319 Kristina Richie
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/319
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's guest is Kristina Richie, Tik Tokker and author of Unraveling Adoption Weaving Between Two Worlds. She shares some of her story with us, including how her birth mother gained custody of her when Kristina was 16 years old.
We talk about how the secrets in her adoptive home shaped her identity. Future romantic relationships and attachment patterns. We do mention suicidal ideation and suicide at a few different points during this conversation, so please take care when listening. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can [00:01:00] find at adopteeson.com/newsletter.
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. In this episode, Kristina does a little work assessing me, and we have split that section out and kept it at the very end of the show in order to keep our focus on her story.
So listen all the way to the end. If you wanna hear my list of favorite movies, songs, and snacks, and what that means about my adoptee wounds. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Kristina Richie. Hello, Kristina.
Kristina Richie: Hi, Haley. How are you?
Haley Radke: I'm great. I'm so glad we get to talk for longer than our last conversation.
Kristina Richie: No, impromptu live.
Haley Radke: My first and only TikTok live was with you, ma'am, and that was a shock.
Kristina Richie: No way. Are you serious?
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Kristina Richie: Oh [00:02:00] wow. I didn't know that. That's amazing.
Haley Radke: How, the 20 people that were there or whatever can just have that in their hearts and that's where it shall live. But anyway would you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us for folks who may be new to you?
Kristina Richie: Absolutely. My name's Kristina Richie, and I was adopted as an infant. When I was five years old. I found out that I was adopted from the neighbors and it was a horrible way to find out. The neighbor's older brother told me that I was adopted. My mom didn't want me. I was in an orphanage and that's why I didn't look like my parents. And that was. That pretty much what started a lifetime of trying to understand exactly who I was without any answers.
And then a couple years later, I had gone into a grocery store with my parents, and then they had a son five years after they had adopted me. They were not supposed to be able to have children. He was considered a miracle baby. My mom was 42, I believe, 41 when she had him. And we were in this grocery store. Everybody was looking [00:03:00] at my little brother. And this little old lady walks up and she's oh, he's so cute in talking about how he looks, just like my mom, my adopted mom who had blonde hair and blue eyes, and I am darker complected and I don't fit the mold right. And I just remember her talking about how cute he was and gawking over him, and then me standing there wanting her to say something about me.
And I look up at her and she looks down at me and she goes where did you come from? You don't look anything like your parents. And I think it was like the very first time that I like really understood the concept of I don't fit in here. Like I really don't belong. I really am so different. But I was terrified of asking any of those questions.
I remember on the way home there was a really awkward car ride. And I was not about to ask. I could tell that there was some tension going on between my parents in that conversation, and I was not about to be a part of it. But the next day on my way to school, it was just me and my dad. And I asked my dad, hey, what do you know about, my birth mom or any about that?
And it was, it literally took like the whole [00:04:00] drive to school for me to have the courage to ask. It was such like an awkward thing. I try to tell people, and this is, I don't know about other adoptees, how they feel, but as far as me, I always felt like that conversation was the equivalent of having the birds and the bees conversation.
It was just that awkward, gave me the same type of heebie geebie feelings. I don't wanna talk about this, ooh. And so I asked my dad that day in the car on the way to school, right before I had to get out of the car. What can you remember? What can you tell me? And all he could tell me was that, oh, she was really young and they, he gave me her first name and I went to school and I wrote down her first name in a journal and that was like my prize possession.
I still have that journal till this day actually. And so move on a couple years later I was 12 and when I turned 12 we got computer lab at school and I learned that you could use the internet to look up anything. And as soon as I learned that, I was like, I have to go find my birth mom. This internet is, it's gonna [00:05:00] be it. This is gonna be how I find out. My parents don't have to know they're not at school. There's no way they're gonna find out. So I started trying to google how to find your birth mom and trying to figure out where I was born in the hospital, all the things. I even went home and lied to my mom and told her that I needed a copy of my birth certificate for a school project.
And little did I know at that time as a 12-year-old that when you're adopted, but they put your adopted parents on the birth certificate. So that didn't help me. I was very disappointed when she pulled it out and her name was on it instead of this, mysterious woman who I only knew a first name of.
So I didn't get any answers and I actually had a friend that was in school with me and she was looking over my shoulder and she went home and told her mom what I was researching at school. And next thing you know, my friend and her mom are at our front door knocking on the door because they want to come and talk to my parents.
And they were really trying to help. I do believe that they were trying to help, but once again, it was like having the birds and the bees [00:06:00] conversation and I just wanted to crawl in a hole. So I lied that day when my mom asked me if I wanted her to go find my birth mom. I think part of it was because whenever she told me that she didn't have too much information, she was like what happens if we find her and she's married and she has children, and what if they don't know about you?
You wouldn't wanna disrupt her life, would you? And of course not, because the only thing that I could think of as a 12-year-old at the time was, no, I don't wanna ruin her life for a second time. So I internalized everything and I became a really withdrawn, but also angry, rebellious, starving for attachment child, and I was doing all of the things I shouldn't have been doing.
And my parents had always stuck to the narrative of, we don't know anything. We don't know anything. We don't know anything. And I needed answers so bad. I wanted to know who I was looking at when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to know who I was and why I was loud and where my small nose came from and where I got my dark eyes [00:07:00] from.
And what was I had people asking me like, are you Asian? Or what are you? And I would just make stuff up because I really didn't know and I wanted to know those answers. Family trees at school were like the most horrible, like family assignments. They were the most horrible, agonizing thing. I just remember asking the teacher, like trying to feel cool for a second.
Which family do you want me to do? And the teacher would always be like, oh, I don't know, maybe the one you live with. And I'm like, why? These people aren't related to me. That has no impact on my family origin. Like it doesn't make sense. And always feeling just like the outsider. And then when I was 14, I was going through some mental health stuff.
I was so depressed. I had a boyfriend that I was very attached to, that my parents had ripped away from me. And hindsight is 2020. They should have, he was way too old for me. I was doing things I shouldn't have been doing. I was sneaking out. And in all reality, I should have never been allowed to date this boy to begin with.
He was 17 and I was 13 years old. Should never happened. [00:08:00] But he was my solid attachment. He made me feel seen. He made me feel heard. He made me feel held. He understood me. I felt like I could talk to him. And this was the first person that wasn't too busy for me, that my emotions weren't too big for, right?
And my parents ripped that away. And then the state got involved and they tried to prosecute him. And it was just, it was horrible. And so I was looking for attachment. Lots of people say they were looking for love in all the wrong places. I wasn't looking for love. I was looking for connection. I wanted somebody to see me.
I wanted somebody that would hear me, that would understand me, and I felt like I had found that with him, and that my parents took it away from me. And that was horrible. And so I was very depressed. I had suicidal ideations. I was sent off for an evaluation at a mental health type clinic, and I knew what to say so that they didn't keep me.
Because anytime that, especially I believe as an adoptee, I've heard this from multiple adoptees. For me specifically, anytime somebody would threaten to have me evaluated or [00:09:00] put me in an institution or make me go to a teen challenge program, or this type of boarding school or that type of place to quote unquote, help me, I felt like you're abandoning me all over again.
And the idea of that was horrible. I couldn't deal with it. So when I was 14 years old, my birth mom showed up at my high school completely unannounced without my parents' permission, and that started a war. I snuck around for two years. Trying to have a relationship with her, even though they were heavily policing that relationship.
I was only allowed to see her when they said it would only be a phone call supervised with my dad listening on Sundays. And then if I was allowed to see her it'd be for a couple of days at a time, maybe at Christmas or maybe during summer. And that just wasn't enough for me. I had 14 years of questions and not enough time to get those answered in 15 minutes on a Sunday.
So I was sneaking around and calling her, and eventually I snuck out to go see her. And when I did, there was a car accident. I was not involved in the [00:10:00] car accident, but it did make me late for curfew. And when that happened, I admitted what I was doing and who I was with. And as a result of that, my parents tried to put a restraining order against my birth mom.
And when that happened, I hired my own attorney. I showed up to court. I sued my parents when I was 16 years old, and my birth mom got custody of me, and so I moved in with her. After that, I became an emancipated minor about eight months later. And I can tell you that I'm so thankful to this day that I became an emancipated minor, because that did a couple different things for me.
But the biggest thing that did was there was a judge. Judge Stern. Judge Stern gave me autonomy for the very first time. She was the very first adult that looked at me that said, I think you know what you need better than anybody else, and I'm willing to give that to you. And as a result of that, I was able to leave court that day after being emancipated, and instead of going back to my birth mom's house, I made the choice to go back to my adopted parent's house and knock on the door, [00:11:00] which was weird because I had literally walked through that door instinctively my entire life.
I had never moved. That was the house I came home to from the hospital, and my parents answered the door. My mom was very guarded. She was still angry with me. She had every right to be. But my dad, my adopted dad, as soon as he came to the door, he, soon as he came down the hallway, he knew that I was there because I wanted to be, not because I had to be.
And the entire game changed in that moment. And ever since then, my dad has been my safest attachment. My best friend, we had the most amazing reconciliation. I talk to my dad every single day. He is my best friend. And so without all of the different elements and everything that happened within those couple of years and as wild and crazy and all of the things with the sneaking out and the lawsuit and all of the attachment fractures and the ruptures and the betrayal and the lies and all of it, I'm still so [00:12:00] thankful for all of that because as a result of that, I got to understand my dad.
And I hated my dad when I was a teenager with all of this stuff going on because he was so controlling and I just couldn't wait to get away from him. And in fact, when I left and I went to go live with my birth mom, I didn't even speak to my parents for eight months. I didn't talk to 'em at all. I went no contact.
They kept on trying. I refused. I didn't wanna speak to them. And there was a split loyalty. I felt like I was cheating on my birth mom with my parents, and vice versa. I didn't feel like I could make the right decision. I felt like no matter what I was doing just in my existence, I was hurting somebody.
And that was incredibly unfortunate. And so at the age of 17, I got married for the first time because I didn't want anybody fighting over me. I didn't want anyone to feel like I was choosing the other. I wanted to feel like I didn't have to pick. And so I [00:13:00] chose neither. And that was a hard season. And I was a divorce single mom by the time I was 18, and I got remarried 17 days after my divorce from my first husband, and I continued on these trauma loops and I didn't even know what a trauma loop was, and I didn't know why I kept picking the same type of partner over and over again. And I didn't understand why I kept making the same decisions and why these patterns just kept, coming back up in my life until I found myself 30 years old with six children and divorced for the third time.
And I was like, I have got to figure out what is wrong with me. I am obviously broken. I've been told this now by multiple men that are telling me, nobody's gonna want you. Who's gonna want you? You've been divorced three times. You have six kids. Who's gonna wanna be with that? And I really did believe that.
And I had worked so hard. I had struggled with my weight my entire life. I was an emotional eater. And with all of the stuff that was going on, I was a hundred pounds overweight by the time I was in my early twenties. And I had worked really hard. And when I was 25, I lost all of [00:14:00] that weight and I was feeling really good about myself.
And I had convinced myself that nobody would be stupid enough to cheat on me now. Nobody would leave me now. I was such a good wife and I made sure dinner was ready and on the table every single night and all these things. And I was like, if I'm just perfect, nobody's gonna abandon me. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna reject me or leave me if I do everything right.
And, it happened was that man still cheated on me and I still got left. And that brought me to my absolute worst place where I was like, I have to figure this out. And that's what started my educational journey on trauma. And I got my bachelor's degree in psychology. And then I continued on a bunch of certifications and started learning about adoption trauma.
And I remember the very first time that I heard somebody use the term adoption trauma. And I was just like, what do you mean? I'm fine. I'm cool, and it wasn't until I started really understanding all of the ways that my story, my childhood, all of that stuff with my birth mom and the way that she showed [00:15:00] up, and all the stuff that happened with my parents and all of the lies and all of the betrayal.
And it wasn't until I started putting the pieces together and saw the through lines where I was like, oh my gosh, I can't deny anymore that this has impacted me. I can't deny anymore that this is why I keep choosing the type of the same type of partner over and over again. I also can't deny that this will impact my children and I have to do something about it.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Kristina, you mentioned trauma loops and I haven't actually heard that phrasing before. Can you talk a little bit about that and when you discovered what that was?
Kristina Richie: We have five basic emotional needs when we're born worthiness, connection, safety, freedom, and belonging. And at any given point, if those one of those five things or all of those five things, or a couple of those five things are neglected chronically in us, we develop a childhood wound around that.[00:16:00]
And those wounds, we have stacks of wounds. Some people will have one or two, some people have all five. But those are basically like the programs that are running in the background that are dictating every single one of our decisions. It's actually pretty crazy. They dictate everything down to the snacks that we prefer, the cars that we drive, the clothing that we wear, the brands that we love.
All of those things are impacted by our trauma. And what happens is we develop these certain wounds and as a child, our nervous system is developing, but then so is our identity. Even after our nervous system is pretty much completely done developing, our identity is still developing. And when we don't have any sense of identity or we have identity ruptures or something that happens like what did with me and many other adoptees, and you just don't know who you are and you're trying to figure that out, you get into this place of, I don't know who I am, I don't know where I belong, I don't know all of these things, and those childhood wounds end up creating [00:17:00] patterns in your life.
These are the patterns that something keeps happening over and over again, and it doesn't feel very good because it always winds up being the same. Like, why do I always pick the cheaters? Why do I always wind up alone? Why does this keep happening to me? The answer to that is trauma loops.
Those trauma loops are patterns that formed as a result of these childhood wounds that basically became calcified within your life. They were not healed. Those things that were neglected, continued to be neglected. Nobody ever made you feel seen. Nobody made you feel heard. Nobody made you feel understood.
So you have spent a lifetime. With these behaviors, with these survival adaptations that kept you safe. And as a result, you are still walking around trying to protect yourself. And those things that you do to protect yourself end up hurting you and you don't understand why you keep on yielding the same result.
Why do I keep getting in relationships to the same person and why does it keep ending up the [00:18:00] same way that is a trauma loop.
Haley Radke: Thank you. And what do you do about it? Like you have managed to actually look at that and impact your life in a substantial way to get out of that?
Kristina Richie: So there is, it's such a loaded answer honestly, but I have developed a framework that talks about these five wounds.
It is called the Julia Effect. I help people heal from not only those childhood wounds, but also these trauma loops that are created from childhood and then just continue through life. Step one is seeing it. Step one is understanding what it is that is playing in the background constantly in your life.
And until you see it super clearly, you won't be able to break it. So step one is being able to identify it. Once we identify it, then I can give you a repair plan and tell you exactly what is needed based off of the particular [00:19:00] wounds. And it's pretty cool how I do this. So what I have developed with the Julia Effect is that I took neuroscience meta programming, which is pattern recognition and epigenetics, which is a study of how the nervous system we basically inherit our nervous systems from the people that we naturally come from.
And we also gain external factors from stepparents adopted parents. That's why a lot of us adoptees are so screwed up, honestly, is because we don't only get the trauma from our biologicals, but we also carry the trauma from the people that raised us, whether that be stepparents, adoptive parents, whoever we're taking on everybody's stuff, especially if they're unhealed.
And that's exactly what happened with me. My adopted dad, when he was 15 years old, both of his parents committed suicide two weeks apart from each other at Christmas time. And my dad was the one that found both of them. [00:20:00] He remembers the night that his father passed away, hearing his family in the kitchen saying, what are we gonna do with Mickey?
And he knew that he was a problem that needed to be solved. And so he winds up living with his aunt and uncle and he is a mess. As you can imagine with just discovering both of your parents after suicide, that's terrible, right? And so he was grieving and he was drinking, and he was getting into fights and he was stealing, and he was doing all of the things that you would expect nowadays if you're trauma informed, you would expect for there to be behaviors as a result of all of that trauma, especially when they don't put you in counseling.
They tell you to suck it up. There was never any let's talk about what you just went through. It was just stuff it. So he gets kicked out of his aunt and uncle's house and he winds up moving in with his elderly grandmother. And one night he comes home and he is so drunk he can't make it up the stairs.
So he ends up falling asleep on the staircase. He wakes up the next morning with a pillow under his head, a blanket on top of him and [00:21:00] his elderly grandmother asleep next to him on the stairs. Now his grandma could have chosen to yell at him, to escalate, to tell him to get upstairs. Take your butt to your room.
She could have lectured him, she could have shamed him. She could have done a lot of things that a lot of parents nowadays do when your kid comes home and they've made some terrible decisions, but she didn't. Instead she laid there with him and his grief and his mess and his behavior, and she was just a safe person for him.
Her name was Julia. And as a result of the way that woman loved my dad, when I came home after leaving and after being emancipated, when I came home and we had our reconciliation, my dad went from being that angry, confused kid that was parenting me to being like his grandma Julia. And so I, I've created this entire [00:22:00] training based off of the fact that one safe adult can change the trajectory of any child's life.
Haley Radke: I wanna go back. I don't know how comfortable you are about talking about this. I wanna go back to your repair with your dad and how he's your bestie now, and him and your mom, your adoptive mom, made some really poor choices in keeping secrets from you and the way they were controlling. We're all making the best choices we can for our children, but it was excessive in my opinion.
Kristina Richie: I agree.
Haley Radke: And some of the things she said to you, I've heard you talk about on, on, in your book and on another podcast I'm gonna recommend in a minute here, but it seemed really harsh and hard to come back from.
Can you talk about your relationship with her and things you wish she would've done [00:23:00] differently, and how you're able to manage that now, being so close to your dad, but has it been different with your adoptive mom?
Kristina Richie: Yeah such a great question. I've actually like really been asked that, and I think I have the best answer right now.
If you would've asked me this a couple months ago, I don't think that I would've had as good of an answer as I do right this moment. I'm gonna take it back to the day that I met my birth mom. When that happened, my adopted mom had come to this school and she knew that my birth mom had shown up. And instead of her asking if I was okay or asking how it went or anything, the first words outta her mouth were, where is she?
And I was like, where's who? I was playing dumb. And she was like, you know exactly who I'm talking about. Don't lie to me, Kristina. And my head turned around on this swivel and I'm like, don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. You've been lying to me my entire life. Don't lie to me. Like, how could you even, how could those words even come outta your mouth?
Like the audacity for you to say that to me right now is wild. And [00:24:00] she was like, let me guess you wanna go live with her, don't you? And I was like, yeah. And I really didn't, I didn't know this lady. I literally spent 45 minutes total with this woman. I knew nothing about her. No I didn't wanna go live with her.
I didn't freaking know her. All I knew was I was in pain in the moment and I wanted to hurt this lady back for all of the lies. And so I was like yeah, I do. She goes, that's fine. You and I have never been into this mother daughter thing anyways. At least I have my son. And her son was her biological son, right?
And so that cut pretty freaking deep. And I don't even think, honestly, I doubt she would ever admit even now that she said that. But I will never forget those words. And there's been several other things that have been said that have been hurtful, but I've said a lot of hurtful things too. And what I will say that has helped me the most with all of this was this past year, back in the beginning of summer, I wound up going no contact with my birth mom [00:25:00] after 24 years of being in reunion. After not understanding why every single time I was around her, I was dysregulated. I didn't even know what dysregulated meant. I didn't understand anything about the nervous system. All I knew was, is that when she texted me, I just felt this weird anxiety. I didn't ever wanna go to her house to hang out. My husband would have to beg me to take the kids over there for dinners.
And I just I hated when she called me and I didn't wanna answer the phone. And I sat there in my own head like, oh, I don't wanna answer it. And there was things that she would say that would just cut so deep. And it was like she would say it with a smile. And I'm like, there's no way that she meant this in a way to hurt me.
And so I went on this really deep dive on healing and understanding the nervous system. And I furthered my education and I spent over a thousand hours and that's where the Julia Effect was born in all reality. And what I came to the conclusion of was that it's just mismatched nervous systems.
And it wasn't anything that I was doing. It was what I couldn't help. It was genetics. And so I [00:26:00] got parts of my nervous system from the people that raised me. I got parts of them from the people that I came from. And you have this big mix of all of this trauma and all of this stuff that I'd never processed and feelings that I didn't have language for and I didn't know how to talk about.
And all I had was these unprocessed emotions and this hard outer shell and this disorganized attachment that said, I really want closeness, but you're gonna have to stay at an arm's distance because I can't let you in. I can't, okay which is very common for adoptees. So I never fully let her in and I feel like she felt rejected by me.
And so with her own junk in her own childhood wounds and all of her unhealed trauma and the way that her dad was and all of this stuff, it was a nervous system issue. And had I understood that. As a kid, had I understood what I know now 30 years ago, 25 years ago, it would've saved me so much pain and heartache.
Even when it comes to what happened with my birth mom. It's the same exact thing. [00:27:00] My birth mom has a very different nervous system than mine. What was wild was is when I started the Julia Effect and I figured out these questions and all of the things and how they relate to each other. I wanted to do basically my own little case study.
And so I started asking all my biological relatives what their favorites were, and I ran all of their stuff and I started comparing and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I'm almost identical to my paternal grandmother, almost identical. And I was like, this is wild, but I'm. Not very, like very different from my biological dad.
Him and his brother are almost identical, and then him and my birth mom are identical and they do not get along. So now it makes perfect sense as to why they don't get along. And it also makes sense as to why I get the same feeling with both of them. I'm just like so dysregulated around both of them.
And I have a lot of that same dysregulation with my adoptive mom. And when I ran everybody's favorites and I started [00:28:00] understanding what it was that dysregulated me so much, I understood that they all had this very dominant safety wound. And I naturally connection wounds. You and I, we get very dysregulated by that.
And not only are we uncomfortable with them, but they are just as uncomfortable with us. So it causes people to say things and to push back and to trigger each other. And it's not like we're doing it on purpose. And the one thing I think that I have kept in my head that has saved me a lot of pain and a lot of internalizing other people's words and emotions is that big reactions, big emotions, whether it be anger or sadness or whatever those things may be, is nothing but information.
It's information. It's telling a story about that person and their own trauma because the reason that they reacted is from something that is way deep within them. Why did this affect you the way that it did? Understanding that has helped me have more empathy and more compassion. That has helped me forgive myself for a [00:29:00] lot of the stupid decisions that I have made.
It has also helped me forgive my adoptive mom for a lot of things that she has said and done. It has also helped me understand my biological parents and why they did the things that they did. Another thing that I have done as well is I researched so heavily. The connection between certain wounds and placing children, and it's pretty consistent across the board.
The people that have safety dominance and they also have belonging. Those two wounds are the most common wounds for placing children for adoption. And when I learned that and I did all the research, and I asked a ton of birth mothers for their favorites, and I analyzed them all, and I saw this huge, compelling piece of evidence of why these people were doing what they were doing.
I was like, I have so much more insight now, and I can look at them with way more compassion than I did before, and now I feel like I understand them. [00:30:00] Instead of me just choosing to be hurt by their words, by their actions, I now understand that my body was having a physical reaction. That was telling me danger, this is not safe for you because my nervous system is not matched up with theirs for, I'm just, I don't feel regulated around them.
I'm not safe around them, not emotionally speaking, but I can say that having all of this information and all of this knowledge now and going back, I was just out there actually visiting my parents three weeks ago, and I talk about this stuff now all the time because it, impacts everything.
Every decision that we make as a human being literally is dictated by our trauma, like all of it. And I can prove it with all of this stuff, which is crazy. But now I have a completely different outlook on who they are and why they are the way they are. Instead of like, why are you, why do you always invalidate my feelings? Why do you dismiss me? Why do you tell me that I'm. Too dramatic or I'm too much, or I'm this and that and the other. Like, [00:31:00] why has this always been a theme and why does this hurt so bad? And why do I want your love so badly? But I just feel like I can't get it. And then now that I understand that it is literally their nervous system versus mine, and that nervous system will always dysregulate mine. I don't have to continue trying to get something out of somebody that is incapable of giving it to me.
Haley Radke: That yeah I can see that. I can see that. And I, when I was thinking about your adoptive mom and dad and their choices early on, they really created the very thing that they were afraid of by holding so tightly.
And I can see that in the trauma loop. What you were talking about earlier, just making these choices out of fear just can perpetuate the cycle. I wanna ask you before we do recommended resources, I know you have used [00:32:00] surrogacy as a family building tool and I'm curious if you have thoughts on that.
Having now unpacked all of this attachment trauma and understanding more of the implications, so while those children are biologically yours and your husband's, someone else carried them and for adoptees we're always like missing that connection to our birth mom. We have the biological piece, but we also like we're in her body for, however many months. And so I wonder if you have thoughts on that now?
Kristina Richie: Definitely. I swore I was never gonna get married again. And lo and behold, this super cute 24-year-old who had never been married and never had any children walked into the bar that I was working at, which was ironic because neither one of us were drinkers.
And I fell in love with this amazing man who [00:33:00] was just precious in every possible way. And I had a hysterectomy. And so I started looking into surrogacy because naively, I believed that all of my issues just stemmed from the fact that I wasn't raised with my biological parents. And I had read the Primal Wound, but I didn't finish it.
And on the last half of it, they talked about this. So I didn't even really know what I was getting myself into, and I didn't think that would have any impact. I like assured myself that no, like they're not the biological parent. If they were the biological parent, I could see that being a problem.
But the, it's really not about that. It's about like genetic mirroring. And I knew those concepts. I knew looking at somebody and seeing yourself in, a reflection type of a thing was really important and understanding where you came from and all of that. And I'm like, as long as I'm open and honest and my kids know that I didn't carry them, everything should be fine.
Yeah, no. So my daughter is almost six and my son will be three in a week and a half. I had two separate surrogates that carried them. [00:34:00] Both of them are friends of mine and it's very obvious that they were very different than all of my other children. Now, my other kids, I have four that I carried, and then two that I have guardianship of that I raised since they were toddlers that call me mom.
So I am used to raising children that are not biologically mine, 'cause I had two. And then I'm used to my own biological children. 'cause I had four of those already. And then I have these two. And these two have very different attachments. They're very anxiously attached. My other kids were very securely attached for the most part, they were my Velcro babies. I've never had a Velcro baby before them. I've never had a baby with colic or stomach issues until these two. I've never had ones that scream all night long until these two. I have never had ones that preferred my husband over me until these two. And I can't really chalk it up to anything other than I didn't carry them.
I will [00:35:00] tell you that the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life was allow somebody else to carry my children. That was so hard. My anxious attachment side got into full gear while these women were pregnant with my babies. I would sit on the phone with poor Tasha. She's the one that carried my oldest, my daughter.
For hours a day because I just needed that closeness with her 'cause she had my baby inside of her. And what I can tell you too is like with all of my kids, I have always co-slept with all of my kids. I have always been so attached with all of my children because I was like always terrified that they would feel like I was abandoning them.
And while these women were pregnant with them, I felt like I was abandoning them. They were in another state, they were in somebody else's womb. I didn't know if they were being protected, if they were being nourished. And that anxiety that came with that was so debilitating. It was horrible. And then you have the other side of it. I've always talked to them about how they were carried by somebody else. I've told 'em the story that, we have an oven. Our oven was broken. We made our own chocolate chip cookie dough. It was time to bake the cookies. We had to take them [00:36:00] to Tasha's because my oven was broken.
So we just baked the cookies in there. So whose cookies are they? And they'd be like yours and yes. So that's how this works, right? So she's always understood that she wasn't in my belly. Tasha still comes and visits, so she sees her and she knows her and she knows that she was in her belly.
We've shown her pictures, but nothing ever would've prepared me for what happened. A month and a half ago, my daughter gets in the car crying from kindergarten and she says, mommy, my friend told me a secret, and I'm not supposed to tell you, but it hurts my feelings. I'm like, whoa. Like first of all, that's not something we do.
Okay. I was like, you can tell mommy anything. She said she told me that I am adopted. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? I'm like, what? She told me I was adopted because I told her that, I didn't, I wasn't in your belly. I was in Tasha's belly. So she says that I was adopted and I'm adopted, and I literally had to sit there with my five-year-old and somehow explain to her, you're not [00:37:00] adopted.
Mommy is adopted, but you're not adopted. You don't have two mommies. You only have one mommy. Like I am the only mommy. Yes, you grew in somebody else's belly, but I'm the only mommy, and she still, like for weeks, was on this, I'm adopted. I'm like, you're not adopted. And she would cry and she would be upset.
And I'm like, you know what sucks so bad about this is my daughter's five. Remember how old I was when I found out? Because some kid told me five. Like this is just history repeating itself. So what I will say is there is a definite obvious difference between the children that I carried and birthed myself, and then the two that my friends carried for me.
Haley Radke: I appreciate you sharing that. And I think as we work in advocacy. It's so helpful to know that, and it's so helpful to connect with those communities as well to have our voices heard a little more about what's traumatic and what's not. So thank you. I know we're wrapping up time and [00:38:00] I really wanna recommend that folks.
First of all, I have a podcast episode so you can hear more from Kristina. You share your story way more in depth on Kate and Ty's podcast. Break It Down on episode 36 and 37. I was locked in listening to you tell your story. It's so good. But you are also a five time, almost six time author.
And I read Unraveling Adoption Weaving Between Two Worlds, and I was like, this is a page turner. I was like, I was really going for it. I totally, yeah, I read it in one sitting and I really enjoyed it. Again, a lots of your stories and a lot of your calls are, to adoptive parents, but I think adoptees will feel really seen.
In the words that you share and you have this, no, I'm just gonna read this a little bit. "You cannot love away a history. You refuse to acknowledge. You cannot expect [00:39:00] secure attachment while denying the very wounds you're meant to help heal. Your child is not a blank slate. They are a whole complex, layered person."
And I was like, yes. Perfect. Well said.
Kristina Richie: Thank you.
Haley Radke: You, you also have a really large TikTok presence. I didn't realize that you've only been on TikTok like a year. You've shared your story on TikTok before and I was reading through some of the comments on some of your most viral videos today.
And I was like, man, people super don't get it. Like I'm really sad for the parents who raised you. What a slap in the face of the people who nurtured you. I would stick with the ones who brought me up, not the ones who gave me up happy face. Who puts a happy face emoji after that? How heartbreaking for your adoptive parent.
And every time I read one of those comments, I don't know if [00:40:00] it like fuels your fire to keep going, but for me I was like, yes, this is why I'm still doing what I'm doing. Most people don't get the impact adoption has on us. And so I'm really thankful for voices like yours sharing your experiences like. Anyway, any comments on any of those things before you tell us what you wanna recommend?
Kristina Richie: Yes, actually. So that's what started this entire journey for the Julia Effect video that you're talking about in particular was I got like 1.2 million views on that video within a matter of four days. And I was blown away and I saw the same thing you saw. I saw those same types of comments and they were literally just repeated over and over again.
And I was super curious as to like, why are these people saying these things? Because I wanted to understand why certain adoptees [00:41:00] don't wanna meet their parents. Wound up finding out was that was actually their attachment style talking. And now that I have this ability to decode the human algorithm to understand where people are coming from, what those comments are, I can actually decode a human being based off of one of those comments not just their attachment style, but also their wound stack based off of their Facebook or even an Instagram or TikTok comment. So now I look forward to looking at those reactions are nothing but information. They say way more about that person than they do about me.
Haley Radke: That's good. What do you wanna recommend to us today?
Kristina Richie: I will tell you that the single best thing that taught me the most about adoption in general was getting on TikTok. I didn't get on TikTok really until January of last year, two days after the blackout happened, and I got on there and I decided to share my adoption story just randomly, and it blew up really fast and [00:42:00] I was blown away by it.
And I didn't even know that there was such a thing as adoptee TikTok, like I had no idea that was a thing. And then I discovered adoptee TikTok, and then I felt like I had community. I felt like I had other people that had similar stories. I had people that understood my story, I had support, and I was just like, wow.
There's people who get it. This is so nice. So I think that understanding that you have a community out there of people who are also willing to talk about it and if you get on there and you start watching, even if you don't agree with them, if you watch with an open mind and you just try to find other people that have the same type of hurt as you, that might have a completely different opinion, might have the same exact opinion, just knowing that you're not alone makes a huge difference.
So that one thing by itself, TikTok changed so much for me and it really inspired me to further my education and to create a way to help people heal.
Haley Radke: I love that. One of the [00:43:00] observations in your book, I was like, oh, this is so good. You talk about cultural hypocrisy and if adoption is so beautiful, why is like saying to someone "you're adopted" still an insult?
And I think you bring those things to light so well on your TikTok as well. So I know folks will go follow you there on TikTok and where else can we connect with you online and follow what you're doing, Kristina?
Kristina Richie: I am on TikTok as Kristina Richie. It's Kristina with a K. I'm also on Facebook also Kristina Richie. I'm not on Instagram as much as I should be, but it is connected to my Facebook, so you can also reach me there it is @thekristinarichie. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so on my website. If you wanna learn more about the Julia Effect, if you wanna have me come speak, it is www.thejuliaeffect.com. There's plenty of information there about the Julia Effect and exactly what I do trainings on.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much. What [00:44:00] a delight to get to talk to you today and share my affinity for potato chips.
Kristina Richie: Ha. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Haley Radke: So I am on TikTok and I'm more of a lurker than a poster there, but I have seen some very amazing conversations go down about the adoptee experience there, just as Kristina was mentioning. And I think there's also there's drama just like there is on Instagram and wherever we are, we always have those things happening too.
It's mixed and I hope that wherever we show up, we are doing it in good faith and hopefully building great community with fellow adoptees who have experiences we can all learn [00:45:00] from and it's a great way to support each other if we are kind and showing up well. So I love that recommendation from Kristina.
Okay, if you wanna hear the real real about me, go ahead and listen to the very end. And thank you for listening to adoptee voices. Let's talk again soon.
Kristina Richie: So within this training within the Julia Effect, I use a list of your favorites. And it's wild how these favorites correspond to things that have happened to you in your life without you ever even realizing it. I can now decode the human algorithm based off of understanding what your favorite snack is, what your favorite smell is, what your favorite songs are.
It's pretty wild. I would love to do yours, actually. I think it would be really fun. And then at the end, [00:46:00] I deliver something called a Letter from Julia. And a letter from Julia is what Julia would've said to you on the staircase that night. So I do these trainings for educators, for social workers, for anyone that works with children, especially adoptees, adoption conferences, things like that.
Because I think that there's a lot of adults out there that understand the concept of being a safe adult, but they don't fully understand that safe emotionally is totally different from I will protect you physically, right?
And so I'm, I've really made it my mission to help people understand their own trauma and their own healing without reenacting it, without having to talk about things that happen to you without you having to relive anything.
You're literally just answering basic questions. That sounds like something your second. Grade teacher would put on your desk for a fun project and as a result of that, it gives me a full blueprint of what you got going on and how to help you and how to help you heal so that [00:47:00] you can become a safe adult so that you can love like Julia.
Haley Radke: That is fascinating. I know you're not a therapist, but I know you've done a lot of trainings in this area, so that sounds really cool. My favorite snack is chips. Can you tell me about potato chips? No, I'm kidding.
Kristina Richie: I can tell you lot actually.
Haley Radke: Maybe now you should tell me about potato chips.
Kristina Richie: Okay. You wanna do one really quick? 'cause I'll absolutely do yours.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Kristina Richie: I think it'd be really fun for your listeners.
Haley Radke: Let's do it.
Kristina Richie: What are your three favorite colors?
Haley Radke: Red, pink, and yellow.
Kristina Richie: What's your favorite holiday?
Haley Radke: Christmas.
Kristina Richie: What are your three favorite songs or three of your favorite songs? They don't have to be your exact three top favorites.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. This is Hard. I love Ordinary right now by Connor Price. Okay. I love In The Blood [00:48:00] by John Mayer. And what's on Repeat all the time is The Six musical soundtrack.
Kristina Richie: Okay, cool. Okay. What's your favorite Disney movie? Or gimme like three of your favorite Disney movies or children's movies.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. They're all orphans, aren't they? This is a hard one because I have new feelings about movies and pop culture as an adult. So as a kid, I remember Little Mermaid was totally one of my favorites, so was The Lion King and Walle. I really liked Walle.
Kristina Richie: You know what I used to sing. I love The Little Mermaid too, for obvious reasons, but I would change the words, so I would change it. I was a singer, so it was, I wanna be where my people are.
Haley Radke: [00:49:00] Yes. That's good.
Kristina Richie: Favorite movie of all time?
Haley Radke: Oh goodness. I guess I'm gonna say Clueless.
Kristina Richie: Oh, Clueless, yes. Okay. Favorite smell,
Haley Radke: vanilla.
Kristina Richie: Favorite snack chips.
Haley Radke: That's right.
Kristina Richie: Okay. Favorite book?
Haley Radke: I don't even know if I can answer that. I have read a lot of books. I revisit the Harry Potter series constantly, so probably that.
Kristina Richie: Okay. Favorite soda?
Haley Radke: Lemon bubbly.
Kristina Richie: Lemon bubbly. Okay. Favorite fast food chain?
Haley Radke: I'm Celiac. So the only fast food I get anymore is Five guys.
Kristina Richie: I love Five Guys. Favorite animal.
Haley Radke: Dogs.
Kristina Richie: Favorite game?
Haley Radke: Kristina. We have 300 board games at our house. I don't even know. The favorite one right now is Flip Seven.
Kristina Richie: Flip Seven. I've never even heard of [00:50:00] that.
Haley Radke: Oh, it's a new hot card game you gotta try it with your fam.
Kristina Richie: Take a number between one and 100.
Haley Radke: 22.
Kristina Richie: Okay.
Haley Radke: I didn't know I was gonna get this like assessment thing happening. I have a lot of questions for you.
Kristina Richie: All right. Let's see what your favorites say about you. Are you ready?
Haley Radke: Yep.
Kristina Richie: I can tell you that safety is definitely one of your top ones for sure, but you're definitely also connection. Yep. All right. Likely wound stack, we have connection, worthiness, and belonging with safety present in the background and the light freedom streak.
Haley is warm, visually bright, emotionally deep, but she has rules about who gets access to that depth. She reads like someone who feels a lot, wants real closeness, is terrified of being too much, tries to stay cute, upbeat, so she isn't a burden and secretly wants someone to notice what she doesn't say.
Her nervous system summary is that Haley's nervous system is soft core intensity. Not chaotic, not loud, but internally she's very active. Her [00:51:00] body is trying to answer questions like, am I safe to be fully seen? Will people stay if I'm not performing happiness, what if I am actually too needy? And what if I get attached and it costs me?
Number one, connection wound, dominant. Core belief is I feel deeply, but I don't want to scare anyone off. Connection Wound is not I love people. Connection Wound is, please don't make me feel alone in a room full of people. Favorites that scream, connection. Little Mermaid, the most classic connection wound movie ever.
Longing Voicelessness, wanting to be chosen, changing yourself to be loved. Walle. Loneliness, devotion, tenderness, loyalty. Without words. Vanilla. Comfort coated safe. Soft dogs. Unconditional love without emotional risk. Harry Potter series. Found family loyalty, protection and being chosen. Christmas warmth, home memory. I want this feeling again. How connection when shows up. She makes friends easily, but only a few know her deeply. She can be affectionate and playful, but [00:52:00] panic when it feels too serious. She wants consistency but pretends that she doesn't need it. She silently tracks effort and emotional safety. Her triggers are being ignored, being left on red, someone getting distant without an explanation. Sarcasm when she is being vulnerable, feeling like she cares more than the other person. Not being emotionally mirrored. Number two is worthiness. High secondary core belief. I have to be impressive, easy and pretty and fun to keep love worthiness. Wound in women often hides under style humor competence being the good one and being low maintenance worthiness tells our Clueless, iconic, worthiness coated movie.
I love it too. And I also carry worthiness, which is very common for adoptees. I can almost always tell an adoptee or somebody that was not raised by their biological family, they will pull up connection, worthiness and either freedom or belonging. Almost always in the top three. Social hierarchy, being liked, performing, beauty and charm.
If I'm [00:53:00] perfect, I will be safe. Red, pink, yellow, bold, feminine, warm attention, but controlled attention, Ordinary by Connor Price and in the Blood john Meyer Identity, inner wiring. Why am I like this? Worthiness wound says, I'm fine. I'm easy. It doesn't bother me. I don't care. But the nervous system says, please pick me. Please choose me. Please don't replace me. Her triggers are being criticized, being compared. Someone implying she's dramatic or emotional and not being favorite. Feeling like she's failing at life or in relationships. Number three, belonging core belief if I don't fit, I'll be rejected. Belonging when shows up in Haley as a desire to be liked by groups, being hyper aware of social energy, being sweet and adaptable, often defaulting to the vibe of the room.
Belonging tells Christmas, Harry Potter. Five guys chips, bright colors, belonging wound. Doesn't want elite belonging. Wound wants comfort, sameness, familiarity. This feels like us. [00:54:00] Triggers feeling judged, feeling like an outsider not being included. People gossiping or excluding. Than safety wound. Haley has more safety than she realizes.
The chips was the dead giveaway for me. Yes, safety shows up as comfort foods. Simple sense nostalgic movies, a desire for consistency. She likely becomes very anxious when plans change suddenly someone becomes unpredictable. She feels like she can't read the room. Number five, freedom, light streak. Very protective energy.
Haley is not freedom dominant, but she has a freedom flare, meaning once she's hurt enough, she will detach and disappear. She'll burn the bridge if she feels humiliated. She prefers to leave first rather than beg. Freedom and Haley is a protective mechanism. If it's going to hurt me, I'll exit before it destroys me.
Attachment style, anxious, avoidant, fearful, avoidant, leaning, anxious. Translation. She craves closeness, but closeness also scares her. She can test love without meaning to. She may chase, [00:55:00] then pull away, and then chase again. Likely childhood environment. Haley reads like she grew up with the combination of emotional unpredictability, inconsistent affection. Be happy, be good, be sweet. Messaging, emotional needs, being minimized or mocked. Pressure to perform. Good girl. Pretty girl. Smart girl. She likely learned that love is safer when I'm impressive. Me too, girl. Me too. Relationship cycles, spark depth, panic, perform, resent, detach. This is where those loops come into play, right?
So it says she connects quickly, she gets emotionally invested. Then she panics and says, what if I get hurt? She becomes easy, pretty, and fun instead of honest. She feels unseen, so she withdraws, gets quiet, becomes cold. She may leave suddenly or emotionally checkout how haley shows love. Remembering what you like.
Snacks, thoughtful gifts. Attention to detail. I saw this and I thought of you being physically affectionate and supporting your dreams quietly. [00:56:00] What she needs to hear. You are not too much. You're safe with me. I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to earn love here. I love the real you, not the happy version.
Your feelings don't scare me. I want to know what's really going on under your smile. What not to say to Haley. You're being dramatic. You're too sensitive. It's not that deep. Why are you like this? You always do this. You need too much reassurance. You should just get over it because all she hears is your needs are a problem.
Then it goes into your gifts, which I think are really cool. So it says that you would keep a handwritten letter forever. You love customized jewelry. Initials or engraving, perfume or body mist, especially vanilla, cozy Christmas vibe items like blankets or candles. Harry Potter. Themed, but subtle, not childish.
Nostalgic gifts. A date night planned gift planned with effort equals safety. Five guys. Snack night, movie night, type of a thing. Favorite snacks, decoder chips, nervous system, [00:57:00] comfort regulation. I need something crunchy to settle. Five guys. Belonging, warmth and comfort. Ritual. Lemon bubbly. I want control. I want clean. I want lightness. So then we get into the letter from Julia. Haley, you were never too much. You were just too deep for people who only knew how to love on the surface. I can see the way that you carry brightness, like armor, the way you show up with warmth, energy, sweetness. Because somewhere along the way you learned that being lovable meant being easy.
But baby, you were not made to earn love through performance. You were made for connection. Real connection, the kind where you don't have to keep your feelings small so someone else can stay comfortable. I need you to know this. The part of you that wants closeness is not needy. It's not weak. It's not embarrassing is a part of you that never stopped hoping, never stopped believing love could be safe. And if you ever feel like you are too emotional, I want you to remember your sensitivity is not a flaw. It is an intelligence. It is a gift. It is [00:58:00] the proof that your heart is still alive, even after you had reasons to shut it down. You don't need to be the prettiest, and you don't need to be the funniest.
You don't need to be the happiest, and you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be real. The right people will not run when you are human. They will come closer because the real you. The you beneath the charm is the most beautiful part of you. I see you. I am proud of you with all my love, grandma, Julia.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I think a lot of that is, is pretty spot on.
Kristina Richie: Isn't that wild?
Haley Radke: Yeah, totally. Wow. I'm gonna have to re-listen to this when I'm not in work mode, so I can take it in more. But thank you.
Kristina Richie: Absolutely.
