156 Astrid Castro
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/156
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 156, Astrid Castro. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Our guest today is Astrid Castro, founder of Adoption Mosaic. Astrid serves the adoption constellation through a variety of innovative trainings designed to highlight the adoptee experience.
We discuss how she came to work in the adoption industry, the current state of ethics in adoption, and what it's like working in such a challenging space, especially as an adopted person. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com.
Let's listen in. [00:01:00] I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on, Astrid Castro. Welcome Astrid.
Astrid Castro: Hello. Thank you so much.
Haley Radke: I'm so happy we're finally talking. I've seen you online for years and doing some really good work, and so it's so exciting to connect. Finally, I'd love it if you would start and share your story with us.
Astrid Castro: Thank you, Haley. I ditto. I have watched you and followed your work for years and it's so exciting to be here. So, my personal adoption story starts about 45 years ago when my sister and I were about four and a half and six years old in Colombia. We had been taken to an orphanage and we didn't know by who.
We were left there and then stayed in the orphanage for a very short amount of time, and then were adopted by a family here in the [00:02:00] United States. They were living on the east coast in Massachusetts, Wayland, Massachusetts, at the time and they were a couple who had not been able to experience pregnancy and they had tried for many years.
So when they finally decided to stop trying to have a biological child, they went ahead and adopted my sister and I from Columbia. And it's interesting depending on which parent you ask. We all have our own stories. I don't think I realized that when I first asked them in my twenties.
I asked them separately. I did an interview for a college essay, and I asked them separately the story about why they adopted us and what they had hoped for and why they adopted older siblings. And I was pretty sick when I came. Why they [00:03:00] chose a sibling group with one of the kids who was pretty sick, and so forth and so on.
And we knew that they had never been to Colombia, so I was really curious as to why they chose Columbia, of all the countries that they could have chosen. And in this interview process, I just pretended that my professor had asked me to interview them and ask these really deep personal questions.
And I think that really speaks volumes to us adoptees who, I feel, have the right to this knowledge. I don't think we should have to feel that we're being sneaky to get information about what I think is our birthright, our birth stories, our birth. Our existence into the family that we live in, why we are with that family, we have the right to know the depths of those if we choose to.
And I know that there's a lot of adoptees who are like I don't need to know the details. I know enough. And [00:04:00] I was the kid who wanted to know every detail, every thought that went behind it. And I needed to know that there was a process, that there was a thoughtful process because I needed to matter enough that there was a process that showed the value of who we were in their family and how we came into their family.
And so I asked my parents, it had to be an interview that was asked separately, so I asked my parents separately the exact same questions. And I wanna say maybe I had 10 questions that I asked each of them, but I had to ask them exactly the same way separately. They couldn't be in the room. And it was on the phone.
And the first question was, how long did you try to have a birth child before adopting us? And my mom had said, oh, about seven years. And my dad had said 10 years. And I remember thinking, wait a second. That's a really big difference. That's a gap of [00:05:00] three years that one person seemed to be trying and the other person had stopped emotionally. Maybe emotionally, maybe physically, and that the other person hadn't.
And I think that also speaks volumes to the era and the time. My parents didn't talk a whole lot about this process. I remember in my twenties when I heard that, it was more frustrating than it was understanding and knowledgeable. For me, it was frustrating. I remember saying to myself, did the two of you talk to each other during this process? Like, how is this possible that your stories are so different?
The other question I asked was, why did you adopt from Columbia? You didn't speak the language, you didn't speak Spanish, you had never been there and you didn't have anybody in your life that was Colombian. And I was just really curious as to why Colombia. And at the time, they weren't able [00:06:00] to travel to Colombia, so we had an escort that brought us to the states.
And so when I asked them that question, my mom, she's the kind of person who wants to paint such a beautiful picture, wants us to know that we come from a beautiful place. So she said we chose Columbia because the people are so kind and wonderful and loving and, oh my gosh, the landscape is just incredible. We also knew that there were a lot of children in orphanages at the time that needed permanency.
And you asked my dad and he said, we tried to go through the foster care system here in the States and they said, you can't move for three to five years. And my job moved me all the time. And so we decided to go with an international agency. And the reason we picked Columbia was because it was the country that would get us to getting to start our family the quickest.
And so [00:07:00] once again, that experience was just two very different experiences on their part, which in my early twenties just confused me. I share this story because I think it really has propelled me in a lot of the work that I do.
Which is how do we create space to tell, to communicate such an important piece. So I work with adoptive parents all the time. And so how are you communicating? How are you making these decisions? Are these decisions the best decisions for you and your family? Is transracial adoption even something that you should be considering, or should you not?
And how do couples gather information that is not biased by an agency or not biased by an attorney. And instead Adoption Mosaic is an organization which is not either an agency or an [00:08:00] attorney agency. We provide education and adoption support.
So, hearing my parents say that was really confusing, really hard for me. And when, later in life, I realized that each of us have our own experiences and I was able to just hold that for what it was, it really helpful to figure out how to do that, to say that each of my parents had their own experience and their own reasoning and their own justification for how and why they decided to adopt the two of us.
So, throughout our childhood, my sister was the kid who was the compliance child who got good grades, didn't stir the pot. She was the older one of the two of us. She was the one that never really talked much about adoption, never asked any questions about our birth family or Colombia.
And then, I, on the [00:09:00] other hand, was exactly the opposite, I was not compliant. I was always getting in trouble. It wasn't until I was 14 that I was diagnosed with severe dyslexia, and I say severe. So to the point of I had gone through my entire education and had tricked the system into thinking that I knew how to read, but I didn't.
And so then I was pulled out of regular school, high school. In my last four years, I went to Carroll High School, which was a school that was focused for and specialized in dyslexic teaching and dyslexia. So I went to that school and graduated from high school and swore I would never go back to school 'cause I hated it so much. It was awful.
Haley Radke: But somehow you have a degree. So I feel like something else happened.
Astrid Castro: [00:10:00] Something else did happen. I found my path, right? And for those of us who struggle in traditional academia, if we find our path and it's clear that continuing our education is necessary, we have a tendency to figure it out and do it.
And that's exactly what happened. I took some time off from school and snowboarded and became a professional snowboarder for a couple years and traveled. And I met my husband snowboarding. He was a professional snowboarder as well. We traveled and did the World Cup and raced in Europe.
My ex-husband is Italian, born and raised in Italy, and so we were racing a lot in Europe and doing tours. I also lived in Colorado and was on Team [00:11:00] Breckenridge. And during that experience I had a lot of downtime in the summer during dry land training and I decided that I would volunteer during my off-season.
I would volunteer at an adoption agency. That was what I was gonna do. I thought my adoption turned out pretty good. Like my parents, I am pretty content and pretty happy where I am in my life, and I wanna give back to an adoption agency and support adoptions. However, I also was very aware of how my transracial adoption experience affected my life and affected it negatively.
And so I also was frustrated and upset that my parents had not received any support or training or anything around race and adopting older children. I now identify as an immigrant. [00:12:00] That's a super interesting conversation to me. Adoptees who were internationally adopted and many of us don't identify as immigrants. Instead, we identify as adopted people, which is really interesting that we haven't been given the rite of passage, if you will.
It is different, I think, than a traditional immigrant family coming to the states. Absolutely. It is different. And my sister and I, being four and a half and six years old, I think we could have really benefited from being seen as immigrants to receive some services.
I think my dyslexia was highlighted, I will say, and it probably didn't help the fact that I was dyslexic as far as trying to learn another language and learn English before starting kindergarten. That was the goal that us girls had to get English [00:13:00] down really well.
My mother hired a Spanish-speaking nanny to help out for the transition. As soon as the agency found out that she had done that, they said no, no, no, you need to let her go. Find an English-speaking nanny because we need these girls speaking English before they start kindergarten.
So all of those things were in the back of my head, even though I wanted to volunteer and support an agency, I wanted to find the right agency. I wasn't super supportive of international adoption. And so I wanted to find a domestic agency. That specialized in domestic adoption and, granted I was 18 years old, so please keep that in mind, I
Haley Radke: Just, okay, so Astrid, you could see me cringing, right? And so just hang in with us, guys, like we're going, oh, she's learned so much. We've all learned a [00:14:00] lot from when we were younger.
Astrid Castro: Exactly. So I decided that I was going to call the agencies. Look, it was back in the day when we had phonebooks and I opened up the yellow pages to the word “adoption” and saw there were a ton of attorneys, but also decided I was gonna call all. I wanna say there were maybe seven or eight, maybe seven adoption agencies in the area.
And I was gonna call each one and I was trying to think of a way that I could find out whether they have ethical practices or not? And so I called and I said that I was pregnant. I said I was pregnant and I was looking for an agency to place my baby. [00:15:00] And looking back on that now, and with all of the first mothers and birth mothers that I know, there's a part of me that's really proud of myself that I did that.
And there's a part of me that has a lot of shame that I did that, because infiltrating as something that I am not, which was a woman who was pregnant trying to make a plan for my baby, and yet I felt at the time, at 18, that would be my kind of right to the point, that I would instantly know how somebody who was calling, who was pregnant, who was looking to find an agency, how that individual would be treated.
I told them that I was Latina, that I was brown and I told them that the father was African American. I wasn't treated very well by any of them actually. And [00:16:00] I remember after every call hanging up and just being in shock. It was like, oh my gosh, I am being treated like this is a commodity. I am being treated with, Oh, okay, the baby's father is black. Well, we just don't have very many families. And just being talked to this way, it was such an eye-opening experience.
And it was one agency that I called and they said, oh, you know what, we are not a placement agency. We help do special recruitment for children who are in foster care, who have been in foster care for a very long time. And these kiddos need some additional recruitment and so we do, we help out with that. That was the Rocky Mountain Adoption Exchange.
And now there are lots of exchanges, Adopt US Kids [00:17:00] is a part of those programs and special recruitment for kids that are in foster care. And they said, however, here is an agency that we think that could help you and here are the questions that you might want to ask.
I felt like they were there to support me. They were there to help me be informed and make more of an informed decision, and they weren't even a placement agency. Then I hung up. I called back and I said, can I speak to your volunteer coordinator? I gave my real name and told them that I wanted to volunteer for them.
That's where my career started in this field. I was pushing papers and filing and I was doing anything anybody asked me to that needed help in the office. And I was helping with some fundraisers and so forth, and I would share my story openly. And I was there during dry land training. I was there quite a lot.
I wanna say there was a period of time that I [00:18:00] was there 20 hours a week and volunteering and just giving back. And feeling really good about that. And one day my volunteer coordinator, my supervisor said to me, Astrid, we have a prospective adoptive parent panel, because they did do some training for adoptive parents.
They had a contract through the state to offer some of these trainings, and they asked if I would be a panelist and just share my story. And they said all of the other panelists will be adoptive parents, but we've never had an adoptee speak. So I spoke. This was one of the first times outside of my snowboarding career that I felt heard and that I was good at something.
And all I was doing was storytelling. I was storytelling my experience of the things that my parents could have done better, the things that were really hard, the parts of being transracially [00:19:00] adopted, what I knew about my birth family's story, what I wanted to know, and just shared all of this stuff.
And I saw people sitting on the edge of their seats just so just absorbing and soaking this in. And I felt really empowered and I felt really good to have literally an audience that wanted to hear my story, that was there and absorbing this. And I could tell that people were listening in a way that they wanted to learn.
And at the end of that experience, I had people come up to me and make comments like as a result of you sharing your story, I am going to do things differently if we end up adopting and thank you. And in that moment, I knew that I was going to work in adoptions in some capacity. There you [00:20:00] have it.
Haley Radke: There you have it. Thank you for sharing that. So I mentioned I have the cringe moment whenever we talk about adoption agencies. I feel like on the show there's always like a little bit of a yucky feeling. I've shared so many times that I have a big passion for family preservation and, working for years in this field, all the unethical things that are going on.
In fact, part of your story is discovering some of that in your lived experience. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that, about discovering some of the unethical things that go on and how you try and balance that while still serving in some capacity in this field where there's some good things happening, but there's a lot of naughty things, very naughty things happening.
Astrid Castro: Yes. [00:21:00] Haley, I think that's something that I grapple with, I think about all the time. I would say that as soon as I stop thinking about that is when I need to stop doing the work that I'm doing. I feel that to be good at what I do I need to be asking those questions.
But also, and this is the hard part, creating space for, at the end of the day, we have thousands and thousands of children that are the results of this system, this corrupt system, this system that supports a lot of the things that I don't. And I think that is the number one, primary way that I remind myself, when I'm doing kids groups and when I'm doing trainings for [00:22:00] prospective adoptive parents, that I don't believe adoption is going to go away in my lifetime.
So how can I find a balance between these; I'm gonna ask my families that I work with really hard questions. I'm going to support their kids in a way that I think they need support. And that might not be super popular to the families. It might be hard for the families to have me hold them accountable. Why haven't you talked to your child about X, Y, and Z?
And back in the day, 25 years ago when I was new to this work, it was questions like, why haven't you told your child that they're adopted and that's not okay? And now it's, why aren't you creating space for your child to have these conversations about things that you have information on? You owe it [00:23:00] to your child to tell them everything they should know by the time that they are off on their own and not living with you.
They should have access to every piece of information that you have. The good, the bad, the ugly, and if the child were to read their paperwork that you have on file, that there are no surprises. And so those are the things. I think it's the hundreds and thousands of kids that I've worked with that I've realized that have benefited from the work that I do that helps me to navigate the industry that I have a lot of strong opinions about, about their practices and what's happening in industry at large.
Haley Radke: So there's so many of us that talk about our experiences as an adopted person online, and what I see [00:24:00] is, well, I see a couple different groups that may push back.
I would say the vast majority are adoptive parents who insist their adoptees don't feel that way. And then some others are adoptees who, validly, might say I've had a different experience. But that becomes really taxing, and especially when you are sharing your personal story, your personal experiences, that comes at a cost.
How often do we talk about the emotional labor it takes to share something so intimately personal, perhaps interacting with people in comments if we're talking about social media, and paying a price for that. Can you talk about that? Because I know you've seen so many adoptees doing this advocacy work and paying that price and burning out.
Astrid Castro: Yeah. Burnout is, I think, in our field, and so many of us are attracted to this [00:25:00] field because of our personal experiences and I will even say because of the healing aspect that it could potentially have to share our stories and have a platform and have an audience and have people say thank you. Thank you for that. That is making me a better person. Or thank you for that. That made me feel normalized. That made me feel seen.
And when you hear comments like that, who gets to have a job where they hear comments like that all the time? And so I think that there is this draw to this field, that we have a draw for us adoptees to come back to this field for those of us in this industry, for those of us who have an interest. And I think that so many of us come into this with the intention of getting and experiencing that, and that when we experience the opposite, that [00:26:00] we don't have a community ourselves.
Oftentimes we don't have a community ourselves to go to and say, I need some support. And I have to say the thing that has helped me not have burnout and, of course, there's certain days where I'm just like, whew, I'm glad I know how to meditate. I'm glad I know how to love myself. I'm glad I know how to remind myself of my goodness and the core of who I am. I'm glad that I have the ability to do that because if I didn't, this would've tipped me over the edge and I would be out. Out.
And it is to me about community and I am so excited and it’s so thrilling to see how many groups and communities are popping up. We've got amazing programs out there like Adoptees Connect that Pam is creating, you and the [00:27:00] podcast and uplifting adoptees voices, and Anne Heffron and Pam, Adoptees who are offering platforms for practicing and writing your story and being heard.
And there's so many other individuals that are doing this work, that are creating these platforms for individuals. And then there's adoptees who are doing it behind the scene, right? Who are doing research for us that gives us these platforms. And I think about Dr. JaeRan Kim, who uplifts her adoptee community in such an amazing, phenomenal way.
And so I've surrounded myself with those people. And that is what gets me through these hard times. That is who I call; I don't call my adoptive parents. I don't call my girlfriend who doesn't have any personal connection to adoption. And I find my people who I know will ground me and help me remind me of why I do [00:28:00] the work that I do.
So because I've been doing this work so long, Haley, right now I have a young woman who started off in my kids groups when she was five and she's now 19 and she is a volunteer. She helps me and she's on panels and just loves being in this community. And every time I see her, Saiming, she is a phenomenal human being, see her come out and her voice and the strength that she has and her ability. Of course her parents signed up for these kids groups and bravo to them for doing so. And she has taken it to the level of this is what it looks like when I'm supported from five years on.
And she is such an example of what I want every adoptee to experience.
Haley Radke: Isn't that exciting? Because I think there's so many of us who don't get to that [00:29:00] place till we're in our thirties, forties, fifties, and some might never, and that's okay too. But I love that there's resources for younger adoptees to really be processing things in real time, as they should be, just my opinion.
Okay. I'm curious. You mentioned this first experience of being an adoptee on a panel sitting next to a bunch of adoptive parents and how that was transformative for you. And I've also heard you say before that being on a panel can be therapeutic. Now I've been to a few different adoption conferences and have had good experiences and have had literally terrible, worst-ever, core-shaking experiences.
So I've seen the gamut as many of us have. I think [00:30:00] there's a lot of, sorry, I'm stumbling because we're gonna talk a little bit more about this in recommended resources because you've been doing something with panels that I think is really powerful. But can you talk about adoptees on panels, the power of that, and some of the pros and cons? So some of those kinds of things from your experience?
Astrid Castro: Yeah. So like you, Haley, I have experienced lots of panels at conferences, local agency panels, except for the conferences, very few non-promotional panels, if you will. So most of the panels that I have either seen or been on or experienced historically in the past before I started doing my own panel work through Adoption Mosaic had all been with the emphasis on promotion. [00:31:00]
And what I mean by that is that it's an agency that is bringing in adoptees or adoptive parents who have a very specific narrative. And even if the narrative is: It's hard, we've had some struggles, etc., etc., the outcome is, adoption is wonderful and I would've never done it any other way.
So let's back up to back to that time when I was between the ages of 18 and my early twenties, I was on a lot of panels. It was like this adrenaline rush that I would get by being on these panels. And all I had to do was be a good storyteller. And I've always enjoyed storytelling.
So I would be on these panels, have that adrenaline feel really wonderful, and oftentimes I would over share. I was young; [00:32:00] I didn't realize the power of storytelling and how it could sit with you afterwards and what would happen, the aftermath of being on a panel, if you will.
Haley Radke: Can I pause you there? Can you just elaborate a little bit on oversharing because I think we say that quite a bit. And I think it's important to elaborate on that to hopefully protect other adoptees from having that experience too.
Astrid Castro: Yeah. I think that when we have spent so much of our life not having a platform that when we're asked to sit on a platform and we're gonna have an audience that's going to listen to our every word and be engaged and excited, that we have a tendency to get sucked into this moment of this feeling that everybody's going to be supportive [00:33:00] of the things we have to say, even the hard things. And we've never shared this in public, or we've never shared this with anybody.
How many times I have heard the statement, this isn't something I've ever talked to anybody about. That's, to me, when the facilitator should hear a scratching record and just stop, pick up the needle and stop. This is not the place for somebody to be sharing something for the first time. And yet oftentimes that is when the facilitator is sitting on the edge of their seat and saying to themselves, this is gonna be a fabulous panel.
Without really thinking, wait a second. What is this person gonna feel like when they're at home by themselves tonight alone? And have we done our job on giving them the resources that they need, the community that they need? Saying I will call you and check in with you? [00:34:00]
We benefited as an agency hugely from you sharing your experience, right? And yet, we are completely disregarding the toll that it will take on you as an individual, and we will disregard that. And so many of us, because we've never been given a platform, we've never been asked. Actually we've never been asked by the people who should be asking us the most and the people who should love us the most.
We should be so well practiced in this story that when we get out there on that panel, we shouldn't be, I am not saying crying on a panel is a bad thing 'cause I've cried on my panels plenty of times and a crying is an expression of emotion that I do a lot. But if the result of that is that I'm not going to feel good about myself when I'm done, then we have not done anyone a service.
We've done the adoptee a huge disservice, and the [00:35:00] adoptee is the one to whom the adoptive parents are sitting there saying, I wanna learn from you so I can be a better parent. Well, right now you're not being a very good parent because you're allowing this to happen, and this is not okay. And so we see adoption agencies, we see individuals put youth on panels, which I am very, very against.
I get it. I get why. And I don't believe that a 15-year-old, a 12-year-old, and, I mean, I've seen as young as 12 on panels, and I will say that one 12-year-old was very well spoken. And I get why somebody said, you would be great at this. And they were a fabulous speaker. And yet I just sat there thinking they're 12. This is not consensual. I would say even at 15 or 16.
I have had a 17-year-old on a panel, and the only [00:36:00] reason is because it was Saiming who grew up since she was five, and she had seen all of my panels. She had practiced to the point where this was not new. Nothing that she was gonna say on this panel was new to her.
The emotions and feelings that she was going to experience were not new to her.
And so I think that's what it needs to look like. I knew she was supported. I knew I would be calling her. And that's the way I run all of my panels. I would love to see a complete overhaul on either agencies don't do panels, period, ever, or just adoptive parent panels, not adoptee panels.
Or, if they do adoptee panels, they come to an organization like Adoption Mosaic and they say, we know that you have a pool, or Adoptees On or an organization that has support for the adoptees. We know that you have adoptees that have practice. And do you have [00:37:00] anybody that we can contract with?
And the adoptee, as a result of being on an Adoption Mosaic panel, knows that they should be compensated financially. Knows that they should be getting support resources in their community from this agency, and they know that if you're gonna be on a panel, I will put it on a calendar, I will give you a call, and I will follow up with you. Having that individual be as supported as they can be.
And that adoption agencies are subcontracting, if you will, through an organization that offers this support to their adoptee community.
Haley Radke: This might take us way too far off track, and we're just about to do recommended resources, but I'm gonna bring it back to family preservation again.
Have you seen agencies and things that you feel are doing a good job on both [00:38:00] sides of things? Making sure expectant mothers are supported if they want to parent, and making sure they're encouraging older-child adoption, even though it's “harder.” And I feel like so many of the things that I see are just, ugh. It's for profit or the coercion is still there, and all of those kinds of things. Give me some hope.
Astrid Castro: Oh my goodness, Haley. I don't know that I can.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Astrid Castro: And when you said, oh, it's for profit, I think that we have a lot of people who have hidden behind nonprofits. We have a tendency to say, oh, they're a nonprofit. If you look at how much the executive director makes, you realize that there are ways to be a nonprofit and that's where you hide the profit.
Haley Radke: So it's a for-profit, but tax-receiptable organization. [00:39:00]
Astrid Castro: Yeah.
Haley Radke: It's funny, but it's not.
Astrid Castro: But it's not. This is the tricky part, Haley, in the work that I do, I partner with agencies all the time. And I will continue to partner with agencies. Agencies call me up and ask me to help with their training. And I am grateful that I get to have access to the families that I do and that are currently parenting children that are needing support.
And yet, that being said, I will say I could piecemeal pieces of what one agency does that I think is really wonderful and what another agency does well. And it’s this patchwork of these things. When I was thinking recruitment, okay, so DHS, Department of Human Services here in Oregon, but there's such a big part of this huge system [00:40:00] that is so drenched in its own type of corruption, in its own type of unethical practices. And there are social workers who work in that who say, I know we want this changed, but who's gonna change it?
At the end of the day there are people like Haley and Astrid who are the product of this system and that we need support. So I actually am not in the pre-adopt world, if you will. The most I do in supporting or helping if a family is trying to decide whether they're going to adopt or not adopt, they can consult with me and I will talk to them about what I know.
Haley Radke: Shoot them straight. That's good. I have a feeling you don't hold back in those conversations. Good for you. Okay, let's do [00:41:00] our recommended resources. And recently I got to attend one of Astrid’s adoptee panels that we were talking about a little earlier, and it's called “We the Experts, the Speaker Series.” And it was really powerful.
Now, the one I attended was about suicide. It was extremely challenging. It was difficult to hear a lot of those things, even though it wasn't new for me. I have guests that share some of those hard things, as well, regularly with me. And I felt encouraged by the end.
Of course I knew some of the panelists, so maybe I'm a little bit biased, you had very well-chosen panelists, and I love the aspect of what you described earlier about the storytelling, right? We get a little piece of their story and then they share their hard-won wisdom with us and the questions are really well thought out. [00:42:00] There is an opportunity for the attendees to ask questions or contribute their own feedback in certain sections.
But what I was really impressed with, and this is unique to you and I think everybody should be copying you, sorry about that, is that even on your registration form, you ask, are you an adopted person? And then, if you're not, you're here as a listener and you're not gonna give your 2 cents. It wasn't worded like that, but you know what I mean. So I felt safe there. I felt safe listening.
While we're recording this, it is during the pandemic. Ugh. Boy isn't our world in a good state. And so there's been lots of things happening online for adoptees, which is wonderful. I love seeing more adoptee resources, but a few of the things I've attended, and were marketed as adoptee-centric, turned out not to be a safe place.
And you talked about my adoptee community. [00:43:00] I have my Patreon supporters and we have Zoom chats sometimes. And a couple of them shared with me an extraordinarily triggering event that happened at another supposedly adoptee space. And I just think, oh my gosh. Like even if it says adoptee on the front, we can't trust. So I'm just saying that Astrid has really created a safe space for adoptees to speak, share, listen, learn from each other.
And there's so many great topics. Even next week, there's one coming up on searching. I see you have one planned about religion and then on your website you can go back and download past episodes. There's a very small fee to register and, from what I understand, if you reach out and there's financial hardship, they'll take care of you.
So is there anything more that you want to share [00:44:00] about the “We the Expert” speaker series, Astrid? I really wanna commend you for how you have created a really safe and helpful space for adoptees there.
Astrid Castro: Thank you, Haley. And from one adoptee to another, when I get feedback like that from somebody like yourself who has been doing this work for as many years as you have been, that just means so much to me. So thank you.
And I think that you summarized it beautifully. And I would say that the one thing is no adoptee is turned away for wanting to attend the live “We the Experts.” For the recorded ones, we do ask that you pay the fee. And like you said, it is a small fee and I, of course, will make an exception to that rule if somebody emails and says, I really don't have the financial ability [00:45:00] to pay this and I really could use the support. Absolutely.
The whole idea of having the waiver and having non-adoptees sign that waiver, I have to say it has been such a blessing. I borrowed this model from a BIPOC event that I went to (black, indigenous and other people of color event), and non-BIPOC people were allowed to attend but they had to sign a waiver. And this waiver was similar to what I have written.
That waiver says I'm here as a listener. And it's only happened once where an adoptive parent wanted to ask a question, and when I realized that she was an adoptive parent, I asked, are you also an adoptee? And she said, no, I'm not. And I think I was kind and [00:46:00] gracious and thanked her for wanting to participate, but said that this was not the space for her. And then I followed up with her.
And I think that is a huge thing that is missing in the industry right now. The place where spouses of adoptees, parents of older adoptees, prospective parents, siblings of adoptees can go to get information that will help them be a better support for their adoptee person, right? And so getting to be a fly on the wall in these conversations, I think is really helpful.
So yeah, the waiver's working really well.
Haley Radke: That's brilliant. Okay. What did you wanna recommend to us today?
Astrid Castro: Okay, so I was given only one. That was the hardest thing to have to think of one resource.
Haley Radke: Space. Space for one. I didn't assign you a [00:47:00] resource.
Astrid Castro: Yeah. No, exactly. No, you gave me space for one. Just because there are so many of us out there doing this work or versions of this work. So I would say Dr. Chaitra's directory of adoptee therapists specifically. I had the privilege of meeting Chaitra in Denver when I was visiting once. She is a phenomenal human being.
And then she told me, and actually I had asked her, I had reached out and said, can I be on this list? And she very kindly said, this is a list for therapists. And she knows I am not a therapist. And so she said maybe someday we'll have another list. So if there's one of your listeners out there who's wanting to get involved or has programming or is doing things, I hope somebody will create a list like this with non-therapeutic services that [00:48:00] are led by adoptees.
So Dr. Chaitra does this list. It's nationwide. I don't know if it's worldwide. I don't believe so.
Haley Radke: It's nationwide, but she does have therapists indicated who will do tele-health or online even if they're not in that state.
Astrid Castro: Okay. Okay, great. And these are therapists that are both adoptees and specialize in supporting the adoptee community. And yet I also love the fact that this isn't a list that she is putting her rubber stamp of approval behind these therapists. She's basically being housing and collecting these active folks that are in the community.
And because of the work that I'm doing with the “We the Experts,” I share that list in every single We the Expert event we do, because we've had [00:49:00] lots of adoptees on these calls that I think need support outside of this once a month, two-hour event.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I refer people to that list as well myself pretty regularly.
Thank you so much, Astrid, for sharing part of your story with us and for allowing me to poke at some hard places. I'd love it if you would share with us where we can connect with you online.
Astrid Castro: Yeah, so Adoption Mosaic has a website and it's just adoptionmosaic.com. And our Facebook is also just search for Adoption Mosaic, and same with Instagram and so forth.
We'd love to hear from folks. And if you're interested, the only other thing that I would like to mention is if you're an adoptee and you're interested in sharing your story and you would like to potentially be a future panelist, [00:50:00] I do have a form that you can fill out that indicates which topics you want to be a listener to and which topics you want to be maybe a panelist for.
And so I could send that; it's a Google form. Just reach out and I could send that to you.
Haley Radke: Perfect. And you have the “We the Experts” registration events on Facebook. They're really easy to find. And I'll link to your website, of course, in the show notes and also the specific page where you list all the previous events and future events for “We the Experts.”
Okay, wonderful. Thanks so much for chatting with me today.
I'm so thankful for Astrid’s voice in the community and how she is working hard to highlight adoptee voices. Of course, that's my passion too. So I'm really glad to hear that she takes very good care to do that in the area she works in. [00:51:00]
I wanted to extend a thank you for celebrating with me if you listen to last week's episode, we celebrated 500,000 downloads. It's not even real when I say it. It still doesn't feel real but so many of you celebrated with me and congratulated the show on the success, I think, of having 500,000 pairs of ears listening to adoptee stories and just the impact of that just gives me goosebumps. So thank you. Thank you for celebrating with me, and I'm just so grateful for you.
If Adoptees On is important to you and has been impactful or meaningful to you, I would love your monthly support. If you go to adopteeson.com/partner, there are ways for you to join the adoptee movement over here and help support the ongoing work of the show.
You keep the lights on and my editor paid, [00:52:00] and you help to serve adoptees who maybe aren't able to make a contribution. And just thank you so much for doing that. So thank you for your generosity. Adopteeson.com/partner is the spot for you to support the show monthly. Thanks so much for listening.
Let's talk again next Friday.
