169 [Estrangement Seires] Leigh Bailey
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/169
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 169, Leigh. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I get to introduce you to Leigh Bailey. This is another episode of our Estrangement Series. Leigh shares about her reunion and how it started to be about her adoptive family's experience instead of her own.
We talk about how trying to put up safe boundaries can be exhausting and how you decide if estrangement is called for in the situation. Spoiler alert: we can't tell you what's right for you. 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, Leigh Bailey.
Leigh Bailey: Hi. Hey Haley. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: Okay. Your accent, I just have to say it, it's just, it's delicious to listen to. I've told you that before and I'm really excited to hear even hard things from your lovely accent.
Leigh Bailey: Thank you. You're so sweet.
Haley Radke: Well, would you start in by sharing a bit of your story with us?
Leigh Bailey: Yes, I would love to. Thank you. So I was born in January of 1975 in a small town in southwest Georgia. And I was given up for adoption at birth, and three days later I was placed with my adoptive family. My birth mother actually lived in the area where I lived and grew up in. It was a private adoption. Four years after I was born, my parents who had struggled to have their own children ended up getting [00:02:00] pregnant with my sister. And so I have a sister who is biological to them who's four years younger than me. She and my mother are twins. She and my adoptive mother are twins. And I think that was always hard for me growing up because I just felt this disconnect. I was just different. I was just a different person than they were. And my daddy was so sweet. We were outside folks, my daddy and me. And my sister and my mom, they were like shoppers. And I would rather take a beating than be shopping. But growing up I spent a lot of time outside with my dad, and I think he recognized how much alike they were. And just kind of tried to keep me with him.
And so anyways, we never really discussed my adoption. I remember two times where it was discussed: once my mother told me that the doctor who had delivered me told her my birth mother had moved away from our area. I just really [00:03:00] always thought that I came from folks that were lesser than my adopted family. Just having that in the back of my head affected my confidence. I just really always felt like I wasn't up to the same level. I wasn't at par with my adoptive family. I was in the fog until probably about five or six years ago. My youngest daughter is so sweet and she was curious about my adoption. Every now and then she would mention things about my adoption. And then one day I was sitting on the sofa in our den and she came and sat next to me and she said, “Mama, I bet your parents are really sweet, your real parents.” And I said, “That's sweet of you to say.” And I said, “What makes you say that? I'm curious.” And she said, “Because you're sweet.” And I said, “Thank you.” And she goes, “And it's okay if your real daddy's in jail.” And [00:04:00] I thought to myself, “I had that same thought myself; you know, good people don't give kids away. He probably is in jail.” But then I said, “That's really sweet of you to say. I appreciate that.” But then it occurred to me my being adopted and not knowing my biology is about more than just me. It's about my girls, as well, because my biology is their biology.
So I got my husband to do the dirty work. I got him to call the person who would know my biological mother's name, and he made that call and he came back to report what he had learned, and it was not at all the narrative I had had in my head my whole life. My birth mother was actually married and in her early twenties when I was born, and I just could not wrap my mind around a [00:05:00] married couple in their early twenties giving their kid away. I thought maybe she had to have been like 16 or 17. And the parents didn't want her stuck being a parent at that young of an age. That scenario was in my head. And I really just couldn't get my mind around that. So I searched and searched for her, and I finally figured out who she was and realized that she lived, at the current time, real close to where I grew up. She had apparently moved back.
So I took the Ancestry DNA test to see what I could learn about my genealogy and my biology, and I was blown away at what I found. It actually paired me from the very beginning with my birth father, but I couldn't figure out who he was, though. His name is pretty generic. There's a ton of names. It's not like John Smith, but once you Google it, there's like a bazillion of them. So a really good friend [00:06:00] of mine, who's an adoptee as well, her name's Ann Rickert, and she's a friend of the show. She listens to your show and she doesn't mind me saying her name. She helped me figure out who he was, and the reason I couldn't figure him out is because he goes by a nickname. So I had to stalk him on Facebook and Instagram and get a feeling like I felt like these were good people and I wasn't entering into a psychoville type situation. And I reached out to him and it took a while for him to respond. In my mind, since he'd already done the test, I thought maybe he was looking for me. He had no idea I was in this world. He had no prior knowledge of me. So he had lots of processing to do. He was in shock. Fast forward, we speak on the phone for the first time and he asks if he can meet me? And I was elated. I thought, probably, he was going to talk to me on the phone and realized it was too much. He couldn't handle this. Nobody knew about me. How was he going to tell everybody? So he came to visit, [00:07:00] and, Haley, when I tell you, it was like somebody unfogged the mirror for the first time. It was literally like looking at a one-foot-taller-than-me, male version of myself. It was like looking in my own eyes and at my own hands. Our mannerisms were the same and our sense of humor was the same. And for him to have not had any handle in raising me and for us to have such similarities. So my husband asked him during his visit, he said, “I need to know that you're not gonna hurt her. I need to know that you're not gonna go away.” And he said, I remember exactly how he said it, he said, “My wife doesn't know about this and my kids don't know about this, and I can't tell you how they're gonna respond, but I am my own man and I will have a relationship with Leigh.”
Anyways, the last person we ended up telling [00:08:00] about this birth father situation was my adoptive mother. I had shared this whole situation with my adoptive sister the whole time. And she and I, both, just knew that my mother wouldn't handle it very well. My adoptive father was in a memory loss unit with Alzheimer's, and she had a lot going on with his situation, but we really knew, Haley, that there would never be a good time for me to tell her I'd found my birth father.
Haley Radke: How old was she at the time? Because you said your dad was in a memory loss unit.
Leigh Bailey: Yes, my adoptive mom would have been 73 at the time. So I tell her, and she seems to be okay with it. I told her that my birth father was coming for a visit and she said, “Okay, so I would like to have a little get-together at my house for my friends to meet him.” [00:09:00] And I said, “Okay.” That felt like acceptance so I was excited about that. And so he spent the weekend with us and then we all drove down to my mother's house. And it felt like a sip and see, like when you get married and you have all your wedding gifts on display and everybody comes and looks at them, eats some hors d'oeuvres and has some drinks. I remember standing in her place: the men are in one group, the ladies are in another group. My birth father is talking to all the men, and I'm kind of on the periphery of them, and I'm looking over in the den at my mother and her friends and, Haley, it was almost reminiscent of the after the funeral gathering, like when everybody comes back to your house and they're supporting and surrounding you with love. And I thought to myself, “I don't really know how much of this is about me right now. I don't need this. I don't need this stare-at-my-dad party. [00:10:00] This is for her. And that's when I think I started losing control of the reunion, and it started being about how it affected others and not me.
Then about a month or so later, he invited my family and I to come down to his house down in Florida where he lived and meet his family: my birth father, sister, and brother. We had a lovely time. It was a lovely weekend, and he had a little gathering at his house, too. He had some friends over and he had some family over. And I remember one of his siblings walking in with a balloon that said, “It’s a girl!” I really wasn't sure how I felt about that. I think she was trying to be funny and light. [00:11:00] I don't think there was any malintent, but I just remember not knowing. I just was very ambivalent about how that felt for me. The one thing I do remember that struck me is that I'd spent 43 years knowing I was adopted and I thought, I have thought of everything about how adoption feels. There's no way there's anything else left for me to feel or think about, until I started looking around their house and seeing pictures of the four of them together. On trips, holidays, just family gatherings, the beach. And I just remember this huge sadness coming over me, thinking I missed this. I never thought about feeling like this. These people just went on with their life and I was given away and he went on to.
I need to tell this part about it. When I talked to my birth father for the first time, he explained to me that he had been married before I was born. His wife died six months to the date of their marriage, their wedding, very unexpectedly. [00:12:00] And the next three or so years after that he just lived life like that day was his last day. He just had a really wild time. And so I was a product of a one-night stand during that time period. And then he went on after. And then, in this meantime, I'm born. He knows nothing about it. He meets his second wife, marries her, and has two kids. And I'm just looking around at all these pictures and thinking, how did this happen? It just felt tragic and I never ever anticipated that. So we left and went home and as we drove home, it was almost like my adoptive sister, who has a seizure disorder, and there's the progression of a seizure. There's this [00:13:00] buildup at the beginning before the seizure. Then there's the actual seizure, and then there's this postictal state afterwards where you're catatonic and your body's kind of gearing down. I felt like I was in a postictal state on the way home. I was just gearing down from what had just happened that weekend, trying to process it all, take it all in.
After that, I felt like the most popular family member around. All of a sudden, my adoptive sister wants me to be at everything she's got going on, and she lives almost four hours away from me. And then of course, I'm getting invited to do things with my birth family, and I'm trying so hard to keep the playing field level and give everybody their appropriate time. The last thing I wanted was for anybody to say, “Okay, great, here he's in the picture and now we're getting slighted.” So I'm spreading myself thin and running myself ragged, trying to keep everybody happy. [00:14:00] And I'm at my sister's–I can't remember what the occasion was, but I went for something–and somehow my birth family came up and one of her friends said to me, “Just make sure that you don't forget about your family that raised you.” And when I tell you I thought I was going to scream, that's putting it mildly. I thought to myself, “You have no idea what it's like to be adopted. You have no idea what it's like to finally get this chance to know your birth family, and you're gonna throw that in my face?” It's like telling somebody with cancer how they should feel when you've never had cancer. You just don't do that.
So then, I decided I would invite my birth father and his wife to Grandparents' Day for my daughter's Grandparents' Day celebration at her school. And of course my adoptive mother was coming. I'd invited them all to stay at my house. I had it all planned; it was going to be great.
Everybody was going to get to spend some low-key, casual time together in a very relaxed setting at my house. And my adoptive mother said, “I'm not staying in the house with them. They're gonna have to get a hotel.” And in an effort to accommodate her and keep her happy, I had to uninvite them to my house and ask them to pay for a hotel. [00:15:00]
And I remember another time being at the beach, and my husband and I were in the parking lot with my sister discussing my birth family and my sister said, “But you're my sister.” It was like that Steel Magnolias moment where they're just having that meltdown after the funeral. She was having the Steel Magnolias meltdown in the parking lot at the beach. And my husband tried to explain to her, as did I: “Look, you have always known your biology. You have never not had a mirror to look into when you look at your parents. Leigh has never had that. And she has been everything y'all want her to be all these years, and this is her chance to know her biology. This is her time.” And she just responded with, “But she's my sister.” [00:16:00] And I knew right then and there, they weren't going to ever hear it. They were never going to hear it. It was always going to be about how it affected them. They could never pause and have empathy for the situation or to just stop and say, “You know, it must have really been difficult going through life not looking like us and playing along with the narrative that we are her people, going to family reunions, holidays, and aunt so-and-so’s.” There was none of that. There was just no way. And I thought to myself, “I just think there are some people that can't do this. They just can't hear these things.” Maybe it's a predisposition. Maybe they're narcissistic. I don't know what it is.
So I entered into therapy not long after–there were multiple [00:17:00] blowups of that same type–and it just was very clear to me that this was about how it made them feel. Nobody wanted to hear my side. So I entered into therapy, and my therapist immediately identified that I bore guilt for everything. She said, “You just feel guilty for all this stuff that you have nothing to do with, Leigh.” But it was all I knew. And I didn't even realize that it stemmed from originally feeling guilty for wanting to know who I was my entire life. You know, ever since I've been in reunion with my birth father, my mother loves to tell people, “I always told Leigh that we would help her find her real parents if she wanted to.” However, I have not one memory of her saying that to me. And my husband says that in the 22 years he's known me, in the 21 years we've been married, he has never heard her say that, never heard me say that. I think sometimes–and we are all guilty of it–we tend to rewrite history in a way that makes us be able to sleep at night. [00:18:00]
So I entered into therapy and I began discussing do I want to figure out how to set healthy boundaries with them? Or do I want to talk about becoming estranged from them? And I'm all about family preservation. I am, even in my adoptive family’s situation. But when in every encounter I have in person with them or on the phone with them, I have to remember my keywords and I have to remember to set the boundaries, respond with a question. It is exhausting. This is as exhausting as it was for me to go around as a child: every time I enter into public, I look around to see who looks like me. And so I thought to myself, “I just don't know that I can keep this up.” And then I found myself celebrating when my biological father and my adoptive mother would be around each other at the same time. [00:19:00] And she would leave and we would celebrate that she didn't act too bad. It's like, what a thing to celebrate, you know? And you make all these concessions. You don't talk about this, and you try to keep it light and casual, and nobody discusses adoption. There's never been one time when my adoptive mother has thanked my birth father for having me, or my birth father has thanked my adopted mother for raising me. We've never had that conversation. I don't think we ever will. So then, I just felt like she really just wanted the whole thing to fall apart and she was just waiting on the reunion to go south.
So then fast forward to about a year and a half ago, my birth father and his wife decided to divorce. I felt like somebody was divorcing me. I wanted them to stay together so badly. [00:20:00] I don't think I slept the entire summer during that time. He gave me all these reasons why they were divorcing, and I knew that there had been issues when I first met him, but I couldn't help but think, had I not entered the picture, this wouldn't happen. And I thought, “God, why couldn't y'all have just gotten this outta the way before I met you?” But I remember where I was standing when my mother and I were on the phone one night, I was in my driveway and she said to me–and she got this really sweet tone in her voice and I knew something was coming–”Let me just ask you this one question and then I'll leave you alone. Does his wife blame you for the divorce?” I thought my head was going to blow off my shoulders into the stratosphere. I thought to myself, “There is no way under the sun I would want either of my two girls that I love so much to assume that level of guilt.” [00:21:00] And a couple of days later, I called my sister and I told her about it and she said, “I know, she told me she said that to you.” And I said, “Why would she do that? Why?” And she said, “I don't know. I said the same thing to her. I said, ‘I would've never said that to her. I can't believe you said that to Leigh’” and she said “Maybe I shouldn't have.” But she didn't feel sorry enough about it to apologize and she never has. And since then, for some reason, whenever I'm around her in person, she has this line of questioning that feels like it's designed to lead me down a road of this is why you should have never pursued a relationship with your biological family. If you'd have just stayed ours; this wouldn't have happened. [00:22:00] I've just never understood why it's so hard for them to understand my wanting to know my biology, that it seems like the only thing that they can feel or think is that I'm supposed to be grateful that I was pulled from the fire of those who are unfit to care for me. No matter how I say things, no matter how I write things. I've tried writing. I've tried catching everybody at a good time. It just falls on deaf ears.
So my adoptive father passed away of Alzheimer's. He actually ended up with COVID and had to be in the hospital in restraints for 25 days, which you can only imagine caused a tremendous amount of atrophy to his body. And about three weeks after he was released from the hospital, he passed away. A couple weeks after his funeral, I was down at my mother's helping her sort through some stuff and my oldest daughter calls me and says, “Mama, so-and-so just told me that her mother just told her out of the blue that she was adopted.” [00:23:00] And I was like, “What? Who tells a 15-year-old! What?” And she said, “Mama, she wanted to FaceTime us and tell us that on FaceTime.” And I thought, “Thank you, Lord, that that didn't happen.” Because I know my jaw dropped and my face would not have been the face to be looking at. And so I hang up the phone and I tell my mama that. And I'm like, “Can you believe that?” I said, “Y'all did it so right. I always knew I was adopted.” There was never that sit down. You're not who you think you are. There was never that moment. And she said to me–this is the first time she's ever asked me this–she said, “Did being adopted bother you?” [00:24:00]
Just a little bit.
Haley Radke: Sorry, I can't get over that. What is that? Is it really not understanding whatsoever? Is it just completely ignoring any of those little mentions you made here and there? What is that?
Leigh Bailey: Yes, that's exactly how it felt. It felt like, “Have you been so disconnected from me my entire life?” And so I said, “Yes.” I said, “Mama, it embarrassed me that I was adopted. I wanted to be yours. I wanted to be the same thing my sister was. I didn't wanna be adopted. I didn't wanna know I was given away and not wanted.” I went on and on to talk about how I had joined these Facebook groups and I had a community now, and that I was in therapy and I was trying to repair a lot of the damage that had been done as a child. [00:25:00] And I thought she was really hearing me, right up until she wasn't. And she said, “Was there anything positive about being adopted?” I wanna just grab my person and leave. And I said, “That's not the point. That's not what I'm telling you.” It's like they could only love and accept me in the form of the person they wanted me to be. It's like buying something you have expectations of working a certain way. And you're all happy with it when it does, and then one day it stops working that way and you're not happy with it anymore. It's, “Wait a minute, I don't really want that anymore. We need to go back to when it was working this way.” [00:26:00] And I thought to myself, adoption trauma is such an easy concept. It really makes more sense that it would affect us and affect our brains than for it not to affect us. It's just not rocket science. It's really that simple. And if you are in my life and you love me and you're empathetic towards my feelings, how can you not ever just take a minute and say, “You know, we didn't make her, someone else did, and so maybe we should celebrate that her dark hair came from her birth family and not try to pretend that it came from one of us, and maybe we should celebrate her talents and interests that differentiate from ours, and say, golly, it'd be really neat to know who that came from. [00:27:00] And I think it's great that you are who you are.” But, you know, I was just theirs.
And, my friend that I referenced earlier, she's been so amazing during my journey. She had a totally different situation. She had an adoptive mother that actually saved a little piece of paper that had her birth mother's name on it and held it for her until she knew the time would come when she would ask who she was. And she showed it to her and she shared the journey with her and helped her find her biological mother. So while we're both adoptees, we feel very differently about adoption because of that very difference, those different scenarios.
One of the hardest things for me in reunion–other than like constantly having to battle [00:28:00] everybody that really wanted it to fall apart–is that the only way, at 43, I can have a relationship with my biological father is as an adult. I will never know what it's like to be held in his arms as a baby or put in time-out as a 3-year-old. He will never see me graduate high school. He will never walk me down the aisle to get married, and he didn't know me during the times of my two daughters’ births. And the only relationship I can have with him is that an of an adult. And I think that threatens all the preexisting folks, all the people that exist. And I have had to learn to try to separate myself from that guilt-ridden pleaser. To say unto myself, “You know what? This is a [00:29:00] gift from God, and I'm sorry if it bothers all these people and they feel uncomfortable and they feel threatened, but I'm not because he's my dad and I'm not going to not know him and not have whatever relationship that's healthiest for us to have just because all these other people don't want it or don't like it or it doesn't make them feel a certain way.” I heard Lesli Johnson say on your show one time, we have to learn to sit with the discomfort of those who disagree with us. I don't need you to agree or like my decisions. This is not open to a vote from you.
But I think as adoptees, so many of us have a hard time managing reunion because of those that we have to sort of battle. And I hate to say “battle,” but those who can't hold space for us. [00:30:00] My oldest daughter is 16, she was 13 or 14 at the time I met my birth father, and she said, “Mama, I don't know why everybody's acting so ugly. You'll never have 43 years with him. He's 69 years old. You'll never have 43 years with him. Think about what they've had with you and they need to step back and let you have your time. You've been their time.” It was a very profound thing for someone that age to say. I thought, “Golly that's a movie line, but you'll never have 43 years of him.
I have contemplated estrangement many a time, and it ain't ever yet. It ain't over yet.
Haley Radke: Okay. Wow. I need to get myself together. [00:31:00] I've been crying quietly here as you've shared the last few minutes. I identify so much with your story. Even your daughter, it is so profound, missing 43 years. And it's like I'm not going to get the next 43, so give me what I can have now. And I don't know about you, but I have certainly felt this need to make up for lost time. And it's really mind-boggling to me that other people can't understand that when we've said yes to them for so long and then, now, you're choosing to say yes to yourself and that's so painful for them. And yeah, wow.
Leigh Bailey: Yeah, it feels very selfish.
Haley Radke: It does. So you talked about going to therapy to suss [00:32:00] this out, like do I just need stronger boundaries? Do I need estrangement? Can you talk about that? What makes you choose to stay in relationship? What makes you think, okay, is this it? What's that like for you navigating?
Leigh Bailey: So for me, during the thick of it, my father was still alive and every day was a different problem with him and his memory loss unit. And I was constantly helping my mother with that. And I felt like I can't leave her now. I can't do this to her now with him and I can't do it to him either. So then when he passes away, she's older now. She's 76, I think, and she's not in the best of health. And when I see her, Haley, it's so hard because when I go down there and I visit her and I see her feeble-looking, I just feel sorry for her. [00:33:00] And I have empathy for her situation and that she's alone now. But then I drive away and that 3% of the time that I actually feel that way about her goes away. And that 97% of the time that I feel the total opposite for her comes back. And, literally, I feel like I talk about the same things over and over in therapy. I rehash things over and I make progress, and then I digress and we have to go back to where we were. And then I make some progress, and then something else happens and I digress. My problem is that I just don't live very far away; I live about an hour and a half from her. And I'm very much still a part of the community and her friends, and I feel like if I become estranged from them that I'll become estranged from all these other people. And I don't know if I'm okay with all of that yet. [00:34:00]
I listened to a podcast–and I can't recall the podcast–and they talked about narcissistic parents and estrangement, and the lady was a doctor so-and-so on the podcast, and she said, “The question you have to ask yourself is: If I walk away from these people today and never see, never hear from them again, never interact with them ever again, how does that make me feel?” How do I feel about that? And there are times when I'm so disappointed in them that I just want to do that. But then I just feel sorry for her because, I guess, that's how my daddy raised me to be, to have empathy. He used to preach “the least of these” to us all the time. That which you have done to the least of these. And when I see her in her home, falling and [00:35:00] having health issues I just think, “Gosh, if she's the least of these and I'm not getting over myself to just ride it out, then maybe that's shame on me. I don't know.
Haley Radke: And what about your relationship with your sister?
Leigh Bailey: It's definitely been strained. She's been a lot better about my reunion with my birth father than my mother was. But we've had some very strained moments over the last six months. We text and send pictures of the kids but I'm just very guarded. I'm very guarded. And I know that they know the Leigh from before I did all my work, all my therapy. Like my therapist said to me one day, she said, “Leigh, here's the deal. You're doing all this work. You're here. You're toughing it out every week. So now you're in this circle over here, and all [00:36:00] these people who aren't doing their work, they're over here in this circle. And your supporters, your husband, your birth father, your kids–everybody that supports you–they're in this circle over here with you.” And it made a lot of sense. That's who I need to focus on. So right now where I am is: I'm focusing on the supporters, dealing with the non-supporters, and I'm trying to keep my boundaries set in a manner that makes things healthy for me.
You have to set boundaries with those who aren't on board with you. This would be my advice. Only discuss things as you wish. Even when you enter into reunion, you get excited. You've learned all this stuff, and you do, Haley, you said it right when you find your birth father and he's 69 years old, you're like, “Oh my God, he's old. I gotta pack this in.” And you jump the clutch on the reunion. You're just like full-steam ahead 'cause, Lord, his family is going to be like, “Okay, I don't think we like her so much anymore. We're gonna have to cut this off.” Or somebody may die. You don't know. [00:37:00] And it's just, “We gotta get this weekend planned and this weekend planned.” You get excited and you start sharing it with everybody. And then, all of a sudden, they're like, “Wait, I don't know how this makes me feel.” So then it becomes about how they feel. So you have to hang on to your reins. Don't lose your reins. You let go of your reigns and everybody starts slowly but surely making it about how they feel. You have to go back to the nucleus of the story. And in the middle of the story, it's the baby that was given away and the birth father that made her. And that's the basis of reunion. Reunion doesn't occur because of all these side people. And you can't let the jealousy of others alter how you enjoy your reunion. It would be awfully easy for you to find yourself making concessions because so-and-so's not real comfortable with this, and “We didn't realize you were going to know him this well. We just thought you were going to talk to him every so often. I don't know how we feel about that.” Here's the deal: It doesn't matter [00:38:00] because it's not your dad. It's mine.
Haley Radke: One of the last things that put me over the edge–I don't know if I've shared this before–but I got asked: “When is this gonna go back to normal?”
Leigh Bailey: Yeah. This is the new norm.
Haley Radke: Exactly. This is it.
Leigh Bailey: So you're going to need to get on board. This is the new car. This is the new ride around.
Haley Radke: I'm curious how you feel choosing yourself.
Leigh Bailey: I struggled with it at first. I just kept digressing in my choice of myself. I would choose myself and I'd feel all high and mighty. I'd use my words, I'd set my boundaries, and then I would start feeling guilty, but, “Gosh, how does it make them feel?” And then you just really have to stop and say, “How did I feel 43 years separated from my [00:39:00] biology? How did that make me feel?” I have spent my whole life being theirs. It's like there were all those boxes that they needed checking. I had boxes that needed checking; they had boxes that needed checking. They needed a child. I needed a home. Check. Check. Wipe the slate clean and move forward. I think that's how they think it works. The fact that there's a lifetime of residual trauma and pain, it's lost on them, completely lost on them.
Haley Radke: Oh, I keep going back to that. You are having this huge conversation with your adoptive mom, you're explaining all the impacts that adoption has had on you. And then at the end it's: “Wasn't there anything good about it?” It's like talking to a wall. Nothing's getting through. There's a tiny window and the only thing that fits through it are the nice things. “Tell me the nice things I did for you.” [00:40:00] Yeah, that's tough.
**Leigh Bailey:**Yeah.
Haley Radke: Wow. I thank you so much for sharing the hard stuff with us. I think a lot of us can relate to reunion putting a great deal of pressure on our current relationships. And, as you said, there's pressure on your biological father's relationships. Like reunion exposes the cracks everywhere, I think. In my experience that's what it's been. I am so impressed when people persevere and really look for help and support and choose themselves. That is so impressive to me because a lot of adoptees–I won't say all–but we've just bent to the will of others our whole life. That was like our purpose, yeah? [00:41:00] And so to be like, “No, I'm choosing me, choosing my family.” I found so much of your story interesting because I've experienced similar things and my psychologist sounds very much like your therapist. So I feel okay. I think we're getting good advice. I think we're learning good things. Choosing yourself.
Is there anything else you want to say before we do recommended resources? Say to someone else who's like you. Do I keep this up? Can I manage just being the boundary enforcer? Or do I need to take a break and say that to someone who is in your same imposition?
Leigh Bailey: When I would dread calling my adoptive mother just to check in with her and I would get this right below in the middle of my stomach. I would get this feeling in my stomach [00:42:00] like, “Oh, please, just don't even mention my birth father. Please just don't bring anything up. Please, let's just talk about something benign.” That's when this isn't healthy. This isn't good for me. And if I'm not healthy, I'm not good for my husband and I'm not good for my kids. And I have the most supportive husband in the world when I tell you he is a rockstar about reunion and adoption and all the mess I've been through in the last few years. He is a rockstar. If you can set those boundaries in a way where you can pick that phone up and answer the phone or have that visit in person. Not have your stomach in knots and it be so painful and you're just dreading the conversation and like looking at your notes before you walk in the door: “Remember, say this.” You know, when it doesn't consume you like that, I think you can carry on as long as it feels healthy to you. But when it affects you, it affects those around you. And that's no good. [00:43:00] That's no good.
Haley Radke: Well said. Okay, my recommended resource is along those lines, so I'm going to go first. I had a friend recommend this book to me very recently. I'm not even finished reading it. And it's so good that I wanted to bring it to you all because she and I both have had some extremely challenging relationships going on, and when she told me the title of the book, I immediately ordered it. It's called Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries and Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy and it's by Lindsay C. Gibson. And she is a psychologist. It's so good, and you mentioned the word narcissism in our conversation, and I think lots of adoptees will be like, “Oh yeah, there's a narcissistic parent ….. [00:44:00] And, we're technically not supposed to go around diagnosing people with a personality disorder. But this is so interesting because it's not necessarily talking about narcissism, but emotional immaturity. Dr. Gibson's little abbreviation for that is “EI.” So want to read that? That's Emotionally Immature. Okay. I'm going to read from the back: “This guide offers powerful tools to help you heal and break free from the coercive control of EI parents and other EI people. You'll learn practical ways to set boundaries, validate your feelings and gain emotional autonomy in all your relationships.” And I was like, “Yes, please.” So far, I haven't seen anything necessarily about adoption, but when she describes case studies of how parents are interacting with their adult children and just the really unhealthy things, I'm like, “Oh boy, have I seen that?” And I'm not necessarily just talking about my own situation, but, you know, how many adoptees I've talked to. [00:45:00] And the really neat thing in this book that I really like is she gives lots of tips on setting boundaries and things and you can find that all over the place. But at the back, she has a bill of rights for adult children of emotionally immature parents. I feel like for adoptees, I think this is a really helpful thing. The right to set limits. And she goes through more specifically what that means. The right to choose relationships. The right to put my own health and wellbeing first. And there's a whole list. There's 10 of them. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have to put up with these things, just as you were saying, Leigh.
And the other thing I was on her website, it's drlindsaygibson(dot)com. I was just checking it right before we hopped on, and she has a Q&A from readers. And the very last question–when we're recording this anyway-was: “Dear Dr. Gibson, How do I know if it's best to cut off contact with emotionally immature parents?” [00:46:00] And her short answer is: “It's best to cut contact when you feel like you've had all you can take. No. It's “all you want to take,” not “all you can take.” All you want to take and that's very different. So anyway, I recommend reading that little article on her website. I'll link to it. If you're where Leigh is, you might want to talk to a therapist about that and guide you through making that decision or whatever. And this book is so good. It's Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. And also, thank you to my friend for sharing that with me. She knows who she is.
What do you want to recommend to us today, Leigh?
Leigh Bailey: Okay, so I know everybody mentions Anne Heffron, but Anne is my writing coach, and I'm in the process of writing my book. Just writing my story, even if it's only for me to read. Getting it out of my head and into print. [00:47:00] Sometimes I'll write a ton of stuff and I'll go back and reread it, and I'll say, “Okay, so I got it out. I said it. I don't have to have that on there anymore, and I'll keep this part.” But just reading Anne's book and seeing that this is our truth. Feeling like you identify with people. Sarah Easterly, I know, I'm not going to go through a litany of all the adoptee books. There are so many good ones out there. Sarah Easterly’s Searching for Mom was a great read, too. It was really nice to connect with people like that and to know they've been there, they've walked in your shoes. Because really, that’s the rub we have with those that don't get us. They've never walked in our shoes.
Haley Radke: Well, when you talk about your story and when we're on this journey of what does it look like when we're interacting with the other people in our lives who maybe have not behaved–what's the line about writing a memoir? [00:48:00] About if they didn't want me to write about them in this way, they should have behaved better. I'm butchering that phrase, but it's like if you're feeling guilty, if you have cut off contact or whatever, you can go back to what you've written and also remind yourself, “Oh yeah, remember they did this really challenging thing. I don't really wanna revisit that.” So you also have a little bit of proof for yourself.
Leigh Bailey: You hate to think about taking your kids away from their grandparents. But you just have to look at the situation as a whole. And right now, I'm fine with them, I'm handling it well. But there's been a time when, like I said, I thought, “I can't do this anymore. Cannot do this anymore. It's no good.”
Haley Radke: Sorry I cut you off there. Did you have a last thought on your writing?
Leigh Bailey: No. Just how cathartic it is and it is for me. And I think it could be for everybody too. Anne always says we cannot die with our stories inside of [00:49:00] us. That's my approach.
Haley Radke: That's a pretty good job. Anne's getting a real workout on this show the last couple weeks!
Leigh Bailey: I know. I know.
Haley Radke: No shame. I think when you read another adoptee's memoir, just like you and I just had this conversation, it's very real. We're not trying to sugarcoat anything for anybody. It's freeing. You're like, “Whoa. She could say that? Maybe I could too.” And like you said, if it's just for you and maybe no one else will see it. Or maybe it'll be a best-seller. You don't know.
Leigh Bailey: And I was literally listening to your podcast the first time I ever heard of her book, Haley. And I remember when, I think it may have been Lesli Johnson, said the name of her book. I think it was that episode. And she said, “You don't look adopted.” I erupted in laughter. I laughed so hard out loud. I thought, “Oh my gosh. Who does?”
Haley Radke: Yes. It was a good title. Thank you so much. [00:50:00] I would love for you to share where we can connect with you online.
Leigh Bailey: I'm on Facebook. I have my whole name on there: Leigh Willis Bailey. I am on Instagram (at)LeighB75, and then I have a blog: alwayslooking(dot)blog. I named it that because I've always been looking. I've always been looking for familiar faces in the last five, six years I've been searching for biological family. I get a high from looking for my family. I don't ever want the search to end. I never want not to search. I always want there to be some more folks to be looking for.
Haley Radke: That's a good title too. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Leigh. I really appreciate it and I know that there'll be lots of people listening that feel very connected to your story and will be like, “Oh, I'm so glad someone else said it out loud, so maybe I can too.”
Leigh Bailey: Thank you so much for having me, Haley. I've so enjoyed this. [00:55:00]
Haley Radke: Guys, this stuff is so hard. I thank you for listening and honoring Leigh's story and my other guests’ stories. I just want to encourage you if you are feeling lonely or confused or trying to navigate some of these really, really challenging relationships to seek out support. I know therapy is not always accessible but if it is, I would encourage you to find an adoptee-competent therapist. And there's lots of lists online where you can find those. There's advice for interviewing your therapist. I have a Healing Series episode way back on that. And I just encourage you to seek out support and community. And, I want to thank my community for supporting the show and keeping it going. There's been some ups and downs lately, if you know what I'm talking about. But if you don't, that's fine. I really [00:52:00] appreciate your financial support. It pays for editing and hosting and all kinds of things.
And, if you want extra bonuses, there's Patreon. I have an Adoptees Off Script podcast that's weekly. We're doing a Book Club right now with adoptee-authored books, which is really wonderful, and we'd love to have you join us. So adopteeson.com/partner has details. And a free way to help support the show is just to share this episode with one friend who you think would either relate or another episode that you think they would benefit from.
Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
