48 Julian - Their History Was Not My History
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/48
Haley Radke: You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 3, Episode 9: Julian. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today, I welcome Julian Kelly to share her story. Julian and I talk about her search for identity, what she's done to build stronger attachments in adulthood, and how her music and songwriting allow her an amazing outlet for all the feelings.
She is wise and talented, and I don't want you to miss anything that she shared. In fact, I was so focused. Here's my true confession: I was so focused on what Julian was saying as I was interviewing her, there's a few minutes where I didn't even notice that we had a bad connection. And normally I would edit that out, but it's just so interesting and good that I know you'll be able to overlook that because we come right back to clear and you'll be able to understand everything. So just so you know, that's coming.
It's just such a great interview; I just loved my time with her. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and all the links to everything we talked about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Sorry for those couple of minutes, but it is so worth it. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Julian Kelly. Welcome.
Julian Kelly: Hi, thank you.
Haley Radke: I would love it if you would just start out and share your story with us, Julian.
Julian Kelly: My adoption story is unique and complicated, just as many others are. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland (according to one source). Another source says that I was born elsewhere in France, so I'm not really sure.
I was adopted by a family. Legally, they adopted me around three years old. During the time that I was not adopted, I was in the system. I was in foster care and also in a couple of orphanages, then was eventually adopted. And my adoption was a closed adoption, so I had virtually no information about either side of my family. Everything that I had was basically hearsay from the social worker. So, when I decided that I wanted to try and find my birth family, I was starting from zero.
Haley Radke: When you just said, “I don't actually know if I might have been born in France,” I was like, What? That is some interesting information that you got.
That, so starting from zero, what does that look like?
Julian Kelly: Do you mean starting from zero with my search or just starting with zero in my psyche, and my being, and my process of trying to make peace with my adoption? Which one are you interested in?
Haley Radke: All of them. Let's start with search.
Julian Kelly: Okay, my search for my birth family was essentially my search for my identity, because my adoption was a closed adoption. So I wasn't privy to basic biological information. In fact, I later found out that the agency even changed my date of birth. A lot of the information that you get comes from the social worker, and it's not written down, and it could be wrong. And a lot of the information that I had in the beginning was based on things that just my adoptive parents remembered that the social worker had said, and weren't sure if they remembered them correctly.
I started with what I thought I knew, which was that the family was located in Baltimore, and part of the family was. The other part of the family was in France. Since I had so little information to go on, what I did was I went on AncestryDNA. And took the DNA test there and that connected me with my father's family.
I connected with them and became very, very close with an aunt on that side. Her name is Manuela and she was incredibly helpful to me. She was able to tell me who was in Baltimore in ‘83 (the year I was born). Then I connected with the adoption agency to try and find information on my mother's side of the family and that was very difficult.
The agency told me that they'd lost my biological mother's file. At one point, they gave me incorrect information. They gave me somebody else's file once and told me that both of my biological parents were deceased. I mean, I really, really, really went through it with the agency. And finally they said, “Okay, we've lost the file. So we have to go to the state archives to search for it. And hopefully it'll be there. And if it's not there, then we can't help you.”
I had to file a bunch of paperwork and they just dragged their heels with searching the archives. This process went on for a number of years; I think it was six years. Eventually, the social worker that I was working with said, “Well, there is another name in the file that belonged to my adoptive parents.” And just on a crapshoot, she thought, Well, did your biological mother try to put another child up for adoption? and “I'm going to reach out to this woman, this random woman, and see if maybe you're her child,” (basically).
And it turned out that my biological mother had at one point, tried to put my sister up for adoption and my sister's information had gotten switched. The file information had gotten switched. So we were able to connect that way. So it was very complicated and frustrating and there were a lot of emotional ups and downs, because I’d get these calls like, “We found her, we found her!” And then a call would come a week later, which would say, “I'm sorry, I was wrong. I had the wrong person. I'm still looking, but I was mistaken. That's not her.”
So I would have these moments of elation and feeling like I finally found my family. And then there would be this horrible letdown that happened twice. The agency also was supposed to hold on to a letter for me that was allegedly written by my biological mother. And I was supposed to be able to pick that letter up when I was 18.
I called the agency shortly thereafter, and they'd lost it. And after briefly speaking with my birth mother, she said she'd also left tapes, like little audio tapes with her voice on it for me, and none of that was kept for me. Nobody knows where any of it is.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.
Julian Kelly: It was rather complicated.
Haley Radke: That is one of the most wild stories I've heard for a domestic situation (domestic adoption).
Julian Kelly: Yeah, it was really complicated and I think that probably the agency, I think they felt pretty bad about the fact that they'd lost my paperwork, but also were trying to cover their tracks and were worrying about a possible lawsuit.
So in many ways, I think the answer for them was to just drag it on, and drag it on, and drag it on, indefinitely.
Haley Radke: You said you were able to speak with your birth mother.
Julian Kelly: Yes, I spoke with her a few times in April.
Haley Radke: And what did—sorry, I don't… When did you actually start the search? You said it took about six years.
Julian Kelly: The entire search took two decades. I'd actually started looking when I was 13. I started going online to chat rooms and also adoption websites and posting my information. At one point, I even put an ad in the newspaper, just doing everything that I could to find them.
And then finally, two years ago, I located my paternal side. And then just this year, I was able to connect with my maternal side.
Haley Radke: Wow. Okay.
Julian Kelly: Yeah.
Haley Radke: You and I are actually the same age. I was born in ‘83 as well.
Julian Kelly: Oh, okay.
Haley Radke: So I remember doing that when I was a teenager too, posting online in different forums and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Julian Kelly: Yeah. Similar.
Haley Radke: Okay. Let's pause on the search stuff, but you were talking about your search for identity. And so did that start when you were as young as 13?
Julian Kelly: I think my search for identity actually started even younger than that. I remember being in first grade and we had a family history assignment. We had to report on where our families came from and our family tree, and then we had to create these little paper cutouts of the members of our family. I remember sitting there feeling almost paralyzed with this pair of scissors in my hand, because I knew I was an adoptee.
I think that was the moment when I thought—definitively in my mind, I knew that the lineage that my adoptive parents came from was different from mine. And I had this deep desire to represent myself authentically, but I didn't know how, because I didn't have the information. So, I just remember sitting there and feeling so frustrated, because I had no story.
So many of my classmates, eventually after they finished cutting out their little paper people, they got up and they knew the stories of their families. They knew, “Oh, well, my family came from England” and “This is how our journey was, and this is what our culture involves, and these are the foods we eat, and these are…” They knew all of that stuff. And for me, I knew only about my adoptive family's heritage, but not about my own.
I was cognizant of the fact that their history was not my history. Even at that young age, I felt a tremendous hunger to just know what my story was. I remember being frustrated, because I went home and I talked to my dad and I was like, “What do you know about my adoption? What do you know about my biological parents?” And he didn't know very much. And it was really frustrating for me. I remember feeling, Why don't you know?
And then also, around the same time, it occurred to me (very young, first grade), occurred to me that I was essentially living and being raised by complete and total strangers. And it just hit me like a brick wall. All of a sudden, I felt tremendously alone in the world and isolated. And just like, Where is my tribe? Because all of my classmates, the people around me, they seem to have such a deep interconnectedness with their families. And even at that young age, I realized there was something different in the way that my parents and I interacted, and the way that I was attached to them (or not attached to them, I should say) that was different from the experience of my peers.
Haley Radke: So you were adopted out of foster care and some orphanages, so you had– There were lots of breaks in your care, before you went to them.
Julian Kelly: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Do you think that had an impact as well?
Julian Kelly: I do. I really do. And it's really interesting that you said that, because my adoptive mom, she always talks about when I came home (the first time I came home), I'd slept in the car, because I was emotionally exhausted. They said I screamed and screamed and cried and cried, and it was obviously extremely traumatic for me to just be thrown into a new world with strangers that I didn't know. And they brought me over to my grandfather's house, and my adoptive mom would try to hold me. And every time she tried to hold me, I'd bite, and I'd kick, and I'd scream. And she couldn't understand it.
That was before these wonderful books we have now, about the primal wound and everything. And she didn't understand that I'd experienced a real trauma and was literally pushing her away, and wanted nothing to do with her. So it was very evident: I stopped eating for a while and my father had to call my pediatrician. And the pediatrician's response was, “Well, children won't starve themselves. So don't worry, she'll eat eventually when she gets hungry enough.”
I remember hearing those stories, growing up with those stories of those first days (because I don't have a whole lot of memories of them). Everything about it to me now as an adult says trauma. And to me, it seems so obvious, but to them, they thought, Well, maybe she's too young to really have a traumatic experience of separation. Maybe she's too young to be cognizant of the fact that she's been moving from unstable place to unstable place. And that maybe they just had no sense of the fact that I was aware that what was happening to me didn't feel right.
Haley Radke: Some of these feelings about not attaching and the impact that trauma had on you as a little wee person—how has it, has it continued into adulthood for you?
Julian Kelly: The impact as a child was profound. It's funny, I feel guilty saying this, but I felt virtually no attachment towards my adoptive parents. I don't know if that was part of the dynamic or the trauma of being separated, but I felt nothing for them. I think I related to them as caregivers. I understood that they were my providers, and that I needed to behave in a way that was pleasing to them, because that was a matter of survival for me.
So I needed to adapt to their ways, and I think I understood that at a very young age. But as far as feeling true love and bondedness, there was none of that. Then, as I got older, I don't know, I felt such a void. I felt an incredible void. So I sought out a lot of therapy work and really dug deep and started asking the difficult questions of, How do I learn to feel attached to other people? How do I let myself become securely attached to safe people in my life?
And I did that work and it was very, very challenging. And now I feel, I do feel attachment now as an adult, deep attachment in fact. But as a child, I did not.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I think probably there are quite a few of us that maybe have had the similar experience of not feeling connected to our adoptive parents, but so hard to say that out loud, right?
Julian Kelly: Yeah it is. It's hard to say, but I feel like people need to know that this is just the reality of our experience as adoptees. And this is a biological thing. Even as a child, I experienced feelings of, What's wrong with me? Why don't I feel attached to my parents? Why don't I? Even that young, even in the first grade, it was really evident to me that the people around me, the kids around me were far more bonded to their parents than I was. And I never really could shake the feeling that I was living with strangers. And for me, I always felt an element of distrust, and anxiety, and a sense of not fully feeling safe. But most certainly, I never really felt as though I was a full member of their tribe, even as a child.
And the older I got, the more I felt that I was different and not fully accepted because of these differences, and they were just… There were differences, I think… For example, I have a very artistic temperament and my adoptive family is very concrete. Growing up, there was a sense of (for me), I was looking for deep artistry in the world and I was seeking out new ways of self expression, yet I was living in a family where those were not their priorities. And I was lucky in the fact that they allowed me to explore my interests and they didn't try to block my creativity, but they certainly didn't understand it.
Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit more about— You said you went to therapy and that you feel like you finally learned to have a deep attachment to others. Could you talk a little bit about that and what are some of the things you've learned or done to do that?
Julian Kelly: Well, I think the number one thing, and this is going to probably sound a little bit controversial, but I was in a therapy relationship (circa 2006). And it was a really traumatic relationship for me. But in the beginning, it was very healthy. And in the beginning of the relationship, the therapist that I was seeing took on the role of surrogate mother. And in many ways, she fulfilled the fantasy that I had, that I hoped that my biological mother would be. And so I think it just opened something up in me, because for the first time, I felt like I was somebody's child (even though it was a therapy relationship).
In the beginning, I think that she, in a sense, reparented me. And so I went through these really infantile states in the therapy, and made my way through that into adulthood and through that. Just through the experience of loving her deeply and feeling deeply loved, I was able to acknowledge the fact that, Hey I can feel these feelings, I'm capable of it.
And then it just started to happen in other relationships. I realized that I had attachments, deep attachments to people, but I just wasn't even necessarily aware of it. For instance, my grandmother, she and I were very close, but we didn't talk about our feelings. And there was, it was like a muted closeness. It didn't look like what other people had with their grandmothers, so I guess on some level, I assumed that I was broken and I wasn't feeling things fully. But it was more learning to express, and learning to allow myself to be vulnerable with others. After I learned those skills, I was able to move forward, get married, and feel very, very deep attachment to my husband. And just foster that.
I have friendships that I feel tremendously connected in those relationships, but there are still some walls with my adoptive family that are very specific to them, I think, too. In part, I never felt fully accepted by them. And not just my adoptive parents, but it extended into other areas of the family. I was very, very close to my maternal side, but my paternal side just—I think they disliked me because of my racial composition (or what they assumed my racial composition was). And so I grew up hearing some disparaging remarks about people of the race, which they assumed me to be. And it was very hard for me to fit in with that. Yeah, to find my place in all of that, and to develop a solid sense of identity among people that disliked me because of my assumed racial composition.
Haley Radke: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you experienced that. You're still in touch with your adoptive parents, then? Even though you felt detached from them, are you still in contact with them, and did they know you're searching and everything?
Julian Kelly: Yes, even though there have been so many growing pains with my adoptive parents, I'm very close to them, and I don't know if it's a trauma bond, or if it's just… I don't know, I really don't know why we continue to choose to be bonded so much, even though there are many emotional components in the relationship that are lacking.
But they were fairly supportive of my search. I think they felt a little threatened by it in the beginning. I think they were worried that they might be replaced, but after they realized that the place that they have in my life is a permanent one, they just came to terms with things. But I can sense, sometimes I feel—I don't know, it's a really strange thing. It's a really strange thing to be, in some ways more attached to my adoptive family, my adoptive parents, more so than I am to my biological family. Because, you know, I'm in reunion now, and that has been incredibly complex.
It's changed my views in many ways. I feel like the adoption system is incredibly broken. There are so many more things that we could be doing to preserve families and to protect children that we're not doing, just because of costs, just because of greed. And it's endlessly frustrating to me, that aspect of adoption. Yet at the same time, I have to acknowledge that after meeting one side of my family, I'm fairly confident that I would not have had a very good life on that end.
And it's painful for me to actually acknowledge that, but there seems to be some very serious mental illness on one side. I think that based on the experiences of my siblings, that had I stayed in that environment, that I would have shared the same fate (which it would have included really horrible abuse).
So I'm kind of in a weird place, because I'm not pro-adoption. I'm never going to advocate for that being the solution. Yet at the same time, I have to acknowledge that had I stayed in that family, I think I would not have made it to adulthood.
Haley Radke: That's something that so many of us go through in reunion. What if, the what ifs, and yeah, I really appreciate you sharing about your story and all of these pieces.
And what I'd love to shift to, you mentioned that you are artistic and in fact, you are a singer and a songwriter. And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your work there and how adoption and being an adoptee has impacted that.
Julian Kelly: That's a loaded question.
Haley Radke: Sorry. (laughs)
Julian Kelly: (laughs) I've been very artistic from the beginning. Art has always been my way of processing my feelings and just coping with the world, coping with really intense feeling states that adoption imposes on us (in many cases). The themes in my life, even as a child–-I had deep grief about losing my family. And it was grief that I couldn't really talk about with my adoptive parents, because we weren't close enough for that. And I don't think they would have been open to it or would have understood, even, because they have no frame of reference for it.
My way of coping with those feelings and with that grief was to put it into music, so I started to write songs. And my adoptive family realized, “Oh this kid has a knack for music.” And so I was signed to a label called Jazz Street Station when I was just 12 years old, and I started to make test recordings for them. They were writing songs for the Spice Girls and really big bands, and they needed a singer to just basically sing through the songs so that the artists would know what the songs should sound like. So, I started making those when I was 12.
And then I went to Peabody Conservatory for a little while and eventually found myself on the national tour of “Songs from the Soul” and I got to do Dreamgirls. And I've traveled the world because of musical theater. And that's been great, because it's good therapy (for one). When you're on stage pretending to be somebody else, you can push aside all your own feelings and your insecurities (or whatever is ailing you), and you can just leave it in the…I don't know, in the side wings (or whatever) for a little while. So I did that for a while until I got tired of traveling. Then I went back to school for clinical psychology, and met my husband, and I got married.
But as far as how my adoption has informed my music, it's tremendously impacted virtually every area, even down to the characters that I was willing to play. I always, even as a child… Like there would be auditions for a bunch of shows and I'd have to go to Chelsea Studios in New York to go to the auditions for the national tours and everything. And I always wanted to play Orphan Annie, because I identified with her.
As an adult, I released the music album called The Family Reject. And that was an album that was pretty much entirely about adoption. I wrote that in a period of time during which I felt really rejected by my biological family. Also, I didn't feel like a full member of my adoptive family either. So I just labeled myself as a way of taking my power back and just decided, I'm going to put all these feelings and everything that I'm experiencing in the music just to hold on to my sanity. So, music has always been a big part of my life.
Haley Radke: And when you talked about putting your grief into your songwriting, do you do that when you're writing songs for other artists as well?
Julian Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Everything that I write, I just write from a place of truth. And so whatever I'm experiencing in that moment, whatever is really “up” in my life during that time is what I write about. And a tremendous amount of my songs are about relationship loss, and abandonment, and grief, and love. Love has also been a huge theme in my music.
Haley Radke: This whole podcast series, we've been talking about Healing through Creativity. And I love to give people some kind of practical ideas of things they can do to use creativity in their own healing work. Do you have any ideas in the musical realm or songwriting that a layperson like myself could just— What could I do to sit down and I don't know… Could I just write a song? Or, I don't know… I don't wanna put words in your mouth. I'd love to hear if you have a couple ideas.
Julian Kelly: If songwriting is something that's relaxing for you, then most definitely. I think we all have a creative side. It's just that in many people, it's unexpressed. So I would just say, just pick up a pen and a piece of paper and just start writing. Just let it flow, even if it doesn't make sense. And then, eventually, if you feel the need to make something cohesive out of it, you can pull the little gems out of whatever comes out.
And then what I do is I sit down at the piano (and I just almost feel like the music is writing itself when I do it). But I just channel my emotions. I just play what I'm feeling like, I don't know… I don't know how to say it—it's almost like I let the music personify me. For the space of time that I'm sitting at the piano, I become the music and it flows out of me.
And that's how I do it, and I do that from a place of non judgment. So, I think that always helps, if you can be creative, but be creative in a way that it's a safe space for you, to not put a lot of judgements on your work. And to just let it be whatever it is and really respect whatever you create just for what it is. I don't know if that helps, but…
Haley Radke: It's totally helpful, and I really appreciate what you were saying about the non judgment, because I've been talking to other artists that do visual artistry, and they're like, “You're not painting for— to go in a gallery, you're just painting for yourself.” So similarly, this is a good example of that.
Julian Kelly: When I write music, sometimes I think about that. Sometimes I think, How is this going to be received by the world, by the community, by… If I'm writing for another artist, is this in line with their image? Those are things that go through my head.
But for the most part, they're fleeting thoughts and I always come back to a sense of I have to write from a place of truth and I have to express what's true for me. And it's something that I do for myself, really. And it always makes me happy to find out that my music has impacted other people in a positive way. I'm always happy to hear that.
But at its core, it's just me really learning, in a sense, how to just be in the world. And just—music is my place where I can just go and exist without judgment.
Haley Radke: That sounds pretty good. I like that. Exist without judgment.
Sorry. I'm just having this moment where I'm like, That sounds so peaceful and nice. And yeah, it's good.
Julian Kelly: Sometimes it's pretty angry. (laughs)
Haley Radke: (laughs) Okay.
Julian Kelly: Nope, really. Sometimes, I'll have a bad day and I'll sit down at the piano and it’s just vitriol. But it comes out, and it's authentic, and then it flows through. The music, I think, gives it a rhythm and it moves. So things don't really get stuck for me. When I put them to music, it's whatever I'm feeling, it just— When the song is done, it's done. It's done. And then I just move on to something else.
Haley Radke: I love talking about this with you, because I love music, but I don't feel like I'm super musically inclined or, I… But anyway, that's so cool. Interesting.
Okay. Is there anything else that you want to talk about in this area? In your album, like The Family Reject, or your songwriting, or anything else?
Julian Kelly: I guess I feel like it's important to say that being adopted has definitely really, really impacted the way that I express myself, I think, because I felt so pressured into being the person that my adoptive family wanted me to be. Music was a place where I could go to be who I really was. And as adoptees, I think it's really important for us to just find that space where we can just be authentically us.
Haley Radke: So true. Okay. So before we go to recommended resources, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to just tell us, what do you wish that most people knew about adoption?
And, before we started recording, you mentioned that we've had a lot of adoptee suicides lately, even the deaths of some young adoptees. Can you talk about that a little bit? And, again, what do you wish most people knew about adoption, that they don’t?
Julian Kelly: First and foremost, I wish that most people understood that adoption is not something that should be taken lightly. I'm sure you've heard this before, because so many people say it in the adoption community, but it's really true. That for a child to be placed for adoption, that means there was a loss. And I wish that people knew how to really respect that loss. And how to understand that we carry that loss with us for our lifetime, for the duration of our lives.
And I think that, yes, the adoption system is broken and there are so many other things that I wish people knew about adoption. But if I just had to narrow it down to a few things, I would say, I wish they knew to respect our feelings, whatever they are/ And to not impose feelings of gratitude and all of the things that people say we should feel about our adoptions. I've heard so many people say to me throughout my lifetime that I should feel grateful. And I wish that those people would instead let me feel how I feel. And let other adoptees feel how we feel, and understand that our experiences are ours to name. They’re our narratives, and they’re our lives, and it's for us to define. So that's one thing that I really, really wish people knew about adoption.
And the other thing I wish that our community could find a way to accept that we all have these really complex stories and experiences. And all of our opinions are unique to our experiences and they are so nuanced. But as adoptees, it's so important for us to come together and to support one another, so that we can make certain that some of the really terrible things that happened to us don't happen to what may be the next generation of adoptees.
So I feel that it's important for us as adoptees, whenever we can, to put our differences (the small differences) aside. And to come together for the common good, so that we can really, really create a lasting legacy and change the face of adoption as it stands today. Because so much damage is happening. There are so many adoptee suicides. There's so many children that are being killed by their adopters. And we know adoption better than anyone.
Yeah. Those are the two things that I really would say are most important. There's a lot of divisiveness I see in our community a lot, and it's really heartbreaking, because I think that if we could all agree on (not everything), but just a few things, we would be strong enough together to enact the changes that we need to protect our future.
Haley Radke: Earlier you were talking about the importance of family preservation, and I agree with all of those things that you just said. And the more we can work together for family preservation, I think we can change things, too. Yeah, I think we're on the same page.
Julian Kelly: Yes. Family preservation is so understated in our society, in general. It's almost like a concept that so few people I think are even aware of as an option. And I feel like as adoptees, for sure, that should be number one on our agenda. But I know there's a lot of things that we don't agree on, with IVF— And there's just so many opinions, but I think it's really important for us to all find a way to come together.
Haley Radke: Definitely. Thank you for that. Such wise words. I'd love to do our recommended resources now. And so, I want to recommend that you go and listen to Julian's music, The Family Reject, and she's got some other albums and they're on iTunes. I've been listening to them on Spotify, The Family Reject. And my boys have been listening, too. And I also noticed—(they're 3 and 5, so they just love music, too).
Julian Kelly: Aww!
Haley Radke: Yes. I also hadn't mentioned this yet, but you have a documentary and I was watching it on YouTube, Almost Family: A True Adoption Story. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Julian Kelly: I felt like it was important to document my experience. And the more I sought my birth family and ran into obstacles and met with other adoptees, the more I discovered that there are so many things that are broken in the adoption world. And the documentary was just my way of— It's going to sound strange, but almost eulogizing myself, and my experience?
I felt like I was doing something important when I was searching for my family and my identity. And I know that there are many adoptees out there that may never find their families. And I wanted also non adopted persons to see the impact, to see what it looks like for an adoptee who is trying to put the pieces back together.
It's just basically the story of my life. In the documentary, I mentioned my best friend of 23 years was also an adoptee and she committed suicide. And filming that documentary, I think, was also in part my way of making sense of that. I think it could be helpful for other adoptees who have similar experiences or just want to take a peek at what somebody else has been through, in adoption.
Haley Radke: It is really interesting to hear your story, and as you say, you weave some other stories (like your best friend), and it gives us more language and more words to describe our experiences. So many of us, our trauma is preverbal, and we just don't have words.
So any of these things like the podcast, your documentary, your album that's specifically adoption related—all of those things just help give us language to talk about adoption, especially with other people who have no idea what we're talking about.
Julian Kelly: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay. So good. So good. Please, what do you want to recommend to us?
Julian Kelly: The adoptee that I would really recommend is Dominique Crenn. She is an amazing chef. In 2016, she won the Best Female Chef in the World award. She's been nominated for James Beard, and she is the only female chef in the U.S. with two Michelin stars. And she has an amazing restaurant in San Francisco, called Atelier Crenn. And her story is incredible. I don't know anything about her personal adoption views, but she was adopted at 18 months. She was in France. And she refers to her restaurant as her home. She refers to her cooking as her artistry and for me (just witnessing as an outsider some for work), it just seems like it's so deeply informed by the complexities of family that she experienced due to being an adoptee.
So I would definitely recommend that anyone who is in the San Francisco area, go check out her food, but if you can't do that, she is on season two of Chef's Table on Netflix. And she's also on Facebook. I would recommend just checking out her way of expressing her complexities and her feelings, with food.
Haley Radke: That sounds amazing. And you're telling me this now, and I remember I was talking with Anne Heffron (and she's an adoptee). She wrote You Don't Look Adopted. And we were talking about how adoption is everywhere. And she was just like, “I was sick of it one day.” She's, “Oh my gosh, adoption is everywhere,” or whatever. So she's, Okay, I'm just going to lay down. I'm just going to watch a show. She turned on Chef's Table and it was her episode.
Julian Kelly: Oh….
Haley Radke: She's, Oh my gosh, even the chefs are adopted. So it's everywhere. It's everywhere.
But that's such a good recommendation. Thank you.
Julian Kelly: You're welcome.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much. So good to talk to you. Can you let us know where our listeners can connect with you online?
Julian Kelly: Yes, I am very easy to find. You can connect with me on Facebook. Type in my name, Julian Kelly, and I'm happy to add people to my personal page or my music page. I don't care. I'm just really lax. Most easily found on Facebook.
I also have a YouTube channel and I have a blog. I blog every few months, but there are some pretty good resources on that blog, especially for people who have experienced secondary rejection in their adoption reunions. So, if that's something that anybody would be interested in reading about, my blog is called I Am a Cherry Blossom in Spring. And I believe I sent you a link to it.
Haley Radke: Yes, I will put links to all of those things in the show notes.
Julian Kelly: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much. It's been just so delightful talking with you and we have different stories, but of course I feel some parallels with you as well.
Julian Kelly: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: Oh, you guys, Julian is so amazing. Go check out her music. She has an amazing voice. You are going to be impressed. I promise.
I have a new thing. I started a monthly newsletter. I started it a couple months ago, but the first one just went out last week. So “monthly,” that's, loose, in quotation marks. If you want to stay caught up with what's happening with me and the podcast, head over to adopteeson.com/newsletter, and you can sign up there.
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Would you tell one person about the show the next time you're with an adoptee support group, or your therapist, or your adoptee friend? Or your online adoptee group? Would you share the show? Tell them why it's a must listen and let them know exactly how you like to listen to podcasts. Do you listen when you're commuting, when you're working out, when you're walking your dog, washing the dishes? Share the show and tell them how amazing and portable podcasts are.
Last thing: next week, I'm going to hit pause on season 3, and we're going to have a break for a special healing episode with Lesli Johnson, where we talk about coming out of the fog. Thank you for listening.
Let's talk again, next Friday.
