329 Alex Blum
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/329
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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Alex Blum, author of An Accident of Birth. Alex shares his story of how he reconnected with his three full biological brothers through DNA testing. We also talk about seeing yourself reflected in biological family for the first time, nature versus nurture, and what Alex has come to believe about adoption in recent years.
Let's listen in. I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Alex Blum. Welcome, Alex.
Alex Blum: Thanks, Haley. I'm so happy to [00:01:00] be here, and I really appreciate the opportunity, frankly.
Haley Radke: Your voice has been in my ears for the last couple days. I've been reading your book on audio. I've been listening to you on other podcasts, but I- for my listeners who maybe don't know you, would you mind sharing a bit of your story with us?
Alex Blum: Sure. I'd be happy to. I was born in the '50s, right? And so I was adopted in the mid-'50s, and I'm sure everybody knows that at that time, adoption was completely closed and firewalled and, it was impossible to get any kind of information without lawyers and a court order, and people used to hire private detectives and all the rest of it.
And so that was my history. So I knew nothing about my birth family, mother, parents, nothing. And, that was my experience for most of my life. And as I got older and when I had kids, I started to get a little more curious about the whole situation and about my history. [00:02:00] And then about seven years ago, I was on 23andMe for quite some time.
My wife actually got it for me as a gift. And about seven years ago, in 2019, I came home from vacation and I opened my computer and there was a message there from a young woman named Brooke, who is my niece now, and she had gone on 23andMe and bought a kit for her husband, and they sent her another one by mistake, which speaks to, for me, how important coincidence and randomness is in life, right?
And so she sent in the kit, and next thing she messaged me and said, "This is weird. It looks like we have," I can't remember exactly, but 24% shared DNA. And the result of that was that- within a day or two, I found myself on the phone with three brothers of mine. They're my full brothers.
I'm the oldest of the four of us, and I had no idea they existed, [00:03:00] and I had no point of view or understanding of this until it happened. So it was one of those sort of amazing kind of miraculous things that kinda fall from the sky, and it's a very... It's a really good story. It's all upside for us, for me and for my brothers, and all of a sudden I had all of a sudden I have four brothers and their spouses, and I have six nieces that I didn't have before, and everybody's really all connected.
So it's been a really miraculous experience. And what happened was that very... almost immediately after I got connected to my brothers, we started doing this thing, which they were doing already, which is we have a Zoom call every Friday. In fact, this morning. And we started talking, and of course, we're comparing stories because it's all about parallel lives, this whole thing, right?
When you have this experience, I'm sure you've heard lots of people say this. And what it does is it gives you perspective, and you get to rewind the tape and fill in the blanks. So we [00:04:00] started doing this, and it came to me very quickly. I thought I have to write a book.
I have to write about this. This is something. So I said to them, are you guys cool with this?" And they were, as they always are, they were like, "Yeah, great. We're all in." So I started writing the book, and it took me about four years to get to A, something I was prepared to say was a finished draft, and then of course several more years of editing and fixing and dealing with the whole publishing experience, which is a whole other subject that I don't even wanna get into and all of that.
So that's a basic background for all this, and, what it's really done is it's, it really expanded my understanding of the whole adoption environment, if you will and I've been exposed to the experiences of a lot of other adopted people, which cover all sorts, that really run the gamut from people who are traumatized by it, people who have had joyful connections, [00:05:00] people who haven't, people who've had disappointing efforts to connect with their birth relatives.
All sorts of stuff. So it's been a really big learning experience for me, without a doubt. So that started the origin of the whole thing.
Haley Radke: Can you tell me a little bit about doing the DNA test? In your book, you alluded that you probably wouldn't have searched. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Alex Blum: Yeah, that's an interesting question. At one point I said to my wife, after I'd been on 23 for years, and I think I was starting to resign myself to the likelihood that, my parents... And in this situation, I think it's normally or it's more common for people to talk about their mother than their father, for whatever reason, and I had resigned myself, like, that, my mother had probably passed away and my father and all the rest of it.[00:06:00]
I didn't really focus too much on the, on siblings for some reason, even though the story everybody loves is Steve Jobs finding his sister Mona Simpson, who was a famous author, so you hear that story. But I hadn't really focused on that very much, and I said to my wife, "You know what? I'm not gonna go searching around and make a meal out of this.
If they're out there, they'll find me." And I don't even know really why I said that, but that's what happened.
Haley Radke: So you tell a story of a moment of holding your first child, which is a moment for a lot of us if we choose to become a parent, and I'm curious if you had curiosity throughout your life.
And I get that stance of if it happens. If it doesn't," but just talk to me a little bit about that. Your... did you have wonderings about where you came from and your story and those kinds of things? [00:07:00]
Alex Blum: Yeah, I did. I did. But I also, to be honest, it was pretty clear to me as I was growing up that My mother, my adopted mother and my father to a lesser extent, but my, my mother, it was very clear that she took a dim view of people that were pursuing, people who wanted to find their birth parents, people...
it's like she framed it almost like it was some form of neurosis. Like, why would you do that kind of thing. And I think whether rightfully or not, I think I internalized that. So I think that, yes, I was curious, no doubt, and I became more and more curious as my children were born and they asked me question- medical history and these kinds of questions and all that sort of stuff.
And then, my parents both passed away. My mom died in 2001 and my dad died like '90, I don't know, '98 or '99, something like that. My adopted parents, and that kind [00:08:00] of cleared the decks for me a little bit because I knew that they had a very dim, negative view of that and I was sensitive to that.
So I think it created a little space for me at that point because I felt like there was really no downside for anybody, and that made it easier. Because yeah, for sure I was curious. Although, I didn't really anticipate what actually happened. But absolutely, I was curious and I wanted to know.
And I had a funny experience which I talk about pretty often. I don't know if you're a fan of the show Mad Men.
But it's that's my dad basically, Don Draper. And that whole, that's the '50s. That, like my dad's office looked like that and I knew people like that and, and there's a... we were big fans of the show and we were watching the show and there's this thing that happens in the show where Peggy, who is a groundbreaker in advertising as a woman and transitions from being a secretary to being a, creative person and she's a very dynamic character. And she has this moment with this guy and she [00:09:00] has sex with a guy in the office and she gets pregnant.
And it's the '50s and she comes from I think classic Irish family in Queens which my dad's secretary was 100% that person. And so she has to, she agrees or decides to give up her child and there's a scene in the show that happens in the hospital after she's given birth and Don goes there to see her and they have this conversation in which she says, "This is not your life.
This didn't happen. So you're gonna get up and you're gonna go on with your life and that's that." And at that moment when that happened, I didn't know that was gonna happen on the show and this, this scene happened. I turned to my wife and I think my kids were sitting and I said, "I can't watch this." And I had to stand up and leave the room.
It was like I, this is way too close to home for me.
Haley Radke: It's accurate.
Alex Blum: 100%.
Haley Radke: That's what doctors told their patients who were mothers that were relinquishing. That's what they told them.
Alex Blum: Yeah. "
Haley Radke: Forget [00:10:00] this ever happened."
Alex Blum: Yeah.
Haley Radke: And don't tell anyone 'cause it's gonna ruin your life.
Alex Blum: It felt very real to me. I thought, "Here it is right here. This is it. This could be my mom right here."
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Alex Blum: It was, I... It was impressive, I thought.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Alex Blum: What they did. So I had moments like that, for sure, where I thought, "Wow." And we didn't know. My wife and I used to talk. Maybe your mom was a drug addict. Who knows? You know what I mean? You just don't know. You don't know.
Haley Radke: I think it's been pretty common for me hearing from adoptees who wait till their adoptive parents pass before they feel safety enough to really examine that part.
Alex Blum: I'm sure that, I think that's true. And it was on the other side of the coin, talking to my brothers, our birth mother, she...
And this gets into the importance of this book, Relinquished, that I also kinda wanna talk about a little. But she, I think, there's a good deal of [00:11:00] evidence, and if you saw that in my book, the little note that she wrote. It's pretty obvious she was pretty tortured by her experience, and I don't think that's in the least bit uncommon.
I think that is a super common thing for moms who give up their children. So on a certain level, my brothers and I have, I think we all feel that it was just as well that all of the parents were gone, because I can't even imagine what it would've been like for her, after the life that she lived, for me to suddenly pitch up in front of her as a 60-something-year-old man and go, "Hey, I'm your kid, the one you gave up, you remember?"
That doesn't feel like it would've been super comfortable for her, or probably me, or anybody, frankly.
Haley Radke: Can we talk about this, how you... she's passed already once you reunite with your brothers. But how you build this picture of who she was through the [00:12:00] eyes of your full brothers.
Alex Blum: These phone calls that we have were super important, and we, 'cause we just talked for an hour.
We talked a lot about her, and they would tell me stories about her. A lot of those stories are in the book, in other sections where they speak in their own voice, and we talked about all that. My brother Hank's wife, Jen, had a lot of personal, had some personal experience of her, so Jen told me some stories about her.
Jen is always saying, "Wow, you remind me of her," which is so interesting. It's a interesting thing to hear. So it's just really, it's assembled just from conversations with people, mostly my brothers, to some extent their spouses. Our mother, she was alienated from most of her family members, so there really wasn't any of that kind of input, aunts and uncles and people like that.
And she was very volatile. She [00:13:00] was not very reliable. She was a serious alcoholic. You know what I mean? So there was, like, this sort of- unreliable narrator feature of her personality, so we just assembled... we just talked and basically just assembled a kind of a spoken word picture.
And I'm sure there's stuff we don't know and stuff that I don't know, stuff that we've missed, but yeah, we just did the best we could, to fill in the blanks.
Haley Radke: And your father died much sooner than her. So how old were your siblings when he passed?
Alex Blum: My brother Hank is the oldest of the three, and then Pete's two years younger, and then Bill is another four or five years younger.
Hank was 10.
Haley Radke: Okay. So it's... I wonder how learning about your father has been different than you have years of experience with your mother and so many stories [00:14:00] to tell you. How have you assembled that together for yourself?
Alex Blum: Of course of the four, my adopted parents and my parent- my birth parents, he is the biggest mystery, not only to me, but frankly to my brothers as well, because they were so young.
Bill really doesn't even remember him. So that was weird. But the, the context is intriguing because he and my adopted father were very similar. They were both in marketing. They were both, marketing and advertising. My birth father was a, an executive at Pepsi and Canada Dry. My dad was in charge of sales promotion, public relations for Macy's, and he worked for Unilever.
And they both had a lot of international or sort of global connection. So in, at least in superficial ways, they appear to have been very similar in a funny way, which is interesting. But in terms of him and what he was like, it's hard to know. [00:15:00] There's not that much to work with. He was in the military in the Second World War.
He was, from what I understand a little bit of a war hero. There's not a lot of detail there to work with, to be honest.
Haley Radke: And the thing about that is if you had searched sooner he would've had passed anyway. There's no, no time that would've helped-... with that. Yeah.
Alex Blum: That wouldn't have filled that space.
Haley Radke: No. Thank you for sharing that because a lot of us search and find a grave, and the complexity of trying to fill in knowledge that feels like is owed to us in some way, and it's so difficult when they're not here. So it's really neat that you have your brothers and this extended family to fill in some of those gaps for you.
Alex Blum: It is. And it, I guess there's a feature of it which is great because it's coming to me from my brothers. So it's I don't know if I can explain this clearly. It's a little [00:16:00] bit like it's my experience. What they're telling me is a large part of what I would have remembered if I had grown up.
You know what I mean? So there's some sort of consistency there, if you will, because what they're telling me is I was two years older I don't know how much that would've changed things, but it still feels like their perception is in some way similar to what my perception would've been, so it feels accurate to me, right?
And we all know all memory is unreliable in some way, right? Your brain is constantly sifting and creating and filling in blanks and doing all sorts of stuff. So all you can do with memory, and with a memoir if you write one, is just try to be as truthful as possible. You can't promise that everything you say is something everyone's gonna agree with. It's impossible.
Haley Radke: Yeah, absolutely. I think for... I remember when I first learned, it must've been in my psych undergrad, something about every time you access a [00:17:00] memory in your brain, you're overwriting that part. You're st- like, you're changing it every time you access a memory. It's a little weird to think about.
Alex Blum: Th- actually, that's a kind of interesting way to look at it. Yeah, because you are. You're inevitably and every time you tell it, you know how that is where we refine the stories we tell all the time? Which goes back to what I was saying before, because one of my experiences is that when people say that thing to me, "Oh, I read your book. I know that story," it's like I think, "Wow, I gotta come up with some new stories." I can't keep telling the same stories again and again. It's kind of a challenge. It's funny.
Haley Radke: Yeah. I have that happen with the podcast. I have a, a Patreon show, too, and I'll say something, and then I'll have my in real life I'll be- recount something that I've already shared on the podcast, and they're like, "I've already heard that." I'm like, "Okay that's weird. That's a weird part."
Alex Blum: Like, all that material that I was using is I used it already. Now I have to come up with new material.
Haley Radke: And your book covers a lot of ground. It does. It does, so that makes sense. Let's talk about nature [00:18:00] versus nurture. And I hear you when you say your biological mother was an addict or an alcoholic, very complicated. Sounds like there was some difficult things happening especially once her husband had passed, your father. And also, your adoptive family, I'm like, whew. Okay, they were wealthy, but they didn't seem like super nurturing people either if I'm being candid with you.
Ready to send you off to boarding school. It's a... I know it's a different time, but also, it's... it was a wild thing to read about. Let's... Can you talk about nurture versus nature?
Alex Blum: It's funny what you said because at one time I was being as, again, as you read, I was being difficult as a teenager.
I was in high school and I was... I went to high school in New York, but for two years after I was trying out a school, and I remember I was being really a, pain in the ass. And my mom looked at me and she said, "You're not even supposed to be here." And I [00:19:00] thought okay, that's pretty honest."
Haley Radke: Wait, what did you take that as?
Alex Blum: It was so typical. I just figured I'll just put that in a file of things like that she used to say. It was like I get it."
Haley Radke: Not in this family?
Alex Blum: I'm supposed to be at boarding school, and I'm here.
Haley Radke: Oh, boarding school.
Alex Blum: You're supposed to be at boarding school.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.
Alex Blum: You're not supposed to be here. I didn't plan on having a teenager in my life. I thought somebody else was gonna do that for me. But the nature versus nurture thing I think is fascinating. I've had interesting conversations with people about it, and I think when you have kids, I don't know if you have kids of your own, but the nature thing becomes so obvious immediately when you have kids because this idea that people seem to have, and unfortunately, I think this is an unfortunate thing that some people who adopt do, which is this idea that a kid is a blank slate.
You're gonna mold that kid. You're gonna create that kid. It's like it's [00:20:00] an empty glass that you're gonna fill with all of this stuff about you and your family and your expectations and all that. And once you've had kids, you know that's baloney. They come with their stuff. They're people already, and they bring a lot to the party.
So I'm a real believer in nature, and I'm clear on how real that is. But on the other hand, also, it's your life. It's your story, and you have to figure out what you're gonna do in that life. So I think there's this incredible balance basically between nature and nurture or nature and experience or DNA versus, the random nature of the universe.
However you wanna look at it, I think there's a real interplay always between the power of coincidence and things that happen and how it affects your life and who you are and how you respond to the experiences that you have versus the stuff that you come [00:21:00] with. It's like there's something that people describe, and actually it's a lot...
It's always brought up in, when they, people talk about Bob Dylan, right? And he was born in Minnesota, and- he left home very young, and he describes this experience of looking at his parents and thinking, "Who are these people?" "How did how did these people get to be my parents?" kinda thing.
He just felt there was some... and I'm just telling the story as best I can. I've heard a lot of different versions of it, right? But that sort of thing. So there's so many different versions of it, but I think, without a doubt, as, when you're born, you bring a lot of stuff to the party. And I've heard some difficult stories, adoption stories, about people who have adopted kids who've had very unrealistic expectations or perhaps didn't fully think about what they were doing, and they don't like the kid they got.
And it's like, "Get [00:22:00] a life. Pull yourself together." "You shoulda thought of that before you did this." I've heard some really unfortunate stories, and I just think, "Wow, what were you thinking?"
Haley Radke: There's also an impact that maternal separation just has on our brains factually and that actually came to mind immediately when you shared the story of like a medical emergency when your tendon got severed, in that you were, like, super cool, collected in an emergency, and that's exactly how I am. Two of my best friends, we're all adopt- we've all talked about how adopted people, on the whole, are very great in emergencies 'cause our brain is trained from the jump, "It's an emergency. Where is my mother? Survive." And I don't know, maybe I'm making a grand generalization, but I think that's pretty accurate. What do you think about that?
Alex Blum: That's so interesting. I've never heard it described that way, but [00:23:00] that's interesting. And I've thought about it another way, which is there is this experience also that I...
And I've heard a lot of adoptive people say this, where it's like you have this sort of inherent critical distance. You feel a little bit outside of things. You know what I mean? You tend to be looking at things, and in your head you're thinking about the situation, and you're having an opinion about it even though it's happening to you.
And I think it may be a little bit of a version of what you're saying, which is... and I still remember what it felt like, and I remember holding up my foot and looking at my foot and thinking, "Yeah, this isn't great." In a very detached kind of way. Oh, and then looking at the people around me and thinking, "They're hysterical," and that I need somebody to, this is not a problem I can solve, so I need some people around me who aren't paralyzed by the whole situation. And I had that experience quite a few times, so it's interesting to hear you say that. I never really connected that with the adoption thing, but I think that's [00:24:00] interesting- ... for sure.
Haley Radke: Okay, I'm going along the same vein, I think, where you're talking about that disconnected kind of feeling. So you share in the, your memoir about your adoptive mother and this legacy and land and farm and this very importance to her, and it's so important she tells your adoptive father "You gotta take care of this with me," before they get engaged or right at the engagement point.
Alex Blum: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I can't recall exactly.
Alex Blum: Exactly right.
Haley Radke: And I think, and it ended with you. How did you feel? Did you feel like you were a part of this legacy that was passed on? Or when you're adopted, it's like, "I don't know, it's not really my history." What do you think about it?
Alex Blum: I think that sometimes adoptive parents betray themselves, [00:25:00] because there is a gap between what they say and what they do. Or else they say things that they're not thinking about, and they don't think about what that's gonna sound like to you. And I think I reference this in my book, but my adopted brother, who was three years older than me, he and I... She used to do this thing. Her maiden name was Phelps. Old New England WASP family thing, whatever, been there since the 1600s, whatever.
And she used to say, "I'm the last surviving member of my family." And my brother and I used to look at each other and go, "Yeah I'm pretty clear where that leaves us." You know what I mean? And even though what she was saying was logical and we understood the, from a factual point of view what she meant, it was such a weirdly insensitive thing to say.
It was like... And she didn't just say it once. It's something she used to say. And you feel like, "Wow, okay. I get it. I get that's how you feel. What you're showing me is how you feel, not what you [00:26:00] think." You know what I mean? And as kids, people don't give kids credit for being as instinctively smart as they are.
And you're gonna make your own judgment about what you're hearing. It's like you don't get to control what the other person thinks, even if it's your kid. So they say this stuff. And then when they started with protecting the land and giving the land away and all that, in the beginning it was great, because we had 600 acres of land that was mostly wilderness.
Not completely virgin wilderness from, whatever but still. And we gave away 300 acres of it, and it was combined with some other land and made into kind of a nature preserve, and I was psyched. I thought that was so cool, right? That was great. But then, and I guess I said this in my book, it's like, you know the thing about cosmetic surgery?
The people that do it, and it becomes a little bit of an addiction, and they keep doing it, and in the beginning it works, but after a while they're just like Joan Rivers. They're freaks. It's like you look at them and you think, "Don't [00:27:00] you see?" "What are you doing to yourself?" It was like that. My mom, and my dad just went along with it, whatever.
It became an obsession. And so from that, then it became historic preservation easements on the buildings. And it was like, okay, I understand, and, we would have these meetings. Of course, they would've already decided what they were gonna do, and then they would have a meeting with me and my brother as if we were being consulted.
And it becomes clear very quickly, you're not being consulted, you're being told. So they started doing that, and we were like, "Okay." And, but, we would say "Okay, we gave all that land away and we created the Phelps Research Area, and that's really great. Why do we need to do this?" And it, but, and it just didn't stop.
It was like easements on the pro- and then there were easements on the remaining property, and then there were... And it just didn't stop. And so at a certain point, again, there's a message that's being delivered, and you think, Okay, who exactly are you protecting it from? [00:28:00] Because we're the ones that are gonna inherit it.
So if you really wanna protect it, what you should be doing from an inheritance or an estate tax point of view, is conveying it to us so that we already own it and we have an investment in it, but that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is you're putting all sorts of legal frameworks around it.
And if there's one thing that we've seen, particularly in our government today, there's a world where legal frameworks don't seem to make much difference, right? It seems like there's always a lawyer ready to figure out how to undo something that isn't supposed to be able to be undone. You know what I mean?
And so it's it feels weird, and you think, "Okay I get the message," and it's not the message you think you're delivering.
Haley Radke: Tell me how your view of adoption has shifted over these last few years.
Alex Blum: I think I've become a lot more conscious of... in the course of writing the book, actually, it was part [00:29:00] of... it was a, a learning process for me in terms of discovering my own feelings and having more of a developed point of view about it, and then all the things that I've heard from other people, and I've been on Louise and Sarah's Adoptee Cafe, and I've listened to people talk and stuff like that.
And the first thing is that adoption is complicated and people have a real desire to oversimplify it and not to appreciate there's two groups of people that are experienced it to the largest extent, and those are the people it seems like nobody wants to listen to, and that is the mothers who give up their child and the child themselves.
Regardless of whether you're adopted as an infant, there's still, to your point there, there's a dynamic there. There's something going on there as a child and it's-- I think this, the [00:30:00] adoptive parents that recognize that are doing a really good thing and being really smart. You have to be open to the child's experience of it and their point of view of it, and you have to be as honest as you can be, and you have to not be overly invested in your own perception of what it's supposed to be.
"Oh, I adopted this kid and they're gonna go to Harvard." Yeah, not their problem. That's your problem, kinda thing. So I guess in that sense, my perception has really evolved in terms of the complexity of it and I think it's very challenging for adopted-- it's-- parenting's challenging anyway.
I think adoptive parenting can be every bit as challenging, if not more, and I think people have a tendency to just the, old truism. It's like, "Oh, you're so lucky because they chose you," that thing that everybody wants to say who isn't adopted, or has never given up a child. It's yeah, [00:31:00] great.
That's an insight that's just about very small. It's just about this thick. It's a very shallow insight if you're the person that's experienced it.
Haley Radke: What have been some of the reactions to your book now that it's been in the world many months and also some of the media coverage that you and your brothers have had?
Alex Blum: It's been great. It's been a, it's been a great experience. The New York Post article and the People article both, they were really fun. The meeting up in New York thing that we did for the New York Post was just fabulous. It was so fun, and it was so fun for the four of us to be in the same place because we don't... my brother Pete lives in Florida, my brother Hank lives in Baltimore, and in the beginning, my brother Bill was living in London, so getting everybody all together in the same place was not always all that easy. So that was a great experience. It was super fun and the, the People magazine thing was fun.
My experience also, [00:32:00] and it isn't wholly related to the adoption thing, is that people have reached out to me that I haven't spoken to in years, in decades, like people that I've known or people I was friends with or whatever, and that, those kinds of communication have been emotionally satisfying. I guess I don't know. There's something about the book where people have reacted to it in a really emotional way. People I've known for a long time have reached out to me and either written me long emails or even you know when you get one of those texts that's a mile long where somebody's like poured their heart out in a text kind of thing.
And also people that I didn't know that have read it and that have wanted to talk to me about it, that have responded to it and wanted... I have a friend, my neighbor, and he read it, and he was like, "You gotta come over. We gotta talk about it." We had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation about it right off the bat, and now we have a completely different relationship than we had before.
You know what I mean? So in that sense, that's been really [00:33:00] fantastic. The whole thing has been really positive, and I'm sure that there are people that have read my book that don't agree with me and think that I'm a jerk and whatever. Okay, everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I haven't really had a lot of interaction with those people.
There's a few people that went on there's somebody went on Amazon and gave me a one-star rating. It's like, okay, great, whatever. That's how you feel. It's okay.
Haley Radke: In podcasting, that's how you know you made it.
Alex Blum: Yeah, right? Yeah. If nobody... Yeah, exactly. That's great. I love that. That's true.
Haley Radke: I'm curious if you've thought about this. People love the reunion story, right? That they're obsessed with it. It's heartwarming. I call it reunion porn. People- love it. And why? Because they ultimately understand it's really [00:34:00] difficult that you were separated from your siblings for your whole life.
Alex Blum: It is. And I spent so much of my life thinking, because I think I was told to think this, that like it's no big deal, right?
And again, people who don't, who aren't connected to this issue, that's always with you. "Oh, what's the big deal? You were adopted. You grew up," and they're like, "What's your problem?" kinda thing, right? And and I carried that opinion around with me for a long time so what?" And only when this happened, I started to realize actually how significant it is and how much of an emotional landscape there is there.
And, there's so much to discover about yourself and other people and the situation and to have my three brothers and there was a funny thing that happened the first time we spoke. We talked for an hour and a half, and I hung up the phone. I was like, "Ah," I turned to my wife. I said, "I love these guys."
And she goes, "Of course you do. They're just like you." Which was such a funny, perceptive thing for her to say. But it is this amazing thing where all of a sudden I felt like I got three best [00:35:00] friends kinda like overnight. Like there was... and this goes to the nature versus nurture issue that you raised before.
It was just different. Here they were, these guys, and there it was. We settled in immediately to this sort of interaction. And we have a good time, we make fun of each other, we have this sort of funny, sarcastic, but very open, emotionally open kind of relationship with each other, and it was just there.
It like, we didn't have to build it. We didn't have to create it. I didn't need anybody to, give me a resume and explain to me who you are and can I trust you? You know what I mean? It, none of that. It was just like, there it is.
Haley Radke: Is Bill the oldest of the three?
Alex Blum: Bill's the youngest. Hank is the oldest of the three.
Haley Radke: He's the youngest. Pardon me. Okay, so Hank.
Alex Blum: Yeah.
Haley Radke: How did Hank feel about being usurped as the oldest brother?
Alex Blum: Ah, he was thrilled. It was hilarious. He was like, "I was never supposed to be the older brother." She, it was really, he's so funny about it. He's "See, you weren't here. I shouldn't have had to deal with this [00:36:00] stuff. That's you. You should have been there," which I just loved. And actually, Andrea, my wife, is really funny because she conversely, she says to me, in my adoptive family, I was the younger brother, and she said to me, "You're, you've always been an older brother personality. You were, you're not a younger brother. You're an older brother personality. You're kinda the person that's in charge and deciding things, and you were born a grown-up," this kinda thing. So it's very funny because on the one side I have Hank saying, "I shouldn't have had to do this stuff. You should've been there. I wish you had been there. I wish I had an older brother," and on the other hand, my wife's saying to me, "You're not a younger brother. There's no way. You were meant to be a younger brother," right? So on both sides, we sorta have that going on, which is kinda funny.
Haley Radke: How has this impacted your relationship with your adoptive brother?
Alex Blum: It's great. I just love him. He's so funny. So when this whole thing happened, my kids, I have two stepkids and three of my own kids, and so we have this [00:37:00] whole blended family going on. And so my stepkids and my kids and everybody, they were brought into it, and COVID happened pretty quickly after this happened, and we started doing Zoom calls with everybody.
So we'd have my nieces and my brothers and their spouses and my kids, and it was like this whole free-for-all. It was really, it was great. But I was a little bit worried because I hadn't really brought my brother, my adopted brother, into the situation, and I was a little worried because I was afraid...
I didn't want him to feel in some way that he had been replaced or that he was not part of it. And so I was a little bit worried. And so I called him, I said, I, there's something I gotta tell you." And so he's like, "Okay, sure." And so I tell him the whole story about what happened and all the rest of it, and he's listening, and he's not asking any questions, and I'm telling the whole thing, and I get to the end of it, and I'm like, "So what do you think?"
And he looked, and there was a pause, and he goes, "You gotta have a party." And that was that. Which [00:38:00] of course I should have known because that's who he is.
He was never gonna be all tortured about it, but I was worried about it. And it was so funny because there's this thing I sometimes say, which is that everybody's always in character, and he was so in character.
That's exactly... I should have known that's how he would respond. He wasn't gonna have a big problem with it.
Haley Radke: Did you guys ever talk about being adopted growing up?
Alex Blum: Not very much, because the message that we were given from the start was my adoptive parents did the right thing in that they told us when we were very young, and that I am convinced, and I'm sure you agree, that is the right thing. Do not wait. That's a bad idea. So we were told very early on, and I give-- and I'm sure that's what the adoption agency told my adoptive parents and all, and that was good. But what went with it was this, "Yeah, so this is it. You're adopted. It's no big deal, and that's it. Let's move on." And there was no discussion, and there was, there were, [00:39:00] my, my adoptive parents were 100% not interested in any discussion of who our parents might be or anything like that.
So my brother and I took that on. It was "All right. Whatever." And that was the end of that. We knew we were not brothers, right? We had no DNA connection, and we knew that, and that made kinda sense 'cause we didn't look alike particularly or anything like that.
But yeah, we just accepted the sort of party line, which was, "It's no big deal. Doesn't matter. Let's move on."
Haley Radke: I am really excited for people to read your book, An Accident of Birth. You include so many historical events throughout, and I think fellow baby scoop era adoptees will really enjoy it. And this really unique thing about your book is you include the chorus of your bio brothers chiming in-
Alex Blum: Yeah
Haley Radke: and sharing what was happening for them throughout the same [00:40:00] times, and I really appreciated that. That's one of the most difficult things, I think, for me in reunion is you know, seeing the family pictures and I'm not there-
Alex Blum: Yeah ...
Haley Radke: and wondering, where was I during that time? It's like the sliding doors moment of like we're in parallel lives, but-
Alex Blum: Yeah
Haley Radke: So yeah, I think folks will really enjoy reading your memoir. I'm really excited to share it with folks.
Alex Blum: I'm glad. That's so great. I, and I really appreciate that. I appreciate your point of view. And I have found that a lot of people, regardless of their age or what generation they are, even whether adoptees or they're not, the one thing I have found that really makes me happy is that people tell me all the time, "I see myself in your book."
They find something to attach to and there's a lot of variety in terms of what that is, and that makes me happy- ... 'cause that, I feel like [00:41:00] if that's the case, then I feel like I did something right, which is good.
Haley Radke: And I read portions of it physically, but I also listened on audio to prepare for our conversation today, and I love hearing all your voices. I think that's really special.
Alex Blum: That was genius, the moment when we figured out to do that. It was like we were at the recording studio and we were there and it was like how do we do this? They're not here. We can't put them all together in the same place. And we set the whole thing up and I just was so happy we were able to do that.
I'm glad that's your reaction, and that's exactly what we were after, which it was, and I think you described it this way, as like they're kind of a chorus, and so to hear their own voices rather than me, I was so excited about it and I was so glad it worked. It just, I think it's great.
Haley Radke: And you all sound similar, which is pretty special too.
Alex Blum: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Alex, what did you wanna recommend to us today?
Alex Blum: I read this book. There's a lot of books out there about adoption obviously, and there's a lot of how-to books and stuff like [00:42:00] that which I'm suspicious of just to put it nicely. But I read this book called Relinquished, which is written by this woman Gretchen Sisson, and it's a study that she did where she, it's where she interviewed mothers who gave up their children over a period, a long period of time repeatedly, and she talks about their experience and why they gave up their kids.
Most of them gave up their children not because they wanted to, but because they had to for either financial reasons or... there's a young woman she talks about, and she said literally, if somebody had given me $1,000, I wouldn't have given up my kid. She said, "I couldn't even figure out how to buy a car seat. Forget about a car. I couldn't even figure out how to buy a car seat. I just didn't see any way that I could get through this. So I gave up my kid, and I've regretted it [00:43:00] every single day since then. And Gretchen Sisson points out that the fact that a mother says that I'm sorry, and maybe this is a little political, though I don't think it is.
It's a failure of our society that a woman who has a kid has to give that child up because she, there's, there is no societal support and she can't get any help. I think that's wrong.
Haley Radke: Yep.
Alex Blum: So I think that book really... those stories are incredible, and I think she says some very valuable things about misperceptions of adoption and the politics of it nowadays and all of that. I just thought it was an incredible piece of work, like really impressive.
Haley Radke: Agreed. Yes. She's a sociologist and scholar and yeah it's fabulous. I'm working on a project myself called On Adoption this year, which is a podcast covering the same themes as Gretchen covers in [00:44:00] her book, and I'm really referencing her book quite often, and she's gathered so many facts and statistics to share with people. It's just excellent. So great recommendation. Thank you.
Alex Blum: Yeah. I was so impressed by her, and the one thing that really struck me, which made me a little bit angry, was the politicization of adoption and people relating it to abortion and all this other stuff that's gone on is infuriating, and she's so informed and she's amazing. I just think it's amazing what she did.
Haley Radke: Agreed. And she's a, a great example of an adoptee ally 'cause she never-
Alex Blum: Yeah ...
Haley Radke: speaks over us and she's always in support of adoptee advocates. I really appreciate that about her, too.
Alex Blum: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing part of your story with us, Alex. I'm sure folks will check out your book, An Accident of Birth: A Story of Adoption and Identity, [00:45:00] and we'll make sure to link to that in the show notes.
And in the meantime, where can folks follow you and connect with you online?
Alex Blum: That's great. Thank you so much. This has been really great. It's a privilege to meet you, and I really appreciate the whole conversation and and you're out there with your podcast, which I think is great. I think that's really good.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you. Do you have Instagram, website you wanna shout out?
Alex Blum: There's a website which is talexblum.com, and on the website, that's the website for the book, and it's, there are links to all the podcasts and everything like that on there. And the Instagram, which is talexblum as well, so it's pretty easy to find.
Haley Radke: Great. We'll make sure to link to those in the show notes for folks as well.
Alex Blum: Great. Thank you so much.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
I am so glad to be back with you [00:46:00] friends. Thank you for your patience as I had a bit of a, in quotation marks, summer break. Actually, I have spent the balance of my time working on my new project On Adoption, which I'm very excited to share with you soon. I'm still looking for your support. We are having an adoptee read-a-thon put on by our friends at Adoptees For Family Preservation, and we will have the dates, how you can attend and participate up on social media.
Please check for that. We will also link to any information we have for you in the show notes, so please click through and I would love to have you come and hang out with us. There's also going to be a silent auction as a part of that, and all the proceeds go to Adoptees for Family Preservation. They are [00:47:00] a registered 501[c][3] and all donations will be tax deductible. Tax deductible. That's tricky to say. Anyway, I'm so glad to be back and podcasting and talking to fellow adoptees for Adoptees On and just know we are so hard at work behind the scenes getting On Adoption ready for the public and my team is so incredible. I can't wait to tell you all about them, and we have so many good things coming up to share with you soon and all of that is only possible through your support, your generosity sharing with your connections that we're working on this show and I would love for you to support Adoptees for Family Preservation, which in turn helps On Adoption come and exist in this world.
When I dreamed [00:48:00] up making a narrative-style podcast that told the adoptee experience and the birth mother experience and what's happening right now for birth parents in contemporary adoption I had no idea the things I would learn and the depth of work it takes to make a really excellent, listenable audio documentary.
And I've learned so much and I can't wait to share that with you. In the meantime, Adoptees On is back sharing adoptee voices and we have a lot of great folks lined up for this fall season and I'm also excited to share those interviews with you. So thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again [00:49:00] soon.
