171 Dr. Susan Branco
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/171
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 171, Dr. Susan Branco. I'm your host, Haley Radke.
Dr. Susan Branco is with us today, and she is a force for good in our community. She shares an overview of her story, and we get a chance to deeply focus on topics that she's done an incredible amount of work and research on. These include how counselors of color deal with client microaggressions and ensuring adoption themes make their way into the core curriculum for future social workers and therapists. Dr. Branco shares more with us about her case study of the Colombian Adoption House, which includes firsthand experiences of Colombian adoptees and what happens [00:01:00] when they find out their adoption was illicit or black market. Her passion for family preservation is evident when we go down the list of systemic problems in the adoption industry. 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, Dr. Susan Branco. Welcome Susan.
Dr. Susan Branco: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Haley Radke: I would love it if you would start by sharing a bit of your story with us.
Dr. Susan Branco: I was born in 1972 in Bogota, Columbia, and I was then adopted by North American, US parents, and I grew up outside of Philly in Pennsylvania. And I relocated to the Washington DC area for college, and I've been in this area ever since. I am recently in [00:02:00] reunion. And I dedicated most of my life to being a licensed professional counselor. I'm still a licensed professional counselor. For a long time, I had an independent practice working mostly with adopted people, families, of which. I would say, the majority ended up being transracially adopted people. Around 2012 or so, I decided to return back to school for my doctorate in counselor education and supervision. And then from there I gradually stopped clinical practice and entered the world of academia. So right now I'm a full-time Clinical Assistant Professor with the Family Institute at Northwestern University. It's an online clinical mental health counseling program. And I still practice, however, right now I'm practicing exclusively with persons who identify as immigrant populations and who speak Spanish.
Haley Radke: That's amazing. So we talk [00:03:00] a lot on this show about the need for therapists who are, we used to call them, adoption competent. Most of my community started talking about adoptee-competent therapists, and it sounds like you're the person who can train therapists in how to do that.
Dr. Susan Branco: I try. I'm an affiliate instructor with Rutgers University. They have a post-adoption certificate program, so particularly during the tele-mental health boom when everything became an online situation, I've been able to do virtual training. Prior to that, I was doing it old-school, traveling to New Jersey from DC to do the in-person workshops. So that is quite important to me. I have worked with other adoptee and transracially adoptee counselors, and we frequently talk about competency and sensitivity, as well as having our voice be heard, while also being very clear about our credentials because our stories are [00:04:00] important. But we do still need to have the skills and the credentials and the training to be able to provide quality mental health services. And there's many things that go into that.
Haley Radke: I have seen an uptick in “coaches.” So I think it's really important that when you're looking for a therapist, you are making sure you are getting someone who is qualified. I'm sure you would agree with that.
Dr. Susan Branco: I do.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Dr. Susan Branco: I've seen the coaching progression and there can be a place for coaching. What concerns me about coaching is the lack of across-the-board regulations sometimes that helps people to provide a certain standard of care with coaching. And I also think it's confusing for clients to understand what the difference is between coaching versus counseling and psychotherapy. [00:05:00] So sometimes that could be problematic and hopefully quality coaches are able to discern the difference and refer people to counseling as needed.
Haley Radke: So if it's like a partnership, you could have a coach and a therapist, and there's different reasons for both.
Dr. Susan Branco: Correct.
Haley Radke: I was listening to another interview you were giving earlier today, and I found it so fascinating. So I know you've done some research on this topic and, as I said before, we're always looking for trained adoptee-competent therapists. And you mentioned you've worked with lots of transracial adoptees, and I find that a lot of the therapists that I know and that are in our community are white. So I thought it was really fascinating how you explained that there is–I'm going to have to ask you to explain it, I think, because I'm not going to be [00:06:00] able to get it right–but just pairing a person of color, likely we're looking at a transnational, transracial adoptee going to a therapist who is a white person, already there's a dynamic, a power dynamic there. It’s possible they're not going to get the help that they're looking for. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then where can an adoptee find a therapist that can provide them the help that they need?
Dr. Susan Branco: Sure. When we're talking about cross-cultural counseling or therapy, I use those terms interchangeably. I'm thinking about how do we look at our positionality. So we're always as the counselor or therapist in a privileged position, really, because the hierarchy in that relationship, no matter how much we try to flatten it, the counselor's always in a role with more power. So this is why we have to pay great attention to ethics and things of that nature to ensure [00:07:00] that we are being as fair as possible to our clients. But add on top of that different racial and ethnic identities and even socioeconomic statuses, and you're looking at even more layers of power differentials. So in addition, when we are thinking about cultural and cross-cultural counseling, we also have to be mindful of understanding that in order to really fully think about an experience of someone of color, perhaps, and I'll only speak of the population I'm most connected to, which is a transracial adoption and myself identify as a Latinx transracially adopted person with an indigenous background. And I'm thinking about my experience and how I've experienced white adjacentness, how I've experienced racism or microaggressions, and I'm using that experience to then be able to widen my perception to how [00:08:00] people of color may have also experienced those things with the awareness that there are some experiences that will be entirely new to me because I didn't walk that same walk.
And so all of what I'm describing is a phenomenon or a term that we call “cultural humility.” And this is a term where we're talking about going into a relationship with complete humbleness, an openness. In other words, we're not going into a relationship with a predisposition that any one way, in this incident culture, is superior to another. And that sounds easy. It sounds like what most of us strive to be, right? Because none of us want to say that we have any superiority over anyone else. But what makes that really hard is that we all come to everything with years and years of experience and bias that takes careful examination, challenging ourselves, maybe others challenging us to de-tangle [00:09:00] and de-layer. And that's especially important to do as a counselor. So sometimes that can be something that might happen more organically between a counselor of color and a client of color because they may have, not the same of course, but they may have some level of shared understanding and experience of what it means to be a person of color in whatever environment they're living in. It is not impossible at all for a non counselor of color or a white counselor or therapist to also develop cultural humility. In fact, I know many that have and work quite hard. Same with counselors of color. It doesn't mean that because you're a person of color, you don't have to do this work also. So I do think that there may be a propensity, though, for particularly transracially adopted people to be pulled towards [00:10:00] counselors of color because, as we know, many transracially adopted people are raised by white parents, so they may feel inherently, perhaps, safer with a counselor of color. They may feel less burden to not share certain things out of risk of offending, perhaps, a white counselor. And that burden may be from feeling that way with their adoptive family. It's not impossible, however, because I've certainly heard of and have seen white counselors working quite well with transracial adoptees. However, I think it does ultimately benefit clients to have more options, particularly clients of color, to see counselors of color. There's still not enough of us in the field. It's growing, but we still need so many more. It's still a white-dominated profession across all of the helping professions. We're still trying to [00:11:00] build that number in the field. I hope that answered your question about what you heard me say before in the interview.
Haley Radke: It totally did. Thank you. Do you have any advice for people who are looking for a therapist and they want to find someone that has similar experiences as them?
Dr. Susan Branco: In the United States we do have a list of counselors of color who are also transracially adopted. It's not a huge list, but there is such a list with certified and licensed counselors throughout the country who can see transracially adopted people. However, knowing that those people are few and far between, some suggestions I've always offered to people is, when you are searching for a counselor, certainly you can do a web search, like Psychology Today, just check and see if they are talking about what their background is in their profile. They should be. [00:12:00] Check to see if they've worked with other clients of color. If they indicate that they do multicultural counseling. I think it's always appropriate to have an initial screening where you can ask about that as well as their experience with adoption. So finding those two mixed is hard, but it's good to ask because it gives counselors a chance to say, “You know what, I don't have those two things, but I do have ample experience working with clients of color. I'd be willing to learn more.” And that's what you want to hear because what we don't want is to have a person who's adopted having to be the sole instructor of all things adoption. Similar to we don't want a person of color to have to be the sole information conveyor of all things about persons of color to their therapist or counselor.
Haley Radke: I think a lot of us can identify with needing to seek out some mental health [00:13:00] supports and having to educate our therapist and bringing them books like, “Hey, have you ever read The Primal Wound?” Or “Have you ever heard of –?” And it can be really frustrating. So I like that reminder that you can ask your therapist questions, you can interview them, you can interview a couple, you can go a couple times. And if you don't fit, you can pick someone else. I think, not all adoptees, but a lot of us are people-pleasers and we want to just go through and do what the next thing we think we should do. But I really want people to feel empowered. You have a choice, and especially you're paying someone, and you said there's this power dynamic in the relationship, but you still, as a client, have a choice when you're looking for a good fit for a therapist.
Dr. Susan Branco: I agree entirely. And keeping in mind that I train counselors-in-training, people who are trained in a master's degree program get a really good, [00:14:00] solid foundation on how to be a helpful counselor. But they don't know, and nor do I, every single potential issue that comes our way that people bring to us. So what you're really looking for is someone that's welcoming what you're bringing, and that's going to demonstrate cultural humility by saying, “I may not know all that. I'm going to find out. It's not going to be your entire responsibility.” And they are willing to do extra work. I have students in my program who are working with supervisors who have demonstrated this many times over by saying, “This is new for me. I'm going to take a CEU on this so I at least get some basic understanding of what this client is bringing. I'm going to look up what are some good, peer-reviewed articles that talk about this particular issue, so that way I'm not going in not knowing anything.” Certainly everybody's experience is unique, and you want to always be open to those nuances. But it's incumbent on your counselor or [00:15:00] therapist to do the bulk of the heavy lifting with that. So you can always ask, “How open are you to learning more about this on your own?” And that will be some out-of-session time. Many of us do out-of-session research to find out how we can best serve our clients. So that's another great question to ask.
Haley Radke: That's a good tip because how many people have I heard say, “Oh my gosh, I had to tell her 30 minutes about all this adoption stuff and I only had 20 minutes left to talk about what I was here for.” Oh, that's good. Okay. I didn't know you could do that. That's great.
Dr. Susan Branco: You can.
Haley Radke: That was a great tip. Wow. Okay. I'm curious, what are you seeing right now as some of the most important things when we're talking about training counselors and things especially related to adoption? Are therapists interested in learning more about that? Are they [00:16:00] becoming more competent? Are there more offerings? You were saying you give some courses on that. I’m curious about that.
Dr. Susan Branco: I often will say that it is my mission to infiltrate every course I possibly can infiltrate to talk about adoption. So part of that mission was about two or three years ago I wrote something about our core curriculum in counseling. There's a core curriculum we have to follow to meet our accreditation standards so that every counselor-in-training who graduates with a counseling degree of some sort will have the same basic training. So I looked at what those core classes were and I used research from some of my colleagues in the field who've done some great work and I developed how we can incorporate in every single class at least some mention of adoption and transracial adoption. And I find that students are becoming more [00:17:00] interested because when they get into their fieldwork, almost universally, they end up working with someone who's either adopted or connected to adoption in some way. And they will come back and say, “I have no idea where to even begin because we did not learn this in any of our core courses.”
So part of my mission, particularly at the program where I am now, is to do online lectures that are prerecorded that then become asynchronous material where I'm doing a lecture on something related to adoption. For example, I did a lecture on the adult attachment interview, the circle of security protocol and how that relates to adoption to give people an overview of how they can maybe do assessments if they're working with someone connected to adoption. Recently, myself and some graduate assistants did a CEU training for all of our students [00:18:00] and supervisors who were interested in Adoption 101, the basics of working with adopted populations and the adoption constellation. And we reviewed the updated seven core issues from the 2019 updated book. Many people were thrilled to have that information because they see a lot of these clients and they had no idea. So my mission is to somehow get in every course, to be able to have people finish the course knowing at least one thing that they may not have known before. Because I know, and we know, that we have a higher rate of mental health seeking behaviors, for very good reasons. But for this reason, we need to have more training in grad programs. So I see it more in counseling in general. I know it is part of social work training programs. I believe it's starting to [00:19:00] make a rise in marriage and family therapist programs, but programs like the Rutgers program, and there's some other adoption postmasters training programs, seem to be flourishing, so that gives me great hopefulness. There's still not enough, of course. We have a long way to go, but I do see more interest also because people are hearing about it more in the media. So certainly there's popular shows that have adoption themes, for better or for worse. Some are better than others. As adoption is always a hot topic in a movie or in fairytales, in TV shows. So I think people are thinking about it a little differently than maybe they were before because of some of the better programming that's out there. And I think, especially for at least the students in our program, they're seeing it more in their field placements.
Haley Radke: That's fascinating and I love that you're talking about weaving it in [00:20:00] throughout because we, my show, and most of my listeners, look at adoption as a trauma: you're separated from your family of origin. And, of course, when you're training mental health professionals, you're talking about trauma and how do you deal with that? It's like teaching, adding that if you've had an experience with being separated from your family of origin, that is a traumatic event. Those kinds of things. It's like stating the obvious, but it's not obvious to everyone.
Dr. Susan Branco: That's correct. Even today, one of my course topics was assessing for suicidality. And last week we were talking about multicultural competencies. So we had a chance to talk about transracial, multicultural adoption competencies that have been endorsed by our professional body. And then this week I was able to make the segue to risk factors in suicidality and we talked about many populations, but I was able to bring up that adoption is a risk factor based on the [00:21:00] research we know about that. So there is a way to include it in most course content if you have an awareness, just like everything else.
Haley Radke: Good. You're good. I like that. Now, I know you have done a lot of writing; your publications list on your website is extensive. And I was just reading in Adoption Quarterly, “The Columbian Adoption House: A Case Study,” which you published in 2020. As I was reading, I thought, oh my gosh, we just need more of this. It's proof of so many of the things that we talk about: the problematic elements of adoption, especially international adoption and the corruption, and all of these wild and crazy things that happen that are so shocking that lots of people wouldn't believe it. And we tell personal stories [00:22:00] sometimes and are told, that's a one-off. But how did you come to decide to write this and focus in on your country of origin, as well? Why did you think it was important to have a case study on something like this? I think it's really important for us to learn from. But I'd love to hear your motivations for writing that.
Dr. Susan Branco: A lot of it had to do with the literature search that I did. I found that there really wasn't a lot specifically about Columbian adoptees. We know that Columbia's adoption program is one of the older international adoption programs. It's often cited as a model program for other Latin American countries. And when I did my lit review search, I did not see much outside of something else I did about Columbian adoptees back in, I want to say, 2007. That was a book chapter and it was a very small [00:23:00] study at that time. I also co-wrote something with a colleague about conceptualizations of different types of adoptees from Latin America, so not just country specific. And I felt like I was hearing more and more conversation within our community on various social media sites where people were consistently presenting evidence that indicated there was something not right about their adoption facilitation. In 2016 Vice News in an exposé on some people whose adoption information was found to be fraudulent from Columbia. So I decided that it was really important that our voices be heard in a research way because, like you were mentioning, it is important to hear everyone's story, but oftentimes, particularly in the adoption professional community or the academic community, [00:24:00] if you don't have a legitimate research study, you are often told that you're not credible and whether that is right or wrong that seems to be my experience with those realms. So I felt it was important to have something that was peer-reviewed, that had institutional board review or review board approval, that methodologically had a set of steps and rigor. So I took all these pieces of news I had heard over the years from the New York Times back in the eighties, from El Tiempo, a popular newspaper in Bogota, that talked about legitimate child trafficking that happened in Bogota. I found some other literature, particularly a case study that was quite well done from the [00:25:00] 1990s, and I put together all these pieces while interviewing some brave people that were courageous enough to tell me their story on the record about their experiences with figuring out that what they've been told has been a lie, and their attempt to reclaim their right to identity is completely thwarted because they don't have accurate information. So I put all those pieces together to develop a story that I hope is readable to people who may be completely new to this topic. And I paired it with ethics and codes of ethics that were clearly violated in this process with the hopes that we will never return to that. We all know that that clearly was not the case because we've had many instances, I think of Guatemala, I think of Ethiopia, Vietnam, the list can go on where countries were found to be corrupt in their [00:26:00] practices and eventually shut down. So the timing of when the article came out coincided with somewhat of a movement in Columbia to change adoption practices and be more accountable, not, of course, to the degree that we're hoping eventually, but being more accountable to prior practices.
Haley Radke: It's Haley from the future popping in: I wanted to let you know that right after I recorded this episode with Susan, she sent me the government report from the Netherlands, which cited her academic article as one of their sources for halting all international adoptions at this time. We are recording this in February of 2021, so remember how we talked about how important it is to have these kinds of academic articles. There is your proof. Okay, let's get back [00:27:00] to the show.
Haley Radke: So some of the people that you interviewed were reporting back to you things like: “These files don't make sense.” “There's obvious lies.” “Someone said, my mother died, but when I asked for the death certificate, they can't give it to me.” So you've worked with a lot of adoptees in your career, I can imagine. Can you talk about what the impact is on someone who finds that out about themselves? I'm a closed adoption, born in the eighties, adopted provincially. I have access to my records because my province is open. I remember getting some identifying information that wasn't exactly accurate, but it wasn't this grand scheme to prevent me from ever finding out any truth. And while there are some challenges to my identity just being an adoptee, but for an adoptee whose literal [00:28:00] file is a big old lie and finding that out? What does that do to someone?
Dr. Susan Branco: It's incredibly painful. It breeds a sense of complete betrayal by your, in some cases, adoptive family members, by your country of origin, by members who hold power positions in your country of origin. And it can be devastating to learn that the narrative you created based on what we call micro-fiction in adoption, this false narrative that was often given to adoptive parents because it sounded good and it filled in a need at the time of giving a story, finding out that what you thought was true is in no way true, and that you may never have an answer can really [00:29:00] cause you to question what is true in general. Who can you trust? How can you know that you can trust someone? It can really create a lot of turmoil. So it's not surprising that many members of the community do struggle with things like anxiety or depression or maybe feeling challenges to trusting people because their entire beginning was created through a lie or false information. However, I always want to pair that with, our community is incredibly resilient. Because even despite all that, despite knowing I might never know, I have seen members of our community and other communities thrive, survive that, do other things to reclaim their culture and their narratives, move beyond. Not to dismiss or to demean anyone who's [00:30:00] struggling in that place of despair but I've seen people move beyond that through a lot of hard work. It's not one day you wake up and you can move forward, but I've seen people reclaim what's theirs and that looks different for every different person. So I do think we are incredible survivors that we've been able to take these circumstances and use them to make meaning of our narratives now. It doesn't mean that we're not angry sometimes, that we don't fall into that hole sometimes, or that we don't, on occasion or on many occasions, struggle with trust in systems, in others. But I have seen it happen for the majority of our community.
Haley Radke: What struck me was the perseverance of truth and [00:31:00] hiring private investigators and DNA testing and all of these things, even though knowing this may not give you an answer at the end. I think I see that in a lot of people who are doing their search: that perseverance, like there's something in you that says, “I just have to know.” And especially when you're living a country away, a world away or maybe you don't speak the language or so many barriers. God, the resilience really does stand out to me. You've got this proud, smiling expression on your face. I love that. I loved how you talked about your community and there's just like this beaming pride when you were speaking about them.
This is a little bit of a stretch, so maybe a thought experiment: Of course, Columbia is not the only country that has had these terrible, corrupt practices. And in recent years we've heard [00:32:00] lots of other things. Marshall Islands had this big thing blow up in the last year and all these things have been uncovered. So we're talking about adoptions where there's still young children. What are your thoughts on that? If an adoption has been uncovered to be gray or black market, some sort of child-trafficking situation, what I see is, “Oh my gosh, we gotta punish the powers that be that let this happen.” But I never see talk about how to reunite this child with their family of origin? How to reconnect them with their community? I'm curious about that because that's the first thing I think of. In all my years of doing this–which is not that long, it's five years–I've only heard of one adoptive family that [00:33:00] found out that their adoption was truly an illegal situation and they returned the child. I've only heard of one. Do you have thoughts on that?
Dr. Susan Branco: What of course comes to mind first, for me, is what we've seen transpire shamefully recently in our country in terms of the brutal practices of parental separation. And in something like that case that was so broadly seen, there is a spotlight on that situation, and yet we're still trying to figure out how we're going to reunite those children with their families. So with adoption and transnational, transracial adoption, I'm always thinking about those [00:34:00] situations. I agree with you. Those children should be reunited with their first families when it was an illegally trafficked adoption because that's who they belong with. But we know the system that's created that circumstance does not have similar viewpoints about who children belong to. Children are often commodified, and we're still operating under false assumptions about what is better for a child, particularly based on the idea that European white, Westernized culture is a better culture to raise a child. So for those reasons, I think we only see that one example of a child who was returned to their community because people in power, for the most part, still believe that children are better off [00:35:00] not in their original communities. And that thinking is completely born out of colonialism, racism, and terrible bias about what is best for a child. I don't agree with it. I agree with you that those children should be immediately returned to their families, and, I know I'm not alone in this and nor is this a unique idea to me, but we should be looking more at ways of having children stay with their first families, rather than having poverty be the number one reason why a child can't stay with their first family.
Haley Radke: Family preservation is so important to me, and when you're describing the adults in the situation, the adult adoptees who, that's their story, 30, 40 years ago and all the problems that have come out of it and the mental health issues that we [00:36:00] struggle with, as you said before, higher suicidality, all of those things. Gosh, it feels so big. This is systemic, all those things that you said. It just feels so big. It's heavy. It's heavy to feel like you're up against this huge system and I thank you for explaining that so succinctly and very powerfully. I think it's important for people to hear that those are the reasons this still is happening.
Okay. I've asked you so many different things. You're an expert in so many different things. Is there anything I didn't get to yet that you want to talk to adult adoptees about? Anything that you think is really important for us to know? Things that you're passionate about that you really want to share with us?
Dr. Susan Branco: Sure. Currently I'm doing research on adult Columbian adoptee first family reunions because that's another area in the [00:37:00] literature where I have actually seen some literature from transnationally adopted adults reuniting with their first families. But I did not see anything specific to Columbian adoptees. And this was another area where I was seeing a lot of anecdotal information about it on social media and just through groups. So I thought we need to have a study about this so that we can offer our community some guidance as to what this may look like on the other side of this, as well as give practitioners, counselors information about how to better support someone who's going through this process. So I'm doing that research now. I'm doing interviews with some amazing people who were willing to be participants and one thing that has really struck is that the participants range in age. So I have some participants who are around my age–I'm in my late [00:38:00] forties–and then I've had some participants who are in their early twenties. And I know in this field I've been doing this kind of work since the early 2000’s, and I have some colleagues who’ve been doing this way before I was, and one of the things we tend to circle back to is we've done so much work trying to educate adoptive parents, adoption agencies about how important it is to be able to offer cultural socialization to your children. So that means not living in an environment where they are the only ones of color, integrating your whole family, not just the child, but your whole family into a community with people that reflect your child. Not just doing culture campuses, wonderful as those can be, but really having your entire family be considered a multiculturally [00:39:00] humble family. And we–the collective we of so many of my amazing colleagues and practitioners and people in academia–have been doing this for years. So when I'm interviewing people and they're in their early twenties and they're sharing with me that they did not get any exposure to their culture growing up. That they remain the only person of color in their community, I can't help but feel demoralized that it's still happening. I still saw it happening even when I was in practice with younger children. And I'm not entirely sure the complete answer as to how we prevent that and how we really get serious about the importance of cultural socialization and raising your children in the community that reflects them so they're not [00:40:00] isolated and carrying that burden by themselves. But it does strike me–it has improved, don't get me wrong–but that there's still so many of us out there that are struggling in isolation. And that really gives me pause. And at the same time, it invigorates me to keep going. And I think that invigorates a lot of our community members to just, we're going to keep doing this so we can reach more people so that people know you are not the only one. Even though it feels that way right now. You are not. You're not alone.
Haley Radke: Have you seen the impact of not having that cultural socialization on the reunion process with their Columbian family of origin?
Dr. Susan Branco: The impact that is starting to emerge based on some of the interviews I've [00:41:00] completed suggest that not having that was one among many other very valid reasons that people wanted to search and reconnect with their first families. And that reconnection, people are describing it as allowing them to discover who their true self might be, allowing them to reclaim some of the culture they have lost. And allowing them to alter their narratives so that it's not this narrative exclusively focused on loss and grief. Not dismissing that, of course, but also being filled with an alternative ending that they've been empowered to reclaim.
Haley Radke: Again, there's that resilience, right? There's something so powerful about that. That's really fascinating. I am wondering, [00:42:00] I'm not sure exactly how to ask this. I know an adoptee who would identify as Latinx and also say they are white-passing and has gone through a journey of trying to do cultural reclamation. Do you have thoughts on that? I think, for me, watching their journey, it was beautiful to me and fascinating and it looked to me like it was empowering for them. I wonder if you've seen that or if you can talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Susan Branco: Throughout our talk, I've been thinking about one of my favorite models for transracial and transnationally adopted persons’ identity development. And one of my favorite models–and I maintain it's one of the best models–is called the reculturation model. And that was a model developed by Dr. Amanda Baden and [00:43:00] colleagues back in 2012. She is a huge name in the adoption field, wonderful academic and practitioner. And this was a model looking at how we reclaim our identity, how we reculturate, because we're not acculturating, that's different to what our unique circumstances are. And we are not enculturating, because that's also a bit different. We are reculturating; we're reclaiming our past. So the process that you described with your friend is a very common process that many people will start to engage in maybe late adolescence through emergent adulthood all the way throughout adulthood to reclaim what was lost for them and to work through determining what is my identity.
Now, speaking about Columbia, I can tell you that that identity is something that I don't believe is unique to [00:44:00] adoptees. From my visits to Columbia and from my reading about the country as a whole, we certainly are a colonized country ourselves, and there is a sense of lighter skin being held at higher value from the Spanish colonizers. However, most people, many people in Columbia, are considered mestizo: we are indigenous as well as European. So it presents a whole host of wonderful diversity. We also have a large Afro-Caribbean influence in Columbia; we have a Middle Eastern presence. So it's really a biodiverse country and diverse in its people. But that process of determining where do I fall? And particularly in a country like the United States where there's not a lot of room to have anything that falls outside the [00:45:00] census boxes that we often have to fill. And I have seen many people in our community having, out of survival, quite frankly, and out of this piece about not being culturally socialized, being able to pass as white sometimes. It doesn't work all the time, but sometimes. And really that's out of survivorship if that's going to be something that helps you to get through life because that's how you're being accepted, then it makes complete sense to me that people might go in that direction. Often, it’s some sort of pivotal moment when people start discovering I am not just that. I may be part European but I do have this other part of me. DNA testing has certainly opened a lot of people's eyes about, “Wow, I do have these different parts of me, and what does that mean? What does that say about who my ancestors are? How do I connect with my [00:46:00] ancestral heritage? How do I explore that? Part of me that I didn't even fully know existed because no one had shared that with me. No one had exposed me to that possibility.” So as adults, I see a lot of people really digging into that and leaning into that part of who they are and reclaiming it.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for explaining that. I wrote down a lot of new phrases from you that I'm going to have to read more about and I love the concept of cultural reculturation from Dr. Baden. She's a superstar in our community, for sure. This was so amazing. I'm so glad we got the chance to talk.
I would love it if we could do some recommended resources now. I usually start, and it's not going to be any surprise that I'm going to recommend to everyone that they make sure to check out some of your writing, Susan, because it's so important. And I've [00:47:00] talked about this a little bit lately, but you guys can read academic publications. You can do it. So I know sometimes it's really hard to get your hands on some of these articles, but what I found out is lots of the authors of the studies, even though they might only be accessible if you're part of a university or something and you go to your library and you can get access. But sometimes the authors of the studies will email you a copy of the article. So would that be okay, Susan, what do you think?
Dr. Susan Branco: Definitely. I'm more than happy to provide copies of articles, and people email me all the time to ask. I'm always honored.
Haley Radke: Beautiful. I love that. And I especially want you guys to check out “The Columbian Adoption House: A Case Study” from Adoption Quarterly, which is what we were talking about earlier. I thought it was really interesting and, of course, I thought it was cool that you did in-depth interviews with adoptees, because I feel like I do a little tiny piece of that every week. [00:48:00] But it was really fascinating to read pieces of their stories, and there's direct quotes from fellow adoptees in there. So I think you guys will really find that fascinating. And again, just like Susan told us, this is real research that you can show to someone and they will take it more seriously because it's peer-reviewed in a journal for all the academics that it is important to. It's legit. And it's very well written. I learned a lot from it. So thank you so much for that. That's what I'm going to recommend. What about you? What would you like to recommend to us?
Dr. Susan Branco: I am a huge fan of the Rudd Adoption Center at Amherst University. They host in-person, and this year virtual, conferences that always address something new and unique to our community. This year the topic happened to be the journey of adult adoptees, I believe. I might be getting that name slightly wrong, [00:49:00] but they are offering free YouTube videos with conversations with different panelists from the conference. And they also offer accessible white papers that talk about certain issues in adoption so you don't need to go through the peer-reviewed journal process or you are able to access that from their website. So I find that a wonderful resource because it's all things adoption and very good research.
Haley Radke: I have been watching some of those on YouTube and they're really well done. Lots of people that you guys probably already know. So I definitely second that. I didn't know that they had some white papers. That's fantastic. I'm going to have to check that out. Thank you so much for recommending that. I think the more we support what we want to see more of, it's just that circle, I think. So yes, I love that. That's so good. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed hearing from you and about your [00:50:00] expertise. Just so generous. Thank you.
Dr. Susan Branco: Thank you for inviting me. I'm just honored to be here.
Haley Radke: You can find Dr. Branco's website at drsusanbranco(dot)com, where there's a contact form if you'd like to request access to her Columbia House article. She's also on LinkedIn and on Twitter at drsusan (underscore) branco. I have links for you in the show notes to all of those spots. I am so grateful that I get to share these amazing conversations with you, thrilled to be reading academic papers to find the gems of humans to bring to you so we can learn more from experts. Thank you again, Susan. I'm so thankful that you shared with us.
And, guys, this podcast is not possible without listener support, and it [00:51:00] continues. My listeners are paying the bills and it's amazing. Thank you so much to all of my supporters. I have almost 200 on Patreon. We're just about there. So exciting. Adopteeson.com/partner has details of how you can support the show, help keep it sustainable, help keep paying all the costs for my editor and all the extra things it takes to have this podcast out into the world.
So if you love Adoptees On, if you want it to continue, if you want us to reach more adoptees who maybe are feeling alone and not connected into community, I would encourage you to go to adopteeson.com/partner if that's something that you're able to do. If not, another amazing way you can support the show is, literally, just tell one person about this episode. Maybe you have a friend who loves reading academic journals and they just really want to learn more [00:52:00] about adoption, and they would probably find this conversation fascinating. So share the show with just one person. That's a huge gift.
We are coming back to the Estrangement Series. Don't worry, we'll be back with more episodes focusing on estrangement and, of course, our regular episodes and more Healing Series episodes. Lots in the works for you for 2021. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
