141 Nelle Doux
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/141
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adopteeson.com/partner.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 141, Nelle Doux. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today's guest, Nelle Doux, shares her story of becoming her own advocate, and as she calls it, a private investigator to find her biological father and the truth about her origins. We discuss her experiences of racism, even from a young age, and the complete bewilderment Doux had from not knowing her racial identity. 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, [00:01:00] Nelle Doux. Welcome Nelle.
Nelle Doux: Hi.
Haley Radke: No, welcome Doux.You just told me-
Nelle Doux: Thanks for having me.
Haley Radke: You just told me to call you Doux and I just couldn't even do it in 10 seconds.
Nelle Doux: It's okay.
Haley Radke: Okay. Let's give full disclosure. We are both in quarantine mode as we're recording this.
Nelle Doux: Yes.
Haley Radke: So I think it's just like everyone's feeling a little bit off kilt or a little out of sorts.
Nelle Doux: Just a bit.
Haley Radke: Yes, so thank you so much for talking with us today, even in these circumstances.
Nelle Doux: Of course. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: Okay. Well, why don't we start out how we always do. Doux, would you share your story with us?
Nelle Doux: Yeah, it is a bit of a complicated one, so I will do my best. I would say it starts from birth where I was adopted shortly after being born in ‘93. I am a [00:02:00] mixed race adoptee, so my birth mother is white and she gave birth to me and then I think it was maybe a month or something, I was then taken home by a white adoptive family. And then I grew up with them. When you're a kid, everything seems pretty normal and nothing out of the ordinary 'cause whatever you're around is your ordinary. And then socialization of society started to impact me psychologically because of race, what I looked like. Just those two simple things. I started to notice over time a lot of different commentary from different people. A lot of above just the, “Oh, you don't look like your parents thing.” More of that plus, “What are you,” people just trying to figure out what my race was. Meanwhile, I personally didn't know what it was, so that was [00:03:00] maybe around middle school, probably ninth grade and then up, and it just didn't stop.
Haley Radke: So what did you answer people who asked you things like that when you yourself don't know?
Nelle Doux: It was very complicated 'cause I'm still just a kid in middle school, and I've never been told that I was anything other than white. So my answer wasn't white though, which is interesting because something in me told me that wasn't the case based on how I was being treated. So I did mental math every time someone had a curiosity, something harmless, but sometimes it's not harmless and it's borderline, racist. So it started off with me just saying, “Oh, I don't know.” It's tough 'cause the first thing you'd wanna do is not say you're adopted 'cause it's just no one's business. Not that it's a problem, but it's like you don't want to get into that with someone you [00:04:00] don't know really. So it started off with that, just “Oh I don't know.” And then they would start guessing and then it becomes like a game even though it's not really a game. It's more of a joke on me type of thing. Because no matter what I give you, I can't give you much, and I actually don't have the facts. So the conversations get pretty awkward and then they just stop abruptly and then it becomes like, “Oh, I'm so sorry,” or “I didn't know you were adopted,” or something of that nature, which is confusing for a kid if they still don't know where they come from and they're in that weird position of cradling feelings while protecting their feelings, but also trying to explain something they literally don't have the story to explain or a narrative, so to speak. So it was weird. It was really weird.
Haley Radke: So you said your adoptive family was white. Did you have any siblings? [00:05:00]
Nelle Doux: I do. I have two siblings. They're both white boys. They are near and dear to me, but their experience is far different and we all come from different birth moms.
Haley Radke: So you were all three adopted?
Nelle Doux: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Nelle Doux: From birth. All of us. Yeah. Yep.
Haley Radke: And so would you ever talk to them about the questions and things you were getting?
Nelle Doux: That definitely was something that started running through my mind maybe when I was 20, but I always kept it to myself because I just couldn't figure out the race. I didn't know where I came from and no one was really helping me figure that out. So when it came to my brothers, there were two main things. I didn't want to maybe ruin how they saw our adoptive parents 'cause whatever their idea of who they are [00:06:00] is probably very different from my experience just because I'm not white. And then on top of that, I don't know what it is, but I've heard male adoptees don't necessarily become really interested in the beginning, but maybe near the twenties and thirties in their life. So there were a lot of things I took into consideration. I didn't really wanna ruin any idea they had of their mom and dad, so to speak, because my experience was becoming so different from theirs that I didn't even know how to explain it anymore. It probably wasn't until really late in the process of figuring out where I come from and conducting these interviews and conversations with everybody involved with my adoption, that I finally felt comfortable enough to tell my younger brother about just what I've been dealing with and how hard it's been. [00:07:00]
Haley Radke: When did you start searching or really considering oh, maybe I could find out where I came from.
Nelle Doux: I started wondering in a way where it just doesn't go away and you just wonder all the time. I was probably age 14 or 15, but it was a very private, I don't know what to call it, but the experience was more private and not really trying to do anything about it. Then it got to maybe senior year. In order to graduate from the high school I went to, you had to give a senior speech and I decided to make it about my adoption so that my parents would have to give me information because I was trying to find things. I was curious.
Haley Radke: Okay, a little tricky. Oh I only need this because I'm doing a speech on it.
Nelle Doux: Yeah, I know. I was like, if this is what I have to do, I'll do it 'cause I just could not get anything out of them. So that was my [00:08:00] little sneaky way of just being like, okay, I guess I'll just tell this story in front of 400 people if this is what it's gonna take for me to just get something from you.
Haley Radke: Wow. That cost benefit analysis is very complex.
Nelle Doux: Yeah, I was a little desperate for information 'cause it was mainly like, I mean it's more sad, but I see the humor in it. But mostly for me at the time, it was like they just won't give me anything. I don't know how to learn about why people are calling me derogatory terms because I look black. Like I don't know how to handle it. So I just, I was like, okay, I guess I have to get creative and make my senior speech about my adoption if I'm gonna figure anything out. And my mom gave me a very select few things to read. And didn't really say there was anything [00:09:00] more, that there was anything less. She was just like, this is all you're getting for now and here you go, you can write your speech. So I wrote it with the understanding that it was the truth. And at that age, I was 17, and then from then on it just gets more and more, I don't even know what the right word is, but it just gets really complicated and starts to like actually change my life because I know they didn't really wanna give me all of the information at that time. But because they continued to refuse to give me information and they continued to say that I was just white when I'm clearly not, it just got weirder and weirder instead of more clear over the years. So then I hit around 21, somewhere around my 22nd birthday, and I'm becoming just tired, I would say, because I just can't. It's tough 'cause adoptees’ rights [00:10:00] don't exactly, they're not the same as the birth mother's rights, so to speak. So it's confusing on how to get information if all you can do is try to get your birth certificate, which is a whole process as well.
Haley Radke: Does your state have open records?
Nelle Doux: That I'm not totally sure 'cause I did fill out a document around the time I was 22, around that age, and it did require some form of payment. And the way they explained it was like, you turn this in and then they get back to you about whether or not the birth mother is going to allow you to have the certificate. So I'm not sure exactly, because I didn't end up having to wait for it because my mom saw how serious I was about it, my adoptive mom, and I don't know if that was the ultimate reason, but I think maybe that pushed her to just give me this [00:11:00] massive folder of information and it said my name on it and said the word adoption. She just plopped it on my lap one day when I was 21. And I was just like,”Oh, okay, so you've had this the whole time. Interesting.” And it was hard to not feel betrayed because, as a kid, you're asking for the information for years. I say kid, but I think of kids as like teens. Teenage years too, because your brain's not totally formed and certain parts of you're totally malleable. Being an adoptee, it's so important that you know your narrative, that you know where you started. It's hard to know what you're doing or where to go if you just don't even know where you're coming from.
Haley Radke: So what did that feel like to have this huge folder of information about yourself, finally?
Nelle Doux: It was like [00:12:00] a ton of bricks hit my heart but I had to pick each one up if I was gonna know anything. And I remember feeling a lot of grief but I didn't even know why. I just felt the grief and something told me, if you're really gonna go through this big folder, you gotta have some kind of right mind. Before I even looked into it, I just felt it. It was like an intuitive, immense feeling of grief because the folder was just way too big for it to be simple. And then from that day on, I actually moved out of the house. I was at the time living with my parents, and I saw it as a deep betrayal to have this massive folder of information, a couple floors below where I sleep every day. It was just weird to me that it would be a wise decision to continuously tell me, “We don't have any information. You're [00:13:00] just white, stop asking us.” There always seemed to be this really immense annoyance whenever I was curious and that to me felt very weird that you would be on the verge of really upset that I'm even asking a question. So I moved out and I took the folder with me and it took a long time to get through it. And during that time, I reunited with my birth mother and actually everything she said was the opposite of what I had been told my whole life by my adoptive parents. So that also became a big red flag for me, aside from just the folder.
And then I would say after that, it just becomes extremely dense. The information I'm getting, the stories I'm getting from the birth mother, the lack of empathy that seems to be going around with [00:14:00] everyone involved, and it just becomes increasingly confusing to me why I am alone and just trying to find the black part of me. Because that was always a question. I was always trying to confirm or deny for either the public, because I was constantly being asked about it. To the point of, I'm making a cappuccino for some guy at work, and he's calling me the N-word. It's just nonstop. So for me, I'm like I don't know why you're saying that. I do, but I don't. And you don't even know that I don't know where I come from but now it's weird and here's your cappuccino and I'll just continue my shift. Those things were happening on a daily basis for me, not the N-word on a daily basis, but the N-word monthly. And that had been happening for years and the whole time they are telling me I'm just white. So for me, obviously that's not the [00:15:00] case. Otherwise, it's just very difficult to understand race and society if you really don't know that you are black for real instead of just like people thinking you are. And sometimes it doesn't seem to be the right thing to do, to just call yourself what other people are calling you also. So I always was just in this weird limbo of am I or am I not? Because I know I look like I am, but I'm not willing to say that I am if I'm not. I have no way to confirm it so it just becomes this big elephant in the room. Who's the birth father and I need to find him. So that's 2015 up until September of 2019 was that entire journey of I need to find him. I don't know how, but I will do it and I have no idea how I'm gonna pull it off, but it's gonna happen. And then I ended up [00:16:00] figuring out how to do it but it was without any help. No finances. Just will and the audacity to interview agencies and conduct these conversations between me and my adoptive parents, me and my birth mother. I just tried to stay patient for a really long time and then ended up finding him, but it was not because my birth mother helped me, and it wasn't because my adoptive parents helped me. It was because I had to know what was real and what was not actually real. It's a lot.
Haley Radke: What I'm feeling as you're talking is I'm just getting really angry and frustrated on your behalf and-
Nelle Doux: Thank you, actually.
Haley Radke: A lot of our audience is adopted people, and I've interviewed people who have stumbled across their records under their parents' bed or snuck in and found things. There's just this, [00:17:00] there's been generations of secrets. Now you said you were born in ‘93-
Nelle Doux: ‘93
Haley Radke: Which a lot of people would say, okay, adoptions were opening up and there's so much more information. And a lot of people would say in the nineties, that would have already been the case-
Nelle Doux: Exactly.
Haley Radke: But not for you. So I know we have adoptive parents that listen. What's something that you would say to them about keeping hidden their child's identity? What did that do to you? What would you say to someone who might not have shared the whole truth with their child?
Nelle Doux: I would say it comes down to your heart and your character. So if you're an adoptive parent and you want to adopt kids, and in my case, the birth mother, they were unwilling to give them information about the birth father. However, if I am able, with no help or information, to [00:18:00] find him, certainly they could have helped me because I had everything against me. So for an adoptive parent, it's just like at what level are you loving someone at? Where are you really coming from? Because if you're coming from a very human perspective, it's a very obvious choice to say, I'm gonna help my kid find their dad. It's pretty simple. There's no real threat to you if what you've given to your children is real love. They're not just gonna leave you. It's just your character over time and there is karma involved as well. It's just like you gotta do what seems and feels to be the right thing, even if it is terrifying or uncomfortable. But the last thing you wanna do is act as if you're more ignorant than you really are. That's very unhelpful. If you have your own inquiries and you're starting to realize that, you see my hair and you [00:19:00] see my facial features, and it's pretty obvious that I'm mixed. If you're consciously aware of how society functions in terms of race, if you have a little bit of an idea, it's pretty simple to put it together that I'm not just white. So you really gotta know why you're adopting kids. You have to know what your why is because having kids is a very large action to do and if it's not steeped in love, then what are you doing? Because that information is someone's info. It's not yours. It's a kid's information, and it should be celebrated. It should be expressed. Kids who aren't adopted still need help in understanding and forming identity, so it's not a terrible thing to just introduce them to things. And if you don't have the [00:20:00] answers, I personally feel like there should be something within you that wants to help them find the answers. It could be a bonding experience. It could be something far more spiritual than you would otherwise imagine if you were to just help them out a little bit. If they ask you a question and you don't know the answer, maybe don't lie. Maybe just-
Haley Radke: Do you think? I feel like that's sort of like a bare minimum.
Nelle Doux: Maybe just like the bare basics of human decency.
Haley Radke: Maybe don't lie.
Nelle Doux: Maybe just say you don't know. And if you don't know and I keep asking, maybe we should work on that together. Because if a parent doesn't know and then there's a child at stake, obviously the child is not gonna be able to explain to you what racism is. So if you're a white adoptive parent and your kid is [00:21:00] clearly mixed but they don't know that and you do, that's a whole ‘nother thing. 'Cause they're going out into the world looking a way, and so they're receiving certain things because of that. But they have no backbone. There's no narrative. There's no explanation. There's no, “Oh yeah, well your dad's black, so that's why.” Oh, okay. I just never got that. There was no very basic level of, “Okay, we'll help you find him.” That never occurred for me. It was, I'd say 2016, I actually did my DNA ancestry. I was in a position in life where I actually couldn't even afford to pay for that because it was either I paid for that or I paid for groceries. So at the time I paid for that because it's like you go that far in life and that's still not a for-certain thing. For me, race needed to [00:22:00] become very clear to me. Like I really needed to know where I came from, literally, because I didn't like the feeling of just walking around and knowing it didn't make sense to assume I was, even though I look how I look and it would be pretty obvious to say that I am, but I just wasn't willing to be wrong, even if it was by accident, which is what it would've been. Once I got the results, there was definitely a weight off of me, but then it became, now I need to investigate and have conversations and figure out how I'm gonna find the piece that's missing, which is the birth father. I had five or six different stories going on about him, and then had to pull the strings on those and uncover what was real and what wasn't. I honestly recorded five years of basically an investigation into my own adoption because I just couldn't keep it straight anymore. I had to still [00:23:00] live, go to a job and do basic things in life. So in order to do that, I realized my mental health is really gonna go down if I don't start writing down literally what people are telling me and comparing it to what they say three months from now, because it keeps changing and people keep switching their stories and they keep giving me different answers and it's just not helpful. To me it seemed borderline malevolent because all I'm asking is for a very basic thing, which is a name that people actually do have. My adoptive parents did not have the name, but the birth mother could have just written the names down because she gave me names of a white guy and gave it to me saying,”Oh, this is your dad.” And I'm like, you really must think I'm dumb. You can't just give someone who's mixed a name and an image of a white boy and say, [00:24:00] “Here he is.” That's obviously not him. It was just the certain things that people were doing had such absence of empathy, honestly. And to keep your mind somewhere safe during experiences where it feels like people are just toying with you and then not helping you, but still toying with you, it's just a very weird place to be. And for those people to be the ones who raised you or birthed you, that just becomes even more complicated. And also trying to teach yourself what racism is without knowing what your race is also very complicated.
Haley Radke: I have this picture on your Instagram feed printed off. That's how techy I am.
Nelle Doux: Gotta have the visuals.
Haley Radke: I like to have my phone off during an interview-
Nelle Doux: Yeah.
Haley Radke: There's this picture of you with a man and you look like you're glowing, like you're both just like vibrant. The caption [00:25:00] is “Unfathomable, pure relief, joy, and elimination of suffering.” Do you wanna tell us about that?
Nelle Doux: Yes. After I cry.
Haley Radke: We welcome all the feelings here.
Nelle Doux: There's just a lot that went into making him appear in my reality. There's a lot of focused hours and days that went into me studying how to become an investigator, just to get him. At one point I thought about hiring one, but I knew I couldn't afford it, so I just figured, okay, what's the next best thing? I guess I'll just teach myself how to do that. So then I researched some investigators that do things very well, and I tried to find videos and tried to find articles and learned on the fly. And then through a lot of grief and [00:26:00] trauma, eventually he appeared and that photo was taken at my first apartment that I've ever had to myself, and it was a sense of something is finally stable and real, and it's not a joke. And yes, he's black and really would've been nice to have that so that I wouldn't have been so confused all of the time trying to match my face up with random pictures on Google of different ethnicities. He could have just told me exactly where I came from day one, and it would've been simpler, but that's of course not how things went. With that picture being taken, it's more than proof. It's like these are real lives that got toyed with for no reason, and thank God they were able to meet each other because there's a lot of loss that everyone has to grieve despite [00:27:00] finding each other, which makes reunion complicated but worthwhile. You do get to build something and you do get to learn those people, just at different times in your lives instead of like traditionally growing up. But still valuable, if not more, because that kind of connection was kept for me for a long time and it wasn't just a dad connection, it was a black father connection, which is just different. It's just different. But all the more necessary. My adoptive father is an amazing provider, very in tune with my mom and they’re a great couple, and they get things done and they do what needs to be done. But there's a race element that was just not there. And I [00:28:00] gave everyone a lot of benefit of the doubt until I started really seeing that everyone knew that they could have done better, they just didn't wanna do better. And I've had those conversations with them where I'm asking, “What was the point really? What was the point?” Because there was way too much suffering. And to be quite honest, I know suicide is prevalent in our community of adoptees and that was something I personally struggled with and they really could have lost a daughter, to be quite frank with you, several times. So it's something that is deeply serious and when someone can have that connection, even if all they do is meet them one time, sometimes that's enough or it has to be enough. It depends. For me, it was life changing because so much heaviness just started to leave. Even just talking with him to [00:29:00] get the timeline right and to get what was a lie and what was not a lie, and to have him go through the folder and just photos and just being able to relieve myself psychologically. We're basically talking like a 20 year period, maybe 15 years, of just being psychologically confused and me personally not having the tools or the evidence or the rights to actually end it.
Haley Radke: It sounds like you were just in such deep pain during that whole period of your search for answers.
Nelle Doux: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Can you talk about now, having since found him, having confirmed that you have this whole other part of your identity, what does that exploration look like? And I know that you are a writer and a very creative person, and can you [00:30:00] talk a bit about how you have moved forward into, I don't know if this is the right lingo, but putting your identity back together using all of these creative means?
Nelle Doux: Yeah, it's definitely a layered process. That's probably how I'd explain it. It definitely started with meeting the birth father, just to have that experience. But then I know there was a lot of grief. It wasn't even up to me. It just surfaced and I had to deal with it and feel it and do something with it because the grief I felt, for me personally, I know on the podcast there's a lot of talking about the fog, so to speak. It was like the fog every day would emerge and it would be thicker, but a different color. But no matter what, it was [00:31:00] a fog and I would think I'm getting through something and then a curve ball comes and I gotta do it again. And that got to end once I met him. And then when it came through, just putting things together, identity, race. I feel I'm still doing that 'cause it feels like I'm a recovering survivor of this weird psychological, unnecessary abuse. It was a very bizarre way to grow up, racially speaking, but also just as a human. It was just a very weird experience. So putting things back together has looked like me speaking up for myself, however weird or uncomfortable it is between me and my adoptive parents and them actually listening and not doing anything but listening and learning. And then with my birth mother, [00:32:00] unfortunately, just the manner in which she handled everything in the beginning before I was born, a few years after that, and then through reunion, that is something I don't really envision putting together unless she is willing to actually have a grown conversation about why she chose to complicate things as heavily as she did, knowingly. So for me to even include her in my life would require a lot of openness from her and a lot of willingness to have a kind of conversation that would probably benefit us both if she's willing to change her life in that manner. But those are pretty big decisions for all parties to make. So for me, putting things together has not necessarily included [00:33:00] her. I personally wrote her a letter right before September of 2019. So for me, it was a way for me to create a boundary between me and her 'cause I think that was the healthiest possible decision for me after I really found out everything and put the timeline together and just saw how manipulative she really was, as long as she was. And how I really wasn't supposed to ever find out is the biggest piece of this. I really could be 26 right now and still not know I was black, but I just decided to pay for a DNA test and that's the only reason I know. Which to me is disheartening and a very weird thing to recover from. So putting things back together has mainly included spending and speaking with the black side of things, to put it bluntly. Like, call my black grandmother for [00:34:00] the first time. We were just texting each other last week and there's so much grief and emotion that I can't even bring myself to call her yet. But I'm so grateful that she's even in my life. That has a lot to do with me also putting my identity together still, and just receiving what I worked so hard for. And that's a part of that.
Haley Radke: So one of your poems that you're performing on Instagram, you have to scroll way back to this one, has a couple lines. “I'm an adoptee. Dying isn't new. I know how to be zero.”
Nelle Doux: Yeah. Yeah. That's a tough line. There are some poems I've written that I understand why they might be dangerous racially or just sometimes things are looked at in all views except for the adoptee's point of view.
Haley Radke: I wanted to ask you about that. The [00:35:00] room that you're performing that in, are the people listening? They're not necessarily adoptees-
Nelle Doux: Right, they're not adoptees unless they are, but-
Haley Radke: You got a big reaction to that line.
Nelle Doux: It was a big room and it was just an open mic I went to in Los Angeles. I actually ended up moving there in 2016. I was there for a little over two years, but that was in the very thick of me teaching myself how to become an investigator, and I barely had anything at that point based on how much I have now. Looking back, I barely had much to go with, but that poem is in reference to my adoptive parents and mostly speaking on every day I am waking up and I'm taking my face, [00:36:00] and I have a photo of my face and I'm matching it on my laptop to pictures of random ethnicities, just a bunch of ethnicities, and I'm getting nowhere. But, I'm trying to come up with some kind of solution. I don't wanna just sit around and wallow because I could do that all day, but it's not gonna help me. And so those were the first few things I was doing as a kid to try to help me understand what was going on and to learn where the racism was coming at, when it was coming, and putting things together and zero is where I started at every day because I wasn't actually getting anywhere. I just, I didn't have a timeline, I didn't have anything. I just had a gut feeling. That's it really. So starting at zero is a very real experience and expression in that poem.
Haley Radke: When I was glancing at it as you've been telling me your story, and [00:37:00] I'm picturing it too, you are growing up in this whitewashed home and now you're adding these things back into yourself and trying to understand yourself more. And yeah, I'm really interested to see where your writing goes next, exploring those other topics. It's such a powerful line and I think meaning wise, I think it would be really impactful for a lot of adoptees to hear that and just think about, wow, is that sort of how I felt about myself too?
Nelle Doux: Yeah, that definitely is a big part of why I even got up that night and decided to just read it because I was in so much pain that I figured, sure, this will probably make me feel better, or it might give me something if someone else feels better. It was a desperate action on my part because I [00:38:00] just needed something other than what I was living through. I needed to experience something else. Part of even writing the poems and making my experience more, not public, but more to share it. It's one thing to keep it to yourself and it's another thing to actually sit in your power enough to share it in front of that big of an audience or to tell your story on a podcast, for example. It's just different. And the people that you can touch, you just have no idea because you can't see 'em but I'm sure they are there, and I always had that in my head, too, this whole journey. I always thought about, through my research and just wondering, trying to find people who are in my position. I still haven't found someone who's ever been in my position, but just in case they do exist, maybe I should keep working hard to find my birth father. Or maybe I should go read this [00:39:00] poem, or whatever it was. Which is half the reason I even am writing a book of poems is if there's some kid in some other country who happens to see a poem or hear something I said, and if something clicks and they go, oh, just 'cause I don't have anything doesn't mean I can't find someone. Or just because I don't have the tools doesn't mean I don't matter enough to receive them. If you're a human being, you have rights and you should be able to be treated decently. Honestly, a lot of my poems are just about can we all just be decent? Please? Can we just do the basics? It would just make it really easier to live in the world if we could just do that.
Haley Radke: Bare minimum.
Nelle Doux: Just the bare minimum.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Going back to that. I'm so glad [00:40:00] that you told us about writing your poetry and you share little snippets here and there on Instagram. We'll let people know where they can find that at the very end.
Nelle Doux: Okay.
Haley Radke: But yeah, so for recommended resources today, I brought a book of poetry because I knew I was talking to you, and I know you're gonna talk a bit about poetry as well, but I recently finished reading Not My White Savior by Julayne Lee, and oh my goodness, it is a powerful, powerful book. If you are an adoptee activist or you are interested in that sort of space, this is a really great read for that. It's very politically charged. I think a lot of times some of the emotions I was feeling when I was reading it were anger at the circumstances that she's describing. She has some really, again, [00:41:00] powerful tributes to adoptees who have died by suicide which you mentioned earlier, Doux-
Nelle Doux: Yeah.
Haley Radke: That this is very common in adoptee spaces and Julayne does spoken word poetry. She talks a little bit about it on her website. And I think it comes through in some of her writing. Like she's just got such a great grasp on language and playing with words and I really thought it was powerful and an important read. It's very hard to read at some points because if you are a big feelings person like me-
Nelle Doux: Yes, like me.
Haley Radke: Yeah, it can get a little bit overwhelming, but I think it's a really important book. It says Julayne Lee was born in South Korea to a mother she never knew. This is on the back of the book.
Nelle Doux: Wow.
Haley Radke: When she was an infant, she was adopted by a white Christian family in Minnesota where she was brought to grow up. And so she explores what it is like to be an intercountry adoptee and [00:42:00] talks about Korea a lot in here and what it's like-
Nelle Doux: Yeah. That's so important.
Haley Radke: Being an adoptee.
Nelle Doux: I gotta check that out.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I really like it. It's very good. Not My White Savior. And it's Julayne Lee and she is also very active on Twitter so I would recommend giving her a follow there as well if you would like to be challenged. She doesn't pull any punches.
Nelle Doux: That'll be a challenge.
Haley Radke: So, yes-
Nelle Doux: That’s good.
Haley Radke: What did you wanna recommend to us today, Doux?
Nelle Doux: Something that is also challenging, probably going to be challenging for some, for very similar reasons. His name is Donte Collins. He's a good friend of mine. He's a fellow adoptee poet and specifically he has a poem in a book of poems called Autopsy. They all touched me, but one specifically would be “Grief Puppet” [00:43:00]. And you can YouTube that. The performance is on YouTube, organized by Button Poetry here in Minneapolis, actually. But what I like about his poetry is that it's very, even if it seems abstract, it is very much to the point.
If there's a feeling that needs to come across, you feel it. And “Grief Puppet” discusses mental health and trauma, which adoptees have their experiences with both. And it also touches on sexuality and some other concepts as well. But from an adoptee's point of view, I think it's just important to uplift all of us who are doing such great work, and he is most definitely someone that, even just listening to the poem, even if it doesn't make you feel necessarily good, you are gonna come away with something that is real. And anything real is worthy of your time.
Haley Radke: [00:44:00] “Grief Puppet.” What a great name.
Nelle Doux: I know, it's a pretty stellar name for a poem.
Haley Radke: Wow. I'll definitely link to that YouTube video of the reading as well. Thank you so much. I wanna make sure people know where to follow you online so they can keep in touch with you and when you're releasing your poetry, they'll be able to hear it right from you, that news.
Nelle Doux: So it is N-E-L-L-E dot D-O-U-X, that's the Instagram handle. So my email can be found there if you wanna connect and most updates will be put there. I don't have a website or anything.
Haley Radke: Your Instagram is so beautiful and-
Nelle Doux: Thank you.
Haley Radke: You are so beautiful.
Nelle Doux: Thank you.
Haley Radke: We got in the video and I am in my basement in this giant Sherpa [00:45:00] fuzzy coat-
Nelle Doux: You look so comfortable.
Haley Radke: And Doux is just so beautiful-
Nelle Doux: I should get a blanket.
Haley Radke: You're just in quarantine and you're just glowing.
Nelle Doux: I’m just in quarantine in the sunroom trying to act like I'm outside.
Haley Radke: You looked like you had a halo beaming around you.
Nelle Doux: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Follow her for her words. There's also a lot of beauty there and you're a wonderful photographer. I feel like there's lots of things that you capture on your trips here and there.
Nelle Doux: Yes.
Haley Radke: You have a very good eye for that as well. Okay. I so appreciate you sharing your story with us. It was such an honor to hear it and thank you.
Well friend, I did not expect to make this announcement so soon after the COVID crisis has hit the Worldwide Pandemic. But I have had a few interviews fall through just because of circumstances. People can't record [00:46:00] if they're like me with young children at home, or they're finding it very difficult, which I am too. Just so you know, there's not gonna be a new episode next week, but we are doing some work behind the scenes with some of our favorite healing series therapists. And we will have those shows to you shortly, so you can expect a new Healing series episode from Adoptees On, May 1st. In the meantime, if you are just really missing out on Adoptee talk, I do have a ton of other Adoptees Off Script episodes over on Patreon. Those are for monthly supporters of the podcast. And without you I'm not able to keep making the show. So I'm so thankful for my monthly supporters and if you wanna join them and get more Adoptees Off Script episodes, those come out every single Monday, please go to adopteeson.com/partner to find out the details of how you can support the show. [00:47:00] And also, we've been having some Zoom calls with Patreon supporters, which has been really joy filling. Can I say that? Even in the hard circumstances, it's so wonderful to see your faces and get to know you better and get to know what's happening for you. There's so many people with different circumstances, either like me, with young kids at home or with teenagers who are finding it challenging or singles or people that are caring for elderly parents. All kinds of different situations, and we've been supporting each other through some face-to-face zoom calls. So that's been really helpful and good, and not a usual Patreon bonus. It's just something we're doing through COVID circumstances. And my kids regularly interrupt me. If you want the extra enjoyment of seeing their little faces every once in a while. [00:48:00] Okay, so that's it. That's the announcement. We will be back with a new healing series episode for you on May 1st. Stay well. I'm thinking of you and I'm just, wow, this is tough. It's tough times and we're not gonna play the comparison game. Everyone is having a difficult time in different ways and I'm sending you love from my freezing cold basement in Canada and hoping that you're well, that your loved ones are doing well, and that you are able to get the support you need, even while social distancing and those things that are really hard for us, especially for people with trauma and that might be feeling very lonely and vulnerable. So I'm thinking of you and I give you a big hug from far away and thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again [00:49:00] soon.
