of understanding how the the patronymic name is in the place of what we would have as a middle name.

And it's usually, [00:41:00] it comes from, it's a derivative of your father's name or grandfather's name traditionally. So also from that, you can decipher maybe a grandparent's name or a father's name. Usually there's a name, DNA testing. No. I did 23andMe initially and got nowhere. I've got, 5th, 6th cousins. They don't have the same DNA testing.

Haley Radke: Unless you're lucky enough that someone has moved to Europe or North America or something, Yeah. Sure. If they've sent out other Children to be adopted out didn't help you find them either. It just helps you find your connections. Okay. Okay.

Interesting. I'm glad you're in community. And thank you for sharing your story and some of your expertise now on this topic, is there anything else that you [00:42:00] wanted to make sure you shared today with fellow adoptees or fellow Russian adoptees or anything like that?

Svetlana Sandoval: My hope for Russian adoptees is that, they come over here and explore like adoption land too. I wish I saw and heard more Russian adoptee voices. I remember when I was first looking for adoptee community, I was like searching for Russian adoptees on these podcasts like Adoptees On, and I don't know. I hope my voice is that assurance for someone else who doesn't see someone else over here from Russia. So.

Haley Radke: I'm gonna just make a little guess. I don't know if this is the case or not, but I'm guessing it's because you're all so young still.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah and there's this other factor that there's not gonna be more of us, right? Like they were cut off. So it's like this is it. Which is a good thing, but no, let's not internationally adopt maybe but yeah, it's limited and this is what we've [00:43:00] got. So this is what we have to work with.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So I'll say the thing that, that you're hinting around at the Russian adoptees that I have interacted with most online, there is still just mostly gratitude and rainbow heart eyes over the whole thing.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yes.

Haley Radke: And, like you said, people can feel any type of way they want about adoption.

That's fine. However, I think, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, with that prejudice that is built in North America surrounding our media intake as Russia as the big bad, it's, it must be easy to be like, oh, thank God I was saved. Out of Siberia or wherever.

Svetlana Sandoval: No. Yeah. No. Yeah. I'm like trying to dance around it and be nice to my fellow Russian adoptees, but that's totally the case. It's like this gratitude and [00:44:00] yeah, it's, it goes hand in hand. It has to with this perception of we were saved from these stereotypes of Russia,

and maybe my case is just unique, and I'm seeing it through my other heart shaped glasses, but like my family knowing them has just verified for me this is not a better life.

This is just a different life. This is just an alternate life that I'm living.

Haley Radke: Wow. Thank you.

Svetlana Sandoval: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I, you mentioned earlier about the Adoption Network Cleveland. And I was going to recommend that because you wrote a piece for them, which is really great. We'll link to that in the show notes for folks.

Lost and Found Heritage, an International Adoptee Journey. And so you chronicle some of your story for us and some of the things you've changed your mind about upon, about, through reunion, but they have this Monday evening speaker series that I've gone to a few of them and I didn't realize [00:45:00] the whole thing is on YouTube, all the recorded discussions.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. That's awesome.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So they have fellow adoptees on, but they also have other folks on who've got books or documentaries or things. The ones I went to, there was a few therapists who've been on our show before who've been on and I went to see Ann Fessler who wrote The Girls Who Went Away and I really enjoyed that conversation.

That was in 2021 Svetlana it's pandemic times. But it's so good. Have you been to some of those?

Svetlana Sandoval: I have. Not as many as I would like, but I it was a few months ago now. Susan Kiyo Ito is on there, and they've had a really good lineup this year.

They've got some other good ones coming up, and it's free. It's virtual. You just sign up, register online, and like you said, they're all available afterwards, too, on the YouTube.

Haley Radke: So we'll link to the YouTube playlist of the ones that are recorded and their current and upcoming events so you can see who's coming, but I really like that they focus on just like a variety of topics that, oh, [00:46:00] many of us would be interested in whether it's searching or yeah, emotional support or I saw some, they've got some donor conceived things happening.

And yes very good. Okay, that's our joint recommendation. But what else? I know you had one more thing you wanted to tell us about.

Svetlana Sandoval: I wanted to recommend Michelle Zauner's memoir. People might know her as jbrekkie or from the band Japanese Breakfast. Her memoir is Crying in H Mart, and it's not adoptee specific, but her memoir is about her connection through her heritage food, and she talks about the imposter syndrome of when you lose a biological family member not feeling fully your heritage enough to fit into those immigrant spaces anymore, and it just really resonated with me, and I'd like, think it's a good resource for other adoptees who feel that imposter syndrome in their heritage.

Haley Radke: Is there something that you think, I'm going to talk about food again, is like traditionally Russian that you're like, [00:47:00] I know this is like their favorite thing, but like I can't. I should though because I'm Russian.

Svetlana Sandoval: Totally. Luckily, I actually have genuinely enjoyed things. Most of the things that I've made, there is this recipe I have not made yet.

It's this like fish milk casserole. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm going to make it eventually, but we'll see. And my uncle recently showed me this it's like very Soviet era food. I don't know how else to describe it it's like chicken Jell O in a mold and it's literally like chicken, shredded chicken and Jell O.

Haley Radke: Reclaim your heritage, if you must.

Svetlana Sandoval: I think I'll just save that. I'm like, I'll wait for that one. You can make that when I go there. I'm not gonna do the jello and chicken, but yeah,

Haley Radke: Oh good. I'm glad I asked. All right. So where can we connect [00:48:00] with you online? If we would like to see photos of you trying fish milk casserole,

just kidding. Those aren't there. Those aren't there.

Svetlana Sandoval: I do. I mostly share like on my Instagram about like me exploring my heritage through food and stuff. That's my primary platform. And I'm @mynameisstill_Svetlana. And then I will also leave you my email address to put in the show notes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah. Thank you.

Haley Radke: It's been so good getting to know you today. I've really enjoyed.

Svetlana Sandoval: Yeah, no, it's absolutely been an honor. Thank you so much. I am just honored to be your first Russian adoptee. So thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Thank you so much for hanging with us today. I really loved my conversation with Svetlana and I actually follow her on [00:49:00] Instagram. I found a lot of amazing, interesting adoptees on Instagram. So if you want to follow along with what's happening with Adoptees On and any new show news, we will post that on Instagram.

You can find us @adopteeson and if you know another adoptee, perhaps one that is also from Russia, would you consider sharing this episode with them? They'll probably find it super helpful. And thank you so much for listening and bearing with my voice and my little pup noises in the background.

Thank you for listening. Let's talk again very [00:50:00] soon.

279 Reshma McClintock

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/279

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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. Oh, it is such a delight to get to share this interview with you. Reshma McClintock, the producer and subject of the film Calcutta is My Mother is back with us today. Reshma is a transracial adoptee from Calcutta, India.

And this incredible film documents her return to Calcutta for the first time since her adoption. And she would tell you it also depicts a portion of her journey out of the fog. I received permission to share the audio from her trailer and I'm going to play that for you here just before we get into the conversation about her story, some of her experiences in Calcutta [00:01:00] and some tips for transnational adoptees about preparing for a home country visit.

We also get to talk about her upcoming documentary screening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 4th, 2024, which I get the honor of hosting the Q& A for that event as a moderator. And so consider this my personal invitation to you to come and join us to see the film and hang out with some fellow adoptees.

Before we get started, I want to also invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community which helps support you and the show 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. We're going to start with the trailer. Let's listen in.

Reshma McClintock: I'm thankful to have been adopted. [00:02:00] I'm lucky to have been adopted, but one is not better than the other. I don't think the alternative would have necessarily been terrible, and I think that's really hard for anyone who is a non adoptee to fully understand. I'm

35 years old. And I'm coming up on the 35th anniversary of the day that I left Calcutta.

I would have loved to have grown up in India. I think. I don't know that. I'm about to experience that and see how it makes me feel. My feeling now is that I'll feel very at home there.[00:03:00]

I don't really know what I'm doing,I am just trying to get an understanding for what kind of life my ancestors have lived and had Rubina and my circumstances been different and we lived here. What will we do? Tell me the other.

I kept thinking about, this is what my biological mother would've done.[00:04:00]

The general feeling I can tell when people see me is that I'm a foreigner. If I'm not connected here, if I don't feel this sense of wholeness, then it might not be coming.

I thought I was going to. I thought I was going to slip in and understand and everything was going to be familiar. That it would be the norm to me like it is to them. Yeah. It would have been easier to not come and live with the fantasy, but I don't want to do what's easier.

I knew I was taking a risk in coming.

Haley Radke: I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On. Welcome back to [00:05:00] Adoptees On, Reshma McClintock. Hi Reshma.

Reshma McClintock: Hi Haley. Thanks for having me again.

Haley Radke: I'm super profesh. I have been fumbling around my words the last couple minutes because we talk on the regular, we're good friends, and now it's business mode. So I gotta get in line.

Reshma McClintock: It's hard. We're pretty casual. So it is challenging to get down to business.

Haley Radke: Focus up. Okay. You've been a guest on the show before several times, even celebrating 100 episodes with me. So I'm going to let people go back to episode 100 if they want to hear your full story. But can you share a little bit of your story with us just to reorient us, please?

Reshma McClintock: Absolutely. I am a transracial international adoptee. I was born in Calcutta, India. In 1980, and I was adopted to the US by white American parents in June of 1980. So I was three months old at the time of my adoption and I grew up in Oregon and I really [00:06:00] had a wonderful family life. My older brother is biological to my parents.

My younger brother was adopted domestically a few years after I was adopted and I really had a very well connected childhood. Really felt bonded with my parents and siblings and extended family definitely had those wanderings of my former life. I thought of it as in two parts and there was this part one that I really didn't know anything about.

However, I really suppressed a lot of that. I grew up in a conservative Christian home, certainly not a very what's the word I'm looking for legalistic conservative Christian home. It wasn't to that extent that I know many adoptees have experienced and I've listened to them share on your show about.

However, it was a very adoption positive home, obviously, which is typically the case for people who, you know, adopt. So yeah, everything in my childhood was about how beautiful adoption was, how wonderful [00:07:00] it was that I was rescued from this former life and that God had bigger, better plans for me than a life in India.

There was never mention of my biological family other than maybe a real sadness for that poor woman, right? A little bit like, oh, you're your mother. She just couldn't take care of you or but never any talk of your mother must be longing for you or is she alive or dead? Nothing to any depth, right?

Like it just stopped right there. We're so thankful she had you. And that was really the extent of it. But most of my life, my existence, my purpose in life in my childhood felt that it revolved around the fact that I was rescued for some greater purpose. And, everybody loves to hear my story.

My parents were very open with my story, too open. And, grocery stores, every time we checked out of the grocery store in Nordstrom, anywhere we went [00:08:00] and again, you have to remember this is the 80s, right? So it wasn't so common. It wasn't as common. Families were pretty traditional. And for the most part, everyone in this family was the same race.

For the most part, there was a mom and a dad, at least, what you're generally seeing, right? In the public, so it wasn't common to see a brown child with a white family necessarily in our area, in our world. I guess I should say that more specifically or centered around my family and the world we lived in.

It wasn't very common, the communities where we lived. So yeah, so my parent, everything was, oh, she was abandoned in India and we, she was adopted. And then it was like, oh my goodness, you're so lucky. You are so fortunate. Oh my gosh, I can't believe this isn't your parents are so incredible. Look what they did.

Are you just so thankful? And I'm talking about literally the lady who's scanning our milk at Safeway, so people we didn't know. And I would just nod and agree and smile and whatever. I remember as a kid that I was always embarrassed by that, [00:09:00] but I couldn't articulate any feelings surrounding that specifically.

That sort of sums up my childhood. Now, saying that my parents overshared my story, I didn't realize that was necessarily hurting me, and they certainly didn't either. And I don't mean to do the whole come to their defense. We didn't know. They didn't know. They were not educated. There's people who talk often about there are adoptive parents

who adopted kids from my specific orphanage in India, who say all the time now, they always say, oh no, we were told we were given really good instruction. And we were told to take these babies home and embrace their heritage. And that was not true for my family. I don't know if that is just a general untruth or if that is something that they just say now to make themselves feel better. I don't know if they really believe that. I, it was not the case for my family. My parents were told, take her home, raise her like you'll raise your white son. It was just, there was no talk of grief. There was no, there was some, a little bit of things here and there in the paperwork that touched on that but for the most part, [00:10:00] these are also form letters, any of the paperwork they receive, they're not specific to each baby, just general things. So anyway, so my parents just didn't know better and they didn't do better. They just, it was a very embarrassing thing for me, but it went on throughout my whole life, frankly, until I got into my thirties.

And now we don't do that anymore. We all, they know better. I know better. We know better. And I can speak up for myself now.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Reshma McClintock: I have the language where as a child, you just don't. And you also, as a child, don't have the authority. I don't think, I don't think you feel like you do anyway. You belong to whoever you belong to, even in a situation where you're not adopted.

They're my parents, they can say what they want, and I'll just have to go with it. So anyway, it wasn't really until I got married that I started my, I know you talk a lot about unfogging on the podcast, and so most of your listeners are going to know what that means. So it wasn't really until I got into my 30s that I started to unfog.

Maybe my late 20s, after I got married and started thinking about the fact that I would someday have a child and that was a real, reality in my life and a possibility is when I really started to think about [00:11:00] where it was I came from and biology and again, these it isn't to say I never thought about those things, but I didn't have language to understand.

Just those fleeting thoughts in my mind about, oh, I wonder, I would hear someone compliment someone else say, oh, you look just like your mom or oh, or my brother. My brother is exactly my parents. He is just like my dad and just like my mom and the genes in my dad's family on my dad's side of the family are so strong.

All the men look the same. It's just very interesting thing. So I was surrounded by all that where other people could see themselves reflected. It just wasn't something I could get. I didn't necessarily even know that I was missing out on that as much. I just felt like it wasn't for me, right?

There were things that were for me and there are things that were not, and I was not fortunate enough to have that thing, right? Oh, in my mind, I put it as simply as, oh, everybody with long hair, wants curly hair, everybody with blonde hair, wants brown hair, those kinds of things. And I thought [00:12:00] for me, I don't get to have this, but I get to have this amazing story and this amazing purpose that nobody else has. So I think you make those concessions for yourself and that's a surviving, survival mode tactic. When I started coming out of the fog, I did it just like everybody else. I slowly started asking questions out loud.

I started writing when I think you and I've talked many times about going back and how painful it is for me to read my early blog posts. When I started writing, they are so syrupy with gratitude, imposed gratitude. And I was, say it was, one step forward eight steps back. Oh, I'm, I am really thankful to be adopted, but I do wonder where I came from.

But that doesn't mean I don't love my parents. And that doesn't mean that I'm not really excited about what my future is. And obviously this was what was for me and blah, blah, blah. So I think that in the beginning stages, that's how you have to come out of the fog. And as adopted people who are you and I, are adoptee advocates, right?

We're out there in this community speaking up for [00:13:00] adopted people and trying to share our stories and their stories and all of these things. And sometimes when we see a blog post from an adopted person who's still fogged, it just, oh, grinds our gears. It's just it can be so frustrating because it feels like it's setting us all back.

However, I have so much grace and empathy also for those people because that was once me. And I don't think for me, I don't believe if I had never started with those syrupy posts that make me cringe now. If I hadn't started writing from that point and that perspective and that place I was in my life then, I don't think I ever would have gotten to where I am now.

So yeah, it's a little painful. It's a little cringy. I don't love it. And I don't love it still frankly I do have minor frustration when someone, an adopted person comes out and says there's two parts to this. When an adopted person comes out and is syrupy and that imposed gratitude, and you can, as an adopted person, see right through it, that can be frustrating, but I have so much empathy for them.

I have less [00:14:00] empathy when those adopted people who're, sharing their imposed gratitude and things. And then they say, I don't know what everybody else is talking about. Adoption is beautiful. It is not trauma. So that's a different thing. So all that frustration I think is warranted. When I was sharing my story in the early days, not to pat myself on the back, and maybe I just didn't know any different, but I certainly wasn't speaking for any other adopted people.

I was saying for me, this is my story. This is my situation. And I'm still really careful to do that. I know there's often a lot of backlash when adoptive parents specifically. I'm sorry to have to just really call that out. But it is true when adoptive parents hear adopted people talk about how they have this imposed gratitude on them.

And they say we weren't you didn't have to be thank, just as thankful as anybody else. But that's not true. Those of us who grew up in homes where we had imposed gratitude know that it was essentially not, I wouldn't say forced on us, but it was, it's like a brainwashing in a way and not that's a brainwashing has such a negative context.

I don't think that there [00:15:00] was like, we will make them love us. We'll make them grateful. I don't think my parents were like, having me listen to special recordings when I was sleeping at night, right? You are thankful to be adopted. You love being adopted. You are white. You are, like your Indian part is left.

You're right. Like there. It's not like that. My parents loved me. They wanted me to feel welcome and they wanted me to feel at home and a part of our family. And that was their intention, although terribly misguided, they just did not know better. And it was really damaging. So there was a lot in my thirties to unpack from that.

I am fortunate enough to have been able to come out of the fog, of course, many steps ahead of my family, but they have all followed. They have all listened. There were moments that were hard when we had these conversations. My older brother in particular, who I just absolutely adore. We have a very close relationship and always have.

He's just wonderful. He had a really hard time. He said some things that adoptees would jump all over him for now, publicly if he typed it on a Facebook post. But he said, I do, it's hard for me because. You're ours. And it [00:16:00] feels like I don't want you to be somebody else's. I want you to be ours. And even that statement, I have so much compassion for that because he also didn't ask for this.

He's you're my sister. To me, this is all I know. He doesn't know what it's like to have a biological sibling. Actually, none of my siblings do. None of us do none. All three of us, none of us have biological siblings who we know. And so to us, this is, we are so close and it's we can't fathom anything different than what we have.

So I can understand my brother saying, and he wasn't saying, don't do this you're hurting me. But he was saying, it's hard for me to think about the fact that you have another family out there because all I can see is that you're mine, that we love you and you're ours. And I have a lot of empathy for that.

But my point being that my family did come out of the fog with me. In that regard, I am ridiculously fortunate. I honestly don't love sharing that some of the time even because I think that is not so common and I really have so much compassion for adopted people [00:17:00] whose families have not come out of the fog, who refuse to entertain their feelings and hear them out because I've been really fortunate in that regard, my even, my husband.

Same grew up with the same thing that the whole world grows up with that adoption is beautiful and it's wonderful and adoptees should be grateful and his family and even they came out of their also conservative Christian, grew up in the same conservative Christian environments. And they also have come out of the fog.

My in laws and my sister in law and brother, it's been really wonderful. And then to see that expand into our friends, there is a stopping point. Certainly we, I've gotten plenty of pushback from people to whom I'm related and to people, many, mostly church people, not all, but primarily, I'm talking like, 90 percent church people, a lot of pushback in that regard.

But for me, it's been a really hard, emotional, but rewarding experience. And that I've, I just recognize my privilege in that, that the most important people to me have come out of the fog with [00:18:00] me. That's really important. In 2015, I returned to Calcutta for the first time as the subject of a documentary called Calcutta Is My Mother.

The film premiered in 2019, and the film initially the intent I went into the film with was to connect to my Indian heritage in a way that I hadn't before. Transracial adoptees you've heard us, you've heard it a million times. We have a very hard time connecting to our race and our heritage, different aspects of our culture.

It's a real, I'm 44 years old. I really struggle with this still today, every day, but I will say that when I went to India, I was really, my, my hope was. I was just so hope filled that I would connect to my roots and this beautiful connectedness would play out in [00:19:00] the film. When I got to India what can will be seen in the film is that it was very challenging.

So I would say the final step of me coming out of the fog and coming into full contact with the grief that is a part of all adopted people and a part of all adoptions. Just hit me in the face when I got to Calcutta.

Haley Radke: When's the first time you went back to India?

Reshma McClintock: When I was 19, the summer after my freshman year of college, I went on a mission trip to India, not Calcutta, but I went on a mission trip to India with a church affiliated with my college in Southern California.

And so that was my first time returning 19 years later. And it was really interesting. It was also I just feel so embarrassed by this trip now, and I, because I went to India with this [00:20:00] attitude and message that I'd been conditioned to carry, that had become my entire identity that I was an abandoned orphan in India, and God rescued me from that place and brought me to America for a better life. Now, I don't know, are we allowed to cuss here? I don't know.

Haley Radke: I'mma beep you.

Reshma McClintock: Because it just, even the beep will give more of an impact than if I don't say the word. Okay. I can't imagine what an I must have sounded like going to India.

And sharing that story to Indian people who live in India and I and nobody stopped me. I cannot believe it. I was a 19 year old idiot. And not that I'm saying I don't I'm not culpable. I said the words I am. But again, I was conditioned to believe that this was my testimony. And then I was encouraged to go to India and share my testimony.

And my testimony was that I was abandoned in India. And could [00:21:00] not survive there and God had bigger, better plans for me than, old crappy India and took me to, Oregon, all the glamour, that's that was God's plan for me and God has a plan for you too. That was my message, essentially.

How embarrassing. It's terrible. It really, apart from just, my own, pride. It's a really terrible message. It is not how you lead people to the Lord, if that's what your goal was. It is not appropriate. It is not kind. It is not true. It's really interesting when I think back to that first trip.

Now, you're really going to hate me when I tell you about the second trip, because I did that twice.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Okay. I don't think I knew that. Did I know that?

Reshma McClintock: I went back again 10 years later in 2009. And all that growth I really would have liked to have seen now looking back between 2019 and 2000.

Oh, sorry. I was wrong. 1999. Oh man, I got all my dates wrong. Went back in 1999. I said 2009. I can't believe what decade we're in. It's just unreal [00:22:00] to me. So I'm having a really hard time getting my head wrapped around it. In 1999 is when I went back the first time and I was 19. I then went back in 2009. For the second time.

Now, I was starting to unfog a little. I had gotten married a few years before. Like I said, I'd started thinking about having children when I went back, but still, I was still conditioned. Not still, I was absolutely in my conditioning. I did not share my story as much on that trip.

So I did not go around India, again, not to Calcutta, but other parts of India. I did not go around India that time saying, God rescued me from this place where y'all have to live. I'm sorry. I didn't say that it wasn't that as much, but it still was. Now, see, here's a part where I would love a transracial adoptee to reach out to me and tell me what the word is, because I've never, I've had a hard time settling on how to say this.

I still feel like, maybe you would say Christian saviourism, because I was going to say white saviourism, but I'm not [00:23:00] white, but again, I grapple with that too. I, it's still, the attitude on these mission trips is white saviourism. And again, I guess for me, I would call it Christian saviourism, since I'm not white.

But it was a lot of that and I just don't subscribe to that anymore. I personally, I'm not a big fan of mission trips. I think there are ways to go and help in other parts of the world that don't have to be like, we're here because we have something better than you. That attitude and that air that surrounds Christianity often.

I shouldn't say all the time, but most of the time and I stand by that. I, so yeah, so I struggled that trip again, wasn't as much about me. The first trip I felt like it was like all about me. The second trip was less about me and I was coming out of the fog and I was in that trip, I was really starting to ache for India.

I really envied every person I came in contact with. I was just like, can you be, every woman I'm like, can you be my mother? And, again, this is like way back in my mind, not, this is not in the [00:24:00] forefront of my thoughts. This is just in there swimming around loosely and I get a glimpse of it here and there.

And I would think, oh, but I had this just urge to curl up in a ball and have, some Indian woman rock me. Which is, sounds insane. Adoptees get it, but generally to the rest of the people, it sounds insane. So I found myself very envious on that trip. On the first trip, I think I was just so arrogant, just so terribly arrogant.

And it's just brutal. I just, I really do not like that person. Even though I was conditioned to be her, I'm just, I'm hard on her. I don't care for that. So the second time I just wanted to, in some ways it may have even been like the first part of a lot of what happened in Calcutta is My Mother, this desire to connect to my culture.

I didn't connect when I was there on that mission trip. But part of that was because I was just reminded constantly also that I'm not a part of that culture anymore. I was, that was removed from me. And it's just felt the people viewed me [00:25:00] as the white people who I was with. And so did I also viewed myself as the white people I was with coming into, I don't know it was like, it's almost like I have this picture in my mind that it's like, when we show up in these places, white people are not, but Christian people, it's like, we're like, wearing diamonds and pearls and it's oh, but then we put your clothes on, right? But we're going to wear your clothes and we're, we're going to dress like you and look at us, coming down to the little people, right?

That's what it feels and I just hate all that. So I, but I was a part of it, a big part of it twice.

Haley Radke: So there is this teaser for the film on Facebook. We can link to it in the show notes and it's a clip from it and it's, you're waiting at the airport for your luggage and you have tears running down your face as you're waiting.

Reshma McClintock: It's going to make me cry right now just thinking about it.

Haley Radke: I watched the trailer three times this morning before we talked and I cried and I was like, oh my gosh. [00:26:00] This is separate. This is different from the trailer. This is a teaser. And you have, you're talking about everything's waking up right as we're getting here when you're in the cab and this morning ride and you say, "it's very metaphorical to what's happening.

It's just cool that I'm coming to start this new journey. I'm excited. I'm so happy to be here." And from your descriptions of your prior trips, like you were going in with a very different attitude. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then also, I want you to bookend with, are there things that you would give advice to other transracial adoptees to have in their toolkit if they are planning a trip back to their country of origin?

Because it sounds like the first time, couple times you went, you maybe didn't have any of those things. And I don't know if you had those things in place for filming either.

Reshma McClintock: Yeah, that's a really great question. And that teaser is [00:27:00] really what's interesting Haley is I going into this trip.

I had, I was about 30 percent unfogged. I would say I had really started because, and I say in the bulk of that 30 percent was me saying, and this is how the film got its name. Calcutta is My Mother. It's a, unique name for something. And what's funny is Michael, my director of the film and I, we agreed on that title and we joke all the time. We're like, that's not what we would have picked like when we started. It's like it's not even but it came from a conversation he and I had about what I was hoping to get out of the trip and I told him I cannot get to it is so unlikely that I know that is so unlikely I can get to my Indian mother to connect with her to meet her to know who she is to any, anything.

It is super unlikely. And I said, I need to go to Calcutta because it's as if Calcutta is my mother. It's the closest I can get to [00:28:00] who I was supposed to be. Who I was born to be, which, for the previous 35 years of my life, I'd been told who I was supposed to be was not someone who grew up in India was someone who grew up in America.

And so that was a really hard. So I'd already, I'd started this metamorphosis and that sounds really dramatic. It may actually, that makes me very emotional too, to think about because breaking off from the person I was in my childhood and growing up and when I was 19 and went to India for the first time and when I was 29 and went back to India that I, there was this there's so much grief surrounding that because they had to break off this identity that I had so fully embraced because it wasn't who I was anymore. And worse than that, it wasn't who I was ever supposed to be. It wasn't just like a change oh, it wasn't that straightforward. It wasn't, [00:29:00] I, was on this path in life and then realized, oh, I need to alter course. I need to be on this path in life. It wasn't that seems, and not that there aren't challenges when that happens to people as well. I think people can relate to that. Probably most people can relate to that. I was on this path and I needed to change courses for me I was taken from my, the right path, thrown onto a totally opposite, different path, told to be grateful for that path, to embrace it, to make that path my identity, and then realized, oh crap I never was supposed to be on this path, I have to go, I have to abandon all these things that I only know, and I have to try and get on a path that I was on pre birth, and for the first three months of my life.

So I think that for me, it's really, that part of it is really hard to talk about. So this metamorphosis had started where I just started thinking and [00:30:00] talking about my Indian mother. And I had never done that before in my 35 years in life. I had not had conversations about my Indian mother or how I felt about her or what I thought about her.

Frankly, I didn't know how I felt about her. I didn't know what to think. I had always just been told to be grateful she gave me life. And that was it. That was the end of it. We never talked about and it's so insane to me now, and I know you too, Haley, you relate to this also. It is so weird that nobody talks about our mothers.

Because in our society, I'm going off on a little bit of a rabbit trail here, I'll come back around, I promise. You know I'll get there. Back to your question. But it is so weird and dumb and yeah, I'm using those very simple words because that's how simple it is that no one talks about our mothers in a culture, in a society where we are obsessed with motherhood and all, everything that goes into it, whether women can or cannot have children, how many should they have?

Should they work? [00:31:00] Should they stay home? What? It's the hardest job in the world. That's not that hard, right? Like all these different things we it is. We are inundated with talk of motherhood. And all these people, and I count myself among them before I pre fogged, we had the nerve to just bring in these kids, to take them from their mothers, no matter what the circumstances, I don't care, don't give me the whole, you were, they couldn't take care of you, they didn't want you, they were on drugs, they were dead, whatever, all these things.

We had the nerve as a society, as a world obsessed with motherhood, to take babies from their mothers and never speak of their mothers. They're the only moms who are not, deserve to be spoken about? I don't, it makes no sense, it is so dumb. And again, I am using that simple of a word because that is how simple it is.

It blows my mind that until I was 35 years old, a woman, at that point I'd had a child, until that point, I had not really thought or spoken, not thought, but had not spoken mainly about my mother. And no one asked me, not one [00:32:00] person in, of all the people I've run into in all my life, I've traveled all over the world.

I've done so many things in my short years on this earth. And not one person has ever asked me about my Indian mother. And that blows my mind. It's, Terrible. It is something we have got to rectify. I don't know. Anyway, so that's my rabbit trail on that. So the part, first part of my metamorphosis had started when I think, I remember the bedroom in my house I was standing in when I was on the phone with Michael and I said, it's the closest I can get to her.

Calcutta is my mother. And he was like, that's the name of the film. And I was like, eh, it's not that great, but he was like, no, it is because of what you just said, the, it fully encompasses the purpose of why we're going. And now I really do love the title of the film because it is spot on. Going back to your original question 37 and a half minutes ago, I am sorry, but I am when I'm standing in the airport like my feet were on the ground [00:33:00] in Calcutta and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is starting and I was flooded with the primary emotion. I didn't really even articulate it in that moment.

Specifically. I was just very emotional. The thought in my mind was like, oh, my gosh, I'm here on the ground. Where she is or was, and I just kept connecting that to my mother, like for the first time in that moment, it felt like now this is may not even be true, whether she's living or not, or whether she's in India or not right at this point.

I don't know any of that, but just the feeling that we are in the same place again for the first time. And the last time we were in the same place together was in India when she gave birth to me. So to me. It was just this like punched me in the face feeling and then when we did get in the car and in the cab and it was like 5am 6am and we've been traveling for, 30 hours and we were exhausted, but it was the city was [00:34:00] waking up and I did feel myself waking up and starting this journey and waking up and very hopefilled in those moments which is where I think, the joy came from and I kept saying in those moments. I'm so happy and I did feel really happy and I the reason for that is because I who wouldn't be happy to go and connect to something they felt they had lost and so it was very, the anticipation and the joy just in the privilege because most adopted people don't get to do this. So just recognizing that I get to do this it's going to be documented for me. I didn't even think about who was going to see the film, at that point, just for me, even that I would have this documented was so exciting. And what I think is so beautiful about that is that it's hard for me to watch.

It's hard for me to watch the film in general, but that anticipatory joy and excitement and naivete, it's hard to [00:35:00] watch because I knew what was coming, just that there was going to be some harder things around the corner some unraveling, but. I also think that is probably really common and more common for adopted people who are going, quote, home for the first time.

So I was really I really felt that joy and that happiness. But I also just didn't have a clue and no one, had prepared me for it. And I didn't know anyone who could prepare me for it. So I say that in that way because I'm sure there are adopted like now I could help prepare. I cannot bring someone give someone everything they need but even watching the film, I think will help specifically Indian adoptees to understand a little bit more about what they're going into walking into. But I at that time didn't know anyone who I could reach out to say, hey, tell me what this experience was like for you. So I was totally clueless in that regard when I get asked a lot, I get a lot of emails from adopted people and just [00:36:00] other friends and family and people asking, what would my advice be to someone preparing to go home for the first time to their country of origin?

And I, 1 thing I didn't do, I wish I had done was met with an adoptee and adoption, competent therapist, not just an adoption, competent therapist. I absolutely believe that transracial adoptees for the most part, need to see a transracial adoptee therapist. One is you will spend a lot of money just explaining to that, just to get to, we're not even, just giving the history and saying I have these feelings and this is why, to a therapist who is not also a transracial adoptee.

Now an adoptee therapy, for a transracial adoptee, the next step closer which is also wonderful, would be just an adoptee therapist, right? Who could be white, not necessarily transracially adopt, right? And that and that certainly is not to knock them. I just really, I also think that domestic adoptees should see a domestic adoptee therapist.

To understand [00:37:00] there are elements of being a domestic adoptee that I cannot understand. My younger brother, of course is adopted domestically and there are things about his experience that are so foreign to me. I just cannot wrap my head around it. I listen and agree because, however he feels and whatever, that is his experience and it's, and we're very similar in our feelings on adoption, but it is still very different.

I would recommend a lot of therapy. I would also recommend talking to someone who's gone before and another transracial adoptee who's gone back to their country. That being said, those of us who have gone, we can't share everything with every person before they go. So I truly, I know I have disappointed people who have reached out to me saying, oh my gosh, I'm an Indian adoptee I'm from her same orphanage, or our stories are so similar. I want to talk to you because I want to go back to India. What do you have to tell me? What should I do? And the truth is the, my first instinct is I want to tell them everything [00:38:00] the reality is. I don't have the time or the even emotional capacity to do that for everyone.

So it's a really tricky thing to say. Yes, I would encourage you to talk to someone who's gone before and I would encourage you to understand that it is not their job to share absolutely every detail to plan your trip to get, it just there are that's a very limited thing someone can do and should do for you. Because I also, looking back, hindsight being what it is, I would, I could have gone in more prepared. At the same time, that was my experience in every part of that unpreparedness was part of it.

Haley Radke: As a film viewer, I think we benefit from your unpreparedness.

Reshma McClintock: And you know what's interesting here? I love that you said that you always say the best things because you're absolutely right. The film, and people have heard me say this a lot, the film is incredible. That is not me tooting my own horn. It just came together incredibly. Michael Hirtzel, [00:39:00] who this is his first film, he's directed and produced, did an extraordinary job.

He is not adopted. He grew up in a conservative Christian culture the same way I did. We grew up together and he came out of the fog throughout this whole process. In fact, Haley, I think he came out of the fog, started coming out of the fog before I did. I think he, and again, he's not an adoptee, but non adopted people also need to come out of the fog.

We're all in this fog together, right? So it's different for adopted people, but everyone's in it to a certain extent. So Michael, I think started coming out before I did, which is really interesting. And some of that, some of his pointed questions and the conversations we had really helped me. And I will forever be grateful to him for so many reasons surrounding the film and what he's done.

But also even for that, for just his insight into something that, frankly, as a white male, it should be so foreign to him. But the fact that he had this sensitivity and understanding and empathy to stop that even he was [00:40:00] like, what? No one has ever asked you about your mother, just that he had that same what is happening. This is wrong. All of those, things. So you're right. The film is so good and so powerful because it is the realist thing I've ever done in real time you see me and walk through with me learning very shocking things about my history. You learn what it's like to try to connect to a culture you were taken out of and stripped from what the feelings are surrounding that.

I just really put it all out there and Michael put it together very well. So you're it's, I love that you say that the viewer benefits from me not knowing from my naivete and my, just not understanding, what I was walking into. So for adopted people, I think everyone should go home when they're ready.

I think it's a really important thing that is even for domestic adoptees. I think you go to that hometown. I think it I think those things are really important. I think you [00:41:00] getting physically literally going to your roots is a really important part for unfogging, but also just an important part of our journey as adopted people.

And so I think the number one thing I would recommend for an adopted person, a transracial adoptee or domestic is to go see an adoptee therapist. Our friend Chaitra has an incredible list on her website. I know you share that resource many times. She's an Indian adoptee and she's an incredible woman and therapist and resource.

But I I think. That it would be the number 1 thing and the 2nd thing is, yeah, just to talk if your adoptee therapist has not also experienced going home, it would be really good to just have a conversation, but just to understand going into that conversation that it will be brief. I'm happy to briefly, share with someone, hey, here's a couple of tips I have and I wish you the best, but I cannot walk you through it.

I'm still walking through my own pieces of that, right? Mine's, it, the [00:42:00] journey doesn't, it sounds so cliche and cheesy. I hate when people say things like this, but I'm going to say it anyway, but the journey doesn't end. It's a lifetime, it's a life sentence. It will go on forever.

But I, I know I've, like I say, It breaks my heart. I have definitely disappointed adoptees. I know who just didn't know that who had high hopes and talking to me that I was going to hold their hand through it. And really, at the same time, I want them to know it's a gift to you that I'm not going to walk you through it because even an adoptee who was born the same year and the same month and, same circumstances as me and India, right? Their experience is going to be different because their childhood was different and their relationship to religion are different or the relationship to their story are different and their personality is different and their mental health is different.

So I can give you so really it's. You know me sharing here are a couple quick things. Those are the these are the general things the specific parts of it are not going to be the same for everyone. There are adopted people who have gone back to their birth country and got exactly what they thought they were going to get out of it. I [00:43:00] absolutely believe that to be true. There are people who have done that and got it gotten exactly what they signed up to get what they thought they would get from it. That was not the case for me and that doesn't mean, that's not all, there's a negative connotation to that. That's not all negative.

I really believe in the grand scheme of things I absolutely got exactly what I needed. It just wasn't what I thought I was going to get. And that's why the film is so surprising. It's funny. I lived it. And then once Michael, after years of editing, he did that all himself. I watched the first rough cut, I was surprised, and it was about me.

I lived it, but just seeing it come together as this whole picture, because, you're not thinking. Today when I'm talking to you, I'm not thinking about what I said to you on Tuesday, right? So watching myself go through this process and this metamorphosis on screen is really, frankly, I think it's beneficial for everyone, but it's a really wild ride.

And again, that's none of those things are to compliment me. It's not because oh, everyone should see my movie. It's not that, but I think [00:44:00] the film in my opinion is one of the best pieces of art out there. Art, meaning writing, blogging plays different things that people have put out there.

I think it's one of the best to show that really captures the experience of a transracial adoptee and what we've lost and how that impacts our lives.

Haley Radke: The quote from the trailer, I think this is the whole crux of it. You say, "if I'm not connected here, if I don't feel this sense of wholeness, then it might not be coming."

Reshma McClintock: Yeah. Yeah, and that was like a real heartbreak moment for me because I didn't go there to get my heart broken. I went there for that peace I didn't know I didn't have as a kid, but realized I didn't have as an adult. Yeah, that was a really, those moments, and that's what I mean about the power of the film, that sitting there in that moment, it was just [00:45:00] exactly how I felt.

I just, I felt really defeated and oh, I came for this one thing. This is the only place I can get it. Exactly. If it isn't here, it isn't anywhere. And if that's true, and again, that's at a certain point in the film, at that moment I thought, if that's true, I think we're about halfway through the trip, if that's true right now, if this isn't coming here, then I might not be able to get it anywhere.

And where do we go from here? And who am I? I think that's another thing that was really, I think that was a really hard thing for a lot of my family to understand. I even had a friend, a very close friend, after one of the screenings, I won't say the whole quote from the film because it gives some things away, but at one point in the film I say, I don't know who I am.

Am I this? Or am I Reshma? with this story, or am I Reshma with this story? Because I grew up with Reshma with one story, and now it feels like I'm shifting, and this is now my story. And I, how do, I don't know who I am. And I remember a good friend, a [00:46:00] well meaning friend, who I absolutely love and adore, said to me you know who you are, after the film, literally minutes after the film ended.

She was like, Reshma, you know who you are. And I was like yeah, I didn't know what to say, so I would thought, she doesn't get it, obviously, and that's okay, that is totally okay not everyone will, and I, not everyone will and not everyone needs to, that's okay, I don't fault her for that, but I remember, she said three times in a row, but Reshma, you know who you are.

And I said, yeah, I said, I don't know that you fully understood exactly what I was saying there. And if you're not adopted, especially, I don't think you can understand how much our story means to us. Even though I also think that's dumb a little bit because people love stories. People love life stories of heritage, right?

We, again, going back to this note, we love ancestry. We love the DNA test, except when it comes to adopted people, why do they need to do the test, their DNA? It's hilarious. If it, if it weren't so terrible, it would be hilarious. [00:47:00] But, for comic relief, it's funny. That, in, in this society that we're so obsessed with being Irish and it's every, geez, every, proud American I've ever met is oh, I'm my proud Italian family or proud Irish family or whatever.

And it's just but heaven forbid, I'm the only brown one here and I'd like to know where I came from. I, it's just. So funny to me. And I do think that's important. I think if you're Italian, you should get to know your Italian and you should, be able to find that out and learn about all your story.

But it's just, it's for some reason adoptees are exempt from that. People just think except for them, because clearly there's, that wasn't the story they were supposed to have. So for me, saying, I don't know who I am without my story. Nobody understands that, and that doesn't hit harder for anyone than an adoptee.

Haley Radke: Yes. Can we just briefly talk a little bit about adoption in India and from India before we talk about our recommended resource? And I was just at a conference this weekend [00:48:00] virtually attended. There was an academic that presented and she was researching, she's a daughter of an adoptee, and she was researching this time period, I think it's say 20s to the 60s, where there is a group of Indian people who have relocated to Malaysia and a lot of them adopted children of Chinese descent. And her paper she was presenting was like, oh they've really how do I say this? They've really just like fully integrated into Indian society. And they, they dress in Indian clothing, and they're just culturally Indian. And often they will marry an Indian man, often, always, I think she said, they'll marry an Indian man.

And she, she was painting this it's a perfect adoption scenario picture, which, I'm sure some of the [00:49:00] people listening were like interesting.

Reshma McClintock: Is it?

Haley Radke: Is it? Yeah. And the other thing, this is a funny thing she said, was that there are some of the adopted children or adopted people will go on to marry into the adoptive family so that, because they're not biologically related, and so that the, it's complete, like it's like now you're really part of the family, anyway, whatever you think about that.

So I asked her, I was like, hold on a second, in the Q& A time, respectfully I asked, I was like, I thought that adoption in India was actually really frowned upon. And that's why so many of the quote unquote orphans, Indian orphans are adopted abroad. And she was like I'm talking about this little group here, but let me make a comment on actual Indian adoption and what [00:50:00] she relayed and I've been researching since then because I knew we were going to have this conversation is that traditionally Indians would not want to adopt from a different caste and so a lot of the babies that are brought to an orphanage in whatever manner. They wouldn't necessarily know which caste they were from, and so that was a barrier.

Also systemic colorism is an issue. So there is a worry about the child's skin color and how fair or not or dark they are. So do you have any comments on what do you know about that sort of general thing about it? Because I really thought I was correct in that there's more international adopted out Indians than there are adoptions domestically within India.

Reshma McClintock: Yeah, that absolutely is true. What's interesting is was the person, this person who's the daughter of an adopted, an adoptee, is, are they a domestic American [00:51:00] adoptee?

Haley Radke: No, she her name is Theresa Devasahayam, and she is a academic from Singapore.

Reshma McClintock: Okay.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Reshma McClintock: So her, the parent who is adopted not of white race, not.

Haley Radke: That's right.

Reshma McClintock: Okay, sorry, I was trying to think of an appropriate way to say that, but. Okay I was just curious about that. Interesting. This is a trick question a little bit, because there's some things I don't really want. There's some pretty,

Haley Radke: oh yeah,

Reshma McClintock: a couple of jaw dropping moments in the film.

Haley Radke: Without the spoilers.

Reshma McClintock: I can answer. Yeah, no, I know you're, now you're feeling like you shouldn't, no. No, I can answer, but there are, there's, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, but there are a couple of jaw dropping moments in the film where we find out some very surprising information about many of us who were adopted.

Yes, from what I understand, now I'm not an expert on this subject, just of what some of what my research and what I was told when I was there as well. And frankly, she probably generally, not probably, she, I'm sure she knows more about this than I do if she's been researching it. But yes, [00:52:00] the adoption from everything I've been told is very frowned upon.

And a lot of that, yes, has to do with the caste system, has to do with colorism. Those issues in India are very alive and present today, still. Even more when you look back to the 80s and 90s where so many of us were adopted out. So the caste system is a really big part of that. Also, there's just generally a lot of which again is funny that nobody else understands it or so many people don't understand but there generally is just so much pride with genetics and they care very much about having a boy and then, having, sons over a daughter difference.

There's so many scenarios enmeshed in that one thing of having children, and a woman who can't conceive in India, there's a lot of shame surrounding that, and so it's like, what's wrong with you? So in India, it just seems there's, often in those situations, very much pointed, if a woman only bears daughters, it's what's wrong with you?

Why is God not blessing you with a, with a son? That's, we need men, right? That's the whole thing gender issue is [00:53:00] huge. There's some really interesting documentaries about the female genocide in India, actually. They're devastating, but they're fascinating and, important to learn.

Yes. My understanding, though, and that is interesting about this specific group. I'm glad that she clarified that's really about that specific group. Because I have not heard another story like that where it's just open and totally accepting. And the community is totally accepting.

What I think is interesting is I do, I've heard many stories of people who, Indian people who will adopt domestically, but they don't tell their families, right? There's, it's a secret. So it's oh, we went away and we had a baby. So it's just that part is really interesting too, because, people will be like, it's the same race, so it's really not that big of a deal.

It's still, it's the same, that's domestic adoption. You're a domestic adoptee. You understand it's, you still want to know who you came from, even if you're with people who, are, have the same skin tone, and even within that skin tone, there's others, there's so many important, critical things in understanding who we are.

Yeah, I think that. Some of those stigmas come up in the film. There, there's a doctor [00:54:00] who I met who was a doctor at the orphanage that I came from, not while I was there, but a few years after. And then for many years until the orphanage closed. And he provides some really interesting insights for us Indian adoptees.

And that's actually something I really struggled with because so many of us have very similar stories. We, from the orphanage, I came from IMH International Mission of Hope. So many of us came from there. And many of us who are connected in the community online and all of that. And, I really struggled with in telling my story and in revealing some of this information.

I am also most likely not in every sort of situation, but generally sharing the story of other Indian adoptees. And, I really struggled with that element of it because the information was hard to hear. So I've gotten a lot of what's the word? I've gotten a lot of feedback from Indian adoptees, and I've not gotten any negative.

Like, how do you share this, information? I didn't want to find out like this or something, right? I haven't gotten anything negative. It's all been very positive. But it was [00:55:00] certainly something I struggled with. In the beginning, but there are some really interesting stigmas and decisions that were made based on those stigmas for all of us that come up in the film that just blew my mind.

I don't even think, I think in the movie, I think in the film, you can see the shock, but also I still, I also would say to the viewer, and again, you understand this because you've seen it, but the, the oh my goodness, I cannot believe this is a real thing. I cannot believe this is what happened.

Those moments are so fascinating and wild because, going back to your original question, Indian culture is so fascinating and it's there's so many parts of it that are tied to this history rooted in this caste system and the different, which we don't, we have it in America too, right?

It's everywhere. But in India, it is so in your face. It's obvious and evident that some people are better than other people in the view, the eyes of the community. Or some people [00:56:00] have, if you're a woman who can't have a child, no matter what caste system you're in, then there's something wrong with you.

And oh, in her past, there must be something, there's all connected to their this culture. And I'm certainly, my intention is not to knock Indian culture, just to explain it. And, Even that, it kills me a little. I don't know all the things I want to know because I didn't grow up there and I can, I will never really fully even understand no matter the research, no matter the time I put into learning these things, I'll never really know to the depth of someone who grew up there and, lived it every day in and out.

Yeah, it's really fascinating. It's a really fascinating thing to that on one hand, they sell adoption with like such pride oh, look at what we have. But at the same time in their own country, it's we don't , shame.

Haley Radke: It's interesting to think about how many late discovery or never discovery adoptees they're creating there.

Reshma McClintock: Yes.

Haley Radke: Yeah. That's really what my research has confirmed for me too. Okay, I have so many more questions for you. [00:57:00] And unfortunately, we're gonna have to postpone that till after the screening of your film in person.

Oh my gosh, okay, this is what we're recommending. Like you have to come and see Reshma's film. There was a little delay. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, that's, yeah, we initially planned the screening for 2020. Everybody's favorite year to, get out and do things. It originally was planned for May of 2020.

Of course, everything had just shut down and the theater, reached out and said, we're not open right now. And of course, we wanted everyone to stay home and stay safe and do what was best for them. So we had to postpone. We certainly didn't imagine it would postpone this far, but they're, scheduling these things are complicated with the theaters and we've got a deposit, but then are we, things have changed and ownership change and, all these different things that can happen happened so we and life, right?

Also, I'm, a wife and a mom and Michael is a, the people, everyone who works on the film has families and real [00:58:00] jobs and, lives. So it just, it took longer than we had planned, but we promised Minneapolis we were coming and we are, and I'm so excited about it. I'm thrilled. I've never been to Minneapolis, just as a side note, so I'm excited about that element of it.

But yeah, we will be in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 4th. The screening starts at 9:30, promptly at 9:30. The film is two hours long. Go to the bathroom before. You're not going to want to miss anything, but it is two hours long. Doors will open at 9 a. m. And then we'll do a Q& A after I'm so honored and thrilled that Haley has agreed to come to Minneapolis with me, and she's going to be our Q& A host and moderator.

And the Q&A's at all of the screenings have been, we've screened in six cities already, and they're, one of my favorite parts, obviously the film is the, main event, but I love people have just come up with incredible questions, and I love the opportunity to get to explain and expand on certain elements that, of course, we didn't have time to get into [00:59:00] every detail of everything in the filming process.

Geez, we did get into a lot. It's two hours long, but there's more. So I really enjoy the Q and A. I think it's Everyone knows Haley is the, I was telling my daughter, I was telling Rubina, I said Haley is a professional question asker. It's like she's a professional interviewer.

She's our Oprah. I don't know if you take that as a compliment or not, but anyway, so I, was explaining to her how incredible it is that you're going to be there. To ask the questions and to host that and I'm really excited about it. So yeah, the delay was unfortunate, it happens.

And I'm now just thankful that we're going to be there. And I think it's going to be a really, the theater is incredible. The feedback has been so wonderful and people have been so kind about, the wait. I understand people bought tickets, years ago, right? And it's is this ever happening?

But people have just been so warm and excited. And I am. Just thrilled. I just cannot wait. And to have you there with me again on a personal, of course, we're dear friends, but professionally, it's just like we got Haley. It's incredible.

Haley Radke: I can't wait. I can't wait to see it on the big screen. [01:00:00] I'm very excited and we would love to meet you all. So come to Minneapolis. We'll get to say hi to you or, as you come in and we'll be so excited to see you and do the Q and A at the end. Yeah.

Reshma McClintock: I know I was teasing earlier that I was going to put up a post that was like, come get your picture with Haley.

Haley Radke: No.

Reshma McClintock: It's true. There's going to be people there for that.

Haley Radke: We're not doing,

Reshma McClintock: but I'm like, she's not going to sign off on me putting a post out like that to promote the screening.

Haley Radke: No, we're not doing photos. Are we? Is that a thing? No.

Reshma McClintock: Oh, people are going to want their picture taken with you, Haley.

You're a big deal. I want my picture taken with you.

Haley Radke: I'm sorry. This is a movie all about you.

Reshma McClintock: Listen, there's going to be some photos.

Haley Radke: Okay, so if folks want to come, the info is at calcuttafilm.com. If you are listening to this after the fact and the screening's already over, you can follow along there for future screenings and where it will be streaming in future.

Reshma McClintock: All those things are coming.

Haley Radke: Yes. Everything's coming. You don't have to [01:01:00] ask. You can just check calcuttafilm.com. And where else can we connect with you online, Resh?

Reshma McClintock: You can find me on Instagram or Facebook. I'm there a lot. Too much. No, I'm kidding. But yeah. And you reach out to me at my email, which I'm sure you'll post. And via the film, we've got great people working on the film so that I don't have to be doing some of those things, which I really appreciate all the people running the behind the scenes parts of that. And anyway, yeah, but I love to connect. I want to see you guys in Minneapolis. I'm really looking forward to it.

Haley Radke: Please come. We want to see you. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing with us today, Reshma.

Reshma McClintock: Thank you so much. You have been so good to me. All these years, like I say, professionally and personally, I can't, we don't have time to get into personally, but anyway, I'm so thankful. And yeah, so thankful.

Haley Radke: Okay. I feel that I missed giving my big [01:02:00] plug for Calcutta is My Mother. So I was allowed to view this film and I cried. It is so beautiful and emotional and interesting and thought provoking and Reshma alluded to this, right? But she discovers some like jaw dropping information that once the world gets to see this will be very impactful.

I really hope you join us. If you are in Minneapolis or in the area, please come. We would love to see you. It's amazing to get to meet fellow adoptees in person and we probably won't have a ton of time together, but I'm really excited about seeing the movie in a room with so many adopted people and getting to have a Q& A live in front [01:03:00] of all of you will be so amazing.

I can't wait. I keep saying amazing. It's going to be amazing. It will be amazing. I'm really thankful. I'm also so thankful that Minneapolis is only one flight from Edmonton, so I don't have to transfer. I don't have to, change planes. It's going to be great. One flight, no stop. And yeah, I'm super excited to get to meet some of you in person very soon.

Okay, please let us know if you're going to be there and comment on Calcutta is My Mother socials or the Instagram post for this episode to let me know that you're going to come so that I can make sure to say hi to you and tell Reshma that you heard about her screening on Adoptees On and that would be so awesome.

Okay, thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again very [01:04:00] soon.

278 Adrian Wills

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/278

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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 guest is fellow Canadian, award winning director and filmmaker, Adrian Wills. Adrian has a brand new documentary out called A Quiet Girl, where we get to follow his journey of a public search for his birth mother and experience every new discovery alongside him.

Today, we talk with Adrian about how his friends prompted his search and what he's discovered about the people of Newfoundland through his time there. We also discuss how we can often create these mythical personas of our biological parents from a few short sentences in our non [00:01:00] identifying adoption information.

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. We have an extra treat at the end of the episode. I was able to get permission to share some clips of audio from A Quiet Girl with you, so stay tuned for that. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Adrian Wills. Hi, Adrian.

Adrian Wills: Hi, Haley.

Haley Radke: I would love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.

Adrian Wills: I'm adopted from St. John's, Newfoundland. And I was adopted when I was three months old into a family, a multicultural family in [00:02:00] Montreal, Quebec. My mother was from Malta and had emigrated to Australia and at 21 had decided to see the world and met my adopted father who was from New York and they met at Expo 67 in Montreal and in, in this, in the early seventies, they decided to adopt a child and that was me.

Four and a half years later, they adopted my sister. And my sister is also multicultural in the sense that she's Inuit. She's from Baffin Island, which is Nunavut. And yeah, I grew up with as an adopted child. And many years later, I found myself back in St. John's, Newfoundland with some friends, and they were really good friends.

People that I had known for, all my life, probably like 35 years or something. I'd gone to high school with them and grammar school with them. And they said, we should go looking for your parents. And I thought, no, we really shouldn't [00:03:00] because I was completely 100% you couldn't be more in the fog than I was. And here I was in Newfoundland, which is actually a maritime province in Canada where there's a lot of fog. And so I was it was summer, there wasn't any fog, but I was definitely still there emotionally in terms of my adoption. So my friends said, we should do this almost like it was a parlor game or something.

And I went along with it because I thought it would be over pretty quickly. And so Saint John's is actually a pretty small. There's only Newfoundland's only 500, 000 inhabitants and Saint John's is pretty small. And there's only, there were two hospitals. There's the The Grace and St. Claire's.

And I was, I thought I was adopted from The Grace and then found out that actually I was adopted from St. Claire's. I found myself at a warehouse where all the records for both hospitals were kept [00:04:00] and I said to the woman there I'd like to see what's going to happen with, I was adopted here.

Maybe you can tell me some information. And I gave her a name, and the crazy thing was that my adopted mother had been given a name, which was my name at birth, but they had made a mistake and sent it to her, as opposed to sending it to her as being the adopted mother, they sent it to her as if she was the biological mother, and so she had this name, and I actually didn't just for whatever reason I didn't actually know that this was really the name, but I used. It was a name that I had kept it was the name Wayne Cousins and I used it and I went in and I said okay this is my name. I think here's my birth date I think I was born here And I expected that was the end of it and we were on our way to a pub for lunch and ten minutes later the phone rang and the woman said, I found your records. And so all of a sudden that changed everything for me because [00:05:00] I started to realize that I actually had been someone else.

And so I, we, screeched the car around. And I showed up and I got those records and I started tearing through them. And I realized, I was looking for my biological mother's name and it wasn't there, but I saw this name for baby boy cousins, which was who I was. And something changed in me at that moment.

And I realized this fog kind of started to lift. And I realized that these questions I've been having my whole life about having been adopted and all the experiences I'd gone through, I'd been tamping them down. And now they were just screaming at me. And so I spent the week there in Newfoundland and people would come up to me.

We started telling people the story and people would come up to me and they would pull out their cell phones and they would say, oh you look like you could be this family, or you look like you could be that family, or, and it was overwhelming, to realize that you could have this whole [00:06:00] other history.

And so I went back to Montreal and I'm actually a filmmaker. I've been a filmmaker for about 20 years or more. And I'm a filmmaker who's made a lot of films, documentary, fiction, all different types of films. And I, I'd followed a lot of people's stories, including I worked a lot with Cirque du Soleil for many years.

I was used to having made films and I had also made a TV show called Who Do You Think You Are? Which was like a show about taking celebrities and taking them through their gene, genealogical experience. So I came back to Montreal and this idea was really getting to me and I realized that went to see the National Film Board in Canada and I said, look, I have this idea for a film.

I think I'm going to go on radio in St. John's. There was a radio station there that's been there since 1936. And I'm going to go on radio and I'm going to say everything that I know about my adoption, which is very little. And I'm going to see what kind of [00:07:00] response I get. And so I went on radio and I started to read my non identifying background summary, which I'll read to you quickly.

It was, it was biological mother, 20 years old, 5'7 tall, weighed approximately 150 pounds. She had brown hair, hazel eyes, and wore glasses. She was of Irish English descent. She was one of five children, all of whom were in good physical health. She had completed grade eight in school and had been employed in a service occupation, laundry work, since leaving school.

She was a quiet girl who did not talk very much, nor did she find it easy to express her feelings. The biological mother felt that she was unable to provide a good life for her child and wanted the best for him. She saw adoption as being the best way of providing him with all that she would like him to have.

And so there was something about the way that was written that it felt to me like a story that I wanted [00:08:00] to understand more about. I felt like the person who had written this knew her and that there was something emotional about this. And so I was hoping I would get this information and what ended up happening was COVID hit actually an hour after I had done this radio show Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada announced that COVID was taking over all of Canada and my message my radio show got shared like 20, 000 times in Newfoundland And three weeks later, I got contacted by someone in my birth family.

And that became a two year process or two and a half year process of making a film where I tried to learn as much as I could about what I thought was originally going to be just my history. But I realized more and more, it was about me wanting to connect act was my birth mother.

Haley Radke: You know what I got stuck on, Adrian, was [00:09:00] you said you were in the fog.

How did your friends know you were adopted? And what was the pressure there? Were you just this is where I came from?

Adrian Wills: I was something like, I've never shied away from the fact that I was adopted. It was just something, it was like saying, I've got brown hair. Or I wear glasses, but it didn't have any emotional real implication for me, or I wasn't allowing it to for many different reasons.

And my friends, because they were such good friends of mine I call them my brothers a friend of mine, John and my friend, James, John and it was just, I was, we were always together. And I think he knew what, I think he wanted me to go on a search that maybe I hadn't even decided I was going to go on.

Because it was strange because the whole way through this process, the two and a half year process, I would keep having calls with John about, the different things I was learning about this experience, because I was trying to figure out [00:10:00] how to deal with it, because the thing with this film that I made a film called A Quiet Girl.

The thing with this film is that I really realized early on, but I didn't want to make anything like what I had made before in the sense that I wanted to be, I wanted people to really understand what it's like not to know and what it's like to search and the only way to do that was for me to only discover everything on camera.

So it put me in a position where I realized, this story was a, it was a dormant story in the sense that it had happened many years ago. But I realized that I was the person who was going through this experience in that. But I wanted people to understand really what that's what it's like to be adopted, what it's like to really have these questions, how fundamental these questions are to us.

And I wanted people who were adopted to be able to see the [00:11:00] experience and get something from it, but I also wanted people who weren't adopted to understand a little bit about the process like how it feels to be adopted. As you well know you've had so many different people tell their stories.

Every story is completely different, but there's a lot of similarities to the stories of what it's like to be adopted that I found anyway, which is there's this sense of there's a form of alienation where there, you feel what you feel or I feel anyway. That I was alone, in the world, and that was okay because you're put in a position whereby you need to it's, in a weird way, it's, I can compare it to passing or something, this idea of passing in a society where you start to pass as somebody who's part of a family, or you try to, feel like you're part of that family, you know that you're different, very different than the people that are around you, you can see it physically, you can see it when you see other people's families, and you see this kind of musicality that [00:12:00] happens, that's invisible between them where they just seem to, there seems to be this, yeah, it almost feels like they complete each other in some ways, even if they don't get along. When you're adopted, there's something different there, and I think you're always aware of that, I think you become hyper aware of it your whole life.

So yeah, I wanted, I wanted people to understand a little bit to I don't know, to pull the veil on the whole kind of process of what that feels like, and especially to search. And the way I did that was. The way I did that was by being as transparent as possible, which was to film every everything I learned on camera the whole way through this experience.

Haley Radke: Why did you choose to go on radio to make your plea to the public versus so many of us we apply for our records and, hope there's something in there or else we're doing our DNA testing and trying to find a search angel to help us put the, tools together to figure out [00:13:00] what it means if you have a fourth cousin match.

It's complicated, but to go on and make a public plea, what was that like? And why did you choose that?

Adrian Wills: I look, it's interesting. I, when I say I was in the fog, I really was in the fog, right? Like I didn't know all of these different things you could do because I hadn't been searching.

So a lot of other people have searched and they have figured out all these things and they've looked into it. I didn't. I fell into this vat of, discovery fundamentally. So I did what I knew how to do, which was I knew how to make films. I've been making films my whole life and it was the way that I've made sense of the world.

My films have always somewhere along the line, they've always dealt with family, somewhere in the film. I made a film where I followed the Beatles Love Tour, L ove Experience with Cirque du Soleil, and I was filming with the Beatles, and George Martin, and his son. And to me, the story I was telling was this story about these [00:14:00] people who had come together and were almost like a family, and now they had lost two of their members.

And that's how I told that story, which was very different than maybe how somebody else would tell that story. And I did it just because that's what I felt, and I went with that direction. So the same thing with this, I the reason is really simple. I was in a pub and a woman came up to me and gave me I was in St. John's and she gave me a can of sausages, little wiener sausages that you put on crackers and she said, this is a Newfoundland delicacy and we have these at Christmas and I want you to have this. And by the way, there's a radio show called Voice of the Common Man. And they used to have people go on and talk about their adoption and ask, the public to see if anybody knew.

And so that was what I had. I was like, wow that makes sense to me. And so it fit with this idea of okay how do I understand the world? I understand it through making a film and [00:15:00] fundamentally I didn't know what I was doing. So originally I thought I was going to make a film about, cause I really wanted to know what it's like to be a Newfoundlander and where am I from? And, all this kind of stuff. So I thought that's what I was doing, and I didn't realize I was really ignorant. Because I was so in the fog that I didn't realize what kind of implication this was going to have, in terms of how it was going to change me how it was going to have me face questions that I never, that I, guess maybe knew existed, but I had never let live.

And all of a sudden, all these things started to live within me that I couldn't explain. I had gone to the Quebec, when I decided, when the NFB said, yeah, we'd like to, explore this idea with you. And there was a whole process, you have to write and, explain how you would make a film or whatever.

And I had gone to see the Quebec government, and I did have a file going, because I was adopted from the Quebec government, and I [00:16:00] also saw the Newfoundland government, and neither of them could really help me, to be honest. The Quebec government was able to tell me that they might have that they think they might have found, my birth father, but that he passed away and that they couldn't give me the name, and so there wasn't much help.

Whereas when I went to Newfoundland and Newfoundland is this amazing province in Canada, there's a famous musical that's been going around North America called

Haley Radke: Come from Away.

Adrian Wills: Yeah, that's what it's called.

Haley Radke: I've seen it, so I know it.

Adrian Wills: Yeah, and Come From Away was in, during 9 11, like three planes landed, or five planes landed in Gander, which is a small airport in Newfoundland from all over the world because they couldn't keep flying.

And the Newfoundlanders all got together and basically spent like whatever it was, five days or a week, putting them up, finding them food, making sure they were [00:17:00] comfortable and treating them like guests. And it was such an impactful experience for all the people who were involved. I think even some people got married and there was a whole experience that happened.

And it was so impactful for people that they ended up writing this musical and people told stories and there was a documentary made about it. But really what it was very illustrative of who the Newfoundland people are. And there are people that are incredibly, there's the expression salt of the earth and that's true of the Newfoundland people. So what I found was that pretty quickly, when I did have these questions that were beating at me or living in me, when I was searching that everybody wanted to help me, and I'm not sure that would happen everywhere in the world, but it happened for me.

And that was such a special experience to have this sense of community in this sense of people trying to help and it carried on while I was making the film. And that was something I wanted to document too, because it was something that I felt was [00:18:00] very much a part of being what I was hoping or what I was learning about to be a Newfoundlander, which is, who I am.

Haley Radke: I find it interesting, the interprovincial chaos of it all with the record keeping because Just like the states, every province has different legislation for adoption, open records, etc. Or if there's a veto or not, and both Newfoundland and Quebec, again, have complicated laws regarding that.

I, it's interesting that your search is crowdsourced. One of the reveals in the, I'll just say this. One of the reveals in the documentary with regards to Newfoundland is that they had a very common, oh, I have too many kids. You ship one off to your neighbor's house or your cousin's house or whatever.

Very communal living plus this [00:19:00] huge amount of infant adoptions. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about finding that you're like, oh, I'm one of many kids who were shipped off in those couple decades, super Catholic province, no birth control, all the classic things.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Adrian Wills: Yeah, sure. It was partly, it was in the beginning as I was still discovering, it was one of the, one of the things I was discovering in the film is I went to see Jean Ann Farrell and she was the, I found like she was the former coordinator of Newfoundland Adoption Services when I was adopted, so she would have dealt with my case and, I went to talk to her because I wanted to know, okay what's the experience?

What, how does this work? And I showed her, my papers, my, the paperwork that I had found in, in that record keeping warehouse and started to ask her about my specific case. And then, she started to tell me that, that when [00:20:00] she got into adoption, that there were hundreds of young children being available on a daily basis from both those hospitals.

And that, that there were so many children, that you, she said that, that they were actually putting ads in the paper to adopt these kids and that they were putting the ads in the paper so that they would, you, the idea would be you would get a, a baby by Christmas. So there was so many which is it's pretty crazy. And then there was this sense of people just being, helping each other because of the sense of community. Taking or I don't know, shipping each other's children or whatever, but more this idea of taking in another child or helping another child or people growing up. So there was this whole case of this occurring all the way through Newfoundland in a way that wasn't that uncommon.

So one of the guys, like the people that I, that helped me in the film was actually a he's a really amazing novelist from Newfoundland. His name is [00:21:00] Michael Crummey. He's written, I think, I don't know, eight to ten books. And his books are historical fiction, but usually dealing with what it's like to be a Newfoundlander.

And he, I went to see him originally just to find out a little bit about what that was like. And then it ended up being that he followed, I went to see him many times because he became somebody who became really invested in my story because he as well had this experience, where when he was young, I think it was his aunt or something somebody made a play to actually maybe take him as a child and that he knew a lot of people who had gone through this. And he felt like it was something that he could speak to and help me and he wanted to help me through that. It is definitely because of the fact that they're Roman Catholic.

It's definitely the whole experience of, what the adoption process is, it is like when somebody gives up a child for adoption, which was like, the nurses wouldn't let you [00:22:00] see the baby. Yeah, it's, these are stories that a lot of people know about, but they're stories that have impacted a lot of different people.

There was an article when we ended up screening the film in Newfoundland, and an article came out and got picked up by 190 papers in Canada. And it was talking about how there's 300, 000 children people from, who were adopted that are still searching in Canada that want answers.

So the story that I was following, which was really individual, my individual story was really, I think is actually a story that a lot of people have experienced. And I know that because when we've screened the film, people have come up to me and talked to me about their experiences.

In fact, it's, it was the most bizarre thing when we would screen the film, we screened it all through Newfoundland and it's screened in different places. And we were doing it with something called the Nickel Film Festival. And they had come up with this great idea of having a counselor after the screening on hand.

And so I was, I'd never heard of that. [00:23:00] And and yet when it's screened, there were people going to see the counselor, either walking out of the film or going to talk because they had their stories that they wanted to reveal, it was the craziest experience was when the film would finish playing, people would come up to me and then they would just download these secrets to me that, they've been keeping for years and years and hadn't been telling anybody.

And now they were telling me in like a four minute kind of flurry. And it was just. It's you know, it's it you realize that you're not the only one searching.

Haley Radke: That statement it's just it's profound right to think about because there's so many people that adoption has touched in a variety of ways and the if you think about the adoption constellation like it's, there's so many people.

I'm not surprised that people are coming up to you and sharing with you because as you said, all your moments through this process are recorded on film and you [00:24:00] present this incredibly vulnerable Adrian to us in so it does feel like a very intimate look into your life. One of the things you share in the film is that you go, you went through a really dark period of depression while making it.

Are you comfortable talking about that? And before you go into that, this whole thing started as on a whim with your friends poking you. And so one of my questions was going to be like, how did you prepare to search? Were you prepared? And I don't know, do you wish you had prepared in a different way?

Adrian Wills: Yeah, I didn't. I wish, do I wish I'd prepared in a different way? I once I started to decide, or once the film started to be made and once I started to, because I was learning everything in real time, I didn't know what I was getting into. So I didn't know what the story was going to [00:25:00] be.

I didn't know what I was going to find. I didn't know anything. It was like being completely blind. And I remember saying in the beginning that I thought this is going to be like going from the dark into the light. That's what I'm hoping. And I think in many ways that did occur, but I was really in the dark for a long time.

But again, I think that's what people have felt, or at least that's what I felt, and I wanted to be honest. That was the thing, if I was gonna make a, I've never made a film about myself, I have no interest. I'm not like a big, I'm not on Instagram, I'm not a big social media person, even though I've made a lot of films and stuff.

It's yeah, I'm actually very I don't know what the word is, but circumspect or where I'm I, I treat my privacy with a lot of respect. And so to do this, I, yeah, I didn't know what I was getting into. I had no idea, but I wanted to be honest. And that was something that was something I was very, cause I thought if I'm going to [00:26:00] do this or if I'm going to let people into any part of my life or whatever I discover, and I have to honor and respect everybody who's going to be part of this experience.

Then I have to do it in a way that at least the one thing I can offer is honesty. And so that's what I did is I was honest all the way through. And unfortunately for me, that honesty had effects that I didn't expect. So yeah, there was a massive depression that I went through that I ended up recording parts of.

Because when you're adopted, at least I can speak for myself, you create myths, you create myths about. Who are your parents? I remember being a little kid and thinking that Han Solo could be my father and that all three of the Charlie's Angels could be my mother.

And, it was this idea of being able to conjure up whatever I wanted in terms of who they could be. [00:27:00] And when I started to, when I saw that, the, that form, like I saw my birth records. It got, it was all of a sudden, it was like getting closer and closer to the myth. It was like actually being able to maybe make something real.

And so I didn't know what I was going to be making real, what I was going to discover. But what I ended up doing was, there was so much that I ended up having to grieve while making this process. And that led me to a lot of depression. And that, that grieving comes from so many different experiences, but it also comes from all the things that you've missed and what you've been hoping for and what your whole life have there's been pendrils of wanting this experience of being held or touched or spoken to or loved by what you'd conjured up as mythical characters.

Haley Radke: When did you first receive any of the non identifying information the paragraph that [00:28:00] contains that really beautiful phrase a quiet girl

Adrian Wills: Yeah, the crazy thing is I think I've had this for a long time I think I had this and the name for a long time.

Like it was part of my records. It was like, I was like, oh, I think I've got something. It was in a word document somewhere. And then I'd found it and it was like, it was typewritten. It looked like it was typewritten. I think like I'm estranged from my adopted father, but I think, and that happened in my early twenties.

But I think prior to that, I think he might have given it to me because it looked like it was type, typewritten in his hand. So how he got it, I don't know, because I'm estranged from him and with my adopted mother. Yeah, it's a long time ago and also, life changes a lot of things and it changes people's memories and so it was like one of those things that I just had, but I didn't, first of all, I never knew I was going to use. And second of all, I didn't know what it meant. And it was only [00:29:00] literally when I saw that birth record. I don't know how to explain this, but when you look at your birth records and you see another name, it takes, it's this really strange experience.

Where you go into another universe where you realize, my God, I, there's so many other things that could have occurred and that they're not just, and I, like I said, I work in fiction and I work in documentary. I work in story. And all of a sudden it was not, yeah, it wasn't a story.

It was actually real and that there were probably real people that were associated to this and a whole world that I, I'm relatively adventurous in some ways. Like I just jump into things and discover it as I go. And I guess I did that with this too. And maybe it's because if I prepared too much there was a lot of fear.

Involved in this search, there was a lot of fear, because you don't know, you don't know how people are going to react. You're going to see people when you're [00:30:00] very vulnerable and you don't know if you'll be rejected. And to be honest, without being too cross promotional one of the ways I was preparing when I was making the film was I started, I found your podcast.

And I started to listen to all these other people's stories and because I wanted to know a little bit what am I getting into? How bad can this go? Where can I go? And even though I did that it's still I still ended up in places. I didn't expect.

Haley Radke: I was thinking about the non identifying information. I mean before we've ever talked in this is our second time talking but I was I had mine from a long time ago to. And it's funny to think of when the first time I read it I didn't understand that a social worker wrote this paragraph upon, I don't know, how many meetings with someone who knows, right? And they got to put something down. And [00:31:00] yet, I hung on all the words, like I, it's that's all I knew to try and build a person like a human with all their complexity out of this like short paragraph and so I what I was like, oh my gosh, I think in my info, it might have the same phrase. It doesn't. That would be a good reveal. It's not. But you did share yours with ours. I thought I would read a little bit of mine. I think the social worker in my case, maybe it was a little bit vain or something. I don't know. There's a lot of physical descriptions in here. She is described as being well groomed and is very careful about her appearance. She has an oval face, pretty eyes and well proportioned features. She is shy, doesn't like crowds, is considerate, reliable, and dependable. She enjoys reading, drawing, and painting, etc. It goes on a little bit. But I remember, she is shy, she likes reading. Done. Same [00:32:00] person. There's this thing where you like, want to have a mirror. You're desperate for a mirror because you don't have that. And you were describing that so well earlier. About what it's like to be adopted and walk around in the world, but nobody knows unless you reveal to them. I found it so amazing that's what you named your film. This little phrase, because you're reaching for finding her. And how do you build that person,

Adrian Wills: Yeah, 100%. That's exactly why we went in that direction for naming it. That name and a quiet girl just kept coming back. But yours. She was shy, in my case, she was a quiet girl. One, if you think about a woman who's going in to talk to somebody who, and she's about to give up her child, like you're not going to be the most vociferous, right?

Like it's not, that's not your most gregarious moment. That's so obviously you're going to be reserved because there's a sense of are you doing the right [00:33:00] thing? Do you feel like you're doing the right thing? And I only started to see that afterwards, after I had gone through years of trying to put together, like you said, try to build a human or try to understand or all these different experiences.

I only saw it afterwards that I was like, Oh God, what people you would have gone through, the thing I've learned so much from this experience too, is all these birth mothers coming up, like to talk to me and telling me about how they feel. Because one of the questions you ask yourself, I think, or I ask myself is, was this, were you loved or, do they think about you?

Are you, or were you just something that just happened and then they moved on with their lives? And my experience, both from having made the film and also from all the different people I've met accordingly, is that they think [00:34:00] about you continuously and that it's a massive part and that to separate people in that way is like a really massive cleaving for everybody involved.

Haley Radke: How are you doing now that this film is, when we're recording this, it's not quite out for the public, but it is right now, when you're listening to this, you can watch this. How does it feel to have it out in the world for people to learn more about you. You do seem like a private person. You're hinting around earlier.

Yeah, you seem like a private person to me. But this is one of the most deeply personal parts of you that you're sharing with us. Are you doing okay? Like how are you?

Adrian Wills: It's all a process, so when you've made something like this, I don't know how it's going to be seen, my experience so far [00:35:00] has been very.

It's been limited to some screenings and, a couple, here and there if I've attended them, you know, and maybe a couple of people who read an article reaching out to me to say that they wanted to see the film. So I haven't really had an experience yet of what that's of having it out or being part of that dialogue.

I don't know. It's a process. How am I doing emotionally after having made the film is that it had such a massive impact on who I was and who I am in terms of it really changes your life. When you do start to look at these questions square, in the face or eye or if those questions are personified and to actually face them, and I think my experience has been that the more you face things, [00:36:00] the more you can grow.

And so I think that there's a part of, especially if you're searching, I think there's a part that feels incomplete in some ways. And so to try to find any way to start to complete it is not just gratifying, but it actually starts to heal. Something within you, and it starts to sew back up things that may have been more gaping than you knew.

Haley Radke: I'm picturing you discovering the multiverse when you find that name in the papers. And now you're, like, in a whole nother universe. Where you're like, no, this is who Adrian is. This is with some of my pieces and some of this collection of info.

Adrian Wills: Super interesting. It's actually, you don't change who you are because you are who you are. You just don't doubt the same way.

Haley Radke: Very good. You are who you [00:37:00] are. I like that. Okay, so I am, like, unreservedly, absolutely recommending people watch A Quiet Girl. It was so beautifully shot. It is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. I've seen a lot. It's so wonderfully done Adrian, I'm not just saying that because you're there. Look at me. Sorry. I'm going to grab my paper because I want to make sure I cover a couple of things. It's visually compelling, just gorgeous. I love how you said Newfoundland is foggy. Relatable. And you spend your time, first of all, I'm super proud of us for not doing any big reveals. Like you guys are going to discover all of these things when you watch the documentary. But you reveal this deeply personal mystery to us. And in over the course of the time, it's just, [00:38:00] oh, I was just wonderful. I cried. It's just beautiful. And I'm so excited for folks to see it because it is this very unique experience of watching someone come out of the fog, literally, like it's right, even though I don't think there's a shot where you're like actually coming into the fog. But,

Adrian Wills: Yeah, totally. Yeah, the people I worked with who helped me make the film were you know, my editor, Heidi Haynes she and I have made like 14 films together, including everything we'd done, and I kept coming back to her, and so all of a sudden, it was making and the same with the producer, Annette Clarke, and the woman she was working with at the National Film Board, Kelly Davis.

It all became very family like, and it was all people that I really trusted and respected and because I allowed them into my world and like my editor, Heidi, even though we'd worked together for that many years, she didn't know anything about my story. And so all of a [00:39:00] sudden we were in an edit room, trying to put this thing together and it was, that was that was pretty insane because you have to relive the experience, and you have to try to find a way to synthesize it and make sense of it.

But if I didn't have the people. The same kind of generosity of community that I've discovered all the way through the film, and you'll see that when you see the film, is the same generosity I had from the people who helped me make it. And and that was like really necessary. Because otherwise I don't think I don't know. I don't know if I would have been able to continue.

Haley Radke: You get the answers that, that as a viewer, you can come to it and you can know that you will get some answers. And yeah, it's it's lovely as an adoptee watching it. I felt so connected to you and cheering you on and I didn't know what was going to happen when I watched.

I had no spoilers either and I want, [00:40:00] I was just like, wow, this is this is going to be so valuable for our community. Again, to know they're not alone. There will be adoptees who watch this and say, I have had a similar experience and will feel validated and seen. And the way you talked about earlier, you want folks to know what it's like who aren't adopted to know what it's like.

And I really think you got that. I think you really show like what it's like when you don't have answers. And yeah, I hope everyone watches it. It's really tremendous.

Adrian Wills: Yeah, I guess I can tell you it's gonna play it's for free, it's streaming in Canada on nfb.ca. And then it's also available on Amazon and Tubi in the U. S. Yeah, it's, people are gonna get to watch it. Yeah, it's very cool.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. We will have links to all the spots you can watch it in the show notes. So make sure you do that. And what did you want to recommend to us today? [00:41:00]

Adrian Wills: Oh, wow. So when I was making this film, I So I, I like to do, research like I said, I was listening to your show, but I was also watching a lot of other people's films about adoption when I could, and one that I found that really spoke to me was by another Canadian filmmaker. Her name's Tiffany Hsiung and her short film's called, it's like a 29 minute film, it's called Sing Me a Lullaby.

And it was filmed over 14 years between Canada and Taipei. And what it was that she was looking at she was looking, she went for the search not for her own parents but for her mother's birth parents because of the relationship that she had with her mother which was difficult. And she was trying to understand that and I think she was trying to give something to her mother.

And that film, she was so honest in that film and, watching it. So I called her before I was making the film and I, we spoke and she ended up telling me that for her, the biggest part about it [00:42:00] was capturing the authenticity of the moment. And that was the thing that I decided. That if I was going to take anything away that would be that so I would recommend it's beautifully shot. It's a beautiful story Sing Me A Lullaby. And then my other thing would be there's a book that a collection of stories that I read at the time called Family Wanted Adoption Stories and it was edited by Sara Holloway and it's multiple perspectives. It's the adopted child, it's the birth mother, it's people wanting to adopt and it deals with all different themes and it's all true stories. And I ended up using a quote, there was this quote that really touched me when I was making the film and I'll just get it up and I'll read it to you because I thought that this to me encapsulated a lot of what it felt like. And so this is from a story called The Fortunate Ones and it's an adopted child is really a wolf [00:43:00] raised by humans. "We are loved children bastards unrespectable by blood the world has chosen to raise us from the goodness of its heart. The world is under no obligation we are not its kin. Letting this cut both ways through the injunction to honor thy father and mother applies to us only if we choose those terms. We can create our own code, born with no boss. Our parents never gave us life. Our lives are like something found lying in the street. And in our old age, we will not turn into our parents. We are truly, defiantly, one of a kind. We may become monsters, angels, something new under the sun. And ours is the world of magic, fairy tales, and legend. From Thumbelina to Dorothy of Oz down to Jesus. Mythical figures don't have parents."

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. I'm really excited to, to read that collection. I hadn't heard of it when you initially shared with me, so I'm really [00:44:00] excited to order that. Thank you, Adrian. What a pleasure to get to talk to you. You just seem like an amazing human, super thoughtful. My kind of person. Where can we connect with you online and make sure we see all the things you've got coming out in the world and including A Quiet Girl?

Adrian Wills: Yeah, I've got a Facebook group page, which is like Adrian Wills director. And I have a website, which is www.adrianwills.com, but I, like I said, I don't do a lot of stuff with socials. Maybe I'll start.

Haley Radke: Don't do it. Don't. Don't do it. Don't get sucked in with the rest of us. You got to be out there making your art. That's what we need more of in the world. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Adrian.

Adrian Wills: Thanks Haley, it's a real, like it really is a pleasure to speak to you and really your show, like it [00:45:00] really helped me while I was making this because all the other people's stories all their hearts, what they'd experienced, their disappointments, they're also like there's, their triumphs, all of that I took with me. And yeah, I really want to thank you for that because I think you, you do, you have a beautiful show.

Haley Radke: Thank you.

Oh my goodness, I really have enjoyed my time with Adrian. We've had a couple of conversations now and he's just is such a genuine person and at as a fellow creator who is like putting myself out there in the world, I have so much respect for folks who are willing to like, put their vulnerability out there.

And this documentary is just like such a tremendous example of that. I think so many people are going to [00:46:00] feel very moved and really get a deep understanding of what it's like to not know where you're from and to be searching for your origins and like the tumultuous nature of searching for identity. I feel so grateful that we have been given permission to share the audio from the trailer from A Quiet Girl.

So I'm going to play that for you right here.

An adopted child is really a wolf raised by humans. We are loved children, bastards, unrespectable by blood. And ours is the world of magic, fairy tales, and legends.

Adrian is a filmmaker from Montreal, but born in Newfoundland, and he's starting a journey, and you don't know where this is going to take you. [00:47:00]

Early 70s, there were hundreds of young children being relinquished for adoption on a daily basis. Newfoundland's famous for trading children around, right? They just farm them out. Unbelievable I was told that you were in a hospital. No, they didn't tell you the truth.

My biological mother, she was 20 years old. She was a quiet girl. That's your mom. I believe she was a soldier. She did create problems with the family.

Trying to understand what my origin story was, but it's turning into something else. Wait, we don't have any choice but to close the file here. Do you think you should always look for the truth? I think the truth can f you up. But if you're not interested in the truth, then you're not interested in living.

Your best [00:48:00] starting point is with the police. Someone has called in, someone has found her. The way I see it, absolutely everything was taken from her. My journey and her journey have too many similarities.

Haley Radke: You want to watch it now, don't you? We'll have links in the show to all the places you can stream A Quiet Girl.

And I would love it if you would share the show with just one fellow adoptee, especially if you know a Canadian adoptee. I am really trying to reach more Canadian adoptees and figure out how we can build. I'm so thankful for all of you that listen in the States and worldwide. And it is so cool to have so many international listeners.

And it's always funny to me that I have built most of my friendships with American adoptees. So I'd love to connect with fellow Canadian adoptees. So if you just share this with one fellow Canadian adoptee that you [00:49:00] know that would mean so much to me. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

277 John Gallaher, Ph.D.

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/277

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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. You are in for a treat today, friend! We have award winning poet John Gallaher with us. John's newest poetry collection, My Life in Brutalist Architecture, releases this month, and it's his first collection focused in on his experience as an adopted person.

Even though he was a kinship adoptee, he still had to take a DNA test to find the family he was searching for. We talk about DNA, nature versus nurture, his search for the other John Gallaher's of the world, and what reunion really looks like right now for him. Before we get [00:01:00] started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptee on.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, adoptee on.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptee On John Gallaher. Welcome John.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Nice to nice to be here Haley. Thank you for inviting me.

Haley Radke: I'm so oh my god I loved your book spoiler alert before we talk about that.

Please. Would you share some of your story with us?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think as with most adoptee stories I've heard or I've talked to people about there's either the 30 second version or the 30 hour version So I'll try to I'll try to split the difference here with with my lifelong jokes. I think this is also a, maybe it's a coping mechanism that the adoptee becomes either [00:02:00] servant to family or clown.

I tended to go the clown route mostly. So the way I start out my story is by saying that I am my own second cousin. That kind of gives people a kind of a feeling of the within the family part of the adoption, so I actually have a little bit of a written down just so I don't forget. So I'll read just these 2 sentences here.

So I, when I was born January 6, 1965, my name was Eric Martin Enquist, my mother and father were young and they divorced a year after that. He died in a car accident in the summer of 1968, when I was three, a little over three and a half, whatever which coincided with my adoption and my name change to John Jerome Gallaher, Junior, actually.

So the first complication to the story is that my adoptive mother when I was born was my second cousin as well her father and my birth grandmother were brother and sister So that's the adoption part now that the [00:03:00] complicated thing why this was why this became a 50 year journey is that my birth father who died when I was three was the biological link between the two branches of the family and his mother fought with my birth mother's mother and my birth mother over custody and it was one of those families that was who's from which side of the tracks kind of situation in the families and so my birth father's family won that battle, not necessarily for custody, but to actually adopt me out to someone within their branch of the family. Unfortunately, though once that happened and they cut my birth mother and her side of the family out of that adoption, they also promptly died as well.

So then any way to find out any information about that side of the family was gone. So I did not even actually know any of their names. I had when I grew [00:04:00] up knowing I was adopted, of course, because I was three when I was adopted. And I did know a little bit about my birth father's name. I knew his last name.

And but I knew nothing about my birth mother's side of the family. And it was after my adoptive mother died, and I was writing, I write anyway, I'm already writing, and oh, I just, I took the test, I did the DNA thing, and then wrote about it as it unfolded, and then here we are.

Haley Radke: Here we are. Do you consider yourself a kinship adoptee or more of a closed adoption adoptee?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, what does that answer get me? Do I get a free puppy or something?

Haley Radke: Yes, I have a puppy. He's not up for grabs, but he's napping. No I guess what I'm getting at is this was [00:05:00] arranged in the family. This wasn't just somehow you got placed with who happened to be second cousin situation,

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Right yeah. It was arranged and also very, legal and that was one of the reasons why I think that I know so little about my adoption because I think that some of the legal agreements were not followed by my adoptive parents. I think one of them was , that I found out more recently that when I was adopted out, my birth family was under the impression that I was going to be living in the region and that they were going to have contact.

And I think that was part of the reason for the within the family idea. But I was quickly moved to a different state. And all the information was scrambled that got back to my birth family, and all the information was scrambled that got to me as well.

Haley Radke: And was there like fear from your adoptive parents that somehow you would be taken back?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think there was. [00:06:00] They said a couple times years and years later that and there's this thing about being a well I don't that's it. I'm used to talking to people who aren't adopted So I see you say things like there's this thing, you know there's this there are these kind of emotions and things one thinks about when one is adopted. So I guess in speaking to you it's gonna be a little different so I'll say for me, I had a strong feeling that conversations on this topic were not welcome but they weren't silenced.

They were just not welcome, and answers to any questions were pleasant, but wrong and then it continued. And I think some of, I don't want to say it was disingenuous, but everything was just a little bit wrong, which made it impossible for me to do internet research and things like that.

So You know, it would seem so easy. It seems so easy, but it turns out sometimes it's not easy at all.

Haley Radke: Did you know [00:07:00] you were a kinship adoptee?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. You just didn't know the details or the answers you were given were like misremembered or not quite exact.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Right and so it's the crazy thing is, it took DNA research on my part years later to find my birth family as if I was from the other side of the moon or something when really it wasn't that distant but families can be pretty screwy things. They can really lop off a branch of that tree and it just disappears for good.

Haley Radke: So you're a well established poet, respected in the community, have multiple publications out. You're a professor, you teach, all of these things. So imagine writing is just part of your life practice, we'll say.

Did you decide I'm going to write through this, or this is just [00:08:00] what you do anyway, and it just so happens these are the topics you're living, so that's what you're writing.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: That's such a good question. Haley. Why did I start writing in the first place?

I feel I'm not, I don't come to writing necessarily as a writer myself I don't come to writing necessarily for content. I come to it for questions, thinking about things and that turning ideas over. And I've always avoided the direct, conversation about my autobiography in this way, maybe it's fear it, a lot of it was, I think that feeling we have of not wanting to rock the boat with my adoptive parents that tends to happen and over time, I just had to convince myself that my story is my story and [00:09:00] finding it is worth something.

Haley Radke: When you DNA tested, what were your first results? I remember when I did my DNA test, I already knew the answers. I did it for the show to tell people what it was like to spit in the tube. How long did it take you to fill up your tube, right? Jeez, it felt longer than they said it was going to be. That was a lot of spit.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Did you gag?

Haley Radke: No,

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I gagged. I was like.

Haley Radke: It was so nasty. I recorded myself doing it, which was even worse. I know. At audio content that is.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: You did some ASMR.

Haley Radke: Yes. Yes.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: ASMR.

Haley Radke: That's right. I don't think I put all that spitting in the recording, but in the public for public consumption, just for whatever you're going to think of me now.

But So I already knew the answers and so when I opened up my [00:10:00] results, my father and mother were both there, did not expect my birth mother to be there because we have not been in contact for, say, almost 20 years, but I knew my father had tested. So it was like, oh, they're there. What were your closest matches?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah, so it's very interesting. No one that I knew was a match. So no, no one that I already knew. The family I've grown up in, my adoptive family, my last name, Gallaher that's my father's name. And so we did a lot of stuff all my life with his family Gallaher's and people related to Gallaher's.

I'm related to them through my mother. My adoptive mother, so she's the one who's related to me. We did close to nothing with anyone from her side of the family. She already had a difficult relationship, so she always had a difficult relationship with her own mother and with a lot of people on the Sullivan side which is her family. [00:11:00] Her father died when she was three and her mother remarried, and that was difficult. So my adoptive mother ended up running away from home and living with her uncle, who of course is also related, he's related to me. My my birth father was named after him, actually.

But we didn't, we, when we were very young, we did some stuff with that couple, her uncle and her aunt, but that's it. No one else from her family and so that's another reason why this story is it's an inside the family story but it doesn't feel like one because I did not know her family. So yes, and none of my matches were anyone I knew, and most of them were pretty, were fairly distant.

No one was closer than about a second or third cousin. And still, that's still the case. Even though I found my birth mother out of it that's still the case. Mostly I found my birth mother through what do we call them? Angels? Adoption angels? Is that

Haley Radke: Search angels?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Search angels. Yes. Someone I know as I started getting some of [00:12:00] this information, I'm not a very private person. So as I was getting some of this information, I was putting it on Facebook, hey, what do you think about this? Especially when I was like finding pictures of people and I was like, do these people look related to each other or that sort of thing.

And so she found me and she was like, my friend, it looks like you could use a little help. So I gave I turned over a lot of the stuff that I had found. And one of the things I had found was a through records not through the DNA such, but through records because once I got the DNA, I was able to get enough stuff to get names, but not matches because you get the match and then you find out from their tree who they have in it.

And and then you can find some documents and things because I ended up getting like a six month a year, I ended up paying for it for a couple of years. I've stopped now. But so I would get all the documents, birth certificates and all that sort of thing. And so I found a marriage certificate between these two people Pat Gorman and what Lynn Enquist.

And but of course, there are a lot, you would think [00:13:00] those two names wouldn't necessarily be what common but there are a lot of Pat Gorman's out there especially because Pat could be a male name or a female name. So there were a million Pat Gorman's and there weren't a whole lot of Lynn Enquist's, but of course he also died when he was 22 you know didn't wasn't any information on him hardly except for a birth certificate But then I did find a marriage record and so I handed that over to the search angel Marie Corvallo And she found children from that marriage. No, not that marriage. She found actually the birth, oh, that's not right. That's not, that's a, it's a different, I found that birth, that marriage certificate, which led me to a second birth, a marriage certificate between a Pat Gorman and a John Graff.

And I had no idea if that was connected or not. And it was just in a pile of stuff that I gave over to Marie. And she found children from that marriage and then on Facebook she found the wife of one of those two people. [00:14:00] And she gave me that person. She says you could always try this person.

So I had to send her a Facebook message saying, hey, am I related to your husband? And then I talked to him and he's my brother, he's my half brother, and turns out, and then within six more hours, I get a telephone call, out of the blue I answer it and it's my birth mother. So that was something.

Haley Radke: That was something. Can you remember that call? Do you remember it?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, yeah.

Haley Radke: Frozen moment in time, where you were, all the things.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah I it is that way that I think a lot of people talk about that sort of a call it's ghostly, right? But it's also the feeling that the physical feeling is like jumping into a cold pool or something.

It's that kind of intake of breath and a little bit of I'm not sure, I'm not sure my breathing is continuing right now. That, that sort of thing. And then it takes a while to, it's also an awkward conversation between [00:15:00] strangers. And that's also weird because it's pretty intimate stranger when one is talking with one's birth mother, but I had no fear going through it.

Maybe I should have, but going through all of this process, I think I just in the way that being a writer, one is always one step removed from what one is writing about. And, as I was already writing, as I was going, I found the DNA stuff so interesting, and then when I started getting archival information, it all was so interesting, I wanted to write about it, that when it came time to actually talk to my birth mother, I was able to just do it, and I wasn't very worried about not being accepted or any of those, because from my point of view, what I wanted to know was I wanted to know it didn't really matter to me what I ended up finding out. I just wanted to know. Whatever response I would have gotten from them would have been [00:16:00] maybe fine.

Haley Radke: In your poem, Coded Messages, you start with, The purpose of life is to carry a sequence of code. How long were you thinking about DNA? Just like the idea of it and what it is. I can just picture you perseverating on this thought.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah. All my life, my friend, it's, we take those classes in school and they're like, what color are your eyes? What color are your parents eyes? All these things that, if you're not adopted never matter, register as something that might be difficult for some people, and I've always been curious about nature versus nurture, and twin studies and all this sort of thing they're absolutely fascinating for their convergence, but also their divergence, , that nurture does matter, but nature matters Wow, there was a story even just a really dumb story, like [00:17:00] maybe this is, and this is gonna be really dumb, I really apologize, but in some ways the best thing I found out was when I met them, when I met one of my two half brothers and my birth mother, so I went to dinner with my half brother's family, so I was there with my half brother and his two sons. And all my life, I have been number one I'm pretty small I'm what, I'm just under 5'8 and I'm not a big guy but my family is this really big German family, this, my adoptive family and so I always, even though I'm of the same race, as they are I couldn't look more different. This is like suddenly, where did this little guy come from with this huge, big, bunch of linebackers and then there's this little guy standing there with them. But I also, I fidget, I squirm, I tap my foot, I never stop moving. And it drove my, parents crazy.

And my whole life, it was like. Don't squirm, don't move, don't wiggle, cut it out. And here I am having dinner [00:18:00] with my half brother, and we're all like squirming, moving, twisting our straws up, fiddling on the knobs of our soda cans. These sorts of things. And I was just like, Oh, wow, I can relax.

I can like physically relax. And it was just that physical relaxation was just so God, it was just so wonderful and it's like such a small moment, but it meant the world to me.

Haley Radke: That you're saying, Oh, this is going to be just like a silly example. I'm like tearing up like when we have those moments, like we don't get that and people don't understand that at all. Wow. Oh, I'm so glad you got that.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: The other story I tell, and that first one I don't tell in the book, but this next one I do tell in the book turned out to be very important to me over time because of the different way people think about biological families versus adoptive families, and this is really telling I don't know, trigger warning or whatever, it's not, I don't know if it's not that triggering, but like I [00:19:00] said before, my adoptive mother's father died when she was three, and he died on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, that sort of thing, and so my adoptive father would always tell me and my brother's adopted as well, by the way, and to complicate this even more, he was my cousin when we were born, so they adopted both the boys from these two people on the other side of the family, and then cut ties, so her father died when she was three, and our adoptive father was always telling us that made Christmas very hard for her because of his death and that we were always too they were a very religious family my adoptive family. So he would, he's speaking from a religious standpoint of keep her in your prayers on Christmas time and to be aware and be sensitive and about her feelings of Christmas because that's very traumatic. That she went through and yet. I was adopted when I was three.

[00:20:00] They made no comment about that possibly being any kind of an internal trauma for a three year old to be put on an airplane all by himself, sent across the from Portland to Wichita, Kansas, get off the plane, have someone meet him and say hello, we are your new mommy, new daddy, forget your name is now this, and that might be something to also think about.

So then there is I've read what the ethical columnists and things in newspapers talking about when one is adopted, one is expected to change their identity and their what their identification to their adoptive family and their birth family is no longer part of the picture but life doesn't work that way because in the way that we would expect someone who had a father die and then as a stepfather, we would expect that stepfather to take into a [00:21:00] consideration that there was a birth father before that, and to be aware, and to be cognisant of that, and to take that into consideration when dealing with their child. But with adoptive people, so often that is not the case.

Haley Radke: Earlier you said, you were like, I'm not used to talking to adoptees, like I'm usually talking to people who don't get it. What are, I'm assuming this might be one of the examples you would give them. Are there anything, is there anything else that you have said or explained to folks who aren't adopted? That helped them with like their light bulb moments of oh, it's more complicated than I thought.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: So there are a few and I know all these as well. Number one is Walt Disney. What Walt Disney has done to the idea of adoption as trope, right? As, as how do you get a story going?

Kill the parents. And then Bambi has to go be Bambi or whatever it's this [00:22:00] literary device to get a story going and you know that's fine that is something that does happen in the world and stories to get going that way but none of these stories take into account much the fact that some people watching that movie or reading that book actually are adopted and they might be seeing this a little bit different than you just using it as a convenient way to get rid of parents so that you can have this story and then of course do that thing that Disney etc tends to do which is and promptly forget about them. And not have them, not have any lingering thoughts or traumas. And they do that about death anyway, a lot of times in movies, in the way that someone will have a death and then the next scene they're like over it. That sort of thing, but life doesn't work that way. The other thing I like to talk about is the word adoption I firmly believe there needs to be a different word for humans who are adopted versus pets or programs that are adopted because it's, if you're an adopted child and [00:23:00] you see the way people talk about adopting pets. It's pet adoption day. And the way people talk about, oh, it's a trial period, we'll take this dog for a few days and if it doesn't work out, we'll always give it back because it's only adopted. It's that sort of idea. And ,there is this feeling, that I grew up having, that the law, when looking at my birth certificate the law says that I was born to these people, but there is always this idea that legality put us together, legality could separate us, that it's, that you're always one step away from, it might or might not be true, depending on how families or whatever are, but we always say things like blood is thicker than water I guess that makes Adoptee water, because we are not blood.

So what is the attachment there? What is the sense of, the flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood? How does that work? All these things were taught, like I, went to Catholic school and was, that sort of thing all the time. [00:24:00] Who's he, what's begets, who's he, what's begets, who's he, what's kind of thing and the way that these things need to be written down and that is, what is and the, and what is the adopted person in that scenario.

Haley Radke: Yeah the falsity of permanence, like the forever family. Oh my goodness. Okay. I thank you for making those points. I think in your book, there's so many things that you touch on that we talk about often on the show like birth certificates. One of the things that you talk about and mentioned several times is names and the changing of your name and stuff.

But I want to say. Do you really friend request people on Facebook who share your name?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I am. I'm friends with several John Gallaher's on Facebook, and I find it hilarious, and I also put a Google alert on my name. And so I get a lot of Google alert updates on what John Gallaher is up to out there. It's absolutely [00:25:00] hilarious.

Haley Radke: Do you do the same with your given birth name?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: No, because that hurts. Because there is a world out there where there was an Eric Enquist. But it's not this one. It's not the real world. And to have his, to have updates from that isn't funny.

That you got me on that one. I do mention that in the book, though, that I did not put one on that name because it wasn't funny, but saying it right now reminds me of how not funny it is, there's a way I like to think about. I thought about this my own life.

So I'm only going to talk about me. I'm not going to make generalizations, but I was always thinking when, I guess when one is adopted, especially when one is adopted, I think a little older, but I'm thinking it could work for a birth adoption as well, that if one always knows that one is adopted, and I've heard this, of course, also from transnational, transracial adoptions who have a very you know, a very different kind of relationship with adoption than people like me, they're from the [00:26:00] baby scooper era, that sort of thing.

But there are some similarities, this feeling of difference this kind of thing am I an android? Am I a robot? Am I here as hired help? Am I all these different kind of things, one that or the fantasies one have. Am I really a, like the Disney fantasies am I really a prince somewhere else in some other world? And I'm just switched at birth. And now I'm in this other family, all these kinds of things.

Haley Radke: Alien in your book, right? You taught, you, yeah.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah, I think what, and I didn't realize until years later, just how powerful that, was this nightly routine I would have instead of prayers where I would go over the day's events, and in my child mind, I was fantasizing child mind. I would upload them to a spaceship that was circling. And, I didn't realize until years later, thinking back about that, was I was three years old. I lived with my birth mother, and then I didn't anymore.

And I was a three year old. I was talking to her. I forgot over [00:27:00] a while, over time what I was doing. And in the book I talk about it that way. I forgot what I was doing, but I kept doing it. And in, the way that I forgot my name, I had no idea what my name was and I had to find it.

And that's another thing that my adoptive parents were incorrect about my birth name and my birth father's name. But they were close. They had the last name right, but they didn't have his first name right. So when I started doing internet research, I couldn't find him.

Haley Radke: I don't, I'm sorry if this is painful, please tell me we can move on. I had never thought about that just now that, like you would have known your name. As an adult trying to summon up that memory, what was that like for you?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh it's the worst kind of constipation one could imagine. I kept in the book, I say, and I, there's a line in the book where I really, where I try to impart how that [00:28:00] feels and the thing I say to myself is that, that the map of Portland is talking to me and it says to me, you could have remembered all this if you'd had a better memory and my reaction to that is, yeah, don't you think I've been saying that to myself every day of my life?

If you can forget your own name, you can forget anything and that's what happens.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I know someone is gonna hear that and be like, oh my god, this is they're going through it right now, and it's something that's not talked about. Going back to reunion you had this call with your birth mother on the phone, calls, six hours after you find your half brother.

And so you've had some meetings with them. And then in the course of your poetry book, there's like a poem in between. Where honestly, it's just talking about how I read it. I've read your book three times now so some of the things you're [00:29:00] like I say this in the book. I'm like, I guess I gotta read it one more time. There's some things that you're saying about or it's a soccer game and it's like this what do you call it the banality of life while in the background there's like chaos happening, right? Like reunions, like I had a phone call with a stranger, but we're intimate strangers and it was weird and like this upheaval no one else sees and everybody else at the soccer game and you're just like, don't you know what's going on with me? Do you have thoughts about that time period of your life?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yeah for me, I, in a way, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I do understand that finding one's birth family is not for everyone. But again, I was in my 50s when I did this. I'm feeling like, I am who I am now this isn't, if this had happened when I was a teenager, maybe things would have been [00:30:00] different.

I was a little messed up then, I was a little, now I'm just wacky, then I was more, a little bit more, stuff was really, identity formation when you're a teenager can really this sort of thing can really retraumatize and really mess that identity formation up. But in my 50s, I was pretty solid with what's going on now and one of my biggest problems in my whole life is knowing that facts don't get nailed down very well. Facts change, right? Memory changes, so many things can change. And for me, just finding out the answers to these questions was really important. So in some ways, this was a chaotic time in my life and a lot of things were going on, but it was also, it was really what I wanted. I really wanted to go through it. The chaos part was yeah, because we're still living our daily lives. We still have to make lunch. While one is waiting for one's DNA test results to come back, where one might or might not [00:31:00] find one's birth mother, one still has to grill that cheese sandwich.

And so a lot of that stuff is in the book. Don't like movies. I love movies. We all, like to go to movies and but I hate movies that like in movies, oftentimes it seems like no one ever goes to the bathroom or no one ever eats meals and, things like action adventure movies, just someone just shot a pistol 35 times. I don't think you had that many bullets in a, that sort of thing where there's like all this facticity is missing. And one of my, things about writing and maybe why I write so much is I just have this fantasy that if I can just If I could just say everything that is going on, that I won't forget it that I'll hold it, that I'll like, I don't know, like I'll live forever or something, but not really that.

It's more like, and actually, now thinking about it, like what you said earlier, or what we were saying earlier, that could very well stem from me not being able to remember my name or my childhood. I just have this kind of mania for facts and [00:32:00] small asides and, uh, and turning a question over, not having an answer, but having three answers instead and saying maybe, or perhaps that's, I've lived all my life in the realm of perhaps and so I just really want to hold on to as much of it as I can.

Haley Radke: Even the minutiae, like collecting.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Because it's when we're old and we're sharing our lives with someone else. Yeah they want to know like when you were married or, actually doing archival research reminds me of this. You find all these things, you find the birth and the death date of someone and then in between them, you see this little line that line covers a lot of territory that we don't know anything about. Who were they really, what were they really like, what did they do for fun, what kind of stuff did they like to eat, and, that's just all the, that's all the kind of questions I had for my birth mother when I met her.

Or when we were speaking on the phone, she did, at one point she said to me on the [00:33:00] phone, she's I'm not going to be guarded, I'll tell you, I'll answer anything you want to answer, ask any questions you want to ask. And I know people are people, so I didn't need to ask, like, why was I put up for adoption?

I figured that out, but, I also, those, and those answers did come as well as we were talking, but I wanted to know more what kind of music did you like to listen to, what was my birth dad like, when you guys were good what did you guys do for fun, how do you like where you're living, that kind of stuff.

That's all the stuff that we erase because we don't think it's important. And then in the end, that's your whole life is that stuff, much more than the important stuff.

Haley Radke: What is reunion like for you now, today?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: My birth mother is a private person. Who really rose up from her private area for a little bit of time. And I'm very thankful for that. She, we [00:34:00] spoke on the telephone for a month or two, and then I traveled to Portland because I'm, as a writer, every year I go to this big writing conference called AWP, the letters A, W, and P, which actually stands for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which is not AWP but that's what it is, and it was, it turned out it was in Portland, and I will admit, that fantasy was in the back of my mind when I took the DNA test, because I do know that a lot of people move around all the time, but a lot of people don't.

And I had this fantasy because I knew I was from Portland, that I would find some birth family if I did the DNA test, and I would maybe meet them when I went to Portland. And it turns out, I did. Fantasy and it was a very good time it was very strange in a way because we acted like tourists a little bit.

I went there. I met my half brother, Dan [00:35:00] first, and we hit it off. We had a great time. And then I met her with him. And the three of us drove around and saw stuff like we were tourists. We went to the dam the Bonneville Dam, and looked at all the fish things there.

It's I don't want to be too on the nose about it, but it was like making one of those memories we would have had as a family. By doing a little vacation stop and seeing some stuff and then after that Dan and I drove down to see a distant cousin who I had found through DNA who lived down in oh, I can't remember the name of the town, Redmond or something like that. I think it was down a little bit for a little bit to the east and south of Portland. So he and I drove down there and saw this person who, was related to us through my birth mother's father's side who was also not very much connected to them. And so he got to meet him for the first time and we heard about our birth [00:36:00] grandfather.

That was interesting because we shared him. We had different fathers, but we had the same grandfather.

Haley Radke: You have these nice moments that you can think of, but persistent, consistent relationship maybe is not. Not in the cards at the moment.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I think with my birth mother if I go back to Portland, I might see her again We did not leave it like, never call again, but she after she rose up for that day she was, I, she's, she was happy to, go back to her place.

She's retired now, and she has her, she plays cards with some friends on Thursdays, and they go out for lunch afterward and she likes that small, she likes that life. I've been in touch with my two half brothers, though, quite a bit. We're on social media, and I know that I'm sure one of them, at least one of them will listen to this. And probably John, which is [00:37:00] actually, this one's nutty. Okay my birth mother's name is Pat, my adoptive mother's name was Kathleen, but she hated her name, so she went by her middle name, which was Pat. So I was raised by Pat. After of course, and when I was born, my name was Eric.

After I was adopted, my adoptive family changed my name to John. And my biological mother then had a son that they named John. So all her life she had a son named John and all my life I had a mother named Pat. Just the weird coincidences that happen in things like this.

Haley Radke: There is a book out there, hard to come by that's called Synchronicities in Adoption I think.

It has all of these little stories like that. I love that. I have so many things we're not gonna get to, which makes me so disappointed. I'm gonna what is my last question gonna be?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh man, is it already? We can [00:38:00] have part two.

Haley Radke: I know, right? I'm thinking maybe we'll have to have you back for book club because your book is that good.

I'm curious. I've had an interview with two people already this year. One's not been published yet, but one is who as they were writing, they were entirely disconnected from adoptee community. One was like on purpose because she didn't want to be like copying anyone inadvertently and one didn't really know like we were here.

I'm curious what your relationship with existing adoptee work is in the adoptee community because in your book you've got quotes from like Marianne Novy, BJ Lifton, Jean Payton, all the people we know we've heard their names before. So I know you know stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you haven't really written about your adoptee experience before.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Correct. And I also didn't read all that much about it. I thought it was more something to experience than to read or write about. [00:39:00] Until I started thinking that I maybe wanted to write about it, and I thought to myself any good person who wants to write about something should also read about it.

So I did. As a reader, I went looking, and of course the first place I went was the internet. And what a hellscape the internet is when you type in adoption. Holy guns. Wow. It is just like this kind of yay rah, you're going to go white savior those little babies and everything's going to be great and you're going to, I'm like, wow, what is this?

It was all this stuff pushed from either adoption providers or from, the parents point of views, the adoptive parents point of views, which I love those questions about what's it like to be an adoptee? Let's listen to some adoptive parents tell you. And I'm thinking something's missing. There's a voice missing here in all of this. And why is that?

Haley Radke: But adoptees stay babies forever. That's why.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely. No, and actually that, the crazy thing about that is adults writing in like [00:40:00] newspapers or books act like that. You're only adopted for that moment, that transaction. After that, you're not adopted anymore. It's crazy because they're always talking about that. So I, had to like, okay, let's get better search terms here. And it was really difficult to get stuff and it was pretty hard to find the some community things. So I did find your podcast and that was like crazy when you messaged me I was like, oh my gosh, I know that name. So that was like really cool. But yours was the only podcast I found or like audio stuff. And I listened to a little bit of that. I admit I did not listen all the way through all of them. But I listened to a couple to get a kind of a feeling for that as I was writing the book.

Not like before writing it though, but as I was writing in the last couple of years. And but I did find like some adoption resources and you have to really dig because so many of them are Pollyanna, religious or sentimental in some ways. And so finding people like Lifton and stuff like that was helpful.

And I know, I could tell that stuff was dated as well, though. [00:41:00] And then, of course, I found so much more stuff about transnational, transracial adoption. And I was wondering if that conversation had completely overtaken the more generalized adoption conversation. There are a lot of books of poetry out there by transnational, transracial poets that are just phenomenal.

Really good stuff. About that. And so I read that stuff as a, I don't know, want to say metaphorical background, but, as fellow poets writing, more than adoptee the more than people, sociologists or someone.

Haley Radke: Your book is just tremendous. It

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: thank you so much.

Haley Radke: My Life in Brutalist Architecture. And. God, I'm really telling myself, but like I knew brutalist architecture from people talking about Kim Kardashian. Oh Sorry to say that in our interview, I'm sorry.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Oh, we could talk about that for a whole [00:42:00] nother Oh, no. No, I can hand I can handle Kardashian conversation.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. No, that's it

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I have it. I have a wife and a daughter.

Haley Radke: That's it. I got no more to say about Kim but anyway, so that's why I knew what that meant, but I think adoptees are going to just devour this book of poetry. You were saying earlier how you document things to remember and reading it is really, I found it moving, of course, but also comforting with those details of your experiences that so many of us can relate to.

Whether or not you've searched and reunited, just sharing your experiences as an adopted child and living adopted. And as I mentioned before, you talk about birth certificates the name changes, all of these things that we so identify with. Finding our identity and all [00:43:00] of those things, John, it's just so relatable, but so thoughtful and of course, you're a poet, so your word choice is just like immaculate and I told you, I've read it three times.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: You're very kind.

Haley Radke: I read it three times and you're pointing out to me things that I should have caught, but I didn't. So there's layers. So I need to go back again.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: And I think for me the brutalist architecture kind of metaphor really feels right to the adoptive experience in the way also that this, I'm going to get academic here for a second.

Theories of postmodernism feel very natural to adoptees, you're reading a Baudrillard or Lyotard or something like that about the simulacra or the multiverse or, all these different kind of ideas and everyone's out there saying, oh, this is mind blowing. And as an adoptee, I'm saying like welcome to my daily existence of going through the simulacra, going through the shades of things, in the same way brutalist architecture, it has [00:44:00] these two different aspects. You could look at it as the imposed, top down, bureaucratic edifice that is down, set over us, like in that Soviet Russia, brutalist architecture, that big concrete blocks.

But then you look at it the other way, of from the ground up from people up of the architecture is exposing its use value. So the use of the thing is what's being exposed by it, which feels very much like the two movements of adoption as one is trying to express their identity and come up. And the other is this top down top down edifice placed over the top of it. And, but they turn out that the same building, I just love that. I love that idea.

Haley Radke: I thank you. Oh my gosh. There's so many layers. I know people are gonna love this and it's for sure made me I've read some of your other work but not all of it but I'm like running to order, just so you know what did you want to recommend to us today?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: I don't have any resources to recommend. I [00:45:00] do have the, a weird recommendation that actually I wish I would have Googled again. The the adoptive resources of reading lists of fiction and poetry. Oftentimes, the poetry and the fiction is by adoptees is not read as much as some of the other resources and things that are much more how to or directly self help, but even things written by people who have been adopted.

There's a poet named Erin Belieu who wrote a blurb for the back of my book and her first name is E-R-I-N and her last name is B-E-L-I-E-U. She is a, she's an excellent poet who doesn't write necessarily directly about adoption, but it's the spirit behind it, but even more so the poet, Shane McCrae, first name, S-H-A-N-E, last name McCrae, M-C-C-R-A-E.

He has a few books out. And he, his adoption story is within the family and it's highly traumatic. It has [00:46:00] racist overtones to it. He wrote it in two different ways as poetry, but then also as prose. And I would suggest both of them. And I'm going to get the names wrong. So maybe that would be something to find the correct name and put it in the notes.

But it's he calls it a kidnapping. He was kidnapped by his grandparents, and it was a very it's a very moving and very amazing story, and he is one of our poets and writers in, the U. S. today. Actually, so is Erin Belieu. They're both highly rated writers, so there's beautiful reads, but I think the the things they write about would be very interesting for people to read, adoptees especially.

Haley Radke: Is this In the Language of My Captor?

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Yes, I think that is it that is one of them but I think that's not the prose one, but I'm gonna have to

Haley Radke: Okay it says Mule, Blood, The Animal Too Big to Kill, In the Language of My Captor. Those are the four listed

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Okay

Haley Radke: on my Google from poetry foundation Awesome.

We will definitely link to those things in the show [00:47:00] notes. You know what I was thinking when you I was reading one of the poems this morning as to prepare and you use the word play on cleave and there's a poetry collection by a an adult fellow adoptee called Tiana Nobile. That's her name that's called Cleave.

And I love that. Like I was like, oh yes, it's such a good word. Thank you so much. What an honor to get to speak to you and hear some of your story, John. I really appreciate it. I hope folks read your book and hopefully you'll come back for book club this year. We'll see. I'll email you about it. You don't have to commit.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: I know.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Absolutely. I'd love to. I already would commit to it.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. Wonderful.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: But actually, Haley, I got to say the honor is all mine. Speaking with you and speaking to with you and to the adoptee community. I am readily accessible on social media. Anyone wants to talk to me for any reason, I'm easily easy to find. So please do reach out. I'm very welcoming. I promise.

Haley Radke: He is. When I [00:48:00] DMed, it was great. And if your name is John Gallaher, please friend request him because he has a little collection going or so I've heard.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: There are more than you think it's crazy

Haley Radke: All right. We'll have your social links in the show notes as well but yes, you're easy to find. Thank you, John.

John Gallaher, Ph.D.: Thank you. And thank you so much Haley.

Haley Radke: We are totally gonna invite John back for a book club event and one thing I'll admit I struggle with is sharing with you all the events that are happening. And we have book clubs. We have a writing, new writing workshop that's happening this month. We have our Ask an Adoptee Therapist. If you're ever curious what events are coming up for Adoptees On supporters, you can go to adopteeson.com/calendar. And all the up to date things are [00:49:00] there and you can click through and join us. We would love to have you there is just I feel like I'm bad at promoting, but like I'm also, I'm keeping secrets from you. If you're like missing out on all these like awesome conversations with fellow adoptees, like I don't want you to miss out.

So come join us support the show keep Adoptees On going. It means so much to me. Thank you so much for listening Let's talk again very soon

276 Sanjay Pulver

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/276

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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 Sanjay Pulver, an Indian adoptee who has become an outspoken adoptee advocate in recent years. We talk about the complexities of being adopted from an orphanage in a country that is not currently safe for him to return to as a queer trans man.

We discuss the intersections between being transnationally and transracially adopted with being a trans person. And Sanjay also shares about his experience with somatic therapy. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon Adoptee community today [00:01:00] 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'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Sanjay Pulver.

Welcome, Sanjay. How are you?

Sanjay Pulver: I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for having me on.

Haley Radke: I remember the first time we were in a Zoom room together, which was a couple of years ago. But today, I'd love it if you would start with sharing some of your story with us.

Sanjay Pulver: I am originally from a very small village in South India, somewhere outside of Hyderabad.

And at three weeks old, I was relinquished to an orphanage in the [00:02:00] area and was there for about nine to ten ish months and then was placed with an unofficial foster family for about a month or so, and then at 13 months old, I was flown over to the U. S. and placed with my adopters, and I flew into Los Angeles International Airport, but my adopters live in San Diego, so we just drove down from there, and I've been here pretty much ever since.

The parts of India where I'm from, like I said, very small village. From my understanding, my birth family was part of the lowest caste in India. Usually referred to, or previously referred to, as the Untouchables, now they're called Dalits, so that's D A L I T, [00:03:00] is the nomenclature now, and I, as far as I know, I have four older sisters, one older brother, and a fraternal twin brother, who I only knew, or found out about when I was 11. And the orphanage I was part of, I found out in around 2020, was actually part of a giant international adoption trafficking scandal. But within my adoptive family, I'm an only child I'm also a transracial adoptee, and it was a lonely experience.

Because being raised in a family where I was the only non white person my age, it felt pretty isolating at times, and then, of course, realizing [00:04:00] later in my life that there were more aspects of my identity that I was unaware of and started having, thoughts about and I'm going to use the phrase coming into consciousness about really threw a lot of that into chaos and realizing how my identity as a transgender man and being adoptee are inherently linked to each other.

So a lot of that is how I started coming into consciousness or, as we sometimes say, out of the fog. Put that in quotes, is really where I started coming into the advocacy part of my journey and now talking about how all of the intersections that I have really [00:05:00] shape how I navigate the world and the conversations I have within it.

Haley Radke: You're in your early 30s now, right?

Sanjay Pulver: Yep, just turned 31 in November.

Haley Radke: Okay. I'm just trying to drag you along a little further. Early 30s, I could be anywhere in there. And you said that you didn't find out that you had a fraternal twin until you were 11. Where did, when, where who did you find out information from that you had older siblings? Where you were born, your orphanage, all of those things, did you get that information disclosed to you or did you have to look for it?

Sanjay Pulver: My adoptive grandma had made a scrapbook for me when I was really little and it had photos of the orphanage and I think photocopies of the very sparse paperwork that I had.

And this was information not compiled by my adopters there [00:06:00] was another couple who actually went to India to the same orphanage to go get their child, and while they were there, took tons of photos. Took video and then sent it to my adopters. My adopters didn't go to India to get me they decided to have me delivered instead.

They wanted expedited shipping, but that actually ended up getting delayed. Yeah, they tried real hard, but didn't happen. The paperwork that I have is like the patient intake form for the orphanage, and on it said information about family, and it just says family is poor, mother is weak.

They have four daughters, two sons, this child is born a twin, couldn't save both so wanted to give one up to adoption, and the way I found out about my twin, even though [00:07:00] it was written on that paperwork I was at an endocrinology appointment with my adoptive mother. And this was because as somebody who was assigned female at birth, my adoptive mom wanted to make sure that hormonally there was nothing going wrong that would impact my menstrual cycle.

And so we were there and as she was giving the doctor my family medical history. She was saying that, Oh, she's a twin, she has siblings, all these things, and I sat there for a minute with my jaw dropped wait, run that by me again. She, what? And that, I think that was the first time I had heard those words come out of somebody's mouth, rather than skimming over them and reading them.

And I was at an age where I could actually consciously [00:08:00] process what I had heard, and so yeah, I found out at a doctor's appointment, and I actually didn't know the the sex of my twin at that point, I only found out in 2020.

Haley Radke: Okay, I'm sorry that is how you found out. And also, I'm, do you know anything further besides just what was in that paperwork or what she said?

To me, I read that, or heard you read that off to us, recall that to us. And I thought, oh my goodness did the twin die and they didn't want you to you know what I mean? It sounded like there was some peril there.

Sanjay Pulver: India in the 1990s was very similarly had a similar attitude, rather, towards girls than boys and wanting sons over daughters, very similar to China's, one child policy in sentiment, just not legislated [00:09:00] into existence, and my birth family, as far as I know, had four daughters and one son, and then my twin brother and I were born.

So it was like, yay, we finally have our second son, and then, oh my god, we have a fifth daughter. Get rid of her. I, that is a part of my story that I have always known and have been told since I was very young. Yeah, you were probably given up because you were a girl. That was a reality that I've lived with for a while.

And I say it so matter of factly, and people are very shocked by that, I think. And it's like saying what I had for breakfast. It's just, yeah, this is my life. Okay, next thing. But I think also the fact that when I was trying to follow up with my adoptive mother like as we were walking to the car I was sobbing and crying and very upset being like why didn't you tell me [00:10:00] and the answer I was told was oh we did tell you were when you were younger but you were probably watching TV, so you didn't hear us, and even if you did hear us, you were too young to understand what we were saying, and that was the end of the conversation.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness, so dear. Yeah so I've heard you talk about this a little bit, but maybe you'll weave this in as you share more of this part of your story, but if you had grown up in India, obviously stating the obvious here, you would have had a very different life.

Sanjay Pulver: Yes.

Haley Radke: And what does that mean to you to be living in the United States having been able to make some choices that you wouldn't have likely been able to had you grown up where your biological family [00:11:00] still is I'm assuming. I don't know Yeah, I don't know exactly. We don't know. Can you talk a little bit about that and maybe more about your coming into your identity?

Sanjay Pulver: I would say that I fall very solidly into the stereotypical tomboy, to butch queer woman to trans guy sort of pipeline.

I know that's not everybody's experience, but that was mine, absolutely. Just short of playing softball, I was a band kid instead.

Haley Radke: Wait, what did you play?

Sanjay Pulver: I'm a French horn player.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Sanjay Pulver: I've been playing for 20 years.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Sanjay Pulver: I'm very proud of that. And funny enough, I was actually the only girl in my entire fifth grade class to play trumpet so I was just you know I was one of the guys from a very young age and I think I never [00:12:00] grew out of that if anything I grew into that more than out of it I guess you could say but I think the biggest differences, the fact the access to gender affirming care is the biggest one as far as differences in being raised in the U. S. versus being raised in India, I think a big one too is just, how long would I have actually survived? I know it's a morbid and macabre thing to think about, but I've told people since I was, young that, yeah, I probably wouldn't be alive had I stayed in India because I was very small when I was born.

Even by Indian standards, I was small. And at 31, I'm 4'10 and a half, so I'm like, look, if Indian people were saying I was small when I was born I was small. I just, there was no way of winning that. And saying I was relinquished for being assigned female at birth, [00:13:00] saying that yeah, I probably wouldn't have survived had I stayed in India is just one of those unpleasant but objective facts that I share as part of my story.

And the other side of being trans, and if I were to go try and search for family now, aside from the fact that I have no information, so I really have nothing to go on, there is a major risk as a trans and queer person traveling to India right now, so it's literally not safe for me to go, even if I wanted to.

And if I did go, I would basically have to, I'd say be stealth, so being stealth is just not being open about either your sexuality or your gender identity is a term that's in, used in the community [00:14:00] pretty frequently. And having been on testosterone a little bit over nine years now I do, I'm gonna use it in quotes, but I pass pretty well.

Passing is not necessarily the goal or really should be considered the standard for any trans person. If you want to pass, great, if you don't, great. Just like there's no one right way to be an adoptee.

We're all individual, we all have our own different stories, paths, and all of them are valid. I just, I do want to make that parallel as well. But, I run into the issue of if I were to find my family what would I say? Hi, I was your daughter, I came back with a beard. Hi. What, how, how do you navigate something like that or in a way, I almost need to use the very small [00:15:00] amount of masculine privilege that I have, which is not a lot. I will definitely say that it is not a lot. I still experience misogyny on a fairly frequent basis, and just because I have a beard and a slightly deeper voice does not mean that people have stopped treating me as though I was still feminine.

But, I've thought about if I were to go search, I would basically take all of my paperwork that has my birth name, all of my stuff, and just say, yes, my name is Sanjay, but I am searching on behalf of my sister. Because they'll probably want to talk to a guy about this more than they would want to talk to a woman about this.

And whatever information they give me is my information, but I'm asking for it in such a way that I'm not, hopefully, not putting myself in unnecessary risk. [00:16:00]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness, the complexity, like all the added layers you have in your experience and from what I understand, it's very difficult to search in India anyway, DNA testing and things is I don't know, we're recording in 2024, maybe it's different in the future, but you can't take kits out, I think I saw you post something about that.

Sanjay Pulver: So the current laws around at least DNA testing in India from my understanding is that you can't take genetic material out of the country. So for example, if I were living in India and I wanted to take a 23andMe test, I could order the test, take the test, I could just not ship, I would not be allowed to ship it back out to be processed.

And that is the biggest reason why both Ancestry and 23andMe do not ship to India. [00:17:00] And therefore, all of the demographic data those companies have come from expats and adoptees. And there are DNA companies within India that do testing, but they only say here's where you're from in India they don't do family matching because that still is a very taboo subject, you know talking about having children out of wedlock especially when you get into caste politics, which I do not have a thorough enough understanding to be able to fully explain that.

Haley Radke: When you mentioned that I was like, oh, yeah I have heard from fellow Indian adoptees that they sometimes will match with other adoptees in the states, which, great that you have a connection, but you're still at a loss for the other [00:18:00] information.

Yeah, that's complicated. Okay, there's so many things I want to ask you about. I don't know where to go first. I think I want to circle back to the orphanage tracking, trafficking, tracking the, I'm thinking about DNA too much, the orphanage trafficking situation, because again, in your story, there's this complexity where, people often will say to adoptees, oh do you wish you had languished in an orphanage?

And that is a part of your story. You were in an orphanage. Can you talk a little bit about that, and how did you find out that your orphanage was caught up in this

scandal?

Sanjay Pulver: In 2020, I was on, funny enough, I was on Reddit, and I posted in the Adoptee Reddit page community saying, I'm an Indian adoptee, this is all the [00:19:00] information I have.

I'm making one last ditch effort to figure out if there's any other information I can get. Anybody got anything for me? And somebody said, you should contact this particular person who's the main point person doing searches in India, who's also an Indian adoptee who was adopted to Germany.

And so I got in contact with this person, and we set up a Zoom call, and when I was mentioning, oh, I'm from the action for social development orphanage, he was like, wait, you came out of ASD? And I said, yes. And he's I've never known anybody to come out of there from that scandal. And I was like, what scandal?

And basically in 1999, so I had already been in the states for six years at that point, but in 1999, the orphanage got raided and it was [00:20:00] shown and proven and the executive director confessed was arrested and confessed to illegally purchasing children and sending them to the U. S. to make money off the adoptions.

And even went to lengths to forge relinquishment documents. To file guardianship certificates, basically falsely, like under false pretenses. And how that connects into my story is that in May of 2020, before I had this zoom call, my adopters were cleaning out a filing cabinet and my adoptive dad was like, here's a file about your adoption if you want it.

And I was like, oh, okay. And I opened it up and it was all information and files that I had never seen before in my life and it also included this guardianship certificate, which [00:21:00] I did not know existed and essentially what that said was my adoptive father was named my legal guardian, and it gave him the legal right to take me out of India and adopt me according to the laws of whatever country he, he lived in this case being the U. S. On the U. S. side, I am completely legally adopted all above board. I have not actually been formally adopted in the eyes of Indian law. So I'm only half adopted, technically. But, to your point about the orphanage, being in a tiny crib, on my back, pretty much, the only times I would be picked up is maybe if I was being fed, maybe not, I don't know.

I actually had a lot of developmental delays physically, because I wasn't hitting all of those, crawling, rolling [00:22:00] over modeling milestones, and I didn't realize that structurally, my body compensated for that over the years unknowingly, which is why, actually, last year, I started seeing a somatic therapist who also specializes in trauma, and in developmental stuff as well interestingly, I'm hitting developmental milestones in my late twenties, early thirties that babies do in the first few months of their lives, which is interesting and fascinating.

And also, I never thought I'd be looking at a baby rolling over and going I'm jealous of you you're a baby, why should I be envious of you you haven't done anything, but I'm like, wow, here I am being jealous of babies, who knew, but, institutional orphanage care[00:23:00] did mess me up in a lot of ways, and I know that because in the criminal complaint and everything, the documents were forged, that really gives me a lot of, hesitation around whether or not if something were to happen where we're going into a new election cycle, knock on wood, this does not happen, but at least for the U. S., if trans people continue to be attacked and attempts to eradicate us continue. As an immigrant, I'm really here at the government's pleasure, and the government's behest. And I don't really know what I'm gonna do if, for some reason I get in trouble or something and I get deported because India has no records on me, really.[00:24:00]

At least not currently, because everything, again, is in my birth name, and none of it has been updated gender wise, and I found out I'd have to pay like 600 bucks to change my name and my gender on my Certificate of Citizenship, which is the only document I haven't updated, because I didn't know you could update that, but I also worry

or I was worried as well, because funny enough, when I did change my name and gender legally in 2016, going to the social security office to update everything they asked me do you have proof of citizenship? And I said what like a passport and they said yeah, and I said, oh I do it's just at home and they said oh it looks like when you got naturalized in 1994 nobody updated social security and told [00:25:00] us so I was legally I was a legal alien according to social security for twenty some odd years and I had no idea.

Now it says I'm a citizen, but it's funny that had I not transitioned that little hiccup and falling through the cracks within like bureaucracy that could have come back to bite me in a really bad way and the only reason I found out is because I transitioned so that's where I'm at with it.

Haley Radke: It's really mind boggling to me that in 2024 Adoptee citizenship is still such a critical issue, and adoptive parents really need to stand up and take responsibility for this issue and because there's so many deported adoptees.

They have no power in the United States to make change and [00:26:00] call for reform. They're not here anymore. Yeah, I know that's an aside, but I'm really disappointed with adoptive parents who don't take responsibility for that.

Sanjay Pulver: Oh, yeah, I'm right there with you.

Haley Radke: We have so much complexity in your story and I'm gonna ask you a question where I don't think these things are able to be separated.

Coming into your identity as an adopted person, unpacking the complexities of that, coming out of the fog, coming into consciousness, all of those things. And then, also, coming into your true gender identity. Can you talk about those things? You've said before they're intertwined for you. Were you processing them at the same time? What was that like for you? Can you share a little bit more about that?

Sanjay Pulver: I wasn't processing my gender stuff and my adoptee stuff at the same time. I think my [00:27:00] adoptee identity had been pretty solid as far as growing up, I was like, I knew I was adopted, I had a fairly consistent narrative from my understanding although, on the outside looking in, it seemed like I had a pretty cushy setup and life.

There were a lot of cracks in the stereotypical narratives that, we have around adoption. I saw those from a very young age, but I never really had the language to describe what felt off about it. And around, I'd say ten years old, I started realizing that, as far as my, my sexuality, my sexual orientation, I knew there was something slightly different about that.

I think that's when I [00:28:00] started questioning that, and I'd already been a tomboy for, since I was really little, and then in middle school middle school's just chaotic for everybody, regardless of your identities, it's just a bad time usually for everybody, because you're going through social changes, you have hormones running amok it's just, I wouldn't wish repeating middle school on anybody, and I will also say, especially going through a puberty that you don't want.

That's also a trip and a half, because technically, being on testosterone, I had to go through puberty again, so it's puberty 2. 0.

And there were moments where I would I asked one of my friends, I was like if I, if everything about me was the same, but I was a boy, would you date me? And, if that wasn't a big sign, I don't know what is, [00:29:00] but that just went right over my head. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but as I've continued on my journey as an adoptee, what I started realizing was that at the very beginning of my transition, I was talking to another trans person and I had said, oh, I want to get a tattoo of my name Sanjay and my birth name in Telugu, which is the language I would've heard growing up, had I stayed in India, and I wanted to get them in a band around my arm, to symbolize that even though these are two different names they are still me, and it is connected, and this other trans person told me, oh, I guess you're not really trans, and I was like, what do you mean by that?

And she's oh the fact that you're not rejecting every single part of [00:30:00] yourself that's feminine, you're not really trans. And that was just a really crappy thing to say in general, but also hearing it from another trans person also added another level of hurt to that. But then what I realized was to reject my identity prior to my transition was actually mirroring the invalidation of my experiences prior to my adoption.

Because growing up it was always like you're in the U. S. now, everything's fine now, you don't need to think about your life in India. India bad, U. S. good that's very reductive and very simplified. But that is what it boiled down to, and it feels disingenuous, for me. To [00:31:00] not acknowledge that I had twenty two years, twenty one and a half years of life experiences that have shaped me.

It just feels disingenuous to, to ignore all of that and just pretend like none of it happened because I say this a lot, but living as a woman has made me a better man, and it's allowed me to navigate situations that I think a lot of cis men don't have the tools for and have not been raised to have emotional intimacy with other people a lot of parts of that the of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, those are not things that I was raised with, so I have an objective, a more objective view of it so I can see it, but I can also then say, hey, you can still be a man and [00:32:00] not ascribe to those things.

And I also realized that my relinquishment and my adoption are both based on the assumptions about who I was because of my assigned gender at birth. I was relinquished because we had another girl, we don't want you, and then my adopters were, in their applications, were like, we are writing this specifically because we want a daughter from India.

And they did. They had a daughter from India for about 21 and a half years. And now they have a son for the rest of their lives. So those things are too ver are always going to be entwined for me, and I will also say a small caveat that while obviously nobody is ever prepared to have a trans child, or a gender non [00:33:00] conforming child, that's not something anybody can prepare for, and while I don't believe that either set of guardians and parents that I've had over the course of my life are inherently transphobic as people the decisions that were made based on my assigned gender and the worth and value that were ascribed to those, and those decisions, those were absolutely transphobic. And granted this is just my own perspective on it, it's not necessarily gonna be how other trans adoptees feel about it, but the people might not have been transphobic, but their actions absolutely were.

Haley Radke: I appreciate you sharing that and I know you've done a lot of speaking and panels about your experience as a trans person with [00:34:00] of course your adoptee identity, a transracial and trans nationally adopted person. And this is the tricky part of being, what I see as being a member of the queer community who's often looked at adoption as a tool for family building. Can you speak into that as, you've got your foot in different worlds that do intersect, but as someone who has spoken out for family preservation and abolition of both the family policing system and the adoption industrial complex, those things. The queer community often is still using adoption as a family building tool.

Sanjay Pulver: I think the biggest thing that I would like to see is more honest and open conversations [00:35:00] and more transparency around family building for queer folks because I know you had other guests on here who've really talked about the history of adoption and the link to queer community before.

So I'm not necessarily going to rehash all of that. I know which episode folks should go listen to if they want to get that that history lesson.

Haley Radke: Okay. Sandra's

Sanjay Pulver: Dr. Sandra Steingraber. Yep. That's the one I was. Yep.

Haley Radke: Dr. Sandra Steingraber. Okay. Let me look it up for folks so they can,

Sanjay Pulver: I think just recognizing that we are not poster children for I guess being able to adopt children as queer people, we shouldn't be seen as like the gold standard of this is how you are a [00:36:00] successful queer person, like this is how you get it made. There are so many other ways to be in community, to have family, chosen family, found family that don't involve supporting harmful and oppressive systems.

And I think the biggest thing is being honest with the kids and making sure that they have access to the resources, namely therapy, and also any information about their biological parents or their sperm donor or their surrogate or, the egg donor, like whoever was involved, excuse me, involved in the creation of this child, being able to access that information so that as things come up and kids are growing and they have questions, those [00:37:00] conversations can happen honestly and in age appropriate ways, and then once the kids are old enough and if they have a desire to seek out these people, the ability to do so is there and it's not behind red tape and there's no gatekeeping for that. And interestingly, touching a little bit on genetics, it's very interesting being a trans adoptee in trans spaces because so much of the conversations regarding early transition and medical transition focus a lot on DNA and, people going what's my beard going to look like?

Am I going to go bald? Or, how much is my chest going to grow if I'm on estrogen? And like these sorts of things. And. a lot of the default answers are like, oh just go look at [00:38:00] pictures of your family. Go look at this or, and I have to sit there and keep my mouth shut because frankly, it's triggering and activating every single time somebody asks that question, which is pretty much always because new folks are going to be asking all the time.

And I, at least personally for me, don't feel like it's appropriate to be in those spaces and ask, hey, can you put a content warning or a trigger warning on talking about genetics? Or talking about family or talking about relationship to parents or like genetic mirroring because most often I'm the only one in those spaces or if I'm not I'm the only one who is not in reunion and has no information or photos or anything.

So I [00:39:00] just I just keep it to myself. And I just, I usually joke and say, I just look in the mirror, cross my fingers and hope for the best. So it can be very difficult at times to hold space for both when you know that you can't necessarily access the answers you want. Which also begs the question too of, is my twin trans?

That's a question I think about sometimes. And, we are fraternal twins, but if we both transitioned, did we just become fraternal twins in the opposite direction? Or, if my twin isn't trans, and I did, and then I did transition. Now do we look more identical? Do we look like identical twins now?

Those are questions I think about that I know I'm probably not gonna get an answer for. [00:40:00]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. So many things. Thank you for sharing. I know we're going to do recommended resources. I just want to ask you one more thing if you're open to it. You mentioned.

Sanjay Pulver: Sure.

Haley Radke: Trying out somatic therapy and is there anything you want to say about that?

Like for other adoptees who may have had some similar Circumstances, maybe being up for a long time in orphanage as you were mentioning about not being attended to your physical needs. Anything like that to encourage folks if they want to try that

out?

Sanjay Pulver: I'm very fortunate in that my somatic therapist is also a trauma therapist and specifically works from an attachment lens like I I hit the trifecta and somatic therapy can look a lot of different ways.

So I do talk therapy with my regular [00:41:00] therapist. I do EMDR, which personally has been a literal life changing experience for me. It's been amazing. And then doing somatic therapy for basically all the body work stuff that EMDR and talk therapy can't necessarily help process. And a lot of it is body work of just like being on the table and getting like like deep tissue massage and but also there's a lot of like restructure like actual restructuring of my physical being of moving muscles and realizing oh, never learned really how to hold my head up correctly because my lat muscles in my back never really activated so I'm using my neck and my shoulders to hold my head up and that's why I have so much tension in my shoulders and my neck and [00:42:00] learning that oh, I didn't really have a lot of core strength as a baby so learning how to stabilize my core or even learning how to stand, because that was the biggest surprise I had, because I used to stand with my legs pretty far apart, so I almost looked like a triangle, because, a triangle's a strong shape.

The first time I stood with my legs pretty much in a normal stance close together, my knees went wobbly, because they didn't know how to hold I almost didn't know how to hold my own weight standing without my legs being super far apart. But I was like I physically have changed everything about body mechanics and how I move to finally compensate for that time in the orphanage.

But I will also say the most recent appointment that I had with my somatic therapist, we didn't do any body work, but for the [00:43:00] majority of it, I was sitting and holding my somatic therapist's six week old baby. And it's funny because the baby and I, we actually share a birthday, which is a total coincidence.

But that created a bond and a connection because now, here is a baby with my birthday who is hitting all of these developmental milestones and I get to see a parallel process between when that baby was three weeks old, this is what was going on when I was three weeks old I was already relinquished, and seeing that very clearly was really profound, and then just being able to hold a baby that was that small, and I'm like, I was this small once?

And, the baby just slept through everything and was snoring, and there I was just like, sobbing and having a big giant emotional moment, and the [00:44:00] baby was just totally unaware of everything, which I feel like encapsulates that experience pretty well. I think somatic therapy can incorporate lots of different elements, depending on your own situation and your own needs and what you're hoping to get out of it, and not all of it will be lying on a table and getting massaged or getting body work.

Sometimes it's holding a baby and crying.

Haley Radke: Beautiful. What an amazing experience. I'm glad you were able to do that. Okay, let's talk about our recommended resources. So I'm just going to quickly mention the episode we were referring to was episode 240 with Dr. Sandra Steingraber. And I want to recommend another podcast today that it's only four episodes.

But [00:45:00] for people who are in the abolitionist mindset, it is with Dorothy Roberts, and she has a four part series called Torn Apart. Which is based on her fabulous book, Torn Apart. We're talking about the family policing system. And she talks with people who are adopted, fostered parents who have been visited by the, by CPS, all of those things it's really an incredible resource.

And for folks who the book is like kind of dense and you haven't gotten there yet this is a great primer into Dorothy Robert's work. So I will make sure to link to that. And then I mentioned earlier that you have been a guest on several panels for adoptees speaking about different things. Two with Adoption Mosaic, one where you're talking about [00:46:00] your twin experience, if people want to hear more about that.

And then I also really enjoyed listening to you on the Adoptees United panel, the Rainbow Adoptees, Intersection of Queerness and Adoption. And so if folks want to hear more from you. Those are a couple of great places where they can hear your advocacy work, and I'm going to link to those in the show notes as well.

What did you want to recommend to us today?

Sanjay Pulver: I think you've already mentioned it before but the podcast Rescripting the Narrative, which is hosted by previous guest Lina Vanegas and Sol Yaku, is a great podcast. I think they have one or two episodes out currently, but it is a podcast really talking about making adoption narratives more adoptee centered talking about the connections to imperialism, colonialism, an extension of, white supremacy culture and [00:47:00] really deconstructing the adoption industry and how we can reform it, abolish it as far as like plenary adoption is concerned and that's, even just those two episodes are fabulous, and the other resource I wanted to mention as well is the Adult Adoptee UK movement, and that was actually started by the host of the Zoom call where we met, as it turns out, and while a lot of their advocacy is UK based their website and their blog posts are open to all adoptees to share their experiences and I think a lot of folks can find good writing there and things that resonate with them and I know I think they do some I think they do some Meetups [00:48:00] and things like that, and I think they are going to try and expand and I think they might also be working with Adoptees United Executive Director Greg Luce on a couple of things, so I want to plug that because if it hadn't been for that zoom call and that group of folks, I wouldn't actually be sitting here having a conversation with you. So

Haley Radke: I don't know, do you think.

Sanjay Pulver: I don't know, I,

Haley Radke: We've connected in other ways, but yes,

Sanjay Pulver: I feel like we would have eventually,

Haley Radke: Yes I'm so appreciative of Vic and their work and we will link to adultadoptee.org.Uk in the show notes as well. So folks can find that. And they have been doing a lot of forward, a lot of forward momentum has have been happening there with the government and yeah, lots of things in the last couple of years.

Thank you so much for sharing part of your story with us. And talking about some things that, a lot of [00:49:00] people don't really know much about. I really appreciate that. Where can folks connect with you online and hear more from you?

Sanjay Pulver: As far as adoptee stuff goes my Instagram, which is just my name.

So it's just @Sanjay.Pulver on Instagram. That is the only social media that my adopters don't have any presence on, either one of them, so that's the main place where I feel the most safe to just post candidly about my experiences, I guess we'll say. I do use Twitter occasionally, if I really feel like I want to post something for folks I know through that platform, which again is just It's @PulverSanjay, with first and last name capitalized.

Those are the main social medias that I use for Adoptee related stuff. And, yeah, really am appreciative of you letting me come and run my mouth for about an hour, [00:50:00] and

Haley Radke: Sanjay, you're someone that I have linked other trans adoptee folks to, because I know you're a safe person for them to go to, and you have open doors for them to go to other support group spaces and things.

So I really appreciate having you as a resource for me when I don't know the right thing to say. And I'm really thankful for that. Thank you for your service to other adoptees in that way. I really, I do really feel grateful. Trigger word. How about that?

Sanjay Pulver: And I'll say, I'm very thankful. Other trigger word that, I, that that I'm able to be a resource and help our community in various ways it's really been an honor to be on here. Thank you so much.

Haley Radke: Thank you

I feel so deeply honored and grateful to be able to share [00:51:00] stories like this with you and I trust as always that you as a listener will be honoring and respectful to my guests and thank them for sharing their story and being vulnerable with us. It takes a lot of courage to share your story in such a public way.

And please make sure you thank our guests for how they are able to share with us so that we can feel seen and validated in our own experiences as well. It is, it's a real honor to be able to hear these stories. And I couldn't share them without our Patreon supporters. So thank you so much for those of you who support the show monthly or yearly.

It just is a huge deal to me and I really appreciate it. If you want to join them, you can go to adopteason.com/community. We would love to have you over there. [00:52:00] Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.