Bonus: Adoptees for Family Preservation
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/bon1
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On. The podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radkey. It is finally time to tell you that I've been working on a brand new podcast for the last year, and I continue to do it's a gigantic project. I'm so excited to be creating this for you, for our community and beyond.
It is called On Adoption, and it's an investigative series that uncovers the stories adoption agencies rarely tell what expectant mothers face, how families are separated and what happens to the [00:01:00] children who grow up as adoptees. This is adoption examined from the inside out by those of us who've lived it.
I've spent the last seven months interviewing mothers who have placed their babies for adoption within the last five years. Why just recent years? I am trying to combat that argument that we used to do adoption this way, but things have changed. Frankly we may call things by different names, but the lifelong impacts are the same.
I believe that true insight into adoption and real systemic change will only come from listening to the most impacted parties, and we are the ones whose voices are left out of traditional media coverage. The goal of this new investigative series is to change how society sees adoption and to elevate [00:02:00] family preservation.
To that end, I've invited the Board of Adoptees for Family Preservation to join in on this conversation and help us do a deep dive of what I've been doing and how you can be involved. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on the full board for Adoptees for Family Preservation that includes Sullivan Summer, our president. Hi Sullivan.
Sullivan Summer: Hi Haley.
Haley Radke: We have Lora Alegria, our secretary.
Lora Alegria: Hi Haley.
Haley Radke: Hi. And we have Lilly Anspach, our treasurer and financial development officer.
Lilly Anspach: Hi Haley.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited to talk to you all. Our goal today is to tell you about the new investigative series that I've been working on. But before we do that, I would love it if all of you [00:03:00] would introduce yourselves to listeners who might not know who you are.
Sullivan Summer: Thanks so much, Haley. So I am Sullivan Summer. I serve as the president of Adoptees for Family Preservation. I am a US domestic transracial adoptee. And by way of background, I hold an undergraduate degree in journalism as well as a law degree, and I spent about two decades in legal and corporate roles with some of the world's most recognizable brands. And now I function as a freelance, literary and cultural critic, as well as serving as president for the board.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Lora.
Lora Alegria: Hi. I am Lora Alegria. I am the secretary for the board. I am a domestic same race adoptee. I have an undergraduate in speech communication and pr and a master's in journalism with an emphasis in pr. Before I had kids, I worked in marketing and fundraising and event planning for a nonprofit theater and Planned Parenthood when I moved to [00:04:00] Washington so my life has always been in nonprofit, so I'm super excited to be a part of this project. And then I was a stay-at-home mom for 20 years, and while I was a stay-at-home mom, I was also involved in nonprofit boards and president of the school board for a Montessori school for two years. Now, I also help Haley behind the scenes for the Adoptees On show and help post things and help her wherever she needs.
Haley Radke: Listen, Lora is one of the main reasons you hear a show on Friday. Okay? Let's just be serious. Thanks Lora and Lily.
Lilly Anspach: Hi, my name's Lilly Anspach. I am a domestic same race adoptee. I serve as the treasurer, so I help manage our finances, help lead our fundraising efforts, really working to build resources to fund the program that we're about to talk about. So that's really exciting. My background, gosh, I have a degree in industrial organizational psychology and an MBA. Really just a background in the manufacturing sector doing operational excellence and [00:05:00] organizational development. And I really think that's gonna help me help the board build systems and structures so that we can really steward this project with transparency and integrity all along the way.
Haley Radke: We have a tremendously skilled and gifted board put together here, and I'm just honored that you all are serving in this capacity.
So recently I opened up guest applications for adoptee on and. It was amazing, the traction, and I don't know, Lora, you probably haven't seen yet, but we have at least 15 applications that came in over the course of 24 hours. And one of the comments on that post was, I'm paraphrasing. Essentially I'm tired about talking about healing and hearing people's stories.
Let's get to the root of stopping that adoption is even happening. And I was like. Listen lady, I'm on it. I'm [00:06:00] also working on this new thing that absolutely is my dream. Imagine telling our stories in a way where we really help shift people's view of adoption to that of one that is. It's family separation.
How did it ever become normalized and celebrated and monetized the way it has this new investigative audio documentary really is meant to do just that. So that's what I've been working on.
Lilly Anspach: I think I told you in one of the other times we were having a conversation how much I enjoy the narrative style documentary style podcast, and I was just wondering, why is this moment significant? Why did you choose now to look at that format to go deeper into reporting on adoption and specifically family preservation.
Haley Radke: Listeners that have been around for a while, which I know includes you, Lilly, [00:07:00] you've been a listener for many years, and a supporter. I've been talking about doing this for so many years, and when my kids were younger, I just, I really didn't have the capacity.
I even commissioned music for the series. I named it. I had art. I had liked the very bare bone starting things, and it just became increasingly clear to me that in recent years, adoptee voices are being heard more and more I believe that the impact is really starting to slowly shift in the culture. And I love podcasts.
I've listened to podcasts for years and years, and the impact they can have on people is amazing. Like the intimacy you can feel listening to stories that are told, especially in this narrative way when we introduce [00:08:00] characters and you can really fall in love with them and really understand their deeper motivations and all of those things. It can really change your perspective on an issue like this.
Lilly Anspach: Yeah, it's definitely. A different way of being high touch with the stories. It's like you're watching a film, but you're hearing it, right?
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. And I think there's this thing where, I don't know if you've ever had this moment. I know you all are podcast listeners in some sense to the extreme of me perhaps. Could be. I know you're runners too, so you might have this moment where you have, you're listening in your earbuds. You are out on a run or you're walking your dog or doing your life things and you can remember I remember exactly where I was when I heard this moment or this very specific thing someone said on a podcast, and it stays with you.
Like I, I have this moment from I think six years ago I remember exactly where I was driving to my in-laws and listening to a podcast [00:09:00] and like the feeling all of it. It can be very visceral and intimate and you have this bonded moment. Which I think can bring about social change.
Lilly Anspach: Absolutely.
Sullivan Summer: I remember exactly where I was during the first time I heard Adoptees On. I remember who your guest was and I remember where on the sidewalk I was standing. When it got to a certain point of the episode, that really resonated with me 'cause I had never heard anything like that before. So I think you're so right about being able to make that kind of impact. I'm curious, Haley, you talked about essentially storytelling and the importance of storytelling, but there's a lot of ways to tell stories why this investigative, essentially journalistic format for this new podcast.
Haley Radke: I think that one of the I'll call [00:10:00] it problems that adopted people have had is being seen as credible in the telling of our own experiences. I felt like I, it needs to be this rigorous reporting with full backstory to, in some sense prove to the general public, what we're telling is true.
So often it's like we are not believed if we tell the story, but if some outside third party source is the one to tell it, then perhaps it's okay, and maybe it's true then and I just, I don't wanna buy into that. I want us to be the ones that tell our own stories. And I am also reporting on birth mothers experiences of relinquishment and placement.
And so I'm an outsider to that community. And so perhaps will their stories be believed if I'm the one reporting on it. I hope [00:11:00] so. This is a tricky thing I think. But because of everyone else always telling our story, it's our turn to tell the adoptee experience. That's what we've done on Adoptees On, and this is a little different because we have that in-depth reporting piece, but I'm, I really want to do such a good job of telling the mom's stories, especially because they haven't had agency. They didn't have agency when they relinquished, they didn't have agency in what their open adoptions look like currently. The one thing they can have agency over is their story, and I hope to do that justice for them.
Lora Alegria: Haley, we all appreciate your approach and your standards that you have for yourself for the Adoptees On podcast, and we know that you carry that into this project as well. And the ethical, you've taken a lot of care in thinking about how to tell these stories [00:12:00] ethically and how to tell these stories that's respectful too to the moms that you're speaking with, and we all know that the narrative, the dominant narrative has been the adoptive parents or the industry telling our stories and telling us how we should feel about our experiences.
So can you expand a little bit about that importance and what changes and why it's so important that we as adoptees and the birth mothers that you're speaking to get to hold the microphone and share our stories and why it's important that it comes from us.
Haley Radke: I think the ethical part of it really scared me because I'm interviewing mothers who have relinquished or placed their children for adoption within the last five years, and I believe that to be a traumatic experience.
And so who am I to ask them to [00:13:00] recount this trauma for me? For our listeners, and not just that, but in great detail please. And can you tell me that again in a different way, please. And so I actually consulted with someone who is a reporter and is on this committee of ethical journalistic standards in Canada.
And we talked through this and how I can ask questions in a good way for them. And also we planned out along with my advisory panel, who helps me with these big decisions for the show supports we could give to these mothers while they are interviewing with me. While the show is being edited, when the show airs and past the point of the show airing, amazingly, I found two [00:14:00] therapists who are running a support group for the women who participate in these interviews.
So I feel that they have been supported both through and after they have been able to connect with each other, which is really amazing. Listen, I'm not there every time I was there at the first one. Just introduce everybody to each other and it was so amazing, like instantly how the moms were bonding with each other, asking for each other's numbers.
And I thought, okay, I, this is good. I did the right thing in setting this up for them and though it did cost them to share with me, I hope that this benefit will somehow even out the cost that it has had for them.
The other thing, this is a weird thing that just happened literally this morning. I was listening to a huge podcasts I listen to regularly and it's a, it's like a self helpy show. I knew [00:15:00] that they changed the names of the callers and likely the locations, and this morning I was literally lying in bed and I was like, oh my God I know this caller, and it took maybe 30 seconds into the call, and I was like, I know this caller.
And then the person proceeded to ask a pretty intimate question of this, the host. And I thought, oh no now I know this private information about them. And so I've spent the rest of the day thinking about, and I already had thought about this earlier, these moms are gonna come share their stories on the show.
And likely, hopefully thousands of people will listen. Tens of thousands of people will listen. Who knows how many people will listen and could the fact that they are sharing their story, critiquing some of the experiences they've had, critiquing potentially the adoptive parents of their child, will that impact their [00:16:00] currently open adoptions?
And so it comes at quite a high risk. And so the fact that this happened this morning where I was like, oh no, they changed the name and I heard it agai n, I was like, I'm asking a big ask of these women. I've told them all the risk and they're all so committed to sharing because they don't want other women to go through what they've gone through.
Lilly Anspach: That's amazing. And when you think about these moms and you just spoke really well about the cost that we're potentially asking them. Can you give us a preview or give us an idea of what are some of the key insights you're uncovering early on? I know you're not all the way through the program, but what are some of the key insights or maybe some intersections that you're uncovering that will illuminate the story that's different than the current narrative that's out there.
Haley Radke: Ultimately, most of the moms I've spoken to have had really tricky [00:17:00] upbringings in some form or another, and of course that leads to a lack of supports when the crisis pregnancy comes.
Also for some, there is a true financial poverty. Others, that's not the case, and it's the social poverty that led to placement. There are difficult relationships with the men involved, ranging from, I really don't want to be hooked to this person for 18 years because they verge on abusive. All the way to domestic violence.
There are real expressions of not all, but almost all of them so far that at some point prior to signing the papers [00:18:00] they changed their mind and wanted to parent. And if just one person, multiple times I've heard this, if just one person had told me, I will help you do this, I wouldn't have placed. That's probably the most heartbreaking of it because I think surely we know one person in our lives that would support us in some kind of crisis like this.
And the other piece to that is, is for some of them, the crisis was so temporary, it was three months, six months, and it, you think about a child's lifespan, what's six months in the grand scheme, like you couldn't have someone walk alongside you for six months. Ugh. It's just heartbreaker really.
Sullivan Summer: So Haley, for listeners, Adoptees for Family Preservation, our purpose is really in the name. But I thought if it's okay [00:19:00] that myself and Lilly and Lora can talk for a minute or two about how we are thinking about Adoptees for Family Preservation and why it is that we felt like On Adoption was a project that we really wanted to invest in.
And AFFP Adoptees for Family Preservation really exists to raise awareness about family separation issues and the long-term impact on adoptees and their families. We understand that hopeful adoptive parents often really have the best of intentions when seeking adoption, but we really wanna encourage them to aim their resources towards supporting family units instead of facilitating separation.
We also really wanna provide education and resources to expectant parents to raise awareness about the practices and the behaviors of the adoption industry. [00:20:00] And we really felt like On Adoption was so well aligned to our broader organizational goals. Lora, do you wanna say a, I think you wanna say a few more things about that as well.
Lora Alegria: Yeah. As you, as we talked earlier, that the industry and the adoptive parents have had the microphone and it's our turn now. And that's what this podcast is about. It's shedding light on the truth of the experience of being an adoptee and a birth mother, a first mother. That is what we saw in this project as important in advocating for us as adoptees and advocating for birth mothers and giving us all back our agency that was taken. That is one reason we chose to support this project. And we hope that listeners will gain insight and awareness from the hard work that you're doing Haley.
Lilly Anspach: I think also too, so many [00:21:00] times, even if we are getting the message across about adoption and the cost to generations or even to families, there's so many people still that will say what other options are there really? We understand that there's pain involved and it's not perfect, but we're still gonna have to do this thing. We really are interested in On Adoption because it's going past just the individual stories. It's getting to that point where you can start putting these shared experiences together and see how this system of adoption is shaped by policy and power and money and culture and a lot of the political problems that are facing all of us in different ways as well.
And so I think really helping folks understand that and spark their curiosity, yeah. We haven't come up with a better way yet, but there's gotta be different ways and really just encourage that accountability, thinking differently, talking differently so that we can [00:22:00] challenge ourselves as a society to do better. We can do better.
Haley Radke: Yeah, absolutely. Those intersectionalities that we really don't necessarily. The general public don't necessarily put those dots together. So in any way that we can outline that for people, tell the story, like how did adoption come to be? Look at these individual stories, like how did their circumstances come to be for these moms that that their last resort was giving their child to strangers who may or may not maintain contact with them, depending on how good they behave and they have no legal remedy if their open adoption closes. Telling from the adult adoptee perspective, we're their kids all grown up. We can share about the consequences of adoption well into our adulthood, our children, [00:23:00] our extended circles, all the ripples out that adoption has, that most folks just never give a thought to.
So how can we tell them these things? Okay. I am so excited because I got special permission from one of my moms that's participating in our series. Her name is Beck, and she allowed me to put together a cut for you of pieces of our interviews. So Beck is a mom who parented her first child. She relinquished her second, and so we've been doing interviews all about her lifetime, her experiences, what led her to this point, and she is a gem, I am so excited to share this with you.
Beck: It was so hard for me to [00:24:00] even accept or acknowledge that I was Henry's mom, like I'm not the woman that's raising him, but nobody, no piece of paper can take that away from me. I brought him into the world. I gave him life. But it's like from the very moment that you agree to an adoption, they really work to strip your identity of what you are to your child.
The agency didn't prepare me for the isolation, the trauma, none of it, they didn't prepare me for how society would treat me or that I feel, I even feel anxious even telling like new people that enter my life, Hey, I have this other child that's not with me. The agency doesn't tell you that. How your baby will scream and cry for 365 days. Nonstop. It's really hard. People later after I placed him if I knew that you was gonna do that, I would've done this for you. And it's like, why didn't you offer [00:25:00] to help me keep my child?
If anyone had just said something, something like, I'll help you. Or It doesn't have to be this way, it wouldn't be this way. And also, if I just knew the road ahead for the consequences. For not just me. Yeah, it's hell. But I made that choice. But, for my children, and I'm actually pregnant again, but it's taken me eight cycles to get pregnant.
This is a planned pregnancy. I was happy, but I was surprised because I was beginning to think oh my God. Like I am not gonna have another baby, or, I know it sounds crazy, but maybe that's my punishment for losing my child. In some ways it feels really selfish to have another baby.
I have questions like concerns about how he's going to process me having another child and I'm pretty sure [00:26:00] like inevitably, he is gonna ask 'cause he is still little, but are you going to give this one away like you did me? And then if I say no, you know why? Why not them too? Like you made this decision for me is good enough for me. Why is it not good enough for another child?
Obviously you can't flip an entire industry built on this but you can, a grassroots effort, just reaching in and talking, reaching as many people as you can because that's still saving somebody from this isn't right, and I don't want anyone else to go through what we've went through.
I don't want anyone else to feel the way I felt. I don't, I just don't feel like we deserve this and our crisis was temporary. It didn't have to be this way. If I knew what was ahead or all the grief that would come [00:27:00] with keeping my pregnancy there, there's no way. It would've came down to two options. I would've parented him as a first choice, but if not parenting him, abortion, the adoption just shouldn't even be an option. It's barbaric.
Lilly Anspach: Wow.
Haley Radke: I listen to that and I get choked up again because her story is so powerful. But I'm gonna say I disagree with her because she says this thing like can we flip a whole industry? No, it's just grassroots. And I'm like, no, girl, we're gonna do it for you. Yep.
Lilly Anspach: Yep. That's exactly what I wrote down when I was listening to that, Haley. As, that's exactly why we exist and that's exactly why we're organized and choosing to fund specifically this project right now because that is our intention and I believe we have that ability to flip that script and make a change if it, if we have to work that hard to strip a person's [00:28:00] identity of motherhood. What's the most natural thing in the world that has to be infinitely harder than what we would have to do to preserve that family.
Sullivan Summer: So as Lilly said, this is why we exist, and so we would ask listeners to find and follow us. You can find us online at adopteesffp.org. We would ask you to just sign up with us so that we can give you updates and let you know what's coming and how you can support Adoptees for Family Preservation. We're also on Instagram @adopteesffp as well. And so again, I will just reiterate, please find and follow us. Right now that's what we're asking for. We will be asking for donations money, resources, funding, so we can continue to [00:29:00] support the work, Haley, that you are doing. That includes, of course, supporting these women who are, as you pointed out, risking a whole lot to make sure that other people don't suffer what they have suffered and what their children have suffered as well.
Haley Radke: Thank you all so much. I can't express the gratitude I have for your support for this project, for believing in me. And listeners, I have shown up for you for nine years. I believe you can trust me with telling these stories in just a amazing way because I've, I, every time I think about this project, I get those goosebumps and like this feeling like this is gonna be a big thing for our community and it's gonna make a really big impact. Like I really deeply believe that. Thank you Sullivan, [00:30:00] Lora Lilly, for joining me today to talk about this project and for supporting it in this way. Thank you.
As I've interviewed mothers for this podcast, I've come to understand so much more about the complicated circumstances surrounding infant adoption, and it's also so simple. Adoption brings a grief and pain for mothers and babies that is outrageous and is in more times than not a permanent solution to a very temporary problem.
If family preservation is important to you, please visit adopteesffp, that's Adoptees for Family Preservation adopteesffp.org, or just click through in the show notes to sign up for updates. I would love to keep [00:31:00] you in the loop of what I'm working on and how you can help. I am truly honored to be entrusted with these stories, and I promise I'm going to make a compelling and impactful show that will bring change.
Thank you for listening. Let's talk again soon.
