318 Diego Vitelli, LMFT
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/318
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today I'm joined by Diego Vitelli, a Colombian adoptee and adoptee focus therapist. Diego shares his own adoption story with us, including what it's looked like for him to have been assigned an artificial date of birth.
We also talk about the accuracy of using terms like reunion. Or adoption trauma. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter. And if you do you will stay [00:01:00] up to date on all my adoptee related work. Diego and I wrap up the show with some recommended resources for you. And as always, links to everything we talk about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Diego Vitelli. Welcome, Diego.
Diego Vitelli: Thank you, Haley. So exciting to be here with you.
Haley Radke: I'm surprised it's taken me so long to get to you because we have lots of mutual connections. I see you in adoptee land doing all kinds of things, but first, would you mind starting and sharing some of your story with us?
Diego Vitelli: Yeah, absolutely. And just to even start at the beginning of like, why it's taken so long to get here which I've been thinking about this for a long time. I first came across your podcast Adoptees On when it was five to seven episodes in.
Haley Radke: [00:02:00] Seriously.
Diego Vitelli: And yes. And at the time I listened, obviously to the first five episodes and I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is, I don't even know how somebody is doing this. I, it was just something I really connected with and people's stories. And I of course kept listening and was listening for many years, and I have the propensity of when I find a new podcast, I have to start from the very beginning.
So I was very thankful to not be. Coming upon your podcast, a hundred, 200, 300, 500 episodes into it. But I did fall behind because I went off into getting my master's degree, which we'll talk about at some point. And so I got really behind by a couple years because I was deep into that. But I was committed to getting back into listening and even back then I was like, I really wanna be on this podcast, but I didn't feel like I was worthy ready, whatever the situation was at the time. [00:03:00] I said, I'll do this down the road. And then it became I'm not gonna be on the podcast if that opportunity comes until I've listened to all the episodes. So I spent many years catching up and I finally did catch up last November, which was odd timing that you reached out then to have me be here. So it's just really a cool thing at the end of the day that.
Haley Radke: I had no idea. I had no idea. And I was tracking you like you were. I have lists. Okay. Not to be creepy, it's just a thing, that's what podcast producers do. And so when it was time for our next round of invites, you were on the list. Wow. I had no idea. You listened from the beginning.
Diego Vitelli: Everyone,
Haley Radke: You know it's ten years year.
Diego Vitelli: It's unbelievable. I was thinking about this morning. I'm like, is it 9 10, 7? I can't remember. But yeah.
Haley Radke: On July 1st, 2026 will be my 10th anniversary birthday of the show.
Diego Vitelli: [00:04:00] Advance congratulations to you.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
Diego Vitelli: I know I've listened to a lot of those milestone podcasts and I can't even imagine what 10 years is gonna be like for you.
Haley Radke: Yeah, no, I'll start thinking of it right now. What's actually gonna be amazing. Okay, so I know you are actually coming to us we're recording while you're in Colombia, so those are your origins. You wanna share a little bit about that?
Diego Vitelli: Yes, sure. My origin story I've thought about this too, is like how many different ways have I shared this over the years in different platforms and spaces and whatever. And it really just the always been the basic elevator speech that I've had.
I was born here in Colombia in Medellín. My story, so to speak, is that I was supposedly found underneath a bridge in Medellín, and I was anywhere from 18 to 24 months old at that point in time, and taken into state custody by, through Colombian Child Protective Services. I went to a local hospital at that time, was [00:05:00] diagnosed with third degree malnutrition and was in their care for the next 18 to 24 months before I was adopted by a family out of Boston, an Irish Italian family, and I was four to five-ish years old.
And I always say. I was four to five ish, and I say today I am 50 ish years old because I don't know my actual birthday. I was given a birthday by the Colombian government of 1/1/76. And when I got to Boston within that first year, my parents were the first to petition the Massachusetts government to change my birthdate, and I was the first person to have that done and they changed my birthday from 1/1/76 to 7/10/75, which is what I quote unquote celebrated for the next. Since I've been there. And it's, that's a, that's another area to talk about birthdays and [00:06:00] trickiness and who knows their birthdays and who doesn't, and so on and so forth.
But anyways, I grew up in a prototypical kind of way in this family. I came with language, as I say, when I was four or five years old. And within nine months I had it eradicated. And I just grew up being in a, in this family and connected to 'em, and I grew up thinking I was Italian.
I, in many senses, people talk about like, how do you fit into your families? And in many senses, I guess I, that Italian ness blended in, and I never even thought about myself being Latino. There was markers and knowing in some ways, but I just lost it. That connection to it because it wasn't centered.
Or if it was always, usually through microaggressions and, racist remarks about Latinos. And I seem to have that lens thrown on me at certain points in time. So it was, yeah, I just it was [00:07:00] very disconnected to to my experience and grew up, just as I think a lot of us do trying to blend in and fit into our worlds.
And then I went out to Seattle to do my undergrad studies at Seattle University and ended up staying out there and had been there basically 32 years at this point in time. So Seattle's home Boston has a lot of roots for me, but it wasn't until I had gotten married and did the prototypical thing, marriage white picket fence, two kids, all that kind of stuff.
And I was, I found myself, just at moments connecting to my adoptee identity, but not really connecting to it. And it was a very long process for me to really come into that awareness. I did get divorced, and went through that process eventually repartnered with somebody else and was with them for 14 and a half years.
And it was through that relationship that I began to really open [00:08:00] up and peel back some of the layers of adoption and my adoptee identity. So that happened when I was basically around 35 years old. It started prior to that, but that's when it really came into focus and it really showed up and, the relationship part of that was the hard struggle.
And I, connected to the adoptee identity. I was also trying to connect with my bisexual identity. So there was sexuality identity that was coming into play at that point in time. And then obviously my cultural identity, that was also very complicated. And because I had. Been disconnected from it. So that's where things landed in the fast forward lane of coming into my own adoptee identity.
Haley Radke: Can I ask you about the relationship strain of it? What was it about you looking into, oh, adoption had a bigger impact than maybe I had thought that caused a strain [00:09:00] with your partner.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I think, you know what the bigger center focus of it was that my ex-partner was also an adoptive mom to a daughter that was adopted from India. And my partner was half Indian and half Latvian. So bicultural herself and was raising this daughter, and it came into focus because of that and this understanding of oh, we have this thing that's happening. And she was young at the time and I was coming into my identity and there was a lot of, I think just this clashing of my own identity, how I was coming into it and what I was feeling was happening with her daughter at the same time.
And how do we bring awareness to people. To people at very different ages. And so I think that was a part of that, was the strain of that and myself, and not having done my own [00:10:00] work entirely at that point in time. To fully understand myself and trust in her and what she was doing as a parent in parenting, and also being very protective of an adoptee, a fellow adoptee as I was coming into my own awareness.
So I think it was just that, and I hadn't done the work and it obviously not only impacted this relationship, but it impacted my marriage and that individual as well. And I fully, really had to reconcile a lot of that through my process.
Haley Radke: Oh wow. Thank you for sharing that. Are you, I don't know. So you're coming into awareness and then are you like looking for outside supports? What were some of the things that you did to look further into this.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. It, I, and part of this is going back for me, when it really first started for me was when I was a freshman in high school.
And there was a moment a story that I tell [00:11:00] when I came out of a class. I think I was in English class at the time and I was walking down the hall and I had a very visceral reaction in my body of something happening, and I just could not understand what happened. It was knee buckling. Kind of experience. And I was a relatively healthy individual, just out of the blue. And all I could remember is as I was leaning against lockers is thinking, wow, like I feel like maybe my biological mother died is the only thing I could come to in that moment in time. And this is me not being connected to my adoptee identity other than knowing that I was adopted and all that kind of stuff.
And so I held that to myself for the rest of the day and did not know how to process it, did not know what to do with it. And I went home and I, it's, I don't know if it was that day or maybe at some point in time, but I had said to my adoptive mother, I think I really wanna try and find my biological family.
And at that [00:12:00] time what I heard back was, why would you wanna do that? What about us? What about everything we've given you? And so on and so forth. It's a very, that's a very shortened version of the conversation, but a lot of us know what that, that conversation is, and it was my introduction to the whole kind of grateful narrative.
And so I shut everything down as a result of that and really packed everything away. And then I had a very, the pull that we have as adoptees of wanting to search this. And of course this is me at 15 with a heavy identity development process and time. And so I, like I said, packed it away.
I had another experience of that later in college. Revisited the conversation again with my adoptive mother at the time and got very similar kind of response. And so it just became, again, something that was not okay to talk about and to explore . And that's, I think what contributed to a lot of, that part of me being buried.
And then it happened again when I had my [00:13:00] son or my ex-wife and I had our son. And we know when, those of us that do choose to have kids and move into that space usually has some sort of impact on our, adoptee identity as it did for me. And it opened that up and I again, approached it with her and had similar kind of language, but at the same time, she was more willing to start giving me information.
And the one thing I will always credit her for is that she kept everything, all the documents of everything that went through my adoption process. And I didn't have a lot, but I had all this paperwork, so I got that file and that was the beginning of me opening up and exploring, what that was like.
Yeah, it's just a it's a long process, but that was the beginning of how I started to now search and look into groups. And back in the day, I found a Yahoo Chat group of Colombian adoptees. And that was my first [00:14:00] introduction to it. And I opened up this chat and I started reading posts and I was just like, oh my goodness, what is all this?
And I was reading a lot of really painful things that adoptees were sharing and I couldn't connect to it, and I was like overwhelmed by it. And so I just filtered everything into a folder so I wouldn't have it in my inbox. And I said, oh, I'll read that later and check it out. And never did, of course. But then years later, I was in that same feeling of pull and wanted to connect and so I Facebook had come out at that point in time.
Looked for Colombian adoptees, found the Facebook group, and then I did the same thing. And I felt like nothing had changed with the community of who these people were. And of course, because I had blocked it off myself, it was too overwhelming. So I lurked for a number of years in that. And then it was one day that an individual, a male, and I, it's really important for me to identify that it was a male that had written a post and said, [00:15:00] Hey whoever you are, wherever you are in your journey, your, you know your story and if you feel hesitant to post here for whatever reasons, like it was very validating and also very welcome and said, please share your story. You deserve to have it shared, or something to that effect. And that was the beginning.
And I sat on that for maybe an hour or two and got enough of the gumption up for myself to make my first post in that group, and then I was off and running at that point in time. So I always credit Michael for being that individual that really launched me into it.
Haley Radke: Incredible. And so fast forward now you're an adoptee who is also a therapist. And one of the observations that you've made is this piece about generationally how our parents raised us, however, whatever decade we were adopted in, [00:16:00] and the safety in with which to have conversations or not. So you got the outright verbal, why would you wanna look for her? You have us and I got the, I was an eighties baby. I got the, of course we support you, but the face and the actions, none of those lined up. And so can you talk to us a little bit about that and your observations in that area?
Diego Vitelli: Yeah, that's two different experiences and yet very familiar experiences for many adoptees and I, yes I'm more of the older generation, so to speak. I came out of Colombia in 1979. And I, I think, the hard part that I have experienced is that our generation was raised with this expectation that we're just gonna be brought into families and [00:17:00] blended in and assimilation was the name of the game.
And so parents were not equipped to understand really what was happening at all in that situation. And you think about a generation before us, it was even more that, and I've been in spaces with older adoptees that it was really, they really struggle with trying to be coming into their adoptee identity now, even at this age because of the conditioning that was there for so many years.
And, when it comes to adoptees and getting to the point of wanting to explore their identity. There's a lot of work that's being done for years before we ever get to even naming it. I think that's an important part to remember in that, that when an adoptee finally gets the courage to actually come forward and say to their adoptive parents this is something I want to do.
This isn't the first time they've thought about it. They've been thinking about it for a long time, and they've been reading the room for a long time. [00:18:00] They have enough data in their mind, so to speak, to say, is this safe enough? Can I do this? And maybe even in some of those situations, they still know that it's not necessarily safe, but they feel overcome by the need to do it.
And maybe that comes from being in spaces. Maybe it's come from being online, searching and doing things, in their background by themselves. Like it's coming from some depth that says, okay, I cannot do this anymore. And I think this is very true. Of identity work and I, and this is an identity piece that we're talking about as adoptees, but I also use this in comparison with LGBTQ identities or in racial identities.
If you haven't been connected to your race, like it takes time for you to figure out, can I come forward? Figure somebody that's trying to come out, it takes a long time and they've been thinking about it for a long time. It's not [00:19:00] the first time and they've played the tape in their head over and over again. And I think adoptees are very similar in that path.
Haley Radke: I've heard from some people that they feel like the impact of adoptee voices on social media and podcasts and all of those things that we, that are readily accessible now to young people is causing them to come into consciousness much earlier than you or I ever had the chance to be. Is that your observation as well?
Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's really important to understand that there, there's a lot of us out there, that adoptees and there's a lot of us that are not at all connected to this. The voices that you and I see, because we're in the spaces a lot. Can very much feel like it's the louder volume of it. What we have to really understand is that it's actually a much smaller subset of [00:20:00] our population that is coming into that consciousness. And I have, I do see that, I see that with clients, even younger clients, this is the first time they've actually really begin to explore and use, recommend pages or, people to follow or resources or whatever.
And it is the first time that they are seeing it, and yet there are a subset of adoptees who are using social media to connect like I did, instead of saying adopt from Colombia Facebook group, there's like adoption and you can put that into Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, and you can get a whole ton of different things. So they are getting exposed to that more. And I think that, yeah, there's a larger group of that and I also don't think it's as big as we would like to think it is.
Haley Radke: No, certainly not. And I'm so grateful for the young people who are sharing their experiences and connecting with their [00:21:00] peers and like making it okay to do I think some of them probably have adoptive parents who took the right training and were a little more open than perhaps your adoptive parents were or mine. But again, I think that's a really small percentage.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Let's go back to this. Sorry I heard from another adoptee that she calls it her birth zone because it's it's a week or two off. She's not really sure on a date, but she, it was like she was so young that it was much more clear. And when you said you were found between 18 months and 24 months, like that's a wide window. Can you talk about your. Adoptive parents choosing to change your birthday. Have you ever thought about changing your birthday? That is wild to me.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. That part of the journey I [00:22:00] didn't do, I think it was, it began that about seven or eight years ago of really reconciling the fact that this birthday was just not mine. And I struggled for with it before that. The really ironic part of it all is that my daughter is actually born on July 10th. And so when she was born, she's now 19, but when she was born, initially I was still, not in my consciousness. And so it was a really amazing kind of cool experience to say, wow, your daughter's on your same day and this and that. And we had fun celebrating those birthdays for many of those early years.
Haley Radke: Did you, and then as I did, your adoptive parents chose that day for you? Like when did you know that day was specifically chosen?
Diego Vitelli: I don't know the specific date that I came into it. I just known that was something that had happened. I did get the story, full story of it, I think about eight, nine years ago from my adoptive [00:23:00] father.
Haley Radke: So you had many birthdays with your daughter shared on the, on July 10th.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Diego Vitelli: Yes. And as I came into, like I said, as I came into my own consciousness and as many of us do with birthdays, the complexities that show up there is that I just started not really enjoying the lead up to that day, and I would, I was having seasons.
My season would start around Mother's Day. And it would carry through June into Father's Day. And then, because my birthday was basically a couple weeks later, it would carry through until my birthday. And it was really rough. My, ex-partner would tell you all the time, like almost every single year I was in some sense, sabotaging this whole period window. And her birthday happened to be in the, towards the end of May, so she was a part of that experience too. And so I just was really struggling with it for so long. [00:24:00] And the part of us that, those of us who don't have our known birthdays, we're a small subset of people out there, but those of us that don't, and I'm not gonna hear to speak for everybody else, but it is incredibly complicated and hard.
And when you are around people that know their birthdays, that's a huge privilege that they have. And they don't understand that. And it's always hard to. I don't wanna be that person like, I don't know my birthday. But it is, it's a fact. And it's not something that just can be overlooked. And yet when you say it and mention it, people are they don't know what to do with that.
And it's understandable, right? Because they don't have that experience to know what it's like. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking for me because I lost a lot of connection to my daughter throughout those years. And we have, struggled for many of her years through high school.
And a lot of that is because of my own process and my [00:25:00] experience of trying to figure this out and not having the right language or the right way to approach all this stuff and they're a product of it. We know this. You have kids. I know that. And those of us that do. If we haven't come into our consciousness before we have our kids, they're the ones actually having to carry the burdens of our trauma as well through that, and how do we help them as we're trying to help ourselves. It's really challenging.
Haley Radke: This is a very light version of this. I don't know what time I was born. I have a time, but I don't know if it was AM or PM and I have a Christmas ornament. You know where you like, that's your name and your birthday, whatever, and it had the time on it, but it's wrong. I knew that it's wrong, but I don't remember if it's AM or PM. And so I just had a friend ask me, oh, I want to do your I think it's called human design. I'm not sure this is what's coming to mind, but I might be incorrect. Do you, what's, what time are you born? You [00:26:00] like, need all these things. And so I was like, oh, I'm not sure. And she said, oh, I'll split the difference.
And in my head I'm like that's not accurate. And so how is it for you participating in these. Not being able to participate in these common cultural, is what's your horoscope or what, which year. Like all of those kind of thing. Yeah, it's insignificant, but it's a part of how we connect with other people. What's your sign, Diego?
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked that question because that was on my mind too, is I thought you were going for astrological sign. Type of kind of identification because they often will ask you like, what day were you born? What time were you born? And it tells you how, I don't even know the language. That's how disconnected I am with,
Haley Radke: which planet and whatever is lined up. Yeah. Yes. I don't know. I'm not sure
Diego Vitelli: Jupiter coming into Mars and all this kind stuff. I have no idea. Can't even fathom it. And it's been hard yeah, because it is a that's a little cultural context that of the people get to bond and connect with about themselves and [00:27:00] figure those things out. And I, yeah it, at times it's like sandpaper to me. It just really rubs me really the wrong way. And at times I'm also curious because naturally we're curious like what would be my day. And I I had I know a tarot card reading many years ago, and I've done this a couple times and I'm very guarded with how much information I give because I think in many senses people can just take a little bit and can really run with something.
And I don't want that. It's not the. It's not the way to really know it, and it feels inauthentic to me, especially somebody that doesn't know their origins. But that in that one tarot card readings the individual kind of narrowed down, seemed to narrow down that they knew my birthday might be 11 two or two 11, like it was like going back and forth.
I'm like. Okay, if I ever do have the fortune of figuring out my actual [00:28:00] birthday, and if it lands on 11 two, then we will have a massive party. We're gonna have a massive party anyways. But that would be unbelievable if that is where it landed.
Haley Radke: Yeah,
Diego Vitelli: and people have told me, no, you're not. I think what is it? Is it? Scorpio or something like that for November. This is how bad I am.
Haley Radke: I don't know.
Diego Vitelli: Then no, you're not that. And then somebody and somebody, I'll say I'm a July 10th. Oh, you're a cancer. And I'm like, I don't know. Am I?
Haley Radke: I know you mentioned like it's pretty unusual to have this gap, but I appreciate you talking about it because I think it lends itself to understanding a little bit more about what adoptees experience, where we're like, we don't know who looks like us and like it's just like this, on shifting sand instead of like on rock and it's, that's just one other layer of your experience that I think can be extrapolated [00:29:00] to the rest of what it feels like to be adopted.
Diego Vitelli: Yes, absolutely.
Haley Radke: Can you talk to me about your feelings about the word reunion, and I've heard you talk about this before and listened to a couple of the podcast episodes you've been a guest on. We can link to those in the show notes for folks. And I was like, oh man, Diego's on to something. We gotta talk about this us.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. Thank you. This is something I am pretty passionate about. It's the one thing I've, I don't know, I don't know why I've latched on it. I think I'm one of the few that maybe speaks about it in this way. Or I don't know that I've heard of somebody else, but anyways, I, yeah. When it comes to the idea of language we are accustomed to hearing, when we decide we want to search for biological families, that the common language is search and reunion.
We're gonna go through the search and reunion process and [00:30:00] experience, and so on and so forth. And I, started thinking about that as from a clinical standpoint of working with clients and how hard that is for adoptees who go through that process, encounter the biological families. And then have in some senses, for lack of better words unsuccessful reunions or reunions that are short-lived, that it doesn't, you can't qualify that as a reunion to me, because it doesn't the, there's nothing intact to make that.
So I just really was playing this with this mentally at some point, and I was like, we've got to change that language. And I came to that conclusion of like, why can't we call it search and contact and let's start there. Let that be a starting point. And what will that do for an adoptee that's going through that process?
It can take a lot of weight off [00:31:00] of our shoulders as we're going through that. And because if we hear reunion, we expect that we're gonna have to, it's gotta be successful. That's the only outcome. And so if it's not that, then what happens to the adoptee? Like that from a mental health perspective is really hard and, can lead to really challenging experiences for many years afterwards.
If it's not, if it doesn't turn out the way you know that they hoped. So I was in that position wanting to help unburden that process for an adoptee and if we can, as an industry that gives us the language, has given us the language and told us what we should be, the words we should be using, and I, we've been in this space for a long time. We're adoptees that are trying to get our voices to be heard and for us to lead in that language. And so this is just one of those areas that I think we could really make a shift and help adoptees that are going through that process, not carry that [00:32:00] weight and see what happens with contact and work through that process and see where it goes.
Haley Radke: I also, I remember a long time ago thinking about the word reunion and then it's like, what do I call what I am in now? Is it reunification? Has it, are you fully back in? And so that, I agree like that language matters. I love that idea of contact because like frankly, some of us search and we just wanna know medical info and we're not expecting a reunion. Like contact with information provided back to us would be great. And that's all some people want. Sometimes that shifts.
Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. Yeah. And the adoptee needs to be given that space to to control their own narrative. And we'll talk about this later in terms of the resource that I wanna recommend and why it's so important, why that resource is to me, is so important because it gives language, again, really important language to the adoptee [00:33:00] to have more control in their process because a lot of it is put upon them to manage through everything that's there. They're having to manage themselves. They're having to manage what they're going to encounter, they're having to manage their adoptive family. That is a lot of stuff to, for an individual to have to carry and figure out. And just have their own experience through it, right?
Haley Radke: You hit your mid thirties and you have to start thinking about adoption and you have to, it impacts your relationship and all the things,
Diego Vitelli: just a few things.
Haley Radke: It's just on us, just a few things. The other thing it also comes down to a bit of language I think, that you wanted to talk about today was this idea of like adoption trauma and separation trauma and those things. And I think they're two different things. You talk about what [00:34:00] your beliefs are and let's go back and forth on this.
Diego Vitelli: Sure. Absolutely. Again, because we come into anything that we know about adoption comes from how the language is centered around us, which is usually by non-op people.
And you'll hear, and I certainly hear often, the adoptee has to go into counseling, into therapy. And more and more adoptees are doing it at younger ages. And it's yeah, have them go in to therapy because they have adoption trauma. And a lot of the books the professionals that use this language of adoption trauma.
And I started thinking about that again and I was like, that doesn't seem and feel really accurate at the end of the day of what's really happening for the adoptee. So to me, what I felt was a big miss is that the industry and professionals were not talking about where the [00:35:00] core issue was. Where everything really begins.
And it, to me, it begins at separation trauma. At that separation that the trauma is induced through that experience. And for an adoptee that for our community, can range for anybody. It can be from minutes to hours to days, to years, like somebody like myself, right? And what's happening in between, through all that.
And what happens after that. But if we don't acknowledge that beginning and we jump to, oh, it's because he was adopted or really that, that to me is pathologizing the adoption part of it. Now, it's not to say that adoptees that have been adopted have, we know there's plenty of adoptees that have been adopted into adoptive families that have been abused in their adoption experience and that has to be honored and, recognized as [00:36:00] additional trauma, but it's an additional trauma. I shouldn't say, but, and it's an additional trauma. And if we're only focusing on that, or if we're only focusing on selective pieces, then we're missing that and an adoptee can do a lot of work through years and thinking, okay I was really abused by my adopters and went through this whole process, and I worked through all of that, but yet I can't seem to get over the hump of something.
To me it's pretty obvious because somebody didn't focus on the separation trauma part of it.
Haley Radke: A hundred percent agree, and that's like the core root is separation trauma and acknowledging adoption trauma with abusive families. I think of adoption trauma, and so there's separation trauma, and we have all these attachment issues and identity, all those things.
I've been thinking of adoption trauma now as the trauma of being put into a [00:37:00] family with strangers and having to pretend that's normal and I belong here and you have to fit in, and that everyone is like pretending like we're all like pretending like this is normal. And so when I think this is weird, I don't fit here, then I think I feel like, and I'm going to use like, I don't mean this in an ableist way, like I feel crazy, like I felt crazy. And so I think that forced integration is also a traumatic event.
Diego Vitelli: Absolutely. I, yeah I agree with that a hundred percent. Because it's the process. For lack of better words it's the gaslighting experience in full force. And you, and when you have some [00:38:00] sort of idea or concept that this doesn't feel right.
And you're being told no, everything's fine. You're the, you're, we love you, you fit in. You're just a one of us. Like all these kind of things.
Haley Radke: And in fact say thank you.
Diego Vitelli: And say thank you for it. Yes. It's so hard. It's and if you don't have the experience, you just don't understand it. But I, and again, I think there's enough other contexts, and this is a part of, for me as a therapist and one that does relationship therapy, that these things show up in other areas. That to me, it doesn't seem like it's a big ask for people to really reflect on what they're doing or what they're placing on top of an adoptee and not think about it some other context that they may be able to somewhat have a little empathy around it and not hold onto this idea that, no, we need to maintain this narrative so that we can feel [00:39:00] good about what we are doing and the choice that we made to go through this process of adoption. And I say not just the adopters in that situation, we're talking about society.
Society wants adoption to be successful because that's what they've pitched.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Diego Vitelli: And so if there's anything that's negative towards that or makes them challenge their thoughts and their original beliefs around that, what are they gonna do? The whole system falls apart.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Diego Vitelli: We know this about other systems.
Haley Radke: And I should say this is how I see that definition, but that's not how people use it. That's not what people mean when they say adoption trauma.
Diego Vitelli: Right? Yes.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Yeah. That is such a good point, okay. We're close to wrapping up, but can you tell us how you came to decide to become a therapist and work specifically within relationships and adoptees and all that, your focus?
Diego Vitelli: Sure. [00:40:00] Absolutely. Where it became clear for me was going back to that adopted from Colombia Facebook group. I spent a lot of time there. I found my community there. I found connections, I found people that I felt like just understood me and, these were spaces where adoptees were pouring out their hearts.
And it was the first kind of experience socially where you could do that and do this with people across, different states in the US but then it became globally across the world and all these kinds of things, and you're just like, what? What is going on here? And I, the thing that I saw in those groups is that how people were responding to people's stories or comments or whatever there was happening, started to become a little problematic.
And you would start to see adoptees, and we know this pretty well in our own spaces. They start going after [00:41:00] the original poster for whatever thought or view that they had and dismissing them or putting, inserting their own story inside the comments. And it just derailing what was there for the original person.
And I started recognizing that and I was always trying to be very conscious of making sure that I was responding to the person that was there and what their experience was. And it might add a little context of my own stuff as I connect with that in some way.
Anyways, I was doing this for a long time and I just was like I feel a pull to help. I want to be a part of this I want to do this on a different level because you can't just do, 140 character kind of response in something and really cover everything. And yet that's oftentimes what was happening in these chats.
And people were just missing each other and they weren't hearing each other. And it's like at the end of [00:42:00] the day, people want to be seen, heard, and validated for their experience. And I had bounced around in a lot of different jobs and industries and just was struggling and for whatever reason or my partner, I, I shouldn't say for whatever reason, my partner and I had been doing a lot of work, personal growth work.
She was phenomenal at doing personal growth work and had been doing it many years before me and had, brought me into that process. And I was starting to do that work myself. She would argue maybe that I wasn't doing enough of it, but I was beginning to do that. And then it just clicked for me.
I was like, this is what I want to do. And I started seeing, of course, other adoptees that were doing, being in these spaces and helping people. And I wasn't one to wanna be on, social media or out there and do all those kinds of things. I just wanted to be a part of it in some way.
And so this was the way that I found my way into doing that.
Haley Radke: Amazing. I heard you're taking clients, which is pretty stellar. We have [00:43:00] such a need for therapists who work with adoptees who get it, and I don't know, I've had so many therapists on the show, and then they all get booked up and there's and people complain to me. I'm sorry, I can't help that. I can't help that. I'm introducing you to amazing people. How can folks work with you if they would like to.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. You can refer them to my website, which is adopteefocusedtherapy.com. And yeah the thing that I'm really passionate about is, and I've obviously listened, like I said, to all your episodes and especially the healing series with fellow adoptee therapists.
And the one thing I noticed is, I don't know, I don't think. I could be called out now that you have had a male therapist.
Haley Radke: That's a good point. Where are they?
Diego Vitelli: And so that became like my passion is to be a male working in this space and [00:44:00] helping other male adoptees. And I think about Michael constantly because he was the one that helped motivate that and so I'm a voice that gets to be out there, a person that hopefully helps other males recognize that it's okay to step forward and talk about this. I was invited to do that. And this is my way, in a sense to pay it forward.
Haley Radke: I love that. Thank you. I believe you're the first. I cannot think God if there is another one. I'm very sorry. You're not coming to mind just now. But I think you're correct. Okay. I would love to hear what you're gonna recommend because in addition to recommending you, I have a different recommendation and so you go first today.
Diego Vitelli: Okay. Sounds good. Yes. My recommendation is In Reunion by Sara Docan-Morgan, and I mentioned, referenced this earlier and I'm really excited to talk about this. I'm really a huge fan of this [00:45:00] book. I read this last year when it first came out, and what it did was, it's just amazing. She is a Korean adoptee. She's writing about the Korean reunion experience, and she has a longitudinal study incorporated into this, and she has her own experience. It's so layered. Incredibly layered, and it's fascinating, absolutely fascinating to have read the book and how she constructed it and pulled it together and all the data that's there from these adoptees that have gone through this experience.
And I think, for me, anybody you know that is thinking about going into search and contact really ought to read this book first. And give themselves the opportunity to really understand some of these complexities. As all, the people that she's references and that share their stories, they're covering so much of the range of the experiences.
And I think we [00:46:00] need to have that, we need to have an understanding that this isn't just a very cut and dry process, and you're gonna go hire an investigator, find your person, your family immediately have a huge party and all these kinds of things. And everything's, rainbows and unicorns.
We know that, you know that, that's not that's not necessarily the case, but we don't understand where some of those hardships land and how they show up, what they show up in and so on and so forth. So this is just a really amazing I think it's a gift to our community.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Diego Vitelli: To, especially for us as international adoptees. We can layer it on as a Colombian adoptee. You can just layer that on for our culture. You can layer it on for any other culture. And for domestic adoptees, I would say the same thing. There's things you can really pull from this experience for the domestic adoptee as well. So just an incredible book.
Haley Radke: Yeah. I don't need to, but I totally second it. I've had Sara on, we talked about it and earlier in our conversation you were alluding to [00:47:00] this thing that Sara's named. So
Diego Vitelli: Yes.
Haley Radke: All of those, what am I trying to say? All of the parts of contact and travel planning and who reaches out first, and all of those burdens that come on us, she's named them the discursive burden that adoptees carry.
And again, having language for that is. So helpful. 'cause it can be like, oh yeah, that's another thing I have to do another. And I really appreciated that part. And I agree. I'm a domestic adoptee. I learned so much from this book. It's excellent. An excellent resource. Good call.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the discussive burden because that was I wanted to revisit that as that was the thing that really opened things up for me when I read that, and it gave language of just how much weight we actually carry through this process and carry through our entire life as an adoptee. Up until that point, [00:48:00] there's a discursive burden that we carry within our own adoptive families that is there that we don't even know of.
But then when you go through the whole search process. And if you do have the contact, yes. It's on so many other additional layers that come on that, and how do we navigate how we talk about it and who do we talk to and all those kinds of things. Yeah. Read the book. It's amazing.
Haley Radke: The word I was looking for was it's invisible labor, so to have a name for that, it's so good.
Diego Vitelli: Yes.
Haley Radke: Okay, so mine's a little fluffy and I agreed it is. It's about me, and so just take it with a grain of salt. Diego. I started a new podcast with two of my friends and it's called Adoption Pop, and we are recapping TVs and movies and critiquing their adoption takes, and it's really fun and I get to swear on that one. I don't swear here, but if [00:49:00] listeners want a take on our view as adoptees on the consistent gaslighting the media has done to society about what adoption is really like. You can hear our excellent takedowns over at Adoption Pop, and I'm gonna recommend one episode. It's the episode where we rip into the Modern Family Pilot episode, which has every bad take you could imagine it's there. So I'm gonna link that in the show notes, but that's my like fun side gig that I'm doing now.
Diego Vitelli: I love that. And I did, I came across that as well. Because of course you were dropping this in your later episodes a year or so ago. I'm working on this other project. I don't know what, it's coming. I'll let you know. It wasn't this.
Haley Radke: No. This is just a new fun one. I'm still working on my other project that is [00:50:00] not as, I'm interviewing moms who've placed their children within the last five years.
Diego Vitelli: Oh.
Haley Radke: And I'm doing a narrative style audio documentary as a it's gonna be called On Adoption, and we're really talking about the impact adoption has on us as adoptees and on moms who've placed their babies. So Adoption Pop's much lighter than that. Yeah.
Diego Vitelli: Yeah, that sounds much lighter. And we, and I love that you're doing this with your friends because those of us that have been in, in these spaces with adoptees, we're having those podcasts all the time. Like we, we share these stories when we get to be in our community and we feel safe enough to open up and share these things.
I've been in those situations. I'm not a podcaster, so thank you for putting it out there and for giving us something to listen to and laugh and chuckle and roll our eyes about and yeah, and relate to a hundred percent.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Yes, my friend Sullivan Summer, who's a [00:51:00] cultural critic, and my friend Kristal Parke, who is a filmmaker. Because we're friends, I feel like we overshare a little bit too much there so you can have a taste of that. So you can find Adoption Pop, wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Diego, where can we find you and connect with you to hear more about what you're doing in the future?
Diego Vitelli: If you're interested in working with me, my website, as I mentioned before adoptee focusedtherapy.com, and I am lightly on social media, although, because I am in Colombia here for six months, a little six month stint I'm sharing a bit about my journey there. Not a lot, but here and there different things. And the best place to catch me there is on my Instagram @Diego.Vitelli.
Haley Radke: Amazing. We'll have that linked in the show notes for folks. Thanks so much for being here, Diego, and what a delight to find out you're one of my OG listeners.
Diego Vitelli: Unbelievable. 10 years it's taken, and here we are. This has been really fantastic. I really [00:52:00] appreciate the opportunity to join you and be, on this side of it, and look forward to many more episodes that come from you and future guests.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
It never ceases to amaze and surprise me, the guests that I invite on the show who have been listening for years, and I had no idea. It's just such an honor to be in your ears in that way, and to be in community in that way, and even if I don't know you personally, I'm so thankful you're here listening to our stories.
Like truly, it means so much to me and I wanna thank you all and I said this like off the record to Diego, but I felt sad when someone thinks that they're not like [00:53:00] ready or, have it all together, whatever, to be on this show 'cause this show that anyone, any adopted person can share their show on adoptees on. It's just that I don't have capacity for like absolutely anyone to come on. We opened guest applications earlier I shouldn't say earlier this year, late in 2025. And we had, I think 40 some come in already. There's more coming in on a weekly basis. And we don't choose based on who has the most followers.
We have folks come on that wanna stay private. We have folks who have, do have a book. We have all kinds of folks we wanna share great stories, wisdom. Earned wisdom from anyone who wants to [00:54:00] connect with other adoptees and who feels that they have something to share that would really benefit fellow adoptees to not feel alone.
That's really at the heart of it. So I was thinking of Diego 10 years ago, we would've loved to hear his story and yeah, he personally felt like he wasn't ready. But I never want you to feel like you have to have it all together to come and be a guest on the show. That is certainly not the case, and if that's something you've wanted to do you can apply to be on the show. We are only able to take a limited number of people just because of the number of episodes we put out. And so if you go to adopteeson.com/application, we are still taking guest applications at this time for 2026 and 2027. So yeah. Shoot your shot. What have you got to lose?
We'd love to hear from you and [00:55:00] a big thank you sincerely to all the folks who've been brave enough to come on the show and tell their stories publicly as a service to our community here. Thank you so much for listening, friends, and remember, you can sign up for my newsletter, adopteeson.com/newsletter, and I would love to keep you up to date on what I'm doing.
Thanks for listening. Let's talk again soon.
