55 Finale - Healing Through Creativity and Community
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/55
Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is season three, episode 15: Finale. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Throughout season three, we've been discussing healing through creativity. And for the finale, I've brought in two more adoptees who are absolute experts in this topic.
My guests are Pamela Cordano, a psychotherapist who we've heard on some of my favorite healing episodes, and also (no stranger to the podcast), Anne Heffron, the author of You Don't Look Adopted, which happens to be my favorite adoptee memoir. We discuss creativity and, “Can we actually heal from adoption trauma?,” or “Are we just building up a huge toolbox of coping strategies together?”
Get ready to put this episode on repeat because Pam and Anne have a fire hose of wisdom on topics I hadn't even considered before, like why healing in community means magnified healing. If you're listening when this has just been released, Anne and Pam are also going to tell you about a special event they're planning for February 2018, and even once they get into the details of the retreats, stick with us, because they give some great takeaways to try out, for those of us—you can just go ahead and insert that sad face emoji here from me–that won't be able to make it to the retreat.
If you're listening after the retreat has already happened, I am almost certain there will be another one in the works, so make sure to follow their socials to get details of any upcoming events.
This episode has been brought to you by my incredibly generous Patreon supporters, and so I'd like to dedicate this finale episode to you amazing people who believe in me so much that you are standing with me financially every single month. No words can explain how grateful I am for each of you.
Okay. Show notes, including links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Anne Heffron. Hi, Anne.
Anne Heffron: Hey, Haley!
Haley Radke: And Pamela Cordano. Welcome back, Pam.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Thank you. It's so good to be here. And hi to you and hi to Anne. And hi to everybody listening.
Haley Radke: I am so excited to talk to you guys, because you have something big planned. And so I really want everyone to hear about your event that's coming up.
But first, let's just talk about season three. And we had this thread, throughout, of healing through creativity. And so I was wondering what your thoughts were on that and if you had any big takeaways from listening to any of the episodes, thoughts about healing through creativity. Anne, why don't you start?
Anne Heffron: I listened to all of them at least once, and some of them I listened to a few times. I think if I put them all together, there's hopefulness. Yeah, that's what I took away from season three, was that it's one thing to tell your story as an adoptee, and sometimes that can be—well, it's depressing a lot of the times! But to take that story and then to make it art…
I mean, Brian, I listened to a couple of times just to hear his voice because he was so joyful. And even when he was close to tears sometimes, there was still an energy in his voice that's… I was calling him vitamin B in my head because I was thinking, Okay, this is where the superpower of adoption comes in. When you take what you're given and you make it into something else, like if you sing, or you create jewelry, or you paint, you do needle work…That's the joy.
I did it through writing, but I wrote about adoption so that I could have some credibility in the adoptee world, because what I really wanted to do was help other people tell their stories. Because for me to watch someone go from thinking they don't have a story to tell, or that their story is the same as everybody else's (so it's not worth telling), to seeing in their face them recognizing that their story not only has merit, but that it's actually really important to tell—That is the very, very best thing.
And so when I heard Pam on your show, I was thinking it's her! She's the golden ticket, because she understands how the brain works. And I want to connect with her, because I think it's like when you have two people at the piano, I felt like we could cover a lot of keys together and really tap into people. People who are really stuck and just don't have hope of, how are they special? How are they gonna get out of feeling trapped? And what can they do with their life? What do you think, Pam?
Pam Cordano, MFT: I think creativity is such a powerful topic, and I'm so excited that you're focusing on it, because I think of creativity as being like birth and from the wreckage of our histories, and from the treasures of our lives, what do we want to create? What can we create, that touches us, and touches other people? And makes an impact, and creates a picture, or creates a sentence where there wasn't one before?
And I feel like creativity is exponential healing and offering, in the sense that it touches so many other people. And then they have a new awareness of something about what was either created, or spoken, or written that they didn't have before. And then like our consciousness rises around the issue of adoption.
Haley Radke: That was something I said to a few of the different guests I had on season three: “Do you understand that you are literally changing the societal view of adoption through this particular work?”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Right. It’s pioneer work and it's a gift.
It's a complete gift to everybody and it's powerful. Maybe it's the most powerful thing. When I hear about what people are doing with their pain and their stories and their strengths related to adoption in a direct way, I just get so inspired and strengthened when I hear about it. And it's almost like I've been in the closet as an adoptee and I've been parts of other worlds related to cancer, and illness, and trauma, and death. And I've been healing and working on my adoption, but in more indirect ways.
And so, when I heard about this Six-Word Adoption Memoir Project, I was just blown out of the water and I find myself writing my own six-word memoirs on different days (and they change, you know, one day is different from the next). And I just love the project so much and it just makes me so happy that it's adoptee specific.
Haley Radke: I know. They're so fantastic and I don't think I could just write one, like to encapsulate everything. It's…yeah. Yeah. Such a great idea. So many of my guests came up with these really unique ways to express themselves creatively. And don't you find that because our trauma, so much of it is pre-verbal, it's kind of the only way they (it sounded like to me), it's the only way they knew how to get it out of themselves.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I mean, listeners may know that Anne has been on this meme kick lately and I've been writing memes. I've been designing memes that are really— I think most of the world would consider them pretty blasphemous as far as what they're saying about being adopted. So I haven't really gone public with them yet, but maybe—I don't know if I will, but to put a picture together with a word or a phrase was so satisfying.
I basically was awake for two days just doing meme after meme after meme, and laughing harder than I've ever laughed, you know? And it was just so liberating.
Haley Radke: Okay. How do I get to see some of these?
Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh my gosh. I'll send them to you. I mean, they're pretty risque, honestly. Right, Anne?
Anne Heffron: Yeah!
Haley Radke: Do you want to give us like one, like your tamest one?
Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh, okay.
Haley Radke: No, no, no. I'm not asking Anne, because I know she'll out you in one second.
Anne Heffron: No, I'm not gonna, I would never do that. The two of us, we were up all night and we would just send them to each other. It was so….
Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. I have this really cute picture of these two babies sitting up in diapers. They're looking at each other and their hands are kind of open, like they're having sort of a baby conversation. And I have the words in big blue, bold writing: “How much did you cost?” That's a really tame one.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. [everyone laughs]
Anne Heffron: You know what it was like? And this is community and this is, I believe this is healing in community because you know, when you're a little kid and then you're sharing with a friend something that your parents probably wouldn't like, but you can't? It's like when you first say the word “fart,”or something and you can't stop laughing.
Right? I feel like we got to be children together (doing this) and then we get to switch back to being grownups, which is an amazing thing to do when you're adopted because often the child part got kind of skipped.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Haley Radke: I so feel that. I so identify with that. I feel like I was born and then I just had to be a little grown up.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Great. Can I share another meme, then, about that?
Haley Radke: Uh, yes!
Anne Heffron: You start.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. So I have this little baby vacuuming the house, and it says, “For f's sake, I'll do it!”
And that's how I felt in my house with my parents. Like, “Fine, I'll do it. I'll pull it together. I'll be here to complete your life. Whatever you need, I'll do it.” You know, so it's this angry baby vacuuming meme. With the f-word in it. [everyone laughs] I really like that one.
Haley Radke: Oh, that's good. Those are great. I think maybe you should start an anonymous account.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I thought of it. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Oh, so good. Okay. Alright. Do you have any other thoughts on the creativity piece?
Anne Heffron: Well, because I was thinking about what you said, Pam, about how, at first when I was making the memes, I just couldn't get enough of the fact that there was a picture and words? You know, it was like getting to write a children's book, but I was getting to tap into two different parts of my brain, right? I was getting to choose a picture and then I was getting to choose the words.
And I think if you look at all the guests that you've had, Haley, it's like in their own ways they were playing with pictures, right? Like, even if it was Shannon, she's stitching words, but she's also stitching pictures. And I think that—Now when I'm doing memes, I'm pretty much dropping the picture, because I have the confidence just to do the words. And then you have these people come onto your podcast and they've gone from creating to actually having to use language.
And that's a big step forward, because that's where we want to be, right? We want to be at a place where we can speak our deepest thoughts and feel heard. And so it's like a little kid—they start with Play-Doh, or they start with drawings, and then… But as adoptees, because most people didn't really understand what we were going through, our sense of language was stifled.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I think it's a relief. It's like putting forms of something unlived inside. Like the part of me that never got to live itself authentically because I was too busy being a traumatized infant and small child. And then I was too busy being used by my adoptive parents to complete their dream. I was belonging to somebody else.
So there's this whole voice and self that didn't have its right to full expression. So, to start to find expression that doesn't necessarily follow rules or please people, but is actually honest and real, is completely empowering. When I made my memes, I mean, I was laughing. I felt like my organs were laughing. It was so funny and it's such a relief to say what I wasn't supposed to say or allowed to say. And I almost felt like I was walking a little bit taller. Like, you know: I said it. I spoke the truth. I created it.
Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. I'm very sorry that I cannot post them online.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I can be twisted. As long as I don't get in too much trouble.
Haley Radke: I won't get you in trouble, I promise.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I do still have a compliant side, after all.
Haley Radke: Good adoptee. Good job. Good job.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah.
Haley Radke: The other thing that we touched on was, “Why do so many adoptees gravitate towards creative outlets?”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. I think it's because we have so much authentic life living and hiding inside of us, that it needs to come out somehow. And being straight about it hasn't worked. Society doesn't mirror our straight expression of ourselves and we have to go around the corner a bit.
And then I was also thinking that, I mean, sure. A lot of adoptees are just smart, talented, artistic people who—but that's not really what you're asking. I just think we have a hidden life and the hidden life needs expression and we have to find a way to do it that feels real enough. But that's… It's sort of like outside of the box of relating to people. Like if we try to relate our truth to our birth families or adoptive families, they often miss the mark with us. So when we create something, there's a satisfaction that won't be found in relationship.
Haley Radke: So I hadn't told my adoptive parents about the podcast, right? For like a year. And then I told them I had a podcast. And then one day my mom kind of called out of nowhere and said, “Congratulations on season three.” So I was like, Whoa, okay, so maybe they're listening. And in our last visit I said, “Are you like listening to some of them?” And she's like, “Oh yeah, I listened to a couple. I got the gist of it.”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Wow. [everyone laughs in disbelief] Oh my gosh. Thanks!
Haley Radke: That is— (Sorry, Mom. If you listen to this, I guess maybe you are listening to more.) But that is seared in my brain now.
Pam Cordano, MFT: It's like you heard one, you heard 'em all. Thanks. Ouch.
Haley Radke: I feel like I am having a hidden life. And you're talking about that. I was like, this is me expressing the hidden life. And even when I do bring it and I say, “Oh, here it is. This is like my life's work.”
“I got the gist of it.”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. This is my heart, and my soul, and my brain, and my talent, and my special voice I use.
And it's like, “Eh.”
Haley Radke: That was a fun conversation.
Pam Cordano, MFT: But good thing that the rest of us love you so much and that you're changing our lives and helping us so much. So…
Haley Radke: I know. She's not my target audience. I get that.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Right, right.
Haley Radke: Okay. With this theme of healing through creativity, just the word “healing” can be a little bit controversial. In fact, at the CUB retreat that Anne and I were at in California, someone asked the panel of therapists essentially that question: “Can we really be healed of adoption trauma?” And, you know, one of the answers given was almost an example of, “Oh yeah, well…I have all these different coping skills built in…”
And so Pam, can you speak to that a bit? Because this is something that you wanted to get to today, was coping skills versus healing. And I really want to hear your thoughts on that.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Well, I really believe it's possible to heal and to do more than develop coping skill strategies. I mean, coping strategies are really important, and to me, they're just the container for the healing.
I know that when I eat well, and exercise and sleep well, maybe even meditate once in a while, my whole system feels better (my nervous system), and that supports me to be able to heal. And healing, I think, is more about feeling different inside yourself in the world, and feeling a sense of belonging to the world and having the freedom to bring toward us what we want and to keep away from us what we don't want. And to really tap into joy, like the joy of being alive.
So you might know one of my heroes is Viktor Frankl, who was in the Holocaust, and he wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. The original title of his book was Say Yes To Life. And so he wrote the book in 11 days, right after he got out of the concentration camps for three years, where he'd lost almost everybody in his family. He found ways to tap into—I would say the meaning of being alive, the joy of being alive through all kinds of ways. Even when he was starving and dying, and trapped and had no possessions, and lost his pregnant wife and everything else in the concentration camp.
And I feel like I've healed a lot (and I wouldn't have said that maybe 10 years ago). But I think when people heal, they feel like there's a path back to that joy, and that vitality, and that saying, “yes” to life. That's what healing feels like.
It's more like the fabric of a person. It's not what a person does. Like, maybe there can be people that have very healthy eating, exercise, meditation, yoga, therapy, habits, but they feel miserable inside. Or they feel isolated, or they feel hopeless, or they hate themselves, or they have negative talk going through their heads all day long. And that's not healing. That's just having “healthy behavior.”
But healing is finding a new way to relate to yourself and to the world, where you feel like you're part of the whole dance of life, really. And that's just too poetic. It sounds too intangible. But I just know that when I have my bad moments (which of course I have them all the time), but when I have bad moments, I know there's a way through them to joy and access to what I need.
With having access to creativity, that's an avenue of expression and of connection that's really meaningful and has so much life in it. And to me, that's a very healing way of being in the world. And then we're not constantly creating (you're not constantly doing podcasts or whatever), but you have access to it.
I would use that as an example, Haley. I would just say, you know, your podcasts are creative. You created this whole Adoptees On, and it's touched so many lives. We can't even count the lives it’s touched and then it's touched the lives of the lives it's touched. The friends, like the connections of the lives it's touched. So, there's this whole exponential kind of touching lives that you've done. And you probably have difficult times with your kids or, you know, whatever… Difficult things happen. But this is alive and happening all the time in your life. Do you know what I mean?
Haley Radke: Are you gonna make me cry on my finale? That is so mean. I can't believe you would do that. Wow. [everyone laughs]
Pam Cordano, MFT: But so even in your worst moment, you can know that, right? That that’s happening. And it's happened. It's real and it's still happening. And you have more in you. So I think that that's an aspect of healing.
Haley Radke: I love thinking about that. Thank you.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Thank you. That’s from all of us. The finale.
So I was adopted at the age of six months. And in my first six months, I was left alone in an apartment by my birth mother, who worked full-time. And I was, I'm sure, very hungry. And she was also physically abusive. I was in two different foster homes, and then I was in a shelter, and then finally adopted.
And so by the time I was adopted, I was— My grandparents told me that I didn't smile, or cry, or show any facial expression at all. I was basically frozen. And I have the feeling now, like when I try to feel what that might've felt like, that I pulled deep into my bones just to try to survive, really.
Something that I've said to you, Haley, before is that for me, moving toward healing has been a necessity. I think I would've died. I think I actually was close to death as a baby, as a newborn in this apartment. And I think that my body knows what dying and freezing feel like, so strongly.
And so healing is about filling out my whole physiological system, opening my eyes, inhabiting my eyes. And moving back into the flow of life and participating with life.
Anne Heffron: It's exactly what I see in the Write or Die. And I watch the people's bodies. People (adoptees in particular) come in and they are coping. They got to this, they're living their lives, you know, they drove their car… But it's like—I watch their eyes and their eyes, they move around a lot or they look down. And their bodies are stiff. It's a frozenness.
And there's a moment in every class I've seen when they realize that— When they feel in their body, they feel the merit of their story or they feel the spark, their shoulders go back, the blood goes to their face and their eyes change. And it happens every time. I think that that's the body. Right? And I think that that's what I recognized in you, Pam, and that's why I want to work with you. It's like you have this vital force.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Mm-hmm.
Anne Heffron: Right? It's like if there's a pool, I'm pretty sure you're gonna jump in it.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. So, I guess what we're saying is that a person can have really good coping skills, but not be healing. They can be more surviving and coping. People who are dying of—(I work so much with cancer). People who are dying of cancer can heal emotionally. They can die on a happy note. And I've seen it again and again. People coming back to life, even if they're in a dying process.
There was something that Anne and I were talking about earlier today, which is that in our brains, we have something called the default network. And the default network is if you—(I picture it like a triangle, although I don't know what shape it actually is). But it's like the stories where we tell ourselves about our lives and who we are, they go around and around and around, and our brains have this negativity bias. So, the stories in our default network are mostly negative stories.
Like we wake up in the morning and our default network is going, and we're thinking, I screwed up last night, and Oh my gosh, I forgot to send in that check. And Oh, my daughter's pissed at me still, and blah, blah, blah (and you know, everything wrong with us). And we can't heal in our default network. Our default network is like a closed system that just goes around and around and around. And so to heal, we have to shift into something called our direct experience network. And that's where something new can happen, where we feel safe enough to let something new in.
And that's really what therapy's all about. So when a client comes to therapy, if they're just sitting in their default network, “Blah, blah, blah, my mom, this, my dad, my husband, my kids…,” they're not gonna walk out of the room any different. But if a therapist can help a client shift into their direct experience network, that's where they're in the moment. They're having a direct experience with one of their five senses. They're probably in their bodies to some extent, and something new can happen. That's where healing happens.
For me, healing has been about doing some bold things to create opportunities for me to have direct experiences. Like, I've done a lot of traveling and I've done a lot of humanitarian work where I'm encountering people who are also having other kinds of problems than I have. And I've thrown myself out of what's familiar to throw myself into direct experiences, and that's where I feel like I've gotten better.
Anne Heffron: Yeah. And I had a similar experience where the healing came from two things: writing my book. (And then, what that actually did was that opened the wound.) But it didn't—that was only part of the journey. What I had to do was come back and actually do the legwork, which was like, How am I gonna survive in the world as an adoptee now? Like I feel physically and mentally challenged by coming out of the fog. I mean, I would've liked to have gone to a sanitarium and just have someone take care of me for the rest of my life, because I was tired and confused.
And I think that then to step up and say, Okay, well I'm gonna start these Write or Die classes, because this is how I'll use the tools that I have (the creativity that I have) to make a living. And to help other people at the same time.
I mean, isn't that what we're all doing? All three of us? I mean, we've figured out what our creative skills are and we're trying to help the larger community, but the adoptee community in particular, because there just aren’t a lot of guidebooks out there (or any, really). I mean, there's books that will tell you how to suffer, but they don't really tell you how to go out and feel okay.
Haley Radke: Hmm. I'm just, I'm just reading. Option B by Cheryl Sandberg. Have either of you read that?
Anne Heffron: Yeah, I couldn't finish it. I didn't really like it.
Haley Radke: Okay, well, I'm not very far in, but she talks about this thing... So Option B is… Cheryl's husband just suddenly passes away and she's talking about how she's learned resilience. And so, you know, all of those things are very tempting to adoptees to hear like, “Oh, tell me more about, you know, how can I survive from my grief that no one will acknowledge?” So in the first section, she talks about the three Ps: personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence when we have a trauma.
And so personalization, meaning, It's all my fault. So adoptees are like, Oh, it's all my fault. I was given up for adoption. Right? It's me.
Pervasiveness: Adoption affects every part of my life.
And permanence. There's nothing I can do.
And this is where– (she didn't write these parts about the adoptee, I added that). But this is where I feel like so many of us are stuck. We're stuck here. And we're learning all those coping skills. And while we talk about healing, we're really just equating coping skills with healing.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes.
Haley Radke: And so I want to hear about moving forward. You were talking about direct experiences and I want to hear all of those things.
Pam Cordano, MFT: So one thing that comes to mind with the three Ps—I read the book and I followed that story and I'm from the same area where she lives in Silicon Valley, so I was really interested in her story and her recovery. So something I've learned is that when we're bonded to our moms, or our dads, or each other, what makes a bond is a call and a response.
So when babies are born, they call by crying, and a good enough mom responds and can kind of be attuned and figure out, “Okay, is the baby hungry or does the baby need help going to sleep? Or does the baby need some stimulation (or whatever).” For us adoptees, our call and response probably got kind of screwed up with, first of all, being with a new mother and then not being mirrored in our grief that we'd actually lost our whole lineage and we're in unfamiliar territory. So there's this disruption in the call response and a disruption in the bonding.
And in my case, I didn't really bond well with my adoptive mother. I just held her at arms distance my whole life and her whole life. So I couldn't call to her, because her response wasn't what I needed. And I think that we adoptees, we have a call that we're ringing out to the world, like, “Help!!” You know, we had a bad time. The culture isn't mirroring it like the– We have disenfranchised grief; we have a traumatized brain. We don't know what to do. We don’t know how to heal, and we need a response coming to us that actually fits us, that actually is attuned to what we actually are asking for in a given moment.
So that goes back to the beginning of what Anne was saying about how this community is so special, because that's what's happening so much on social media is people are calling and other adoptees are responding and they're saying, “Oh, that happened to me too.” Or, “Oh, that's so painful.” Or, “That's so hurtful.” Or, “That's so heartless,” or whatever it might be.
And so being responded to with empathy and attunement is a very big part of healing.
That's where we have a lot of power in our community to work together to magnify the healing by doing work on a group level, like not just one-on-one. Trying to find a therapist who can, you know, understand the magnitude of the trauma of adoption, but actually working in an intentional way together to optimize that we all can respond to each other's calls because we understand this territory together.
Anne Heffron: And I think it's about—as a group, I think what I've noticed with myself and with other adoptees is it's really easy to get caught up in the story. You know, if you go to an adoptee conference, you'll find people telling the same story over and over again. And, I did it. And it's like The Old Man and the Sea in the Hemingway story, where he told his story over and over again. And we do that because we're looking for some kind of sense of finality, but we can't figure it out. So we keep saying it, but the more we say it, it's like a straight jacket.
We become our story and our brain spins trying to figure out like, What is my story? How can I tell my story? How can I… It's important to tell your story, but I think it's also important to realize that we are a body of energy. We are a bunch of cells put together. If I took your body apart, there is no story in your body. But I actually thought my story was going to kill me. And so that's why it took me so long to write it. And when I was writing it, I thought it was going to kill me. But it's not in me, you know? It's a thing, it's an idea.
And I think that what I want to work with people (because now I see this), is your story. It's not something that you have to tell, right? It's not something that you have to find all the details and get it right. You get to tell the story any way you want to tell the story. You get to own the story, instead of the story owning you. And that's where the creativity comes in.
And all of the guests on your show this season told their story in different ways, different creative ways. And it frees you. So then you can go out in the world and say, “Okay, I'm a human being with a certain level of energy and what do I want to do with this life?” Right? You deal with the story part, but then you can move on.
Which is for me, it's such a relief. I don't have to think about my story anymore, because I figured out how to tell it. And the way I figured out how to tell it was, “I'll just tell my story from my point of view because then no one can argue with me and tell me I'm wrong.” But it took me a long time to figure really basic stuff like that out.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I know that in individual therapy and also in group therapy, I try to find ways to hear the story or the essence of the story and then put it to the side. And then see what else wants to happen, because there's always more that wants to happen in this story. We all are imprisoned in our stories and they are hurting us, but we don't know what else to do and we want to make sure that they get their fair weight of the truth in them.
So today I had a client that came to my office who was in a story about her to-do list, that her to-do list is running the show in her life. So I got a big piece of paper and I sketched out this pretend to-do list with big boxes to check things off. And I put it on this table and I gathered the clocks in the office and put the clocks with the to-do list. And I had her stand up in the room and on the other side of the room, I put everything frivolous I could find.
I put these clay objects, I put this little funny plastic monkey thing, and a stuffed bear. And I put that on the other side. And so I asked her to kind of be, you know, walking around trying to figure out what she wants to do with her to-do list, because she says she wants to get out from under its control, but she says it's running her; she can’t. When she picked up the to-do list and she was actually thinking about getting it out of the room, but then she realized that her to-do list was actually keeping her safe. And she had an embodied experience, like a real experience of the fear she would feel without it. And so we're not done yet, but I had a relief, like, Okay, she just started to peek behind the story of the to-do list being so important and realizing that it's actually holding something together for her.
So, she's still grabbing on the to-do list and she went home without– We didn't work it out yet, but she's closer than ever to not being run by her to-do list, because I know that she's going to be thinking, Whoa, you know, there was more to this than I realized. Because she had an experience of it, and that really excites me.
So I feel like there's ways that the creativity and therapy can get around and under our stories. When I was training as an intern, we would use the whole group to help a person move beyond their story. So if these were cancer groups, so let's say there was a man with stage IV colon cancer and he's got a story that he always disappointed his mother, you know, and da dah, dah...
So somebody in the group would volunteer to be that story, and they would stand behind him and say, “You're such a disappointment, you've always disappointed me.” And they would be the mother giving him the story out loud. And then he would say, “Oh my God, my shoulders have so much tension.” So then somebody else would stand up and put their hands on his shoulders and provide some tension and then he might feel something else.
But we're trying to get these things out of the way so something new can happen and it's when something new can happen in our direct experience, that's when we start to heal this into becoming more of who we actually are. And we're not just trapped by these stories.
Anne Heffron: And when you see other people around you doing the same thing, I think, because in some ways terrifying to be an adoptee and to think, Well actually, who would I be without my story? Because maybe, it's the only thing we've had our whole lives, and even if it makes us feel like prisoners, it's still ours.
But you can look across the table and see, “Well, I see who you are without your story.” Right? “You're this beautiful person. You're so much without your story.” And then that gives you confidence that maybe you'd be okay without your story. I find that tremendously helpful.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I really believe in group healing and the power of group healing. It's contagious. We have these mirror neurons, you know, 30% of the neurons in our bodies are mirror neurons. So whatever's happening with you starts to happen with me and then it gets cooking. When groups are all about the story, people leave the groups feeling exponentially worse, you know?
And that's like a bad day on Facebook where it's like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe this. I can't believe that.” Like trigger, trigger, trigger. But when things start to go well in a group and there's enough safety and people start taking risks to move beyond their stories, it becomes contagious and super powerful.
And then the challenge is: How do we integrate it after the group is over? How do we go back into our lives that are organized around our stories? And how do we start to actually translate the healing into our lives? But it's easier because now we know it. Now we know there's more.
Anne Heffron: And also you have community. I mean, you and I have only met face to face twice, but it feels like I've known you forever. And there's something about knowing, you know, when you work with people. Like Haley, even, you know, I've only met– Have I met you more than twice or just twice?
Haley Rider: Just twice
Anne Heffron: Feels like, yeah. I mean, but see, I can't even keep track because you're so on my mind. I love this, because what your intention is to be the best Haley possible. And that makes it easier for me to be the best Anne possible. It's energetic group work, even from a distance. It's amazing. I am a hippie and I'm in Santa Cruz. [everyone laughs] I'm all right with that.
Haley Radke: I don't know what to say to that. It's okay.
So, I love this idea, that group healing. Pam, you said, group healing (right before we started, I think), “Group healing is magnified healing.”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I've been facilitating groups since, gosh, the mid nineties. My first experience with groups was after I got my master's in psychology, I was looking for a place where I wanted to have an internship and I was really drawn to working with cancer, even though I had never had cancer, and my family had never had cancer, and no one I really knew had ever had cancer.
But I know now that it was because when people suddenly get a diagnosis of cancer, the rug is—especially a bad diagnosis (like, you know, something that's incurable or a recurrence)... The rug is pulled out under their feet and everyone who knows and loves them, their lives are completely changed in that moment.
And something resonates for me as an adoptee with that kind of trauma of this quick shift from one world to another, one way of life to another. So I was really drawn to working with cancer because of that. And it was a place I could go and show up because of my adoption trauma. I know that now.
I was trained as an intern at this really wonderful, innovative cancer center and we would work with groups of about 20 people and everybody had a very serious diagnosis. It was people with cancer and their either significant other or someone, a friend, someone important to them. And we would all get together for 10 weeks, one day a week, all day for 10 weeks.
And it was my first experience of what a group could really do. There were ground rules like confidentiality, so we knew anything that was said was going to be kept private. And there were ground rules around not giving people advice and just letting people express themselves without any worry that they're going to have to deal with someone else's reaction to them.
And then we had all these really creative and innovative ways of working with people. And what I saw in the group was people who were dying like withering plants come back to life. It was like the group was water and sunshine to these plants. And even if they died, and many of them, most of them did, they got their twinkle back in their eyes and we had a lot of joy in the groups and people just came to life. I came to life.
And it was my first experience feeling like what a healthy family would feel like. To be an intern at this place, I had to participate for 10 weeks first and really experience it as a participant even though I didn't have cancer. And then I was able to start facilitating the groups with the main facilitators. But I felt like these people were like brothers and sisters, and that the facilitators were like parents. And I felt like they had my back and I felt like I had everybody else's back. And it was a “we” kind of a thing. And my life up until that point had been an “I” kind of a thing, like I felt on my own unless I was putting on a false front to try to survive and get through.
But I wasn't really connecting from a deeper place. And this was the first place I started to connect from a deeper place. It felt like the kind of internship or job that woke my heart up in a new way. And it was healing. It was healing to me. And then it let me know something about the power of groups.
One thing I was thinking about this good family kind of model is that when we feel safe in a group, we know that no one's going to share anything personal we say. We know that no one's going to give us advice or indulge in massive reactions to what we share. We have the space to start thawing, or fluffing up our feathers, or bringing deeper layers of ourselves forward.
And this is really what we're talking about before with creativity, where creativity is bringing something of the hidden life forward. And when we're in a group that feels safe, we can bring parts of our hidden lives forward. And it's not always about pain, and suffering, and trauma. Sometimes it's about humor and joy, and energy and vitality, and dreams that are unexpressed. And just space to be more of who we really are.
I think of groups as being really empowering to the hidden life that wants to happen, not just to the pain, and the trauma, and the darkness that has happened already. And that's maybe one of the most exciting parts. Something so wonderful for adoptees about being in a group is that we often don't see ourselves accurately.
We have our trauma that we live with, and we have whatever stories we tell ourselves about why we were given up for adoption and why we don't fit in, and why this, and why that, and everything wrong with us. And we have this traumatized brain that's just looking for problems to anticipate them and to protect ourselves, really.
So when we're in a safe group and we start to come forward with our hidden life, we start to be seen by people more accurately for who we really, really are and not for who we're pretending to be or passing as to be safe. And that is extremely empowering and exciting, because people don't know how great they are.
People don't know how aspects of them are so unique and appreciated by other people. And so they get witnessed in a group for the fuller picture of who they are, and then the roles they play in their life can expand to more roles. Like, I was always the rebellious, angry adoptee. And so to start to be seen in groups for my goodness and my kindness was just sort of—it changed my sense of myself. Like, Oh, okay, I still am a rebel and I'm still angry, but I'm also really kind. I'm not just bad. I'm also good.
That's so powerful in a group. And that's where groups are like magnified, healing because we don't just have a therapist who we're paying to… you know, it's easy to make up a story and say, Oh, okay, if I finally found an adoption competent therapist, and she's really nice to me and she doesn't argue with my level of trauma I'm describing to her, but I'm paying her. So what is it worth? Does it really matter? Is she just, you know, am I paying her to be nice to me?
But when you get in a group and you have all these people around you, people start to notice things and share how you're touching them and how you're impacting them. And then it's so much more believable to our whole nervous systems. We can kind of, it shakes up our sense of ourselves. We can go, Wow, maybe I am funny. Maybe I am edgy. I had no idea.
Haley Radke: That's amazing. That just like, is lighting my fire to get my support group started here.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah?
Haley Radke: Yes.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Do you hope for that with your support group for people to see each other and be seen in broader ways.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. And you're in the Facebook group. I have the secret one for Patreon supporters and guests, and it's been incredible to see how people share these really intimate struggles that they're having and sharing their deepest parts of them, just as you said.
And then the others come and say, “Oh my goodness, me too.” So that's an amazing level. And in the online community, it's so cool that we can do that. But the in-person is just one more level.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Right! Because our eyes are really receptors, you know, our eyes take in people's faces. And so when we have these faces in front of us that see us and aren't asking us to be different for them (they're just accepting us as we are). And then they're actually starting to love us (like to fall in love with us), and to value us, and to see things in us that we don't even really know. Our eyes drink that in and it changes us.
Our eyes are such important portals. And you know, originally that's what gazing is with babies and infants, is that infants are gazing at their mothers and their mothers are gazing at them. And ideally, that's drinking in being loved and being wanted on this planet.
But we don't all get that. I didn't get that. My eyes at first didn't even really want to look. I didn't want to see what people were gonna look like looking at me because I felt so ashamed of myself. And to wake up my eyes and kind of bring them back to life and be able to look at people looking at me, seeing something good and not just, you know, what I'm ashamed about was really powerful.
Haley Radke: That does sound powerful.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I think that safe and effective group work is worth a lot of individual therapy. I love individual therapy. I love going to individual therapy. I have a great therapist.
Anne Heffron: Tell her about the dog.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I heard a dog trainer say that when dogs are kind of neurotic, what helps them out is that they can walk off leash together in a pack. And we've got these fields. I live in Davis, California. We've got these fields outside of town and we have two dogs and our daughter has one close by. So we'll get the three dogs together and we'll take them off leash into these fields. And I always just think about that trainer saying, “Yeah, that kind of sets their minds straight or it heals them a bit in their, in the brain.”
And I think about us, we're pack animals. I know we're pack animals, too. We're tribal animals. And for me, the thought of adoptees healing in a tribe is so exciting. Like, I just think I've been kind of just sneaking doing it in these other communities. Like I've gone to Esalen and I've gone to all kinds of workshops (because I love them), but to actually have adoption be the center of it– Like, wow, what could happen there? So yes, group healing is exponential or magnified healing.
Anne Heffron: Well, think about what it feels like just in your body. If you're an adopted person and you walk into an office of a therapist who by some miracle is an adoption competent therapist, it's gonna feel incredible because you're gonna feel safe. But you're also one person. Imagine if 10 people walked into that room with an adoption competent therapist. It's like a life raft is sitting in the room, because all of a sudden… I mean, one of the things about adoption, at least for me, is this feeling of aloneness. Right? Like nobody really gets it.
This past year, after writing the book and having people write to me and say that they could have written the book themselves. That's a shocking thing. When I thought those thoughts had isolated me. And so just knowing that there's people out there that think the same way I do, this is what's made me so driven to have more of a healing community, because that's what I feel is missing. It's this, ‘Okay, now we recognize that we're in this together, but what do we do next?”
I mean, we've given ourselves permission to voice our pain, which is extreme.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Healing! And I'm not talking about coping skills. I'm talking about healing. Healing really requires going out of one's comfort zone. Of course it takes, like I said, it takes safety to do that, but it is really about taking a risk and having faith that there's something better for oneself than the story that has become really comfortable (like a comfy coat), that we don't want to take it off because we don't want to lose– That's the little bit we've got is, is that.
I mean, I've gone to groups before where I've thought, What if I didn't share that I was adopted? What if I didn't bring my adoptee trauma in? Could people ever really know me? And I've ultimately thought, No, they really couldn't. But sometimes something else wants to heal or something specific wants to heal, and it really takes courage to step into healing and out of the story.
Anne Heffron: It's hard. It's scary. I mean, it's—I wrote about this in my book, so I don't think my daughter would be mad, but there's, you know… When she was a little kid, she used to suck her thumb, which is a habit. And then we went to the doctor and he said she needed to stop sucking her thumb because it was messing up her teeth. She made it a day, because I said, “Okay, you can have all the candy you want. Every time you wanna suck your thumb. I'll just give you a piece of candy.” And at one point, at the end of the day, she was just kind of sweaty and she looked at me and she was staring at my face. And she said, “Mama.” And I said, “Yeah?” She said, “Can I suck on your nose?” [Everyone laughs.]
And there's that, you know, she's trying to grow up. You know, trying to change and be a big girl, but it's really hard. And when you do it in community–I was there for her, right? So I let her suck on my nose, which if you ever have a kid do that, it is a weird feeling.
But that, I mean it's a strange example, but that is healing and community because the next day she didn't do it, right? And then eventually, she wasn't sucking her thumb. But if it was up to her, she would've sucked her thumb for a very, very long time, because it's more comfortable. And even if you're an adoptee and you're living with your story, and you're in an unhappy marriage, and you're in a job you don't like, and your stomach hurts all the time, it's still safe to you.
And so it's scary to give up those things, even when they cause you pain. But what I found is, anything that scares you, it is a doorway of flames that's worth walking through. It is an invitation. So I used to avoid those doors and now if something scares me, like writing the book or doing Write or Die, I know that the fear, it's a…
I mean, there's a fear of walking into traffic. That's the kind of fear, it's not worth doing. But there I have a sense of, Okay, this is a fear I need to face. And at the other side, there's a world that I didn't even know existed. And so I have to sort of leap into the unknown and just make a game of it, have faith that I'm gonna survive, and that there's gonna be something on the other side. But when you're doing that with other people, it's less scary because then you can commiserate.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. You know, like Haley, I was—my practice got too full this year and I was seeing all these women who are widows and they had so much in common. And I felt like if I started a group for them, they could see each other twice a month in a group and they wouldn't need as much individual therapy and it would be a lot cheaper for them.
And they would have a community to connect with. So we started that last February, and these eight women are just delightful. They've bonded with each other, they understand what each other is going through, and I just facilitate a resilience group for them. And they remind me of adoptees, because their life has changed suddenly and the main person they're bonded to has now died and they don't wanna be in this new world, but they're forced to be in it.
And their nervous systems are all screwed up. So we just had our final group of the year and we lit a barbecue, a fire, and a barbecue. And we burned these things that we wanted to let go of for 2017. And then we made these art projects where we wrote down things we wanted to cultivate and bring in for the new year, but the joy in these women is incredible.
And one of them just started to have knee problems. She's like close to 80. And these other women just showed up with walkers, and canes, and all these things for her. And it's like they have a community. So they're not needing to see me individually, because they've got each other. And so it's just a much better situation for them. And they're healing so much more rapidly than they would if they were all in individual therapy with me. And saving money. Now they can go travel together if they want.
Anne Heffron: With their walkers.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, with their walkers. No problem.
Haley Radke: Well, just like you said, Anne, with people writing to you and saying, “Your book is so similar to my life.” I can't believe the emails I still get from people who just randomly happen upon the podcast and they're like, “This is the first time I've ever heard other adoptees voice these things.” And we've just kept them stuck and silent for so long.
Anne Heffron: I know. It's amazing, because when you start talking about it, you forget that it wasn't always like that.
Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially now we live in “Adoptee Land.” It's kind of like, “What do you mean, we're the first ones? You don't have all your friends that are adopted?”
Anne Heffron: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay, ladies, I wanna hear about your retreat.
Anne Heffron: What I wanted to create… So I had this opportunity where this famous person gave me her house for three months so I could create my book. And it was like this nest, and it was a miracle. And I was trying to think of, How could I…. So it took me three months to transform my life, and I was thinking, How can I give this to other people, but do it in a compacted way?
And I thought, Well, okay, number one, to make it go fast, you need a really good therapist. Right? Because this is hard stuff. And if you have focus and if you have support, this could go really, really well. There's something about checking out of your normal life for a couple of days. I wanted the retreat to be more than two days; be more than three days. It's a Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and then a Sunday morning. That's a significant amount of time.
Your nervous system gets reset. You get to step out of your life for a while. You make these really good connections. And Pam and I get to dive in deep and with the writing, and with the different therapeutic exercises that we'll do. It's the thing that if I couldn't have written the book and done it that way, I would've wanted to do it this way. This is like the super express train to how to get really joyful.
Well, you know, joyful is not even the right word. I can't say that. I'm more myself since I wrote the book. It doesn't mean that I walk around laughing all the time. I mean, I'm still sad sometimes and I still feel confused, but I definitely feel a hundred percent more grounded in myself. And I think that the way Pam and I work together, there's—we just understand each other and our thoughts. It's like we're feeding each other.
And I wanted to share that with other people. And then I wanted these people that come to us and do this, they'll be their own group. They'll know each other forever for the rest of their lives. And they can teach other people.
And then, I mean, I hope this is the work I do for the rest of my life. I feel like everything I did is to get here: to help people free themselves. We only have this life, you know? I mean, maybe there's reincarnation, but let's just pretend that this is the only one. And you can blow it as an adoptee, you know, you can get so stuck that you die feeling like, Wow, I never got to be myself.
And I think that, you know, Haley, like you, I found you by some miracle, and then I found Pam through you, and then I found all these people through your show. And I don't really believe in coincidence, you know, I think everything happens for a reason. And I think Pam and I are really, really powerful together, and we have so much to offer, and I just wanna share it and have people feel excited.
Adoption, for all of its difficulties, you might as well make it an opportunity, right? Because you're stuck with it. So, let's see how great we can make it.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I happen to really believe in our power to heal, and there's that word “heal” again. Just like if I cut my finger, you know, get a paper cut, I know my body's gonna get to work right away and start healing my finger, even without me doing anything. And I think that for adoptees, given the right soil and given the right support, we can heal. And I think that what's been missing for us is the right soil and the right support.
So, I feel like I really trust that we want to heal, like we want to get freed up to live fuller lives and to connect more deeply and in a more satisfying way, and to become more the creator of our own lives, rather than just this object that was thrown around and bought and sold and treated, (well, in my case, unkindly). And, you know, we want to get back in charge of having our life be like a palette where we get to decide what we put in it and live the best life we can possibly live, whatever that means to each person.
So I believe in our ability to do this, and in some ways, working with people with terrible diagnoses, or becoming paralyzed in accidents, or losing vital people (like we all have, too). Seeing people heal has really shown me—like my body knows we all can heal. If we're given the right soil and help, we all can heal. And I know this. So I want this retreat to be amazing soil with amazing quality help. And I trust the process. I trust we get there and we do the right things in the right ways, we're gonna just naturally heal together and bond.
Anne Heffron: Seems inevitable.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah.
Anne Heffron: Plus it's in Berkeley, which is so beautiful. I love Berkeley.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. So the retreat is going to be in Berkeley, California up in the North Hills (which is a beautiful area of Berkeley), right near this place called the Gourmet Ghetto, where you can walk down and get all kinds of amazing food.
But we picked a giant house that has a view and there's some rooms for rent in the house, or there's like Airbnbs or bed and breakfasts nearby in the neighborhood. We're gonna meet for four days. We're gonna have eight healing sessions. Each session will be three hours. So we're gonna have eight times three hours together.
And then we're also gonna have rest time and you know, take a walk, go explore Berkeley, get some sleep, whatever, you know. So time off as well, because people need time to integrate and just, you know, not just be with people all the time. I think there's some introverts coming who are gonna have their own rooms and just have a place they can just go retreat and get away from people if they need a break, you know?
And we're gonna be working in all kinds of ways with people. We're gonna be using art, we're gonna be using writing, we're gonna be doing a lot of being together. And I'll be facilitating ways of interacting and teasing out this, you know, what wants to come alive versus what's blocking you from coming alive.
And I think that the fact that we're all gonna be adoptees is gonna be just amazing, because there's so much we won't need to explain to each other. And that's just gonna take so many layers out of the way of getting close and connecting. The cost is $625 for the retreat. And then people book their lodging either with us in the house or nearby and pay for their food on their own.
I think we have six people who are signed up and others who are considering it and thinking about it. I think we have three or four people flying in from other places. We're really excited about it. We have a couple of young guys coming and college age, so that's gonna be an interesting mix of men and women, younger and older. And we just expect it to be a really nurturing and transformative experience.
So it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's President’s Day weekend in the United States, so February 15th to 18th. It is gonna end at 1:00 on Sunday, the 18th. And then people in the United States won't have work the next day, so it's time then to either get home or have a day to just rest or integrate,
Anne Heffron: We're gonna come kidnap you, Haley. So have fun being there. [everyone laughs]
Haley Radke: If we're not able to come to your retreat, say we live in England, for example, or New Zealand. My New Zealand listeners wanna come, too, I've heard. Is there an activity that you might be doing at the retreat that you could recommend to us to maybe do at our next support group meeting?
Anne Heffron: I thought of something right off the bat. I think there could be that someone could be listening right now and feeling discouraged that if they don't have enough money, or they don't have enough time, and feeling left out: right off the bat, you could write the three reasons why you can't go to this retreat. And those three things will seem like problems. But what if those three things are—what if they're wonderful things? Like what if those three things are you? So it might be, the three reasons are, 1). I don't have enough money. 2). I don't actually like Berkeley. I swore I'd never go there again. And the third one is, 3). No one's gonna take care of my dog.
Well, you have three things to write about. And the first is, “I don't have enough money.” So tell the story. Write the story, write two pages of not having enough money. And it's not a pity party of not having enough money. It's, “What is it like to not have enough money?” And you treat it with seriousness and beauty, right? It's like you make a little movie out of it. And it's not that saying, “Oh, I wish I had more money.” It's just, “What does it look like when you don't have enough money?”
Or if you say, “I have to take care of my dog.” Well, write about your dog for two pages. It sounds really, really simple, but I think anything that gives you access to writing about your life in a way that's with careful attention is a form of prayer, and that's a form of escape from pain.
Haley Radke: Well, I definitely have FOMO (fear and missing out), so…
Pam Cordano, MFT: Can I add something to what she said?
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Pam Cordano, MFT: We have a lot of opportunities now to find people online who we connect with, and I would just encourage adoptees to find people that they feel very understood when they share something important to them. When people respond to you in a way where you feel like, Oh, they really got the essence of what I was trying to say, that's a good connection. And when you start to feel like you can move in the relationship: you can be serious, you could be joyful, you could be funny, you can play... All those things are indicators of a good quality relationship.
And so I think that we adoptees need to find as many people as we can. And who is better for us than other adoptees who understand the heart of the trauma, like the heart of the beginning of our lives. And so to have room to move in safe relationships that have many aspects to them is a wonderful thing. Even making subgroups, I mean, there was some talk about, you know, the “cool table” and the “not cool table" recently on some posting, but it's not about cliques. We should really be careful not to form cliques, because we all are so sensitive to rejection.
But trying to find people that just really resonate with us and where we feel good about ourselves, where we feel more like our best selves with them. And that's one thing I found with Anne, is when we talk (whether it's about a problem or about something good), I feel more of a sense of my best self with her. And it's unique, because she understands the pain that I understand. So it's great in that way for me. It's healthy for me to go to her, to call her, and be responded to if I need help. So that's maybe something I would say is: find the right people.
Anne Heffron: Yeah. And Haley, as far as the fear of missing out, I was thinking about— You know, Pam, when you were talking about how there was the mirror neurons, and then we're all connected. You know, Haley, it's like we are as adoptees, we are all connected. And so if one group is doing something, I think it influences everybody.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes. And so it's like the ecosystem.
Anne Heffron: Right. Right. We're one huge group. And it’s an interesting thing.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. And it's a thing that goes to the beginning of this podcast of us talking about how the creative episodes have influenced us, because they have. So what each of us is doing is affecting each other.
Anne Heffron: Exactly. Their successes are also my success because of that they're, “I know that they could do that. That means I could do it.” Even if it doesn't mean I'm gonna be a beautiful singer, but in some way. It's possible. Just even…
Pam Cordano, MFT: More is more.
Anne Heffron: Right. More is more, yeah. Like that. Especially with cake.
Pam Cordano, MFT: And connection, in our case. Adoption connection.
Anne Heffron: Oh, yeah. Gotta stop thinking about food. [Everyone laughs]
Pam Cordano, MFT: What I was thinking about your question, Haley, is that… I'll tell you about a really neat thing I've done with my women's groups this year. I have three groups in my private practice, and they're all with people who have some kind of major loss. What we've done is we've made bridges where they pick two points, either in the room or even outside. And one side of the bridge is the feeling of being constricted and afraid and feeling awful (kind of like how we adoptees feel on our worst days, like we just wanna go hide in a hole, or worse, just not even be here).
And then crossing the bridge, there's a threshold in the middle somewhere. And then the other side is where we feel more expansive and more connected, and we feel part of the world. And we're not just into conserving for our own wellbeing. We're more in touch with our generosity and wanting to share with others, and that's when we feel the best, that's how we are. We humans.
I've had people make their own bridges, they've done it on paper and then they've done a walking back and forth between these two sides and it's really walking between “trauma" and “not trauma.” And we all have those in us. We have the “trauma" and we have the “not trauma.” When we walk over to feel what the “trauma” feels like, and we feel constricted and tight—our muscles are tight, and our eyes are looking down, and we don't wanna be there, and we maybe have some pain... And just as we feel pain, or whatever.
Then walking to where we feel expansive. And we see the colors around us, and we see the world beyond us, and we know we're part of it and we have something to share, maybe. Once people start realizing that's a bridge that we live on all the time— Two hours ago, I might've been on the constricted side of the bridge and then now I'm on the more expansive and connected side of the bridge.
But we need to get to know our bridges, because this is really how we heal. Because when we're on that expansive side of the bridge, that's how we wanna feel. I mean, that's what Viktor Frankl was doing in the concentration camps. He knew he could go take a nap when he was exhausted and feeling awful, but he might go (he was a doctor), so he might go and do some medical treatment on somebody to help them out. And that was a more expansive, connected thing to do. And he knew that that mattered and it was meaningful to people and he felt better inside and he had that power to make that choice.
So anyway, getting to know this bridge is really important to me and it's important to me to help people that I work with (one way or another), get to know this bridge.
Haley Radke: So that's something that you could do together and then you sort of talk through the experience of being on one side or the other, or how it feels to be choosing your side or…
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in a way it's really what a trigger is. Like we might be doing just fine and then suddenly we get triggered by something and we're—Boom! We're on the other side of the bridge and we feel awful.
And it can really feel like we don't have access to anything but that terrible side of the bridge. And we don't want to expand, you know, we don't want to connect. We just want to say, “F-you world,” you know? “I don't wanna be here.” And it can take a long time sometimes to get out of that. That's what being triggered really is, is like landing on the other side of the bridge. And it's horrible.
So, I mean, that's just a metaphor for how to work with it. But it's really the thing that I think that (to me) is what healing is, is like knowing that there's a bridge and knowing how to put one foot in front of the other and get back across it, and getting more and more familiar with the path so that it's not—It doesn't take so long. You might start to take 30 minutes instead of three months.
Haley Radke: When I was talking to Nicole, the art therapist in one of the episodes in Season Three, she was talking about drawing a bridge and what's on each side. And she gave a really great exercise. So if you want to go back and listen to that, that would be something that people could do on their own.
Okay. Can you talk a little bit about what is different about a retreat (like a small intimate retreat like this, with two of you leading), versus a conference situation where you're going to different lectures and workshops? And even some, they have a theme of healing, but it seems like that's an unfulfilled promise. You get to the end of the weekend and there's, you know… It's an unfulfilled promise.
Anne Heffron: I can address that. There's something about when you go into a conference… For me, I feel very, very exposed because there are a lot of other people who are also feeling really exposed, but there isn't one common—
Well, we're all there. I mean, why do people go to adoptee conferences? They go there to connect and learn, but it's very loose. And I think when you go to a retreat, you inherently have a weighted blanket over you, because this is something you're doing for yourself. You don't have to take care of yourself in the same way. It's like you're sitting in a comfortable chair and you get to sit back because Pam and I are running the show. When I went to a writing retreat with about 10 people, it just felt so decadent and I felt like I was doing this for me.
Pam Cordano, MFT: One of the key differences is that (I can't speak to every retreat), but I've had really good retreat experiences, both as an attendee and as a person facilitating retreats. But to me, retreats are safe places to explore new territory, within. And to open up new doors.
And to me, when I go to conferences, I'm more in learning mode and I have a guard up, because I might see someone I'm scared of, or I might have a bad interaction. It's so big. There's not like a safety nest built in. So retreats to me are safe and intimate and they're places to go deeper inside and to heal.
Like I know with my license, I have to go get a certain amount of educational units and I used to go to conferences to get those units, so I could learn about this and that. But now I go to places where I can experience something in an intimate, safe setting, so that I can grow while I'm getting my units. Retreats are like therapy and conferences are like education and networking.
Anne Heffron: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel like after a conference I have to do a whole lot of self-care. Where after a retreat, a retreat is the self-care.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I mean, the thing that people might have to recover from after a retreat is growing, because when we grow beyond the ways our lives are organized, that's a bit stressful, because we have to then figure out, how are we going to make room for this new thing in our current lives? But that's growing.
Anne Heffron: Right. Right.
Pam Cordano, MFT: It's like molting, how snakes molt.
Haley Radke: Well, I love what you talked about earlier, Pam, about the experiences and how that changes you and just the experiential nature of a retreat and all the different hands-on activities and things that I imagine that you're planning.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I mean, my hope is that people are mostly in their direct experience network, where they're mostly directly experiencing the nourishment of the view and the safety of kind responses when they share something, and the direct experiences that Anne and I bring to the retreat itself. And delicious coffee, or tea, or whatever.
I love the air in Berkeley. It's like wonderful air. And that's all direct experience and I wouldn't want people to have much of a chance to get too far into their default networks, because that's just not what it's about. That's just fortifying the old fortress of pain.
Anne Heffron: Well, it's also like a nurturing river. You're not just being thrown into an ocean and say[ing], “Good luck!”
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. No, we would be setting up a whole structure for safety at the beginning, you know, from confidentiality to how we talk to each other at the retreat. I'm pretty strict about that stuff, because I know what stuff makes us feel safe and what doesn't in a group. People need space to share without having to worry that they're gonna get, you know, disagreed with or advised or any of that stuff. We don't do any of that. That's not helpful to growing.
Oh, I have a little anecdote, which is that I sent a copy of the writeup to Nancy Verrier, because she was my adoptive mom's therapist for 15 years. And she lives right there near Berkeley, so this is like right near her community. And she's turning 80 this year and is mostly doing phone work now and still some conferences and things. But she was saying she loved the title, because she's really been focusing on moving forward into healing, too, herself. She likes that what we're offering is also fitting with the way she's approaching her work these days (which is more about healing and less about just kind of the very important part of taking inventory of just how bewildering and upsetting this entire thing is). Speaking for myself. You know, it's important that we get our bearings around how hard this has been, but also, and then what do we do?
Anne Heffron: Which is essentially what Haley's been doing with this whole third season, right? Like the first two seasons you're telling the stories and now you're kicking into creativity. A beautiful thing.
Haley Radke: It's something we've talked about before, briefly, about spiritual bypass. Just that very thing you just said, Pam, about recognizing it and acknowledging it, and then you can do the healing.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Exactly. It's really about being grounded in the gravity of this whole institution and how it's impacted people who are hurting from their experiences of being adopted, without minimizing anything. And then it's the, “Then what?” “Then what do we do?” “How do we let our traumatized systems, whether it's ways we've been calling to the wrong places, calling to addictions, calling to people who aren't really there for us?” “And how do we start calling for the right things and getting responded to the right ways so that our lives can become better and we can heal?”
Anne Heffron: My life is definitely a million percent better with you two in this, for sure.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I feel that way, too. You guys make sense to me.
Anne Heffron: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good way to put it.
Haley Radke: It's so good to speak the same language.
Anne Heffron: Yeah.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes. My nervous system's happy right now.
Anne Heffron: Yeah.
Pam Cordano, MFT: I can laugh.
Haley Radke: Well, it has been so lovely to talk to you ladies, and I so appreciate all the different pieces of wisdom and amazing insights that I got from you.
Can you tell us again where can we find the information for the retreat? And where can we connect with you online?
Anne Heffron: The Facebook group for the retreat is called Beyond Adoption: You. I can be reached on my Facebook page, at Anne Heffron, or my email is anneheffron@gmail.com.
Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, the best way to reach me is through my email, which is pcordano@comcast.net. That's P-C-O-R-D-A-N-O@comcast.net.
Anne Heffron: Remember, we're kidnapping you.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. I love you girls so much. So fun to chat with you. Did you know I have a monthly newsletter? It's new, sort of. There's only been two so far, and I'm sending my next one in about a week. It's a place for me to share my personal thoughts with you and also any behind the scenes news of the show, like what's coming up for Season Four, the theme and dates of the launch, all that good stuff.
If you'd like to be among the first to be in the know, you can sign up on adopteeson.com/newsletter. If you are passionate about helping adoptees and want to move our voices forward, come and partner with me. Adopteeson.com/partner has all the details. I've had this goal for 50 patrons for a while, and it would be so amazing to hit that before I launch Season Four.
So if you've been on the fence or you've thought about supporting the show, but just haven't pulled the trigger yet, it would mean so much to me. I take monthly pledges that help pay for the cost of hosting and producing the show for you. And I have some great thank you gifts for you, including a secret Facebook group. There's even some unedited episodes of the show if you need something to tide you over until Season Four. So that's adopteeson.com/partner.
This is the Season Three finale. What does that mean? When will the show be back? I'm gonna take a brief break, friends, and I'm gonna be starting to record Season Four and you'll likely see a few healing episodes in your feed here and there just before Season Four gets going.
So make sure you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app and you won't miss an episode. But I will miss talking to you every week, so I can't wait until Season Four starts up again. I just love you listeners. I love connecting with you on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter is my favorite. But I am active on all of those social media platforms.
So you can come find me @Haley Radke and also @Adoptees On. So I look forward to chatting with you on social media during the break and make sure you subscribe to the newsletter so that you will know when the date is of our launch. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again soon.
Outtakes
Pam Cordano, MFT: There's my dog again. Someone just rang the doorbell. Probably someone selling encyclopedias.
Haley Radke: Do they still do that?
Pam Cordano, MFT: No.
Haley Radke: Hopefully it's someone selling chocolate.
