320 Erick Wolfmeyer
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/320
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 Erick Wolfmeyer, a contemporary quilt artist known for his bold, large scale textile works. Erick shares experiences of being relinquished twice by his mother, their fraught reunion, and the DNA discovery that upended his identity yet again.
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 we wrap up with recommended resources for you. And as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's [00:01:00] listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Erick Wolfmeyer. Welcome Erick.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you, Haley. Thanks for having me. I'm so honored to be here.
Haley Radke: I cannot wait to hear your story. And you have an unusual skill, and I'm so excited to hear about it. So please, why don't you share your story with us a little?
Erick Wolfmeyer: I always say my story started probably around the age of three to five. And one thing before I even say anything about my story, I think in the, in our community, we often conflate our search with our story. And while our search is part of our story, our search is certainly not our entire story. There's the semantics of what is my story? When we ask that question, what are we really asking?
And I think really what we're talking about, and I doubt people that don't have our experience are asked this question as often as we are and have to have our elevator [00:02:00] pitch about our whole life story in a nutshell. But we get really practiced I think at telling it. I think, I remember when I was dating in college, I was always feel very compelled to tell them at least something to know so they know like the person sitting in front of you is not the entire story, so I've been telling and refining that story for years. And one thing I've also learned is that telling your story, people are just innately curious, right? And, but telling our story can be certainly puts us in a point of vulnerability and can be very dangerous in a sense that if we don't know our audience, it really opens us up to micro and macroaggressions no matter how well intended the listener is.
And I've just learned over the years to be very protective of my story and know that no one deserves my story. That it is, an honor that I would bestow it on them if [00:03:00] it seems appropriate. And I'm just a lot more careful in how I tell the story and who I tell it to. But I do like to share it because I think it's all part of folks who have not had this experience understanding really what it is and what it isn't.
'Cause as you well know, part of the reason we're here is to fight against the false narrative that exists around this experience called adoption. And can I ask you a favor before I tell you this story? I wanted to start with a quote.
Haley Radke: Certainly.
Erick Wolfmeyer: That I felt like is gonna really set the tone for where I'm coming from. And it is old and dusty. It's from 99 to 55 BC so it's a little old. It's from a man named Lucretius and he, there's a wonderful book by Lucretius called The Nature of Things, and this is a passage from there that I like. "Lastly, in construction, if the carpenter's rule is bent or if the square is warped on which you have your measurement, [00:04:00] or if the level anywhere staggers off even by a jot, all of the structure must be built on crooked lines, the lot ramshackle, tumble down walls leading out or in and all out of whack. Now part of the rickety shack is to fall, and now part of it does collapse and all because it was betrayed by faulty measurements when its foundation was being laid. Likewise, your reasoning concerning things is built to skew if founded on sensations that are off from plum and true."
Haley Radke: I can see how that might relate to what we're gonna discuss.
Erick Wolfmeyer: We'll just let that sink in for a little bit. Some of my earliest memories around this are, I know earlier than age five because the family that raised me, we moved at around a certain age. So I know before the move. After the move, and it was before the move and that was in 73 I think. But anyway, I remember sitting in the bathroom.
The bathroom was the [00:05:00] only house or only room in the house that had a lock on the door. And I would go in the bathroom again. I was anywhere from three to five years old. And I would lock the door and I would sit on the toilet with my pants on. I wasn't actually gonna the bathroom. And I would do ESP with my mother because I don't know if you remember the movie we're slightly different ages it looks like, but there's a movie, a Disney movie called Escape to Witch Mountain, and I've watched it recently and it's actually has a why it makes sense why I would've liked it at that age in terms of, there's a lot of themes that are about separation and whatnot, but, and family connection. But I would sit on the toilet and I would do ESP with my mother, and I would just send her little messages and say, I want you to know that I'm okay. I'm okay. Where are you? And I would just basically, that was the gist of it, as I remembered, is I wanted her to know that I was okay, if she were worrying about me the next big thing I remember related to this was the Series Roots, again, based on our age, discrepency. I'm not sure if you'll know what that is.
It was an American [00:06:00] television series that was, you're shaking your head Yes. Do you remember Roots Well, or you've heard of it?
Haley Radke: Don't remember it. I've heard of it. You've heard of it? I've seen bits of it, yes.
Erick Wolfmeyer: You know what? Yeah. Okay. You know the reference. Yeah. So Roots was a big deal. That was back when you had three stations on tv, and I remember seeing the scenes where the families were separated on the auction block, and of course, I didn't have the understanding to know why that was freaking me out. But I look back and I think, yeah that, that really, that's something that's ooh, that spoke to me like something's not, Ooh, that's not good. That really was shocking. Then fast forward to my freshman year of college, I was going to a small Lutheran school in Chicago, in River Forest, to be specific, Illinois.
And one of my part-time jobs was as a babysitter. And when I was doing the interview, I never forget she was taking dishes outta the dishwasher, clean ones. And I happened to tell her that at the time I said I was adopted, and she just got [00:07:00] this look on her face, like she was almost ready to drop the glass.
And I thought, wow. No one's ever responded that way. Come to find out, she had relinquished her daughter and she was fairly, and this is back in 1985, and so this woman was also somewhat involved in kind of the movement, to help. Kinda move things along, for search and all that. Again, it's was before the internet, so it was so different.
It was so analog and there was even the things you could do were just so painstaking and so iffy in terms of a result. So I noted those three things as precursors to all of this, because up until then, it was just something that was internal and, I dealt with it as we all do growing up, but it wasn't until I met Diane Coates that it all broke open for me.
I had never even heard the term birth mother, which is not really a term that I use now, but I had never even heard that term before I met her. So I was like oh, there's a name for that. Oh, okay. So that really set me on my way. I would've been like 18, 19 years old. [00:08:00] And I ended up transferring schools and ended up finishing up in St. Louis, Missouri. Went to art school. I left my pre seminary program after a year and went to art school instead. Which was a much better fit for me as it turns out. But I then initiated my search in 1989. I was a junior in college. My, it had to be, it was this whole court thing where my parents that raised me had to take, go to the court where my adoption was finalized and the court had to petition the adoption agency to do the search.
My family of origin, my, mother and father had the option to be declined to be identified. This is in Missouri. This was in Missouri in 1989. So my mother agreed to be identified and the man named as my father declined to be identified. Okay, fine. So my mother and I talked on the phone, this is around like spring break in March, and we agreed not to exchange any photos, any recent photos before we met.
And so I flew up to Montreal. She was, oh, by the way, she was living in [00:09:00] Montreal and I had an 18-year-old brother, half maternal brother Scott. And so we agreed to meet in Montreal. I flew up there over my spring break and one of the things I remember just recently was my brother told me that when I came through sort of the doors in the airport, my airport moment, and he, she leaned over to him and said, there he is.
She had never seen a picture of me as an adult. And I found that really fascinating that she just knew right away. Suffice it to say as many do. It didn't go as planned. I was supposed to be there about nine days and I was only there about four before she, my mother took the liberty of reading the diary that I was keeping while I was there.
So I took a shower one day. My brother Scott was like at school or something, he was gone. So my mother and I were only the only ones at her apartment and she read the notes I was keeping. And when I got outta the shower, she just ambushed [00:10:00] me and come to find out she had already called the airport and had my ticket changed and the whole shebang.
So I had made a backup plan through my employer at the time. He had a friend in Montreal as it turned out. And so I had already made an escape plan. We were always at the ready, right? We always have our plan B. And so I had within moments after the confrontation that my mother and I had, I was being scooped up by this person I didn't even know.
But that was a friend of my employer and I spent the night at their house. I went to the airport the next day, prepared to buy my own one-way ticket home. And come to find out she'd already made the plans for me to, who, how you change a ticket, I, whatever. So I flew home. So the next several years were pretty rocky and weird and off and on and back and forth and whatever.
My mother that raised me intervened at one point, and it was just a whole thing. It was just rough. But it, the next sort of chapter was my mother came to visit me, and by [00:11:00] that time I was living in Rapid City, South Dakota. I had finished college and et cetera, and she came to visit me, stayed with me actually for a month. Big mistake. And all I remember about that visit, the main takeaway is that she got on the plane in this, it was a summer of 93, 92, something like that. And I didn't hear from her for 27 years. So.
Haley Radke: Are you comfortable saying what. What were you sharing in your private thoughts in your journal that was so upsetting to her?
Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh I mean my mother is the queen of self sabotage. She actually has no contact with me or my brother who, whom she raised, or he would tell me he raised her. So it's not surprising looking back that I almost think she was looking for a reason to just burn it all down. I think my mother might have, an undiagnosed mental, but who knows?
For obviously being a relinquishing mother is not the easiest thing in the world for sure. I don't know 'cause it [00:12:00] wasn't my experience, but I know that she had her own challenges long before that ever happened. She lost her father at a very young age and it thrust her and her mother into poverty and I'm really getting way ahead of myself. One thing that I would say is my mother, I found out only fairly recently that my mother, had planned to relinquish me from the get-go. She was a go-go dancer in St. Louis. She danced with me until she was seven months pregnant, believe it or not. So I'm always wondering what kind of music I was hearing, like in utero.
Haley Radke: Do you have the moves now?
Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh, I used to. I'm too old now. I used to love to dance. Yeah, it was a big thing. She's also was a chorus line dancer, so she, the high kicks, all that fun stuff. So I was born and then immediately relinquished. She didn't even know my gender. But here's the trick. I'd always thought that I was relinquished because of my cleft lip and palate. But actually, weirdly. That's really what kept me in her life for longer than I would've been otherwise, most likely. Because I had that complication. She had to sign paperwork and she had to be In loco parentis [00:13:00] or whatever they say.
She couldn't really entirely relinquish her responsibilities 'cause I needed this immediate care. So the first day of my life, I had a repair on my lip. My palate stayed open for a full year, and it wasn't until my family that raised me, got me that they took care of that. So it's funny to watch my name and my parents change in the medical records that I have.
She relinquished me initially, although she had to stay in touch. Then she went to Chicago for a month because she said she would, people on the street would ask her like about the baby, and it was just too much. After a month, she came back. I don't know anything about that first month in my life. I have no idea who or how many caretakers I may have had, but I was a failure to thrive baby. I was actually starving because they couldn't figure out how to feed me with the open palate, which for those of you who don't know, that just means that my upper, like the soft palate was just open to my sinuses and everything. So you can imagine it's really tricky to feed a baby like that. So it was failure to thrive and she actually took me back. So my mother took me [00:14:00] back at a month old and she and my grandmother raised me or took care of me. My mother would take it, my mother would dance at night and my grandmother would take in ironing.
This is back in the day when people ironed things or pay. So you can imagine they were very poor, but they managed to take care of me for the next six months, and then they just ran out of resources and my mother relinquished me for a second time. And that February 2nd, actually, of 1968 is the day that I was transferred to the family that raised me.
And the nutshell on that is I had a great life. I love my parents. They're wonderful. They're still married after 65 plus years. They're 87 years old. You know I mean they're great. There's really nothing to tell on that. It's all good. Very Leave it to Beaver, so wonderful. Just idyllic childhood.
But fast forward to where I picked up, where I left off. So then my mother came back into my life unexpectedly in around 2015 and promised me that everything was better now and we're gonna be good. And so I was willing to give her a second, third, [00:15:00] fourth chance, whatever it was by that point.
And that time culminated with a visit around July 4th to Southern California where she now lives and has lived for several years, as well as my maternal brother. He lives there too. And everything seemed great. I did mention to her, oh, by the way, I, IDNA tested and what I failed to mention was when I was in Montreal in 89, even though my named father had declined to be identified, she told me she identified a man and he happened to be living in St. Louis, right? In the same city I was living in. So I went back to the adoption agency and said, Hey, I actually know who he is. I could go see him, but I don't wanna do that. So will you please just contact him and let him know that I know who he is? So they did all that.
He was very reluctant when I met him. He said don't be so sure I'm your father. And I thought that was a really horrible thing to say at the time, but we never, ever developed a relationship whatsoever. So anyway, fast forward to 2015. I told my mother like, oh, by the way, I did a DNA test.
'Cause I gotten a call outta the blue on a [00:16:00] hot July day from my would be first cousin. This man who was named to my father, his niece called me and said, Hey, I'm Jennifer. Would you mind DNA testing? I'm actually trying to find my father. And I said Jennifer, how do you even know about me?
After things went south with the man named to my father, I wrote a letter to his parents, my wouldbe grandparents. And I thought maybe they're just these nice little old people in rocking chairs and they're just gonna be so happy to find out about a grandson they, didn't know about.
Actually the opposite was true. They called a big family meeting and were very upset, and they tried to get this man's siblings to turn on him and tell 'em what was going on and who was this person? I just wrote them an introduction letter. I didn't ask for anything, but apparently the quote was shared with me was, we're not supporting any bastard children.
So that letter was very important because without it, I actually would never, ever know the truth of my story. So it goes to show that every little thing we do in life really does matter. It's that whole butterfly flapping wing thing. [00:17:00] So Jennifer had heard about that letter. It was such a big deal in their family, and based on that letter, which apparently she still had in her hands, she was able to find me and asked me to DNA test.
I said, sure. I'm thinking nothing more than it would just prove this guy who was so reluctant that he was my father. As you can imagine, it turned out that he was not my father. The DNA test revealed completely different person. Jennifer was not my first cousin, but she was so lovely and actually is extremely knowledgeable about how the all this stuff works. And she helped me find the truth and dig through all, the GED match, the ancestry.com, it's wade through, all that sort of stuff. And my father was actually well known enough that I could read about him online and that was really a blessing because he had actually died 11 years prior to this.
And I had, I have a paternal brother who had died four years prior to him. And so I never got to meet them, but my father was well known enough that I read an article in Forbes Magazine about him [00:18:00] and because, that's what, how you do. And I learned that I had sisters that I didn't know about. And so within just a few minutes I was able to find them via social media.
But Jennifer, who stayed in my life, this would be first cousin who helped me reveal all this truth through the DNA test. She very wisely said, don't contact them. Let me contact them and then we'll get them to DNA test and then we'll know for sure that all this is like true. And so she contacted my sister Christian, and she took her about six months, but she did eventually DNA test.
And we are siblings and I love her dearly. And I just talked to her this morning, so that's really great. I, so I, after this was around 2015, 2016, I went to Texas to meet all of my paternal siblings that we know of. The flip the other side of the story with my mother at this time, when I told her that I, the last communication I had with her was via text, which we, we were texting back and forth.
That was normal during that final year. And I said, hey my [00:19:00] DNA test results came back and there was some surprises and she sent some very kind of angry response. And I basically I've never heard from her ever again and we don't have any contact. I am in contact with my maternal brother, Scott, he and Christian.
I'm very clo Christian. My is my paternal sister. Scott is my maternal brother, and we are, I feel very close to them and I maintain regular contact, regular relationship with them. So that's as nut-shelly as I can get I think about it. And there's, I wanna mention my father. You can read it on my website, who my father was.
He's not someone that, most people that he wouldn't recognize, people wouldn't recognize his name. But he was a really big, huge deal in the music industry and was, has been called like one of the best r and b songwriters you've never heard of. His friends were like Mick Fleetwood. He lived next door to Jack Nicholson at one point.
Actually, Mick Fleetwood asked him to be in Fleetwood Mac and my father turned him down 'cause that's just the kind of guy he was. It's just stuff like that. It was like [00:20:00] kind of mind blowing actually to read about him. I can watch videos on YouTube of Tina Turner singing my father's songs and he wrote songs for Bonnie Rait that I was literally listening to on a seat on a cassette tape that I still have in 1989, having no idea that I was hearing my father's songs he wrote for Eric Clapton. I just recently got to hear two new songs on my father's 'cause Eric Clapton rereleased, his album Journeyman, and there are two new songs on there. And both of them were written by my father.
So that was a cool thing about having this big character for a father, that he was well known enough that I could read articles about him online and learn about him that way. My, my single goal that's still left my box to check is I wanna see a video of him 'cause I've never seen him alive or moving.
I've heard him sing. I have his, you can listen to his music on YouTube. He has albums of his own where he's singing, but I've never heard him talk or, seen him walk or move. My sister Christian tells me all the time, oh, you [00:21:00] look just like dad. You look, of course I don't have to tell you this, but there's just nothing that's more music to my ears than to hear that, she can see a thing that I can't see, but I know that it's there. And just to have that mirrored back to me is really such a gift. Such a gift.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I'm sorry you never got the chance to meet him.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, I am too.
But I think I accept what is, and I do feel like he, I don't know that he ever knew about me in his life, in his living years, but I do believe he knows about me now, and I do believe that he communicates with me in various ways, not surprisingly through music. There just have been too many little things that have happened along the way that are hard to ignore that I really feel like it's his little nod of saying, yeah I'm in another place now.
I'm in a better place. And like he looks back in his life and it's free of all of the. All the craziness. He lived like the big hard rock [00:22:00] and roll lifestyle, and he died at age 57. I'm 58 years old, so I've already outlived him by a year. But I do think he's in a loving place and he sends love to me and my siblings and yeah I do feel, so what else?
That was really nut-shelly, really nut-shelly. But I don't know what else to say. It was just one of those funny, wow like there isn't there, this sort of, this thing where, you know almost like a fairytale thing where, you know the relinquished child discovers that, oh my gosh, my, my father was like, a multimillionaire and he was, semi-famous, all this sort of stuff, but, and.
Okay. Yeah I had that sort of fairytale story, but it really didn't mean a whole lot in the sense that he was already passed away. But what it, what meant the most to me when I found out who my father was actually, and knowing how close I came to, never, ever knowing that, and to know that the only reason I know it to this day is because of a letter that I wrote with an open heart [00:23:00] to these would be grandparents that were not my grandparents.
Isn't that bizarre? That's how I know, that's how I know this. And people ask me like why do you think your mother lied to you? I said I don't know that she lied to me. I just don't know that she knew because my birth certificate, my original, my OBC original birth certificate, there's no father listed and I don't know the circumstances of my conception. Obviously, other than that, my parents are both Scorpios and I always think, oh they just had a really great night on around their birthdays, and my father was, he was not even 18 at that point. This would've been November of 1966. My mother was like 20. She was gonna be having her 23rd birthday, I think.
He, at the time, around that time, he was on tour with Little Richard and my father actually learned to play guitar from Jimi Hendrix. I know it sounds like I'm making all this stuff up, but it's true. You're laughing. But he did. This was Jimmy his, he was Jimmy James and he was touring with Little Richard, and my father was too.
My father was [00:24:00] very tall and was often mistaken for being much older than he was. And so he got sent home off the tour because he was actually underage. I don't know how my parents' paths crossed, but my mother also traveled with her dancing. She told me that she would travel throughout the south in various clubs and do shows like dinner and a show kind of thing back in the day when that was a thing.
And so maybe they crossed paths when she was traveling. Maybe they crossed paths when my father might have been in St. Louis. But it doesn't really matter 'cause I'm here, we're here and we're here to talk about, moving forward in life.
Haley Radke: It's so nice that you have pieces of documentation.
Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a privilege. Yeah.
Haley Radke: And a lot of us find graves and then are trying to piece together things with folks who knew our parents in real life somehow. So that's cool. But of course it still is all secondhand knowledge that you're getting access to.
Erick Wolfmeyer: It is. Yeah. My siblings could tell me some things. I did recently meet, so [00:25:00] Roy Orbison moved from Nashville to Malibu to write with my father, and I did recently meet Alex Orbison, Roy's son. He's delightful. He was my late brother's best friend and happened to be in concert where I live in Iowa City and so my sister knows Alex and lots of other folks, and she help me arrange to meet him. 'cause I wanted, I have a handmade bracelet that was belonged to my brother, that my sister gave me. And I have two of my father's rings, which I meant to wear today. Oh, I forgot. Anyway, so I wanted to show Alex that bracelet, and I just wanted to make a full circle connection with him that, because I know my brother died so young when, and so my brother was in a band with Alex, and so Alex was really lovely.
And so to hear him talk about my father and, so there's lots of people that knew him. But yeah, it's all, it is all secondhand. But again, I wanna acknowledge like I have so many privileges, but keep in mind too, I'm 58 years old and I, like I said earlier, I've been working on this since I was about three years old. 55 years.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Erick Wolfmeyer: And I don't know, I think [00:26:00] you know this, but one of the things I like to tell people is I'm so old school that I literally was workshopping. The Primal Wound with Nancy Verrier in 1992 in Oakland, California. So a year before it was published in 1993. I was in a small group, workshopping it with her. That's how old school I am. I was like, honey, I've been around the block. I've been doing this for a while. I've been doing this for a while.
Haley Radke: So one of the things I really appreciate is you talk about how you had this idyllic upbringing with your family that raised you, and yet I have, I wrote this quote down from an interview you gave in 2010. "I have a shattered sense of identity. Quilts are like trying to put together pieces of my life into something that makes sense. " Can you talk about that?
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, so in 1998 I made my first quilt for a guy who's actually getting married this summer and he invited me to his wedding and I was so thrilled. And it's a day after my birthday, which is funny too. [00:27:00] But he's really the reason that I started quilting. 'cause he was a baby and I made a quilt for him. And then it turned into this whole thing. My art education kicked into high gear and it just became a thing. So I, it has taken me around the world and my quilts have shown all over the country.
I just found out on Saturday that two of my quilts just sold in a show that I'm in Michigan right now. So it has become a whole advocation. I have a day job, by the way. I'm a paratransit bus drivers, so I drive a bus for people with disabilities, mostly mobility issues or cognitive developmental issues.
And I actually love, love, love that work. But I have three days off cause I work four 10 hour days. And so I try to spend as much time when I'm not doing podcast interviews. I try, I, I spend as much time as I can in my studio, which is in a church making quilts. And I've made, I would say I quit counting at a hundred.
I don't know how many I've made, but they've mostly sold which has been a blessing. And, yeah it's become a whole spiritual practice for me, and it's been, I think, the primary [00:28:00] gift and tool in my life for finding healing and wholeness and integration. Because it is literally the perfect metaphor.
It does root back to my early self where, I primarily as a child would spend my days alone in my bedroom building with blocks, be it like Lincoln Logs or Legos or whatever. And that's really still what I do to this day, is I go to my studio, I'm by myself, I turn on music, and I just piece quilts that are just like giant puzzles and I make my own designs.
I don't use patterns, and I stay really true to the traditions of quilting. Oh and if you look at my website, you'll see a giant quilt of my mother. It was that last visit I talked about seeing her around July 4th in 2016. The quilts called Corona, California 2016. And there are a variety of reasons why a titled it that, but I think one of the primary ones is, before the internet, especially when we're doing our searches, just having an address or a city or anything tangible as to a, [00:29:00] where is so critical. So I did this gigantic portrait, quilt of her, it's 12 feet by 16 feet and it's made up of over 27,000 pieces each hand selected by me. There was no sort of computer, generated pixelation, but it's essentially using the concept of pixelation.
But I hand selected each piece to make this portrait. And it's a, from a snapshot that I took the last time that I saw her, she's in her pool at her home in California. That was like, the grand people have called it, I can't think of the term they've used. It'll pop in my head in a second. But tour de force or whatever, it's just such a grand expression of how quilting has interfaced with this re-stitching back together of my whole self.
Because, as people have had this experience of a relinquishment and identity reassignment, we're always living in two realities. And as Paul Sunderland says, it's the impossible job description that we have to live into and up to this assigned identity that we've [00:30:00] been given.
And that's a big job and it's exhausting. And I find that the creativity is a place to, for my soul to rest and to celebrate. And it has brought me so much joy and connecting me to so many people. And there's are other interesting parallels too. All my quilts are hand quilted, I make the tops what but then they're sent off to Amish women that hand quilt them for me.
And that's actually rare. Most people are machine quilting these days. And every stitch is done by hand by a woman that I will never meet because that's how their culture works. They don't want any credit. And I worked through brokers to get the quilts to them and back from them.
And I always find that kind of fascinating. Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? That I wouldn't even have this work complete if it weren't for these anonymous relationships with these women, in a far off distance that I'll never meet or see. I'm like what does that sound like? So yeah, I think that what we're always doing. Is trying to [00:31:00] make our outsides match our insides. So if our insides are calm and integrated, then hopefully our lives will reflect that. And if our insides are not, our outsides might reflect that as well. And I think that's where what we call self-sabotaging behavior comes from is that we're really, as counterintuitive as it might seem, we're really just trying to make our insides and outsides match.
So yeah, the quilting has been just an enormous part of my life. I hope to do it until I die. I showed in France in 2018 and I'm been invited back in 2028, so I'm hoping just to go every 10 years. Why not? So anyway, yeah, that's a huge part of my life. And if people want to look at my work, my name is my. Given name for my adopted family is Erick Wolfmeyer. It's a name I go by. And of course I never really liked it as a kid 'cause it's hard to say and it's hard to spell and ugh. But it's been a wonderful [00:32:00] name to have in the age of searchability. 'cause it's very unusual. I think in fact, I think I was the only Erick Wolfmeyer on Instagram when I was on social media. That's pretty remarkable. So yeah, you can just search me and you'll find my stuff.
Haley Radke: You, you have to go look at these quilts. You have to. They're incredible.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you.
Haley Radke: I know you've talked about quilting with quilting people. So I'm going to, mostly leave that there.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, because there are interviews that you can find on YouTube and all that sort of fun stuff. I just did one with Wisconsin Public Radio. That's was good practice for this interview. And it's online and YouTube, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Amazing. I have one question I cannot get outta my head, so I'm gonna say it out loud and it's not gonna add anything to this interview except for my interest.
Erick Wolfmeyer: I don't know, you might be surprised.
Haley Radke: Do you have a story of a mishap I just think about working with fabric and I'm a spiller. I took 15 minutes yesterday to try and get grease stains outta my, one of my son's favorite sweatshirts. And [00:33:00] I just think about, having your coffee by this, on this. Incredible.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Okay. You've brought up several things here, so you should know that I almost never am further away than five feet from a Tide pen.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Erick Wolfmeyer: I love my tide pens. They just fall out of pockets. They're everywhere. Tide pens, love those 'cause I can't stand having a little drip. I will tell you last year, one of my personal goals was to spill on myself less.
'Cause I'm old and I'm thinking it's not a good look to be spilling on myself. So I am doing much better. And it's really all about intention and consciousness and slowing down. So it is possible, but I've never really, I've never really had a mishap in that I've had things like one of the quilts I recently finished, I got about three quarters of the way done with it and I realized there was some kind of seam allowance differences and the whole thing was getting askew and weird.
And I was like, oh, that's gonna bug me forever. And I literally [00:34:00] deconstructed the whole thing after being about three quarters of the way done with it and then reconstructed it. But the truth is, I don't even have any memory of that. All I have now is a beautiful finished quilt that I like and so it doesn't really matter.
But no, I don't really have any spillkus, or gezoink memories or? No, we're good. We're good. I'm glad you asked though.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Erick Wolfmeyer: I hope that can be reassuring to you.
Haley Radke: It is.
Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a goal.
Haley Radke: I'm so glad you don't have a,
Erick Wolfmeyer: It's within reach for you, Haley.
Haley Radke: I have a, I have a terrible story about accidentally dropping one can of root beer and it sprayed over my entire living room in a 360. I don't know if you knew this, but if a pop can drops and spins, explodes, it spins,
Erick Wolfmeyer: It spins.
Haley Radke: So you get the full.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Wow.
Haley Radke: Anyway, I'm glad you don't know about that. Okay, let's switch gears. Yeah. I wanna talk about language with you because before we got on in some of our contacts, you're like, listen, I don't say adoptee. I don't talk about adoption.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Right.
Haley Radke: I don't say birth mother.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Nope.
Haley Radke: Tell me [00:35:00] about language for you.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Okay, let's just go down some of them. The why's. So birth parent, to me, it's too like matricentric. It's only focusing on the mother. So I like, I'm not into that. Also, why is it that our population, why are we the only ones really that have to talk about birth parents? I have parents. Period. I don't say biological parents. It sounds like a, all I think of are petri dishes. I think of like science experiments and labs and like bubbling liquids.
I don't say first parents. It seems like, there's a hierarchy. I don't say natural. I don't say original. I don't say real. I say parents because to say anything less is to soften the impact and the trauma and to make it okay for everybody. Everybody else. Because you know what, let's back up here.
And one thing I wanna make sure that I say is hold onto your hats. Adoption is not about parenting. Adoption is [00:36:00] about solving adult problems. Now, I'm not so naive to believe that, of course there are times when kids do need a different situation for safety reasons, for whatever. We're not gonna go into that because that's not my job, but that is one of my, the things that, one of the things I premise all my thoughts about this is adoption I've discovered is not about parenting, it's about shame management. And then a story I'll tell you of that is my sister that I was raised with, my adoptive sister, if you will she found her family of origin, both paternal and maternal, talked to some of her paternal brothers, found out that her mother, not her mother, but their mother was still living.
And they were like, oh no, we can't we have to keep this under. Her father had died, but her siblings are still living. And the brother basically is now controlling my sister to say, I'm not gonna let you meet anybody. Because even though now our father and our mother, like their mother, but not my sister's [00:37:00] mother are gone, they're still shame managing their 'cause. He doesn't wanna besmirched the memory of his father because my sister, my adopted sister was the product of an affair that this man had, and they don't want that to be come to light. So here is my grown sister who's 60 years old, being infantalized by another, adult sibling, as if somehow it's okay for them to have access to this, but she can't because they're shame managing.
So that's an example of what I mean when I say adoption is not about parenting. And so for so many people who don't have this experience. Our stories and even our lives seem to be so intricately linked with the quality of our parenting because as if somehow we have any responsibility for that.
But, there's such a link between the, there are all these sort of false binaries, good parent, bad parent, the failed mother who didn't keep her child. And then the Madonna-ized woman who [00:38:00] then in her grief of her infertility, takes on someone else's child and raises them and all the benevolence and all the awards and the accolades and all this.
And that narrative is so much part of the false narrative, but it doesn't serve our needs and it creates all these false loyalty battles that just really need not exist. And I'm just, after all these years, I'm really a realist and I've realized that in order I, so I'm not really a part of the adoptee activism, movement, whatever other than in my own way.
And I try to use my platform that I have with the quilting world to speak out when I can and just speak my truth. But part of it is because I, and by the way, I told you this off the air, but I love and adore and respect the work you do in your show. And it's amazing and it's wonderful. I found that when I was on social media and other things that it just wasn't, I would just get really frustrated because I feel like, to be truth, totally truthful, Haley, that until we stop using the word adoptee and adoption, [00:39:00] I don't know how much further we're gonna get.
And so I really looked at the trans community and how far they've come with a very uphill battle and learning the term cisgender. And I remember there was a time, I had no idea what that meant. Looked it up. Oh, okay. So I'm cis male. Okay, cool. Ah, that's good to know. So I, if I had, first of all, I try to only use little precursor type boards as sparingly as possible.
Qualifiers I try to use as sparingly as possible, but I do like cis parent and allo parent because it really takes out any of the judgment or the value around better, worse, whatever. And what more importantly it does is it, in order to define ourselves, we have to define ourselves within the entire community of human beings.
Because so often our language and our, all of the things that we do have in common, we [00:40:00] start to silo off. And so then there are the cis parented folks with all their cis parented privilege that they don't even realize they have, but they're swimming in it all the time. And then we are over here in the corner going sharing our little stories. But I really feel like in order for the cis parented folks to really understand who we are and our experience and how traumatic and painful and difficult it is, and what we're always navigating day after day, they have to understand themselves in relationship to us.
And that we started our lives just like they did. It's just that there was this gigantic interruption. And again, I go back to, I was just reading, I was just listening to Paul Sunderland's video today. I'm like, oh my gosh, please everybody listen to his stuff over and over again. 'cause that was a major turning point for me when I heard his work.
Haley Radke: Can you say what allo parent is.
Erick Wolfmeyer: So allo just means other, it's, I think it's a Greek term. It just simply means other. So I have my cis parents, which are my original parents or parents of origin. Family of origin. So terms I do use, I use cis parent or I [00:41:00] use family of origin. You've heard me say many times today, the family that raised me.
It's not that I never say the word adoption or adoptee, but I next to never, ever refer to myself as an adoptee. So I find the term adoptee to be infantalizing. It keeps us perpetually in and defined by that state and that thing that happened. And even Sunderland says it's the word adoption is it's this weird word that really doesn't even describe what happened.
And it's a whitewash term to me. It's not that much different than when you go on these forums and they ask you to check your, are you white, are you Latino? Are you whatever? I am not white. I'm not a color. I'm of Northern European descent, but I'm not white. And I feel like. The analogy I would make is if it were a piece of furniture that had been varnished or painted, and that I continually identify myself with the varnish in the paint, but disregard the actual piece of furniture that's underneath of all that.
And so for me I go to therapy again. I have so much privilege. I'm [00:42:00] able to go to therapy every week pretty much if I want to. And I have a wonderful therapist that I've trained. She would admit that I have trained all my therapists and I have the privilege of having made a friendship.
When I did workshop that book with Nancy Verrier in 92 in Oakland, I met a guy named Randall and we became like the best of friends. He was also gay. He still, he is also gay. And we were just like blood brothers for about 20 years. And for whatever reason, I don't know, our friendship is like evaporated and I don't ever hear from him again.
And I've tried to reach out and I get nothing, and it's really super strange and hurtful. But I do accept that. It was what it was and it really saved me when you talk about people finding your show and telling you that it saved them 'cause they felt really isolated and they felt really crazy. He was that person for me that had all broke open, like knowing Randall and going, 'cause he was also I guess I forgot to say he was, had also had the relinquishment and adoption experience.
But yeah, so I feel privileged in [00:43:00] that. I had a really great family that raised me. I feel privileged in having had Randall in my life for 20 years to share this journey with. So I come to this having had a lot of bolsters and a lot of supports. But it is very hard and I've definitely had my dark moments.
Haley Radke: Can I ask you, Erick, how do you identify yourself? Without saying adoptee your adoption.
Erick Wolfmeyer: I know it's, it is tricky, isn't it? Because the fact of the matter is, there isn't one word that sums it up. So I enjoy seeing the quizzical look on people's faces because, adoption or adoptee is a word of convenience, but convenient for whom it's not convenient for me 'cause it doesn't tell my story. And if it does, tell the story. For example I said earlier when you asked me to tell my story, the reason I've become so skittish about it is because for me, all I have to do is say the word adoption. I call it the a-bomb. And suddenly I could see people's eyes glass over, and in their mind, they already have decided, they just click into the [00:44:00] cultural narrative that they've been told about it, then suddenly everything I say gets skewed through that. I just say I was, family separated and re-identified or given an assumed identity. It's not unlike the witness protection program, and when you really stop and think about what we went through. Just so you know, I was a baby scoop, classic baby scoop, conceived in 66, born in 67, relinquished and reassigned in 68 and closed adoption.
I wasn't able to know anything other than that, that I was from St. Louis. I wasn't raised in St. Louis, but I, we were two hours north of there on the Mississippi River. So a total shutdown lockdown. And then from age 18 on, I was, from that time that I met that woman who I babysat for, I was like, pedal to the metal baby.
I am not resting until I am satisfied. And you know what satisfaction looks like? It looks like you're, 50 something and you are tired and you say, I'm so happy for everything I've learned [00:45:00] up to this point, but I'm just gonna have to stop searching at some point. I'm tired. I'm tired.
And you just come to peace with the fact that there will always be more that I don't know than that I do and I'm, I have to be okay with that. Just make the most of what is right in front of me and the life that I have with my husband, with my dear friends, with my family, all of my family. So yeah, I feel like I, I literally have eight pages of notes that I realize, oh, I guess I basically have the outline of a book here.
People always tell me, oh, you should write a book. Which maybe when I'm retired in a, two years or whatever, I will start on that project. But right now with my full-time job and the quilts, it's and, life. It's more than enough just to do all that. But yeah, I'm answering your question in like too many words, but does that, so I don't really have a word.
I don't have a word. [00:46:00] I think of us collectively as a diaspora. We are a diverse group of people that have had a similar experiences. I'm not, not monolithic, we know, but I think that we are our own kind of diaspora of sorts. So that would make us diasporites. So I guess I'm a diasporit, but I like to confuse people because when we use the word adoption immediately they think they know what that means, even if in most cases they haven't had that experience.
And what they have had is an experience of cis parented privilege with all the privileges of relatedness. Because relatedness is what's really at the root of all this. It's a little bit like when I talk about quilts, everyone thinks they know what quilts are, right? Oh yeah, my grandma made quilts, or, oh, I have a on my bed, all this.
But then you stop and you ask people tell me what the three parts of a quilt are. And they're like, what? It's the top, it's the batting and it's the backing. And then it's all put together with the binding. So it reminds me a little bit of that, not that it's a quiz, not that I really care that people [00:47:00] need to, they don't need to know that I don't care.
But I'm just as an analogy, that. People think they know what this experience is, even if they haven't had it. And people are all too often unwilling to allow us to have our experience with it when it is our experience, and they're so eager to tell us what it should or shouldn't be. And we have to be so fierce and so strong to hold it together.
It's like a being again, a co constant headwind. A constant headwind. And we know that we show up so much more in, all the places, addiction, suicide, mental illness, all these sort of struggles that we are overrepresented there. And sadly, and what I find so shocking is how underrepresented we are.
Haley, I keep waiting for you to go on National Public Radio. I keep waiting for you to go on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. These are all American references, of course, I think. I listen to a lot of news and talk radio in, the background of my day and I [00:48:00] next to never hear a thing about us.
Since I got the invitation for this interview, I was tracking what do I hear on the radio. I've heard so many stories about researching like spider monkeys or researching the most. And that's fine. I'm not anti-science, I'm not anti-intellectual, but there are the most, obscure things that people are researching and talking about.
I heard a woman talking about like how people suffer when they are disconnected from their family stories. It was an hour long hidden brain on NPR. Not once did she mention anything about our diaspora. Talk about separated from your family story. But we weren't even mentioned. I'm like, what? So why is it we're overrepresented in these things I mentioned prior, but we're so grossly underrepresented in the public dialogue.
I think it's because, the public has been, and we have been sold a bill of goods that, adoption is this, wonderful rainbow and sunshine and everything's good. What? There's [00:49:00] nothing more to talk about. Bye. See ya. And it's just not that way.
Haley Radke: And you wouldn't consult with a baby or a child. And if we are perpetually infantalized.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Like where's the, there's nowhere to call. No one to call for an interview. No one, because they're children.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah. And they're all fine now 'cause they've been adopted and they got happy. Lived happily ever after. There's nothing to talk about. And so I'm just shocked and I cannot listen to one more person come on fresh air with Terry Gross and talk about. How traumatic it was to lose their father, that they live with all their, it's not that I don't have sympathy, but I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, why? So this is why the work you do is so important and it's so nascent and it's so groundbreaking, and it's just like you are literally building the foundation that I hope we can get to it start spilling out into the cis parenthood world of people. Like where we, it can become part of the common communal dialogue.
And it's not just you and me sitting here on a mic, with our 4,000 to 8,000 listeners, which by the way, [00:50:00] wonderful, but you know what I mean? I really want you to be interviewed by someone that outside of our diaspora.
So it's great. We're talking to ourselves, we've been talking to ourselves and among ourselves for probably 40 to 50 years. And I'm just like, we've got to get out there. And that's where I go back to the whole thing about, I just refuse to use the term the language of oppression. And one thing that we are most sort of. Typically in our diaspora is we are, and I learned this recently in my therapy, this, my therapist will shoot terms back at me. I'm like, oh my gosh. And they just, some of 'em just really stick and recognize how overly accommodating I am. For example, I don't go to therapy 'cause my life's a mess.
My life is totally great. I go to therapy to maintain and manage and just deal with the little stuff 'cause guess what? It's not always that little 'cause, even the little stuff, it all taps back into something much bigger. And I tell my therapist too, that imagine a giant reservoir. I'm just coming to you every week, like splat, scooping out [00:51:00] a few buckets and throwing 'em over the edge.
'Cause I have a lifetime of stuff that I never got to process with anyone that was willing to listen, with curiosity and with understanding and willingness to learn. And it's a safe space to do that. And so I go and I talk about the little things because it helps me, just the life as it comes up and it helps me see.
Oh, so one thing I learned recently is how overly accommodating I am. For example, recently I had someone on my bus, she was in a hurry to get to her appointment. In a hurry. In a hurry. Stress. What is over accommodating me do. I made a very stupid decision.
I had seen a bus in front of me in this loop at the hospital, pull through this super tight squeeze. There was a big water truck on one side and like a marble post on another side. He pulled through there within inches of clearance and I thought I drove a school bus for a much bigger, bus for 15 years.
I can do this. It turns out I couldn't do it, and I got hung up on the pole. The water truck eventually [00:52:00] left. They had to come and get a tow truck and pull the bus off the pole. But you know what? It all boiled down to over accommodating. Because I was more concerned about that woman getting to her appointment and managing her stress for her than I was to sit here and say, no, we're gonna have to sit in some discomfort collectively until this situation clears.
So that's why I'm telling you that's what the it, the rubber hits the road in all the little things, those little micro decisions we make every day is that our adoptive consciousness, our adoptive self, it can't help. But because that's what we Sunderland said today I listened to, he says, we have no pre trauma personality, that we are just constantly responding to the world through this trauma brain.
And that's the other thing I wanna make sure I say today. This is my call out. My call out is my challenge to the language we use to think about it very carefully about what it's doing and how it's holding us back, and that we're in. Nah. Anyway. But the other thing is like I cannot believe for the life of [00:53:00] me that there is not a DSM diagnosis.
Like developmental PTSD, I think he refers to it as, or whatever, can you imagine Haley, a world where someone who's had our experience can go to a therapist and the therapist knows what to do and the therapist has gone to workshops and they're like, oh, I know how to deal with this. Just like I know how to deal with sexual abuse or this or that or whatever.
But literally, no matter who you go to see as a therapist, you're pretty much starting from scratch. And like I said, I've been working on this for years, so I train and teach all of my therapists because when I train and they always say, you don't really know something until you can teach it. So I've been teaching my therapist for years, and by teaching it, I've also learned more about myself.
So it's a whole process, but it's also exhausting. Like I'm paying them, like they gotta be paying me. But they're lovely people. I don't, I'm thankful for them but I think about people who aren't able to do that. Yeah I'm an oddball in that regard. I'm just really, I am my mother and my father's child.
That's one I forgot to say earlier is that when I learned about [00:54:00] my father, the thing that it did for me is it made my life make sense from the inside out. I imagine my, with my eyes closed, I imagine that I could see inside this cavernous shape of my body, like I'm inside of a cave and my body, with all the organs and everything gone, it's like the walls of a cave, right?
And someone clicks the light on and suddenly all the walls have the story of my life written on them. And that is how I felt when I found out about who my father is. I'm like. Oh, okay. The man that told Fleetwood Mac, no, thank you. That's my father. And it's oh, why is it that I spend hours upon hours with this passion I have?
Where, what does, where does this burning, creative passion come from? Why always thought my mother liked to sew. She made her all her own clothes. But that didn't quite. It didn't quite cut it for me, but when I found out how big of a personality and a big of a force he was, I was like, oh, okay. [00:55:00] Okay. I got it now. Yeah. Yeah. This makes sense.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing part of your story with us. Erick, and talking through those things. I think that's, you've given us a lot to think about as a community, especially in terms of language and how we're positioning ourselves.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yes.
Haley Radke: With that, I wanna recommend that folks check out your quilting work, and in particular, I'm gonna point them to now you told us about the one of your mother. Face of a stranger.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh yeah. Thanks.
Haley Radke: Oh my God,
Erick Wolfmeyer: I forgot about that one.
Haley Radke: It's a self portrait.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah.
Haley Radke: And yet you called it face of a stranger.
Erick Wolfmeyer: And recently, it's gonna be in a show in a, like next year at, it's a, it's owned by a museum, I was in a show, in a museum. They purchased it. And actually it was one of my highest selling quilts ever, which was shocking. 'cause when I made that quilt, Haley, I'll tell you, I made it. And I thought, oh my gosh.
Who would ever want this? This is so [00:56:00] stupid. Why did I do this? What a waste of time. And it has become one of the most popular pieces I have. And like I so said, it sold for like over $10,000. So it hangs in this museum. It's in a show. And what I, what it dawned me the other day is that, oh when most people walk by and see that. It is the face of a stranger to them. But you understand why I title, you know why I gave it that title as well? There's a whole other, right? Yeah. Thank you for, I totally forgot about that.
Haley Radke: I to me it's a nod to us, and.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yes, it is. It is.
Haley Radke: I thank you. I looked through, as you said, you've done many interviews and so I looked through many read many, listened to many to prepare for our conversation, and you always talk about that part of you, and I appreciate that because you're bringing to light what it's like to be separated from your [00:57:00] parents of origin, so thank you for being one of those people that does bring it to the public.
I also wanted to highlight for folks, I don't know if I've ever mentioned Jeff Forney on the show before. He's fellow adoptee. I'm gonna use that language because that's what I have in my,
Erick Wolfmeyer: that's totally great.
Haley Radke: My toolkit.
Erick Wolfmeyer: That's great.
Haley Radke: And he takes portraits of adoptees and he's done your portrait and you share a little piece here and there's multiple photos on here of you and I was so excited to get to see them before we talked today. And I'm gonna link to that in the show notes for folks. So
Erick Wolfmeyer: Great.
Haley Radke: It can be a little trip down memory lane for you too.
Erick Wolfmeyer: It can 'cause I didn't even know it was out there, so I was happy to be reminded of that. It was a fun day.
Haley Radke: It's out there.
Erick Wolfmeyer: It's a fun day.
Haley Radke: It's out there fun. What do you would recommend to us today, Erick?
Erick Wolfmeyer: I wanna recommend the work of a man named John O'Donohue, the late John O'Donohue. I always, he's always my go-to for the sort of moments of the deepest, profound [00:58:00] when you just need that pick me up. And I really believe there's a, I don't know anything about his background off the top of my head, but there's a deep sense of belonging and beauty and longing and desire and his language is so beautiful and I wanna recommend the book called To Bless the Space Between Us or really anything by John O'Donohue is marvelous, really marvelous.
So he's a great author. And like I said, I the last books I read about the, this adoption experience were Primal Wound and Journey To The Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton. So you can imagine, I'm like, it's been a while since I've really dove, so I just went on my own journey. I'm grateful to all the help along the way. And then, like I said, I stumbled on Paul Sunderland several years ago, but it's really just been me and my power animal, like powering through all of this. So yeah.
Haley Radke: All the identity pieces.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Trying to put it all back together.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Into one. Into one.
Haley Radke: Figuratively [00:59:00] and literally.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Literally.
Haley Radke: And, okay. We are gonna link to your website, which is https://ewolfmeyerquilts.com/. You also have a blog there, and as you said, your off social, lucky you. But I'm sure there's a way for folks to connect with you through your work, and do you announce when you have showings and things on your website?
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah, if you look at my exhibits page, I will often put things that are upcoming. It'll just, it won't always have the date, but it'll have the year, it'll have the location. So if a person really wants to know, they can Google it or whatever, but yeah. Yeah.
Haley Radke: There may be an Erick Wolfmeyer quilt near you, and you don't even know it, but now you will.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Yeah. Exactly.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Erick. What a pleasure to get to talk with you today.
Erick Wolfmeyer: Oh, you too. I'm honored. I'm honored. Thank you, Haley, and thank you again for the work that you do.
Haley Radke: My pleasure.
I'm always in awe after I talk with [01:00:00] artists, the way creative folks see and interpret the world. Helps me understand things in a different way.
I love art, but I am such an amateur. So I remember several times going into our local art gallery and feeling like, oh my goodness, I love this, but I don't know why and I don't know who the artist is, and I don't have it all together to understand the nuance and the symbolism, but I think art is for everyone and just the enjoyment of it is okay too.
I watched a couple of tours of Erick's work that are available on YouTube, and I was straight back to that stunned feeling, even though I haven't gotten to be in the room with them. These pieces that we're talking about are, some of them are massive and folks walking nearby them or sitting and enjoying [01:01:00] them, and it's oh my goodness.
To be in the same room as this quilt is so it must be so incredible. And we didn't get into this, but Erick doesn't keep this huge stash of quilting fabric. He uses what he has, and from what I read, I'm guessing he has less than most hobby quilters keep in stock, but the intricacy of assembling thousands of pieces of fabric, and we didn't really describe this, but the self portrait and then also the portrait of his mother, which to date I, as far as I could tell on his website, these are the only ones that he's done portraits of people and it is like a mosaic. And in that all of the colors would match up with a photograph except that there're, in, in blocks [01:02:00] and to figure out the colors for that. I'm sorry, it, I cannot describe this on audio, how impressive this is. And I know there's computer programs I'm thinking of Lego.
Okay. That you can be like, here's a photo, make me a Lego kit that I can assemble so it has similar colors and it will give you something like that. And Erick doesn't do that. He does it all by hand and. Oh my gosh. It's just incredible. And when he applied to be on the show, he wrote he hinted at, in his submission of all the healing that has come through these hours and hours of quilting.
And I love when you find something that works really well for you. And Erick and I didn't go into this, but 'cause I didn't wanna bring it up, I'm like this is not the same. But for me this is my [01:03:00] similar thing. It's just I just love puzzles so much. And I started doing them really regularly just in the last few years.
And it's like one of my favorite things that I do. I just love sitting down and working on them. But I only like puzzles where I can look at a piece. And know exactly where it's gonna fit. So I don't like big forests where it's like this tree, this, piece with a piece of tree with a couple leaves on it could be anywhere in like half of the, I don't like that.
I like to know exactly where something's gonna go. That's what's relaxing for me. And not to put too fine a point on it, but, I'm going with this as adopted people or the diaspora as Erick is calling us to know [01:04:00] where a piece fits into our life is so impactful. And I think that's where my obsession comes from and thus my fascination with Erick's quilts.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Please do go have a look at his work and tell me if you've ever seen it in person. 'Cause I'm jealous. And I would love to see it in person. Thank you so much for listening and for valuing adoptee voices, and let's talk again soon.
