324 Diana
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/324
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. On today's episode, we are welcoming Diana to the show to share her story of being adopted from Russia at age two. Diana unpacks how early separation institutional care and adoption shaped her mental health and sense of identity.
This episode has mentions of childhood sexual assault, suicidal ideation, and disordered eating. Please take care when deciding to listen. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to sign up for my podcast newsletter, which you can find at adopteeson.com/newsletter. [00:01:00] We wrap up with some recommended resources, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Diana. Welcome, Diana.
Diana: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Haley Radke: Oh, my pleasure. I can't wait to hear your story, if you don't mind sharing with us.
Diana: Sure. To begin, I'm going to start reading from an exerpt from my adoptive mom. This is basically the announcement of me joining the family July, 1997. What do you know? Christmas in the summertime. You usually hear from us in December, but we just couldn't wait that long to share our news with you. Last year, we told you about the addition to our family, which had four legs, the kitten Princess. Now we have a two-legged [00:02:00] addition to our family. This is all real, by the way, at the beginning of June.
The adoptive parents traveled to Russia to adopt a 2-year-old little girl. Her name is my American name. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, so she's a definite contrast to adoptive sisters, dark hair and eyes. She's a typical 2-year-old in many ways and others. She's very advanced. We always wanted and expected to have a second child, but didn't seem to be able to.
One day the adoptive mom said, wouldn't it be nice if I gave birth to a three or 4-year-old? That way adoptive sister said she'd be closer in age. Then the adoptive dad said it doesn't usually work that way. And anyway, what if it's a boy? I hadn't thought about that possibility. So we investigated adopting a three to 4-year-old girl in the United States.
If you wanna child under the age of five, you may as well be asking for a newborn. One lady told us we'd have a six to eight year wait. [00:03:00] Another asked if we take a slightly handicapped child, then asked. Then when we asked for a definition, they said, needing glasses or missing a limb, it was hard for us to put needing glasses and missing a arm or leg in the same category.
Also, in America, the birth mothers retain more rights than foreign countries. We also did not wanna run the risk of a birth father coming out of the woodwork after a child has been settled into our family. So for all these reasons one year ago, we started inquiring about foreign adoption. For six months, she was made available for Russian families to adopt.
Then foreigners, within a few months from now, US Immigration will have determined that she's a US citizen. Now she's a legal alien, but she's still ours in its permanent, which is all we wanted.
Haley Radke: Oh my God. She really said the quiet part right out loud and just wrote it all down. Who did this letter get sent to?
Diana: All the friends and family. It's [00:04:00] funny, when I first read that, I was completely taken aback. I was barely out of the fog when I first read that letter, but the ick I got from it was just unimaginable. And my therapist, who at the time was an eating disorder therapist, she even read it and was this is way out of pocket here. Like we can try to like work through some of these things, but. All right.
Haley Radke: That is shocking. It's, it's not I have heard of some of these things, like people's photo albums being captioned or like baby announcement or something, but like the full detail, including the birth parent, fears and all that. Wow. That's a treasure you got there. Amazing.
Diana: Thank you. That was just a little part of it. I didn't read the whole thing. [00:05:00]
Haley Radke: Wow. Okay. So you were just two when you made your way to America.
Diana: Right? Yeah, so I was two and a half. But before all that, my paperwork. I'm gonna go by what my official paperwork says.
So I was taken from my apartment where my mom lived and put in a hospital because of the quote, social situation of the home, which I'm thinking is poverty. And then I was in the hospital for pneumonia. And it also said I was like permanently hungry, and then no one ever came back for me. So I was put in the orphanage after that, where I probably got fed and got better in that way, but I still had some consequences from rickets, from being [00:06:00] malnourished.
So they decided to come to Russia with another family. My adoptive parents are Christian, and I think that family was Mormon anyway, so it was I guess adoption tourism is like a term I've been hearing a lot lately, so they adopted me. The other family adopted a little boy and they took us sightseeing for a little bit and then just brought us back.
Haley Radke: Do you mean the adoption tourism thing like they came to Russia to the orphanage, but they weren't necessarily, they didn't necessarily know which child they were going to take home.
Diana: Oh, okay. Maybe I misunderstood the concept.
Haley Radke: Were they already know that you were it, they picked the girl and you looked cute in a picture and that was the. [00:07:00]
Diana: Okay. Maybe. Maybe that's what happened. I'm actually not 100% sure.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Diana: But I'm sure they had pictures or something like that.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I've just, I've heard orphanage stories where families go and then literally select the, the child that is most agreeable to them. Yeah, that's what I understood as like adoption tourism. So it, all of it's problematic. But anyway, carry on. So they did actually go to Russia anyway?
Diana: Yes, they did. Yep. It's just funny because they're the type of people that wouldn't step foot out of their state if they didn't have to. But okay, so after that my adoptive mom was probably on leave, for a couple weeks I was sent to babysitters.
Like I, I feel like I really didn't have a whole lot of time to adjust [00:08:00] because it was, I was pretty much jumping from like place to place a lot of the time. When I was five, I was also a victim of child on child sexual assault, which is like having that at such a young age, it really confused me inside about who I could talk to or who was safe, because she also told me, of course, like you can't tell anyone. It's a secret. So me being five, I was like, oh, I have this big secret. So that kinda winded its way into the under underbelly of my life. But I would say elementary school, I really felt the outta place aspect. Like looking around in my classroom, I just had this feeling like these kids belonged.
They are supposed to be here. They're actually doing the work in class. I'm just being like, pushed along. That's how it [00:09:00] felt anyway. I was terrified of my teachers. I was terrified of anyone bigger or older than me or any type of.
Haley Radke: Just like an authority figure.
Diana: Yeah. Authority figure. And when I hit nine, this thought just popped outta nowhere, but I was really starting to think huh, I should just kill myself.
That sounds like such a good idea. And I don't know where that even came from 'cause I didn't. Like I wasn't really exposed to that kind of thing growing up in a Christian household and pretty much being like, oh, everything is fine. Everything is great. Jesus loves you. So that thought just was in the back of my mind for a while, and then I didn't act on it at all. But when I was 12, I decided, oh, I haven't acted on that thought. I'm like, maybe that was just me being really [00:10:00] childish, like maybe that was just a really childish thing of me to think, because I don't know how that worked, but that's how my brain worked at that point. And then also, of course, growing up, you're gonna have friends that move away.
So those always felt extremely painful, like reliving, being separated and really not having a great way to contact them. I could call them or write them letters, but that was about the extent of it. So that was also like things I had to work through within myself. And when I hit middle school, my, my mental health was just like on a, like decline, like this whole time.
So when I hit middle school, I was really depressed. But that's also something people say oh, you're like a teenager, you'll. That's just how teenagers are. [00:11:00] So I had really good friends for a couple years, and then I started this really bad habit of pretty much destroying my relationships by either becoming jealous or just acting weird or mean just I knew they would abandon me, and it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy of they'll abandon me because of this reason and not because of me, just as how I really am. Like that kind of thing. So there were two other Russian adoptees that I knew of in high school. And they both were able to keep their name.
So whenever I told people that I was also adopted from Russia, they really didn't believe me because of my name, number one. And then they would say I didn't have an accent. And then thirdly, a lot of the [00:12:00] times they would say I looked like my adoptive mom, which also talking about that I did have really blonde hair growing up.
So she would dye her hair like this super light blonde to try to match me and. Also like due to my rickets and stuff like that, I have an extremely short stature. I'm five one and my teeth were really messed up, that kind of thing. So that's why I do believe that paperwork, but my adoptive mom was also super short.
So basically that's all that they saw us being like short and blonde, and that was it. But while the rest of the family, the adoptive family were, I would say very Italian, I know Italians can also look very different, but they had the brown eyes, brown hair, like long and [00:13:00] curly brown hair, so that kind of thing.
Haley Radke: Can I pause you there? It sounds like through childhood and middle school, like there, there was a lot of pain going on for you internally and at the time, did you know where that pain was coming from, or you were just existing in it. And.
Diana: I had an idea about it, but when I tell you I was so deep into the fog that I would have never admitted it on my life.
I would've just been like, oh, that's just my personality. That's just how I am right now. Yeah I probably wouldn't have even accepted it at that time either. If someone were to just be like, oh yeah, this is like, all true. If I was in high school or middle school and I stumbled upon adoptee Facebook [00:14:00] pages, I would've been like the adoptee that was like.
Okay. You guys are crazy. I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm fine. Even though clear clearly.
Haley Radke: Fair enough. Most of us grew up that way. Like not to speak for all adoptees, but it's like you're told this is normal, this is what should be happening, get over it kind of thing.
The idea that you were trying to convince the other adoptees that no, you indeed too were adopted is also a little bit telling for me. It's something was prompting you.
Diana: I also remember asking a friend, my best friend at the time, if it was a big deal that I was adopted and I think I was asking for her point of view.
Because for me, I was like, this is my deepest darkest secret. This is what I tell people, like who are my [00:15:00] only best friends. Like especially in elementary school, that kind of thing. And she's no, not really. I'm like, oh, okay. I must be making a big deal out of this. Alright, I'm just gonna fast forward.
I went away to college and that. That really opened my eyes to how my mental health was never really addressed, which I know I probably should have spoken up, but really I didn't have the voice to. My anxiety was so bad. Also my depression, but my anxiety was so bad. I could go days without talking to people at college, and I just like moved from spot to spot, like I was like in a board game and I had no other like free will happening or anything. So that's when I dove headfirst into an eating disorder. And [00:16:00] it was the craziest, I think it was like six years of my life I spent, so I lost a good portion of my twenties to the eating disorder and basically what I found was, number one, a sense of community online, because there was a giant eating disorder community that I made some friends on. I was able to stuff down my anxiety with the food and then I would purge it and then, so that would also be like releasing my anxiety and just that whole process was like, I guess a self cure for like my anxiety because it would just numb me out so much, which I've also, I've said this before to a couple people, like I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol, but the eating disorder [00:17:00] feels like something that would be really close for me to compare it because of all the crazy things.
Like I say, it made me do, but I don't know. I don't feel like I was in myself when I was on that.
Haley Radke: Of course.
Diana: Yeah. Oh, so much stuff, but, so when, I guess it was my sixth year or whatever, I finally drained my bank account that had, that I was using for all the food. It was actually my college tuition account.
So I decided then I would, try to end it, but that obviously didn't work. So I had to admit to everyone like, what happened and like I am not doing well and that there were so many years of just going in and out of treatment centers [00:18:00] and. I just really remember, I don't know what brought this up either.
When I was at a residential treatment facility for the eating disorder, they asked me if I had any like type of trauma in my life and for some reason I told them like, yeah, like being separated from like my mom and like my country and all this stuff is like super traumatizing. And they like cut me off.
We were on the phone, they just cut me off. They were like, oh, okay. Okay. So I guess that wasn't really what they were looking for 'cause I wasn't put on the trauma track for that. So I was like, that was another thing that was like, oh, maybe. I'm still just like making this stuff up in my head. Maybe it's not like actually a real problem.
Haley Radke: And so this would've been just like six or seven years ago?
Diana: Yeah. Yeah.
Haley Radke: [00:19:00] Because, the stats are that we're overrepresented in like residential treatment centers for addictions. I don't know what it is for eating disorders. I know we have a higher incidence, but it's disappointing that they didn't even acknowledge adoption was a trauma even just a few short years ago.
Diana: Yeah. Yeah, that, I don't know. That was just another point on their side of being like, we're the ones that. Write the narrative, for now. So we're gonna decide what's trauma, what's not, and what deserves treatment.
Haley Radke: 'Cause you had, and you're, you had it sounds like a starvation as a young child.
Diana: Right? Yeah. So also I'm glad you pointed that out. When I finally read my records, I talked to my adoptive mom about it and I was like do you think [00:20:00] this like eating disorder could also be from that, like being malnourished or starved or anything? And she's no, you don't. You wouldn't remember that you were a baby.
And I was like. Okay. I don't know what I don't know. I'm like, I like told her it's, I'm like, I eat and I feel like I'm never going to eat again. Is that normal? And she's I don't know what that's from. That's not anything.
Haley Radke: But this will, this is really making me upset because. Yeah, like I, I, 20 years ago went to some sessions about adopting internationally and they literally talked to us then about, or the state of orphanages and the things that children from orphanages may struggle with, and one of them is food, duh. Like this is so obvious. So to have your [00:21:00] trusted adults and experts in your life while you're an adult, tell you no in recent years.
Where we already know all this. This is really, it's frustrating. How do you feel like that too now looking back what are you talking about? None of you got this?
Diana: It's frustrating, but I feel so vindicated by my community, the adoptees and all the research coming out that. Like my whole passion right now is to spread the message of all of this, all the trauma, all the research to people like me who grew up in places like that where it's just in your head, you're a blank slate, like all of those really, not true things about adoption that I don't know if they're still being spread, to hopeful adopters, but it could, [00:22:00] yeah it kills adoptees. I'm just gonna say that so many adoptees end their lives because of, I can't say one thing or another, but probably because they were very alone feeling and no one probably took the time to listen to them and just saw 'em as who for who they are.
Haley Radke: And this, yes, and this higher incidence of eating disorders. And eating disorders are like it's not a good prognosis for, but I don't know, what is it? I don't One of the highest mortality rates of mental health issues.
Diana: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it might be the highest or it's one of the highest.
Haley Radke: Okay. Yes. Highest mortality rate of any mental illness. 10 to 15%. That's from AI when I just Googled it. So please fact check me if you're trying to cite [00:23:00] this. wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna be quiet now, but I just know that I am just like so frustrated for, seven years ago, Diana. These people should have known better.
Diana: Thank you. All right, it was winter, I guess I was still fully in my eating disorder. I had, I was on eating disorder Twitter now, so that's a great, oh, I'm just, I'm not gonna be sarcastic. No one really gets my sarcasm, but, so I had some friends on Twitter there. Okay. And I just happened to watch the movie Lion with Dev Patel because I was just going through his whole, whole list of movies because I love him as an actor and I was like, okay, I'm gonna watch Lion even though this is probably gonna be super triggering for me.
So I watched. I watched the whole thing. I was in awe [00:24:00] because I had never seen an adoptee just be written like that or look like that. And it wasn't even just him, it was also his brother who I was like, I can't remember his name right now, but I'm like, that's me. Like that guy looks exactly like me.
And like the adopters don't know what to do. And I'm just like, whoa. It's like I was like more than one person in this world had that experience. I'm like, there's no way. So I was like on a high from that and I started posting more stuff. I started looking up more adoption things, and I guess I asked people on Twitter, I'm like, do you guys know if there's like an adoption community anywhere and one girl was like, yeah, just Google it or just look it up. I'm sure there's one. And I did, and there was a big community on Twitter that I was [00:25:00] on for a little bit, and I still met like really great people there. And I actually met my therapist there too, so I still have her. She's great.
Haley Radke: Twitter's where I first found my adoptee community.
Diana: Yeah. So the first video that they guided me towards was the Paul Sunderland. Video. I think it was Adoption and Addiction, and that was the first research based video that I ever watched about adoption. And I just had tears streaming down because I was so in awe of someone saying all of this stuff out loud and being believed.
I just never in my life have felt that amazing being spoken about that way so that really inspired me to deep dive into the adoptee community. Also, at that time, I asked for all my paperwork to just look at everything, which was [00:26:00] always a battle. But, so the first round I got, I guess my paperwork from the orphanage and from what the hospital looked like during my time there and the story about how I was abandoned and that kind of thing. There are so many different things that I've heard. So on paper it says one thing, and then my adopters would always say another thing. They would say oh, she was 16, she was this, and this. Like you lived with a great aunt or something. And I'm reading these documents and there's nothing about any of that. So I'm like, I don't really believe you. So I, until I meet my mother or family and they can tell me the facts, I really don't believe the story part, I believe the medical [00:27:00] part just because I can see the ramifications of the rickets and stuff.
Haley Radke: I was just gonna ask, I guess I was just gonna say, I guess there's two possibilities. The staff at the orphanage could have told them, spun some story to them that they were repeating back to you, and that just was, I don't know what they did. Or of course they, they could have made it up to be more palatable to you somehow than the true story. I don't know. And then I guess you don't really know the circumstances of how you really became available for adoption. It sounds like there was the hospitalization and then he went to the orphanage, but were you taken away like a child protective services kind of situation, or [00:28:00] if your biological family just weren't able to care for you and they brought you there, or I guess you don't really know.
Diana: The way it was written, it sounded like someone from some sort of government agency was there and took me to the hospital. I think, but I'm just confused about some of the parts of them claiming they searched for my mother for six months, which I don't believe that at all. They said they went back to her apartment and she just disappeared. I'm like, I don't really know what to believe with any of that.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Diana: So in my personal life I was really gung ho for all of this. I would tell it was pretty much the first thing I would tell people now, just because I wanted to see their reaction because I had this awakening here and I wanted to see if [00:29:00] people in the real world also knew about this.
So I was greatly disappointed with most of the answers or responses I got. I got things like, oh, that was nice of them to adopt you. Or oh the typical oh, you're not actually Russian. Like that kind of thing.
Haley Radke: So when you say there was an awakening, meaning you, you connected the dots that, oh, adoption did have an impact on my life and this separation, and all those things.
And then people in real life were like, no, that's not a thing. So it's very frustrating. That's very frustrating place to be.
Diana: So I just tried to keep who I knew was safe, my friends, and like people adoptees online that I met close to me so I could still talk about these things with them.[00:30:00]
And then. I met my husband at college and that is a whole new chapter of my life. My wedding was I wanted a lot of it to have Russian, details and traditions, things like that. I wore a kokoshnik it's a headdress type thing. And I was styling it in my adoptive parents' house. And my adoptive mom is oh that's so pretty. Doesn't she look good? And then my adoptive dad just goes yeah. And then he goes back to writing whatever he was writing. And I'm just like, okay. I don't, I didn't know what he was doing at the time, but on my wedding day he gave me this 15 page letter about how I was chosen by God, God made it so they would be my [00:31:00] parents and then he was like explaining the fall of the USSR.
And why I needed to be adopted and there were just a lot of Bible quotes, but this basically gave me one of the biggest mental breakdowns I've ever had. Just I'm really glad my husband and a friend were there to keep me sane. That kind of sealed the deal of I think I'm just gonna be estranged from them. I think I'm just not gonna talk to them after this. So I really wanted my original documents. That was something I've been asking for a while at that point. And their answer was always like, no, you're gonna lose it. Or they would be like, why do you even want this stuff? And it's I was thinking because I'm, I don't plan on seeing you guys ever again.
I just want my stuff so we can be done. And they wanted me to have this elaborate answer like, oh, I'm looking [00:32:00] for my mom. I'm looking for X, Y, and Z. And that really wasn't the truth. At that time. So it took a while for me to get that stuff from them. My husband was mostly in contact and he said, we're gonna have to file a police report if I don't get this stuff. At this point.
Haley Radke: What was it like to have your adoptive father say essentially using God as the reason you were separated and had an orphanage experience and had malnutrition and those kind of things. Like you said, you had a mental breakdown. Can you say what that meant to you?
Diana: I'm not gonna say I was surprised by any of that, but just the fact that he took so much time to write it out and he thought these were great reasons, but [00:33:00] that was his always his go-to is whatever happens is because God wants it to happen that way. He like people like this, like you can't really have a discussion with them because they're single-minded about what they believe. They don't want to even think about how there might be other things going on. It's not because of God. It's just, I don't really know how to explain it either, but it just felt like a slap in the face and that he can't really do any deeper digging.
Haley Radke: Has this impacted your, you grew up in Christianity. Has this impacted, your desire to have any kind of faith life at all?
Diana: Yeah I really don't agree with, I guess the whole of religion or the Abrahamic religions. I'm really into [00:34:00] thinking about my ancestors or even praying to them and being like, please, if you're out there, let me know. I'll learn Russian sentences and be like, please, I'm still here. Please save me. I don't know.
But it's still the estrangement. All of this is a huge freedom. My husband is great. He doesn't pressure me with anything, with getting back with them, and he's not super religious either.
So just being out of the scrutiny, being out of the religion, because growing up, I guess I didn't explain this. I definitely didn't feel like I could be myself around them. I was this tiny person that was just yes, no, school was good and they would be mad at me for not wanting to say anything else other than that. But yeah.
Haley Radke: I'm assuming that [00:35:00] you made a name change. Is that right?
Diana: Yeah, that's correct. I decided to go with, go for it right after my wedding because my adoptive mom found some sort of letter that I had signed my Russian name and she emails my husband saying, how dare she her mom just got knocked up and just left her and blah, blah blah.
And , how dare she, all the normal adoptive mom stuff. So I guess that really lit a fire under me and I was still on the fence, but I was like, no, I'm gonna do it because. I'm not gonna let them dictate anything I do anymore. So I changed my first name and my middle name because Diana, D-I-A-N-A is not inherently Russian like when you look at it.
So I wanted at least to have a name that looked Russian. So that's a, that's [00:36:00] another funny story. They were like, oh, we changed your name. 'cause we didn't want it to be different like Svetlana. And, now that I know what my name is, it's not inherently Russian. But that was one of the biggest pains and also anxiety inducing because the hoops you have to jump through.
I live in Pennsylvania, the rules are different for each state, apparently. So I had to put in two different newspapers I was getting it changed. I had to go to all the counties I lived in the past five years, so that was right after college. So I had to go to four different counties. On a single day off from work that I took off.
Oh man. Just so much stuff and money. And also you don't have someone who can guide you with this stuff because the people at my courthouse, they didn't know what they're doing half the time. I guarantee you, every step I took in this process, [00:37:00] something was wrong and I had to redo it because of they just didn't do it right, file it right. They just didn't find that my name was on a mortgage, so I had to go back and see the judge again. That was fun. So after I got my name changed. You have to go through all the documents you want changed, like your social security card. I pull up there and they're like, oh, you're not a US citizen, question mark.
And I'm like, I have a social security card. How am I not a US citizen? So I had to come back the next day and bring like I, guess I should have brought everything anyway, but I had my citizenship document because thankfully I got all my originals. My final step, no, not my final step.
One of my final steps was getting my Freedom of Information Act, because I was trying to get my alien report from my adoption, [00:38:00] and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not great with that kind of stuff. So the first time I filled it out, it was wrong, and that's when I heard of an adoptee lawyer slash rights activist who works with slash for adoptees pro bono.
He's amazing. Greg Luce, he helped me refile everything so I could get my FOIA, and I got all my, I got all my records. There was nothing in there that was super surprising. My records actually had more about my doctors than it did me, so that was. Whatever. But the final hurdle I guess I had to overcome was getting my citizenship paper updated with my new name. So thankfully, again, Greg helped me out with that. It was $505, which is an [00:39:00] exorbitant amount for a piece of paper, you're updating your name, but it had to be done because. I'm glad I got everything done. I think it was two years ago now, because now with the state of the US it's a mess.
They're reporting that people who are trying to get their Freedom of Information Act FOIA, they're coming back like 80% redacted. You're getting no information anymore, getting your citizenship certificate back in the mail. I think mine took six or seven months, so I had no citizenship paperwork, which was kind of stress inducing but now it's taking even longer. So it's just a mess. And I really feel for the adoptees who really don't have any guidance in any of this. And it's terrifying. And we really do need people like Greg and Adoptees United who can show us the [00:40:00] way, because it's kinda like uncharted territory. We don't have the government on our side adoption agencies. Like all we have is Greg.
Haley Radke: Yeah. And he, he's told me before too, that. There's a lot of immigration lawyers who should know this part of the law, but they don't. So he is definitely a unicorn.
Diana: Yeah, for sure.
Haley Radke: That's pretty amazing.
And then I know we're wrapping up, but you also have taken your passion for adoptees and advocacy and your leading an Adoptees Connect group.
Diana: Yeah, that's correct. Myself and Fai are meeting in Pittsburgh every month. I actually heard their episode on Adoptees Crossing Lines, and they said there's no really, not really any groups in Pittsburgh.
And so I just was able to reach [00:41:00] out and say, hey, if you're still interested, we could maybe start this up. And this month is our one year anniversary of meeting adoptees, and it's just amazing seeing all the different faces and all the different stories. I had no idea that there would be so many baby scoop adoptees coming and sharing their experiences because I don't, I feel like we don't hear from them a whole lot.
I don't know if that's true, but I definitely didn't hear a lot from them. But yeah, it's really meaningful work. If I could just help one adoptee see that they're not alone and that they matter, their voice matters. I just really want them to understand that we're here for them no matter what stage they're in, like in the fog, outta the fog, whatever they wanna be considered.
Haley Radke: How are you doing? Are you in recovery and you have a therapist and how's that going for [00:42:00] you?
Diana: Yeah, I have a great therapist. She is an adoptee. Lina, she's from Columbia, which for me, it was really important to find an intercountry, a adopted person, therapist, just so they could, we could talk about the different immigration and legal issues that we might have. So she's amazing. I've been recovered from my eating disorder. It'll be I think seven years this August. So that's really great for me. I'm on medication. That definitely helps. I should have been on it a long time ago, but here's the Wellbutrin and Lexapro.
Haley Radke: Congratulations Diana, that's a big deal. And that's a lot of hard work.
Diana: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Evidence of very hard, deep work that you've done. Okay, we'll make sure to link [00:43:00] to the Lion movie Paul Sunderland's video Fai's episode of Adoptee's Crossing Lines. And of course Greg and Adoptee Rights Law and Adoptees United, I have something to recommend that's a little bit unusual, so if you allow me a little nerd moment.
One of my favorite academic journals, Adoption and Culture. This is a very pretty, pretty cover put out this special issue. It's volume 13, issue 2 20 25. It just came out Winter 2025, which is basically when we're recording and it's a special issue. The Natal Mother in Adoption and this whole journal is focused on birth first mothers Valerie Jay [00:44:00] Andrews, who is a Canadian birth mother and the executive director of Origins Canada, was a guest editor.
And I have a piece in this with my friend Sullivan Summer. There's an interview it's called, Now is the Time an interview with adoptee and podcaster Haley Radke, where we talk about my new podcast project On Adoption. So I was pretty honored to be asked to participate in this, and the research and other articles in this are really amazing.
Alice Diver has a piece in here. Of course, Valerie Andrews has a couple, I should say Dr. Valerie Andrews. And it's well worth getting. This is a paywall journal, folks, so if you're not an academic nerd, it is spendy, but you can also try and get some, get it through your library [00:45:00] so hopefully folks can read it that way.
Do you wanna tell us anything more about Greg and his organizations, Diana? 'Cause I know you're recommending him today.
Diana: I just wanna drop the Citizenship Clinic he runs, he's doing this free again he's been helping a lot of adoptees and he could definitely use any support that he can get from
anyone who cares about adoptees.
Haley Radke: Yes, I know when we're recording this, I know there's an event coming up and there's a fundraiser going on, so we will link to that info and if there's a future clinics or any of those things coming up, we'll definitely have that available. Thank you so much, Diana, for sharing with us.
Where can we connect with you online?
Diana: Adoptees Connect, PGH, so that's the Pittsburgh region. You can find me [00:46:00] there. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and you should be able to find our email if you have any questions.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing with us. What a pleasure.
I just have a few episodes left up until we celebrate the 10 years of Adoptees On, and it's been so lovely too get to reflect on all these past episodes, and I've talked to adoptees of like many different ages, and especially when I talk to someone who's a little bit younger, I just feel like there's so many more resources and people talking about these things now then when I was that age, and I feel [00:47:00] so deeply grateful that people are going to be able to process all of this stuff sooner than I ever did. It's really great to see the community grow in this way. And it was so nice to hear about Adoptees Connect groups still going on. I know that the official banner of adoptees Connect has shuttered in the past I think maybe it's almost been two years now. But there's still Adoptees Connect groups going on and local support groups that folks can access, and I'm thankful for all the leaders who faithfully figure out where to have the meetings, what we're gonna talk about welcoming in new people.
And that is a great gift to get to meet in person if you're able to I would encourage you to do that. Connect with people in real life. It is so helpful. [00:48:00] Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again soon
