40 Ridghaus - Am I Adopted?

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/40

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 3, episode 1: Ridghaus. I'm your host, Haley Radke.

Welcome to Season 3 of Adoptees On. This season, I will be introducing you to some extraordinary people. And while we listen to their stories and experiences of being adopted, I invite you to consider an ongoing thread that will be weaving through these episodes: healing and creativity.

This is Part 1 of a special two-part premiere, so you're going to meet Ridghaus today and next week, Derek Frank. You may have seen one of their incredible videos entitled “Six Word Adoption Memoirs," where Ridg and Derek ask, “If you had six words to tell your adoption story, what six words would you choose?”

We'll get to talk about that next week when I chat with Ridg and Derek together. So make sure you're subscribed to the show in your favorite pod catcher like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and you'll get next week's episode automatically. So easy.

Today, Ridg shares his story and I'm not spoiling anything by telling you, one: Go get your Kleenex right now. And two: I was hanging off every single word that he said. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome Ridghaus to Adoptees On. Welcome, Ridg. How are you?

Ridghaus: Thank you, Haley. I'm good.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I'm so excited to talk to you because I've followed your work for quite awhile, and so I'd love it if you would just share with us your story.

Ridghaus: You know, I never quite know where to start the story, because there are two distinct moments in time. I tend to think about when I was 19, because I was engaged to a girl and we broke up. And after we broke up, she called me to tell me that she was pregnant. You know, obviously, it was an unexpected thing for us. We tried to get back together.

There were still too many hurt feelings and we ended up not–-I mean, the relationship just didn't work out. And so we talked about, what kind of home do we want our child to grow up in? (Because both of us had come from dysfunctional families.) And she had a friend who reached out to her and said, “You know, maybe you wanna consider adoption.”

And so we did. And we actually had an open adoption that stayed open and, you know, we were able to be a part of Zach's life from childhood all the way through adulthood. You know, now he's got his own career living on his own in another state. Despite the hurt, the trauma of it, we both had as positive and experienced as you could have.

And then I turn 35. Zach is 16 at that point he invites me and his birth mother Rebecca to Thanksgiving dinner with his family, and kind of their extended family. And it was the first time that Rebecca, me, Zach, Colleen had all been together since he was born. And so I remember sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table, just kind of looking around. (By this point I have five other children. Three of them are with me, and Rebecca has taken in a foster, in-family adoption.) It was just one of those things where I'm like, Wow, I never would've thought about my life moving to this moment right here, where I can see Zach. And the relationship with Rebecca didn't work out, but I've got these other children... And, you know, it was good.

And a month after that, I get a letter from the state of Kansas (where I live)that said, “Please contact us. We have information that may be of interest.” And so this was just after Christmas. So I called them and I said, you know, “Hey, this is me. You said you had information.” They double checked everything, and they said, “Well, we've received a letter from the birth mother and she wants to be in touch with you.”

Of course immediately, I think of that Thanksgiving and I'm like… Well, Zach's birth mother was sitting right across from me. You know, we haven't been in touch. We've been able to communicate when we’ve had to over the years, but we haven't really been in touch with each other. And so I get this really just odd sensation, like, Why would this happen now?

And so I talked to the social worker further and confirm, she is who she says she is. And she needs to check a couple of other things about my family history. And once we clear that up (her name was Tina). Tina says, “So would you like to be in touch with your birth mother?” And I said, “Oh wait— You mean Zach's birth mother, right?” She said, “No, I mean, your birth mother.” And I said, “But I'm not—I'm not adopted.” And she said, “I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not sorry, but I don't think that I should be the first person to tell you this. You're adopted.”

And I immediately burst into tears. I asked her if she could call me back in a few minutes, or if I could call her back, because I just really needed to compose myself. So here I was, a 35-year-old man, one son that I had relinquished into adoption, five other kids. And for the first time in my life, I was finding out that I was adopted.

And then I had two simultaneous thoughts. One of them was, Nobody ever told me. And then the other one was, Yeah, of course. I'm adopted. It all makes sense now.

Haley Radke: What made sense for you?

Ridghaus: I wasn't like anyone at all in my family. You know, my adoptive parents were… They did their best. I mean, they tried their hardest, but they both barely made it through high school. And I was doing high school work, you know, when I was in fifth grade.

I was blue-eyed, red hair. They were both hazel and brown eyes with black hair. And despite being fascinated by science, and genetics, and all that stuff, I never took Mendel's formulas and applied them to my own life. You know, suddenly I was like, There's this other set of parents out there in the world who, you know, maybe they look like me. Maybe they're creative and you know, they like to read, and…

It was obviously a shock. But, you know, then I started to live, you know, later, (in what I would read about, that kind of adoptees go through). You know, the, I'm a prince, you know. Or, I'm royalty, and these other people are out there. So that was what made sense. What made sense to me was that I wasn't like them at all. And I always felt out of place. I always felt odd, and I never understood why.

Haley Radke: What happens next? Do you call her back? Tina?

Ridghaus: Yeah. So I collect myself. I kind of get the—I get the tears out.

Haley Radke: Like I can't even picture that. I'm sorry. I'm just like, I can't even.

Ridghaus: Yeah. It was just like a rock dropped on me from out of the sky, just totally unexpected. And it felt burdensome. Like this knowledge now felt burdensome to me. So the first thing that I did was I called my adoptive parents (you know, now I say adoptive parents). Then, I'm like, you know, If somebody knows the truth to this, it's gonna be my folks.

And so I called. And I had been—really I had been estranged from them for a while. We were unlike each other. They had different life goals than I did. I took a period of time where I stopped calling (like I was the one who would call and kind of check in every week, and stop by the house and see how they were). And I took about two years where I stopped doing that, and I never heard from them. They didn't call. They didn't check in.

And so I felt like I wasn't as important to them as they had been for me. So we had been in kind of this rocky place already, but I had seen my dad more recently and more often than my mom. So I called her house and my mom answers. And I said, you know, “Hey, I wanna talk to dad.” And she said, “He's doing laundry. What do you need?” I said, “Well, I just have a quick question. Am I adopted?” And she comes back with. “Well, you were born at this hospital, by this doctor. This was your birth weight, on this day…”

So she gave me a bunch of facts, which wasn't really what I asked for. And then she said, “Well, you know, who would say something like this to you?” And I said, “Funny that you should ask. It happens to be the state of Kansas. They're under the impression that I'm adopted.” And she said “Well, no. That's just crazy.” I said, “Okay, when you see dad, have him give me a call.” And then we hung up.

So I called Tina back right after that, and she was actually still reeling from being the first person to tell me. Because I was the first adoptee that she'd spoken with who didn't already know that they were adopted.

Haley Radke: Right.

Ridghaus: So then she's, “Hey, can I call you back in a few minutes? You know, I'm still kind of processing this.” I'm like, “Sure. You know, I've waited 35 years. You know? What's another 20 minutes or so?” So she didn't really take that long. She called me back a couple of minutes later. And, you know, mentally, I was like, “Listen, you know, your question was, ‘Do I wanna be in touch with my birth mother?’ And the answer is yes. I do. Whatever information you have, give it to me.”

So she said that she would send me a form that would release all of my records, but that she could send me both the form and the request for contact in the same envelope. (And so this was a Monday that we were talking.) And I checked the mail, like I watched for the mail carrier to arrive, hurried down to a mailbox to check, you know, Did it come today?

So I lived that life of that adolescent adoptee, you know, who fantasizes, Well, maybe my parents are in academia. Maybe they're in film. And then you start to think, Oh, well? You know, I kind of do have Tom Petty's nose. Maybe I'm related to Tom Petty, or something like that. And then on Friday, the mail arrived. And I hurried down to the mailbox, and picked it up on my way back.

You know, of course there's this manila envelope from the state. I open it up before I step into the house. I walk in the house, I pull out this pile of papers, and on the top is a photocopy of— (It looked like a 5x7, you know). And there was this woman's cursive handwriting and it said, “I'm trying to find Baby Boy (Kyle?). I would like to know how he is. Please reach out if you ever wanna talk or if you need anything.” And then it was signed, Barbara. And it had an address and a telephone number.

And it was one of those moments in my life where I just don't quite remember where the telephone came from, but suddenly it was in my hand. You know, like I was barely finished reading this photocopy, and I looked down at my left hand and there's the phone.

And so immediately, I dialed the number. Woman answers, and I said, “I'm trying to reach Barbara.” She says, “This is she.” I said, “Well, my name is Andrew.” (Obviously I wasn't Ridg, then.) I said, “My name is Andrew. And really, I don't know what to say next.” That was it. I wanted to call, I wanted to say my name, hear her voice. And I was done with plans at that point. Like I had nothing else.

So I hear her take in breath (you know, on the other side of the phone), and I imagined that she was probably sitting down. And it's funny for me to talk to her now because she remembers this moment differently than I do. She says, “Well, do you still live in Kansas?” And just like when, you know, Tina said, “You're adopted.” When she said, “Do you still live in Kansas?”

There was something about her voice. There was something about—there's like a space in time where I'm like, I know that voice. There's this comfort that immediately just came over me and I knew, Yeah, this is it. Despite what my adoptive parents were saying, (you know, that I wasn't adopted). I was. And this woman here is my mother,

Haley Radke: Like, what does that do to your headspace? Thirty-five years of living a lie? I don't understand. How would you phrase that? What does that do to your mind?

Ridghaus: You know, just like the initial shock of finding out that I'm adopted, there was this, Oh, of course I'm adopted. And, Oh my God, what a betrayal. Hearing her voice was at once both comforting, as well as completely debilitating. Because all the things that I thought that I had known, I had to revisit and see if they were actually known, if they had substance.

And so honestly, over the next two years, (if I were to put this into some concrete terms), my Lincoln Logs all got knocked down. Right? This house, you know, the little fence, all of those little things that come with the Lincoln Logs. Everything got taken down, to just rubble.

And then I just worked at investigating every memory, you know, like the little Lincoln Logs. Like I picked each one up and I said, Oh, does this have… You know, is this of substance? Is this true? And I just started to rebuild it. And it really took two years before I landed in a place feeling, you know, like I had rebuilt something.

I really wanted to push “pause" on every single part of my life. I didn't want my kids to grow any more. I didn't wanna have to finish my master's thesis. I didn't wanna have to see anybody. I really just wanted to have time to dedicate to this. The world didn't stop in between all of the other events. And that's what I was doing. Like my mind was just constantly working at analyzing every childhood memory and seeing what was still true.

Haley Radke: Hmm. Did you grow up with siblings?

Ridghaus: Yeah. I had a sister who was five years younger. And to kind of go back to the phone call with Tina, once we conducted our business, I said, “Tina, I should ask, you know, I have a younger sister. I don't know if she is their natural child or not.” And Tina said, “You know, of course, I can't talk to you about another person's information.” And I said, “I know. I was just kind of thinking aloud.” And she said, “You should have her call us.” I'm like, “Okay.” I hope Tina doesn't get in trouble.

Haley Radke: Should I bleep out her name?

Ridghaus: That would be funny. She's now in the Witness Protection Program.

You know, so she didn't reveal anything except to say that, you know, my sister should reach out, to just verify her identity. And then she never did. About a year, maybe a year-and-a-half after I discovered, she found a letter that had been written between my adoptive mother and her own mother (my adoptive mother's mother), talking about adopting my sister.

Haley Radke: So you were both adopted and they didn't tell either of you?

Ridghaus: We were both adopted, yeah. But she was a lot more like them, you know? Dark hair, dark eyes. She was interested in the things that they were interested in. You know, I grew up watching Notre Dame football, listening to classical music. You know, I liked opera, I liked to read.

My adoptive parents were Nascar, cheap beer, and rotgut whiskey. We were just different, you know? And my sister was more like them.

Haley Radke: She felt like she fit, so she didn't necessarily need to… Yeah.

Ridghaus: And it was funny, like at the time I didn't know about the narratives. I didn't know about the “good adoptee.” I didn't know about the “bad adoptee.” You know, like I didn't know about those things, because we weren't raised adopted. But she was the “good adoptee.”

Haley Radke: So let's go back to— We've got these two years where you are just sifting through your life and figuring out what's real. Am I remembering things correctly? And then you also have this son, Zach, that you relinquished. How does that kind of play into this?

Ridghaus: You know, I reached out to Zach pretty quickly, because that was part of what I investigated, too. What did I do? You know? And he and I had some pretty significant conversations around this. And Zach has his own story, you know?

I only mentioned his adoptive mother because at that point of his life, his adoptive father had left the family. So it was just her raising Zach and his younger sister. And that's Zach's story. So about the time that I kind of emerged from, you know, this analysis and kind of contemplative restfulness, and started to figure out, Okay, here are the things that I can stand on. Here are the truths of my life.

Zach was graduating from high school. And so I took Zach… I went to his graduation, of course. We spent a few days with his adoptive family, and Rebecca (his birth mother) came and we had three or four days all together with Zach at his graduation. And then Zach and my other two oldest sons hopped in a car and drove to Seattle to meet my birth father, his mother and father, as well as his sister. (So these would've been Zach's great-grandparents, and grandfather, and aunt.) And so we basically road tripped, you know, camped in a couple of places. We lost the poles to one of our tents.

And so all four of us, we're in Idaho. It's freezing because, you know, it's May, but we're at elevation, so it's freezing outside. But we're in this two person tent, all four of us. And we're laying like mackerels, you know, head to toe. And we have to open the tent in the middle of the night because we're just generating so much body heat that we're welcoming this freezing air.

We had these really interesting moments on the way out. And it was a good time for Zach to spend time with Drew and Ethan. And then we get there and we spend three days with my birth father Ben and his family. So we took a four-generation picture, and then Zach has to be back in Colorado for his job. And so we drive straight back from Seattle. And you know, it was just a memorable time.

And so it was maybe another year-and-a-half/two years later that I was reading some— Of course, I was reading Primal Wound, reading some of Ron Nydam’s stuff. And I come across this statement in Ron Nydam’s book Adoptees Come of Age, where he is talking about how we are continually recreating the situation of our relinquishment. And I started to think about Zach and, you know, me relinquishing, having been relinquished (even though I didn't— I only knew that in a pre-verbal kind of sense).

And I just called Zach and I'm like, “Listen, I wanna let you know something.” I said, “I made a mistake. Rebecca and I didn't work out. And I have nothing against your adoptive parents, but I shouldn't have let go of you. I know what Ben has meant to me. I know what meeting Barbara and knowing those relationships, those have been formative. Those have been significant.” And I said, “If I ever had to make that decision again, I wouldn't. Okay? I would rather be in poverty and with you than ever give you up again.”

And he said, “You know, I didn't know the words to that question. But I've always wondered it.” And I just said, “Never again.” It doesn't change what happened, who he is, and we still have a— I mean, we're still in contact and communicate, and have relationship with each other, but it would've been different.

Haley Radke: You know, just as an adoptee, hearing those words, you know, that you're just— You're wanted, right?

Ridghaus: Yeah.

Haley Radke: He can just know that. I can't. I just cannot get through anything without crying, apparently.

Ridghaus: Well, these— We're talking about core things, preverbal. I mean, they, yeah... Yeah. Thinking about Zach, I mean, that was a big part of just my own journey.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. Can you share a little bit more about Barbara and Ben, and connecting with them? And sort of how that happened?

Ridghaus: Yeah, so Barbara was immediately receptive and we spent about three months on the phone. Like that first day, we probably spoke for six to eight hours. Just a free, kind of natural connection. And, you know, my kids were in three different schools, so one came home at 3 (or 2:30, or whatever). So I'd hang up the phone, make sure they get settled, get them a snack or whatever, and then call her back. And then an hour later, and then somebody else would come home, and I'd get off the phone and do all that again. And then we probably spent another, you know, two or three hours after those three interruptions.

[laughs] One of the things— I had just watched a TV show where an adoptee had been contacted by his birth father. And his birth father was like, “We never got to go fishing. We never got to do these things, you know?” And then over a period of a few weeks, the birth father tells the adoptee, “Son, I'm dying. I need a kidney, and your blood type is my blood type.” And so the son agrees to give the father the kidney. And then the birth father disappears.

So this is on my mind, like I've just seen this on a TV show. So, you know, within the first week of conversation with Barbara, I said, “Soooo, why now? You know, I'm 35 years old. Why now?” I said, “Are you sick? Do you need a kidney?” [laughs] She's like, “No. No” She said, “Actually I thought I would hear from you when you were 21.”

And when she tells this story now (like when we talk about it now), she says, “I was thinking to myself, Well I sure know who I can't come to if I need a heart...” [laughs] But that's— It's just something we laugh about. Because you know, it was a legitimate question. Not, Did she really need a kidney, but, Why now? I mean I was willing to…

Haley Radke: No, I know. It's just so funny, right? But we do think about those things in the back of your mind. Like, What is…?

Ridghaus: But I felt the freedom to ask her those things. You know, and like our relationship has been very open. So what she said was she thought she would hear from me when I was 21, and then she didn't. And then she didn't want to intrude on my life, and so she waited until I was 22, and then 24. And then by the time I turned 25, she thought, Either he hates me, or he's dead. And I have to know, I just have to know.

And so she was living in another state and so she had to go through the forms and get them notarized, and filed with the right departments. And it just took a period of time. So she had actually finished the form when I was 32, and it was about to expire. Like it had another three or four months before that form was going to expire, and she would have to fill out a new one if she wanted to maintain an open registry with the state (when they got ahold of me).

She said that was it, that she'd always wondered. That she never passed my birthday without sending off balloons, or having some quiet time, or just pulling some friends together for support. But that she'd always wanted to know where I was, and how I was doing.

Haley Radke: I wanna just pause there. When you're talking to her and you tell her, “I didn't know I was adopted.” What was her reaction to that?

Ridghaus: I don't think she ever judged them. Like she never said, “That's ridiculous.” What she said was, “I couldn't imagine that you wouldn't have known.” And that was about the extent of her response to that.

One of the ways that I wasn't open with Barbara (initially) was, you know, she would ask about childhood. And being raised in a home with two daily alcoholics has challenges. And I didn't wanna talk about what childhood was like.

Haley Radke: Why do you think we do that, Ridg? Like hide those ugly things from original parents?

Ridghaus: I could already see that she suffered from the relinquishment. I didn't want to add to the suffering, you know, by saying, “Yeah, not only did you relinquish me. But they were kind of **** parents.”

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah.

Ridghaus: After about the tenth time I heard what a good job my parents did in raising me. (You know, and this was over a two-year period of time, when I was sorting through all this stuff.) One day I just had to stop her and my paternal grandmother Marge, and I said, “Listen, I don't wanna talk about my childhood. But it wasn't easy. And it's something that I survived. And I'm the person that I am not because of the way that they raised me, but in spite of their parenting. And I really don't wanna talk about it.”

And at that point, I hadn't even spoken about it with my kids, or my wife, or anybody. They knew that I had left home at 16 and that was it. So it was one of those things that actually facilitated some healing (for me), to finally to begin to talk about some of those things.

Then, on the other hand, you know, Barbara was a nurse, she worked for a law firm as a medical malpractice consultant. She had taught English in Italy. She and her husband had a winery. So, you know, a very kind of vibrant, world-traveled life.

Haley Radke: Did they have other kids?

Ridghaus: Yeah. She has another son who was about the same age as my sister, growing up. His name was Liam. Different father, same mother. And you know, Liam and I have been able to connect. And we went to Ireland a few years ago and walked through the country and saw U2. Just had a really good time together. So that's been a good relationship.

Ben, his dad was an engineer for Boeing. Ben is a landscape designer/architect, builds houses, and makes wine. He also has a winery. So, it was peculiar for me to land in this creative, artistic… (I don't wanna say tasteful, you know…). But I mean, these are people that they appreciate food and wine. I mean, they weren't gluttonous, but they wanted to savor these moments of life, which is just a lot different than what I grew up with, so...

Ben is ambidextrous (like me). And there was a day where Ben and I were working on a house together, and I watched him switch from right to left hand with this power tool. And I thought, That's it. That's where that comes from. And at the same moment, I remembered: I was probably 11/12, and I was playing basketball or throwing a football or something. And my adoptive father said, “How do you do that?” And I didn't know what he was talking about. I'm like, “What?” He said, “Well, you're using both of your hands equally. How do you do that?” I said, “I don't know. Doesn't everybody?”

So on both sides of the family, you know, Barbara's redheaded, Ben has this very lean, lithe figure that I had for… (well, until I got married). So I finally started to see myself in the world, from somebody who had come before. And that, too, was healing.

Haley Radke: I'm so glad that you had all these positive things come out of this.

Okay, so you said when you called Barbara, you said, “It's Andrew calling.” And now you have a new name, so I wanna hear all about this.

Ridghaus: Probably six years ago— Oh, no, it probably would've been ‘08, maybe? It was a little while ago. We'd been three or four years into reunion with both sides of the family. And I was talking with Barbara one day. Somehow I got into my mind, I wonder if she would ever want to adopt me. And at this point, both of my adoptive parents were alive. And so she and I talked about this. And she was overly enthusiastic, like just, you know, “Absolutely.”

And for me, I thought… I began to think of it in terms of, you know, life coming full circle. There's a redemption in the beginning coming back to the ending, you know? And having a new beginning. Almost three years ago, my adoptive father passed, and last fall, my adoptive mother passed.

And I had a weekend after the funeral, where I was just kind of thinking about my own mortality, my kids… And the question that I had asked Barbara eight years before came back to mind: Would she want to adopt me? And so I called her and I said, “Here's what's happened. Would you want to adopt me?” And without hesitation, she said, “Yes.”

And so over the next few months, she and I began to plan out an adoption ceremony, because there are a few states in the U.S. that permit adult adoption. And Washington, where she lives, is one of them. And so we planned a trip where I would be in Washington State for my birthday this year, and we would go to a court and have my adoption by my birth mother finalized. So that's what we did.

And the attorney said, “Do you wanna change your name?” And I said, “Yeah, that's something I've thought about, but I can do it later.” She said, “Well, it's free right now. You know, if it's part of our paperwork, there's no expense.” I'm like, “Oh. Okay.” And so I took part of my birth father's last name (Ridg), and I took a form of my birth mother's last name (Haus), and I blended them together. Because I feel like I'm the start of those two lines.

And so that's where I get my name from now, which is Ridghaus. The name that I was born with had lost meaning (you know, aside from it was a recognizable name that many people knew me by). The significance of the name had been lost for a long, long time, so it was just a name. And so, in forging this new identity (Ridghaus), I felt like I'm able to establish something for my kids, that they're born of this new line. And so I've talked to them, you know, if any of them want to change their name, I'll get the paperwork passed through.

I think all of them are on board. That's the new name. This summer, I was unadopted, you know? Being adopted by my birth mother, I felt like it was an un-adoption. And I took on the names of my birth families: Ridghaus.

Haley Radke: Through this whole story, you just sound so grounded. You know, you talked about these two years of putting your pieces together. And talking about how you are the person you are, in spite of your childhood. And all of these beautiful things that you really were passed genetically—the creativity, and the different love for life, and things that you have gotten from your original parents.

Can you talk a little bit about that? How have you found healing in this? And how do you stay so grounded? You just sound like you're really in touch with all of these feelings and things, whereas, some of us are just like—we just feel like a disaster all the time.

Ridghaus: You know, that's not to say that I don't feel on the verge of disaster at various moments, but I do feel like I've been able to dig my feet down into the ground and find a place where there's stability. You know, and that comes through several things. One, I've got a great tribe around me in the adoptive community. One of the first people that I met who, you know, was open and vocal, is a trauma sensitive yoga practitioner trainer, Cathy Koley. And knowing Cathy, I met Brian Stanton, and Desiree Stephens, and April Dinwoodie, and Aaron Seedy, and Derek Frank, (who became my partner on this film stuff).

So, I have a group of people around me who have absolutely no tolerance for BS. They are happy to call me out when they feel like I'm being anything but true. And we have that rapport with each other. And, you know, we stay in touch. We check in. And so, one of those elements has been that rootedness with just a fantastic tribe.

My kids are amazing. And for all the mistakes that I feel like I made in raising them, they have become just beautiful, kind adults, and the kinds of people that I want to continually have around myself. And again, there is just no— I just don't lie to them, and I don't let them lie to me. (Like we just have a very honest relationship.)

There are times when me and Ben, or me and Barbara haven't seen eye to eye and they'll be like, “Hey,” you know, “What's going on there?” I'm like, you know, “We haven't spoken for a while.” (They kind of made me mad, or I think I stepped on their toes, or whatever.) And we just need a little bit of time to sort that out.

But I'd say one of the other things that helped me get into just a groundedness (and this coincided)... Like I found out that I was adopted at the same time that I got invited to write a book about spiritual formation activities (so things like rest, and meditation, and fasting). And so for that two years that I was rebuilding, I was also going through these spiritual formation exercises. Some didn't fit me, you know, but I would still practice them every three or four months.

Some very much so. And then they really helped to establish a strong relationship with my kids. Like one of the things that we do, is we observe Sabbath Friday night to Saturday night. And then what that means is, we have to make sure that dinner's ready, and we kind of clear everything else off the schedule. It gets harder as they get older, because you know, they've got a job, or they're working on Friday night, or they wanna see a boyfriend or a girlfriend (or whatever).

But for years, we've maintained a Sabbath of... “This is our rest,” you know? And we're just gonna spend time together, and we're gonna appreciate each other. And it's one day of the week where the world does not stop turning. Like it keeps going, even though I'm resting, which tells me while I contribute important things, I don't make the world go around. And so I just get a good sense of: I participate with this other community, but the world keeps spinning. So, exercises like that have been very helpful.

And then finally, just to kind of top it off, I started working with a body therapist, who put me into breathing exercises and got me to talk about some of that trauma that I went through, and just breathe through it. She's been fantastic.

So I'd probably say those four things: my tribe, my kids, the spiritual exercise book that I was a part of, and then having a really good body therapist to work with.

Haley Radke: Those are so helpful. I'd love to shift and talk a little bit about creativity, and how we can find some healing through that as well.

Ridghaus: Yeah.

Haley Radke: And we are gonna talk with you and your partner, Derek, a little bit later about your video project and all of that. So let's leave that, but anything else that you want to discuss about creativity, and ways we can find healing in various mediums? I mean, creativity is kind of broad. What are your thoughts on that?

Ridghaus: Right now, I'm reading a poet. Nayyirah Waheed. She's a woman of color. Poetry comes across very simple. But it's not. It's this deftly created, curated collection of words. And when I read her poetry, it puts me into this meditative space. What do I think about that? And what does that say about the world?

And so I like to write poetry myself, or short stories. But when I read somebody else's words, it gets me away from, What did I grow up with? Or, What did I do? And I get to read their words and kind of sift through them and find out what's true in there (a little bit like the exercise that I did when I first found out that I was adopted),

I wanted to sort out what's true, and then I can take those true words and kind of reassemble them for myself (so they become a way of me expressing the same things). She's giving voice to some of my own experiences and not just Nayyirah, but anybody who's involved in creative expression.

And, you know, some people just don't feel comfortable writing words, but they will create amazing portraiture, or take great photographs or stunning music. Right now, there's a person who's recently come into our circles by the name of Kristen Garaffo. She plays the ukulele. Have you heard Kristen?

Haley Radke: Yeah, I met her at the Indiana Adoptee Network Conference.

Ridghaus: That's right. That's right. She just got a song, she just put a song on Spotify. And I love her voice, like there's this lilt when she's playing her ukulele. And you know, she doesn't have to be talking about adoptee stuff. It's just—she's singing her spirit. And it's just so affirming.

Haley Radke: I love that idea, that creativity can lead us to what's true. Because adoptees, we so struggle with identity. (I mean, late discovery adoptees, for sure.) That's even another level. But all of us in general, Where do we fit? Who are we?

When we're looking at our— If we manage to find our first parents, you know, do we fit with them? It's so much, So finding our individual identity, Who am I? And the thought that creativity could help with that.

Ridghaus: That's expressed so aptly. I just did a quick search for Nayyirah, just to make sure that I could say her last name. (And I don't know that I still said it right). But her Twitter feed popped up, and the last poem that she posted said, “Feel it. The thing that you don't want to feel. Feel it, and be free.”

And I think that encapsulates how I see it. Some of our lives are not very pretty and you know, like you said, we wanna kind of hide that, or we wanna keep it from…whatever.

But I can look back on my life and go, Yeah, that's not pretty. That's icky, you know, it's— Actually, it was actually pretty scary at the time, but I can feel that it was scary and then not be that dad. And be free from what that was.

Haley Radke: Well, I feel like we've had, you know, incredibly profound moments. You're just so wise.

Ridghaus: I have a lot of help.

Haley Radke: So is there anything else you wanna touch on, Ridg, that I didn't get to? I didn't ask you about, you really hoped that I would talk to you about?

Ridghaus: No, I— You know, Haley, I really appreciate what you do here in these podcasts. I love hearing other people's narratives. And I think you do such an exceptional job of giving people space to talk about those things that are important for them and, you know, their journey.

So, as I look back at what we've talked about, I can't think of a thing that we would need to dive into further. You have such a good touch with people, so I'm very grateful for this opportunity to share, and talk, and see what others have to say.

Haley Radke: Oh, thank you. That's so kind. Thank you.

Okay, so we are gonna come back and we're gonna talk to Derek, and we're gonna talk all about Six Word Adoption Memoirs. And we're gonna talk about some recommendations. But let's pause here.

So, how can we get in touch with you online?

Ridghaus: So, it is easiest for people to get in touch with us through our Facebook page, the Six Word Adoption Memoir Project. It's facebook.com/6WAMproject/.

Haley Radke: Great. Thank you so much. It was so fun talking to you.

Ridghaus: Aww. Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: I have so much more to say, more to tell you, but I'm sure you're saying, “Wait a minute, Haley, where's the recommended resources? When are you gonna talk about Ridg and Derek's videos?”

Listen, I promise I did not forget these things. This is Part One of a two-part premiere, and next week (Friday), you will hear Derek's story. And then Ridg, and Derek, and I break down the Six Word Adoption Memoir Project, including some behind the scenes moments (one of which involves a mattress). So you just have to listen. So funny. And we do our recommended resource section there.

I have a group of over 20 supporters that contribute monthly to help cover the costs of producing this podcast. Thank you. I could not keep the show going without your support, so thank you so, so much. If you would like to stand with me and ensure adoptee voices are shared worldwide, head over to adopteeson.com/partner. There's a link right in the show notes of the app that you're listening on that you can click through on. You can check out the options for support.

I even have a secret adoptees-only Facebook group for supporters and guests of the show as a thank you for your generosity. It's this incredibly intimate and supportive place that has been a real encouragement to me, especially in these last few months.

Speaking of adoptees, I have two clips to share with you that were submitted through adopteeson.com. Let's have a listen.

Abby Forero Hilty: Hi, my name's Abby Forero Hilty. I was born in Bogotà, Colombia, and adopted at the age of two months. I grew up in a suburb of New York City. Thanks to Facebook and other social media sites, I've been able to connect with adoptees from around the world. Recently, 16 other Colombian adoptees and I co-wrote the first Colombian adoptee anthology.

The book is called Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees, and I edited and published it in early 2017. In each chapter, a different author shares her or his experience as a transracial intercountry Colombian adoptee, using various means of expression in the U.S., Decoding Our Origins is available for purchase online at thecreatespace.com shop, or via Amazon.com. Outside of the U.S., please use your country's local Amazon site.

All profits from sales of the book are being used to purchase DNA kits for first mothers in Colombia, and Colombian adoptees who are searching for their family. Thank you.

Stephanie Harris: My name is Stephanie Harris and I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I was relinquished as a newborn in 1969, closed adoption, and have been in full circle reunion with both first families.

My dear friend (and also fellow adoptee), Lynn Grubb, became the editor of our book, The Adoptee Survival Guide. This is an anthology collection of 30 absolutely amazing adoptees. We share the wisdom and tools, and we give insight on the life of an adoptee. It was published in 2015.

You can find the book The Adoptee Survival Guide on Amazon, or you can go to www.theadopteesurvivalguide.com. If you'd like to connect with us on Facebook, we also have a page: Adoptee Survival Guide.

Haley Radke: Thank you for submitting those, ladies. If you're an adoptee with a book you'd like to share with us, head over to adopteeson.com/connect, and you can send audio feedback to me (just like Abby and Stephanie did). I love to hear your voices and I'm happy to promote your work on my show. For free. There's no charge or anything.

Come find me on social media, tell me about your projects, and how you're finding healing. I really wanna connect with you, so links to my Twitter, Facebook page, Instagram—they're all on adopteeson.com.

The very last thing for today. (Oh, so much. I know.) Would you tell just one person today about this podcast? Perhaps you know an adoptee who also relinquished a child. It's actually super common for us to repeat these patterns. Maybe they'd be encouraged to hear Ridg's story of connecting with his first son, and some of the healing conversations they've had.

Thank you for listening. Let's talk again, next Friday.

Oh, I said that was the last thing, but I totally lied, because I have one more thing to tell you. Aah, so much stuff. This is what happens when I'm gone for a few weeks, right?

I was invited to come down to the Concerned United Birthparents’ Retreat, which is happening in California on the first weekend of October. So if you are headed down to that retreat, please come find me on socials. Adopteeson.com has all of our links there. And let me know you're coming, because I wanna meet you in person. I wanna give you a big hug.

I really love connecting with listeners in real life. It's one of my absolute favorite things, and if you want, we can do a quick little interview. I can record your thoughts about adoption and about the retreat. I'd love to do that with you. So let me know you're coming. I wanna see you, and am excited to meet you in real life.

38 [Healing Series] Finding Allies

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/38

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series, where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves, so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee. Today we answer a listener question sent in from Kate. Let's listen in.

Lesli Johnson is a fellow adoptee and licensed therapist who works to help other adoptees connect the dots of their story and live authentically. Welcome back, Lesli.

Lesli Johnson: Thanks, Haley. Great to be here.

Haley Radke: I'm so happy to chat with you again today, and I actually have a question from a listener, so I'm going to read that to you.

“I have a suggestion for an episode topic: talking to significant others or friends about your feelings about being adopted. I'm not married, but I'm in a serious relationship. My partner is not adopted and doesn't have any experience with adoption. He's very supportive of me and genuinely listens to me when I need to vent about adoption stuff, but even still, I often wind up feeling like I have to justify my feelings in our conversations. Not because he's being antagonistic, but just because he's coming from a different perspective, and I think it's hard to put yourself in an adoptee's perspective if you've never lived it. I guess my question is: what are some strategies for having real conversations about adoption with people in your life that don't have experience with adoption? Obviously, it's always best if you can talk to a therapist, but ideally you should be able to talk to your partner or close friends when something agitates you and you want to talk about it. Any advice for how to teach a non-adopted partner or friend to be an ally?”

So, can you answer us, but also maybe talk to our partners a bit?

Lesli Johnson: That's a great question, and I think as adoptees– all people want to be seen and validated,I think sometimes for adopted people, we want it even a little bit more, our experience to be understood and seen. I think there are few ways that we can get the important people in our life– depending on who they are, but it sounds like this person's partner has a willingness to be there for her and understand. So maybe sharing beyond just educating about her own experience or her own feelings. Maybe this person would want to be included in listening to your podcast. “Let's listen to this together and have a conversation about it afterward.”

Or maybe this person's friends or partner, or any adoptive person's friends or partner, would be open to reading some of the must-read books for adoptees and having a conversation about it to better understand.

And I think, at the end of the day, no one really– it would be like me trying to understand what it feels like to be a man and fully understanding that, or my partner trying to understand, you know, fully embracing and understanding the experience of being a woman, or me as a white woman fully understanding what it's like to be an African-American male, or vice versa.

So I guess that's a long way of saying that there's no way for a person to fully understand the experience of being adopted unless they themselves were adopted, but that through education and support we can help our allies better understand us and our experience and how it shaped us. What do you think? How would you answer that question? I'm curious.

Haley Radke: Well, when you're talking about that, I'm thinking, ‘You know, it's taken my husband a long time to understand why I am the way I am.’ And now that he has listened to the podcast –he's not listened to all the episodes, he's always like at least a month or two behind. So, you know, who knows when he'll hear this? Hi, Nick!-- I guess he's understanding more and more, but it just takes a long time, Lesli. I really think it takes a long time, and you're right. Like he's never fully going to get it. He just isn't. If you're not adopted, you don't understand what it's like to not know your heritage, to not know who your parents are. He's never going to understand that. It's just impossible.

Lesli Johnson: Yeah. I just recently got back from a vacation with my partner's family. He has two brothers, and just seeing everyone in a room with their parents, and then some of their children, and all the genetic similarities, not only in the physicalities, but also the mannerisms. It didn't make me sad, it just kind-of was another time when I thought, ‘Wow, I don't have that.’ I mean, I do know some of my biological relatives, and I do see similarities, but not in the context of, you know, a big room over a family meal.

And I think, like you said, it takes a while and we have to be patient. I think we have to be patient and empathic just as we're wanting that same patience and empathy, you know?

Haley Radke: Definitely. So you're describing that situation and I'm thinking, ‘Yeah, it was just like that for me at a family event a few weeks ago.’ And then later, I can go to Nick and say, “You know, I felt kind of triggered because your dad was talking about how much so-and-so resembles so-and-so, and all these similarities, and every time I hear that, I think, ‘I have a loss there.’” And so when I tell Nick more and more of those examples, his ears get attuned to that as well.

Lesli Johnson: Yeah, and I think it's what our triggers are, and being able to share those vulnerable parts with the people that we care about, in hopes that sharing those things, our partners, our friends, will respect that and be very mindful. For me it's separations and transitions. And I've worked really hard to not be so vulnerable there, but I want some people in my life to know that separations and transitions are really, really difficult for me sometimes. So I want someone to be empathic to that, just as I would when they share with me their vulnerabilities.

Haley Radke: Well, that's such a great tip. If we know those specific things that are really difficult for us, sharing that with your partner and just kind of explaining, you know, you can say, “Separations are really hard for me because my story started with rejection.”

Lesli Johnson: Or with a separation!

Haley Radke: Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Lesli Johnson: It requires us to have done our work though, to be able to articulate that, what our triggers– right?

Haley Radke: Absolutely, yeah. Are you saying I have more work to do?

Lesli Johnson: No, it's a process and I think the process is ongoing, and that's a good thing.

Haley Radke: So what are, like, the top three books we could get a partner to read if they were super interested?

Lesli Johnson: I mean, one of my top ones now –I certainly have many of the books on adoption– but I think a great one would be Anne Heffron's book You Don't Look Adopted. I think that's a great one. There's parts of it that are funny, there are parts of it that are sad, but at the end of the book, you do have an essence of– of course it's her story, but I know you've read it, and I've read it, and I know other people that have read it, and we all take little bits and say, “Oh, yeah, right. I felt this way.” You know, there are other books. I think The Primal Wound is a great one. I think it's maybe not the first one I would recommend for someone who wasn't adopted, but certainly great information.

Haley Radke: Well, even if you as an adoptee are reading through that, you can say, “Can you just read this chapter, or these couple pages? Because this is my experience.” Because yeah, I agree, “Can you read this huge book and it's kind of dry?...”

Lesli Johnson: Yeah! Or watching movies that have an adoption theme and having a conversation about it afterward. Again, listening to episodes of your podcast or parts of your podcast that really resonate with the adoptive person and then being able to say, “Will you listen to this with me? I'd really love for you to hear this perspective because I really agree with it,” or, “I really felt that way when I was younger.” Or, “These are some of the fears I have.” Whatever material is relevant.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Lesli. That was really helpful. How can we connect with you online?

Lesli Johnson: You can connect with me through my website, www.yourmindfulbrain.com, and that has all my information.

Haley Radke: Great. Thank you so much for your help today. Thank you.

Lesli Johnson: Thank you, thank you. I always enjoy being here.

Haley Radke: This episode was brought to you by my phenomenal Patreon supporters. If you're looking for a place to find further adoptee support, I have a secret Facebook group for adoptees that is only available to my Patreon supporters. I take monthly pledges to help sustain my work in producing episodes just like this one for you. Visit Adopteeson.com/partner to find out all the details.

Today, maybe you consider sharing this episode with the person you'd like to have be your adoptee ally. Listen to it together, and then share with them about how they can best support you. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday for the season finale of Adoptees On with Jessenia Parmer of I Am Adopted.

37 Liz - Speaking Out

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/37

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 2, Episode 12: Liz. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I feel tremendously honored to introduce you to Liz Latty. Liz shares her story, we talk a lot about our dads, and we dive deep into adoptee activism.

I usually do this at the end of the show, but I'm going to ask you a big favor upfront today. As you're listening, if you feel moved, if you are hearing some of the things Liz is sharing and think, ‘Oh my gosh, I know exactly who needs to hear this today,’ please share this episode with them. I know it will bring encouragement to many of you to know you aren't alone on this journey.

Liz and I wrap up the episode with some recommended resources, and as always, links to all the things we're talking about are on the website, AdopteesOn.com. Stick around to the end because I'll be letting you know details about the season finale of Adoptees On. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to introduce to Adoptees On, Liz Latty. Welcome, Liz.

Liz Latty: Hi, Haley. Thanks for having me.

Haley Radke: I'm so excited to tell you that– I'm so excited. Oh my gosh. See, I'm sorry, I'm already starting to fangirl. I promise I'm not going to do that. You've written some very, very powerful pieces and I feel like you are really getting our voice out there. So thank you so much for your work for us.

*Liz Latty: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I'd love it if you would start off by just sharing your story with us.

Liz Latty: I was born in Michigan, in suburban Detroit, in the late 70s, and was adopted through Catholic Social Services at about two months old. I was in a foster home for about two months. Was raised about 10 miles from where I was born. I was raised with an adopted sibling, you know, we had no biological tie. And we had really different experiences of adoption, I think. I was sort-of always really deeply grieving from a really young age, and always knew that I would search for my family. You know, it was a closed adoption and so didn't really have much information. I started searching when I was about 18. It was a really very difficult, tumultuous time for me. I was raised by an extremely Catholic family, and I came out of the closet when I was 17, 18 years old. It was not a pretty scene. And so I was actually fairly disconnected from my adoptive family because of that, and was sort of really reeling from that rejection around my sexuality. So of course it seemed like the best time to search for my original family!

Haley Radke: Of course! Why wouldn’t you want to just bring all the feelings in?

Liz Latty: Yeah, of course, it's fine! It's great. So yeah, so I started searching when I was 18, but I was also sort-of living in a very transient state. And it was also before a lot of technology was available, too. e're talking about like the late 90’s. And because I was sort-of in and out of homelessness and transience, I didn't really have access to computers or internet or money or anything. And it took me quite a while to find my original family. I actually ended up finding a, you know, what folks like to call Search Angels. Though at the time I hated that they were called Search Angels, because I was on the heels of being rejected from a very religious family and community. The prevalence of religion in adoption was very difficult for me to deal with. You know, I was really angry at that part of my life. So I sort of resisted working with a Search Angel for a while, simply because they were called Search Angels. I was like, ‘I don't want any angels.’

But I did end up working with someone who was able to find my family within about three weeks. It was pretty quick. And then met my original mother and her family, and then found my father some time after that. Though that was really difficult as well. Yeah, I actually got my father's contact information, but found out that he was born-again evangelical before I contacted him. And I had already been rejected by a religious family for being queer, and so I was terrified at the possibility of that happening again. And so I didn't contact him for quite a while, almost a year after I had his information. But I finally did.

So I was in reunion with my mother for about two and a half years, and then that sort-of fell apart, for reasons that I guess I'm still trying to figure out 15 years later. But I am still in relationship with my father to this day, and I also have nine half-siblings.

Haley Radke: Whoa.

Liz Latty: Through him. Yes. And I have relationships with them, and with their mother, to varying degrees as well. So that's been a really amazing part of my reunion. And my adoptive family and I have worked long and hard to sort-of repair our relationships and build relationships together as adults and, you know, figuring out how to accept one another. Yeah, so that's my story.

Haley Radke: Well, we often don't talk about reunion with our fathers, so would you mind going into that a little bit? You said you were kind-of afraid to contact him, and you waited about a year. Do you wanna expound on that?

Liz Latty: Yeah. Well, it was really just because of the religion thing. And it was like the intersection of religion and queerness, which is just really volatile, often, right? As we know, right? I mean, I'm not saying across the board. Lots of religious folks are perfectly open and loving to various sexualities and gender presentations and all of these things. But, you know, historically speaking –and certainly my personal experience– had been really difficult. So I was really scared. And I think, too, though, that something about it being my dad made it a little bit less urgent. Which is strange, you know, but I think it makes sense, right?

Like, when I found my mother, and the first conversation I ever had with her on the phone, she told me his name and she told me their breakup. They had stayed together for two years after I was born. They were very much in love, teenagers, you know, at the tail end of high school, and had stayed together and had gone through this really painful trauma of losing me. Because it was not what they wanted, they were forced into it. And then had a really painful breakup. And she was like, “Here's his name. I don't ever want to talk about him again.” And we didn't. We never did. I was like, ‘Alright, cool.’ And as soon as I had his name, I was like, ‘Huh. That's so weird. I kind-of have not really ever thought about him.’ Like, I had, but not really. It was sort-of always about the mother. It was always about the mom for me. It opened a new window, you know, it opened a new window that I hadn't thought about and that I was really interested in, but it just didn't have the same urgency as it did with my mom.

And so I think that both the fear of being rejected for my sexuality yet again, and because also I think that often in religious communities, rejection of queerness is really violent. So it's a real fear, you know. I had been– they thought I was mentally ill, and were joining, you know, groups that were trying to “pray people straight”. And it was the height of the ex-gay movement in the mid-to-late 90’s. And they really thought they could cure me. They also thought it was like a symptom of attachment disorder and sort-of pathologized it around being adopted. That was pretty emotionally violent. I was just like, ‘I'm not doing that again. I'm not going through that again with another family.’

I had like his name and address and phone number on a little piece of paper, and I just folded it up and put it in a shoebox and put it under my bed for quite a long time. And then one day I just was like, ‘You know, if I don't do this, I'm gonna regret it.’ And I just pulled it out and I called him. And he said that he always knew that I would find him, that if I had any of him in me, that he knew that I would find him and that he was just waiting. And then we talked on the phone for an hour and it was really easy. He's super chatty and, you know, we're both really chatty and crack lots of jokes. He actually does comedy, and he is an actor and a musician, and it was just really easy. Again, I also sometimes think, ‘Well, is that…?’ you know, it was never easy with my mom. It was never easy. It was always a struggle.

But then, you know, it's been 15 years and certainly there's been difficult times. We've lost touch for years at a time, and then reconnected, and it's not been without its challenges. But the initial reunion, we lived in the same place at the time, and so he just immediately wanted to come over. He came over and I made my girlfriend at the time –who, we lived together– hide at the neighbors.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.

Liz Latty: I know. Which I still feel guilty about. We're friends to this day, so she's forgiven me for all the trauma. And she understood at the time, too. She is a really loving person and very compassionate and empathetic. So she understood, you know, that I was just terrified. That it was real, you know. That I had been rejected already and that that fear was really real. And so she hid at the freaking neighbor's house while my dad came to meet me for the first time.

But then I went out to his house, which is about 20, 25 minutes from where I was living in Detroit, and met his kids and his wife. And she immediately just sort of claimed me as one of her own, you know, still does. They only had seven kids, actually, at the time, but two more –twins, my youngest brothers are twins– they came just a little while later after that, and his wife actually asked me to be the other person in the delivery room. So I was there for their birth with my dad. And my dad was actually the last person to hold me in the hospital before they took me away, when he was 16, 17. So that was a pretty powerful, pretty intense time.

So yeah, it's been 15 years of an ongoing rollercoaster. And I'm constantly surprised at how new things come up all the time. Like, I'm still finding things out that I didn't know before, or getting conflicting stories about things I thought I knew before. And I'm still finding myself with new questions all the time. I mean, my dad and I had actually lost track of each other– well, not lost track of each other. We knew where each other was, but we hadn't talked for about seven years, until last summer. And we saw each other last summer and sort-of started a correspondence again just this past year. So it's a new level, you know. It's just always new. Which I just think about and write about a lot, this idea, this experience of being on the other side of reunion long-term, and what that means. What it means to build relationships with people who, in the beginning all you share is this shared history of trauma, but otherwise you're sort-of strangers. And what that means over time, and how that grows, and ebbs and flows and stuff.

Haley Radke: Well, I found it interesting, Liz, when you said that your father said, “I kind-of knew you would find me and I was just waiting for you.” Do you think he ever would've searched for you? This is something I've asked my dad probably 3 or 4 times, and I think his answer is no, but he can't say it to me.

Liz Latty: I don't know. That's a great question. He might listen to this–

Haley Radke: My dad listens every week, so I'm like, ‘Is this going to make the final cut? I don’t know.’

Liz Latty: Yeah! I don't know about formally, I know that informally, he was constantly searching for me. Always. He told me, in fact recently, just this past year, he went much more into detail about our story from his perspective than he had previously.

And whew, it was really hard to hear, and I'm sure it was really hard for him to say. Just how deeply he was affected by this, which I think is another thing that we just don't think about with first fathers a lot too, right? That losing a child can really derail their lives, too, you know, even though they didn’t physically– weren't the birthing parent.

Haley Radke: When you were telling your story and you're talking about how we think of the mother first and you're like, “Oh, I didn't even think of ‘Do want I search for him?’” I think that's so common. I think because we have this picture of our mother and we're inside of her for nine months, it's easy to picture that connection. And the father is, you know, it's a one-time contact. Oh my goodness, how do I say that, right?

Liz Latty: I think that too, we're often –and I think I'm gonna say the word political, and I think it is– because of the sort-of political context of the narrative of adoption, right? Like, what we're told, what people think about birth families, right? That they're “unfit” in some way. I think often the idea is that the father isn't around. And that might be true in some cases, but there was never a picture of him in the narrative that I was given. But he was very much there. He was very much there, but that picture wasn't given. It's not that it was like, it was given and my parents hid that from me. That's not the narrative that they gave me. Like, that wasn't given to my adoptive parents, you know what I mean? A lot of the narrative in my adoption file is just false. It's just absolutely false about what was going on, and I think that may have had something to do with the religious nature of the agency, like, the stigma around– I don’t know. I mean, my father was cataloged as the father and it was like, ‘These are his siblings, these are his parents. Everybody's supportive. Everybody's on board.’ So it wasn't like he was absent, but there was no, I don't know– They were a long-term, committed, very much in love couple, and he was very much there. And she was in fact sent away while she was pregnant, and he drove up hours every weekend and snuck into the maternity home to visit her. And they stayed together for years, they moved across the country together after he graduated from high school, because she was a year ahead of him, so she was already out. And it really affected him. It affected them, it affected her, it affected their relationship. It affected everything. You know, a child just doesn't go missing with no consequences.

So he really talked about how painful that was and about how much shame was involved. And in fact, he left the state and didn't come back for over two decades because he felt that he had shamed everyone. And then when he finally came back, he just sort of imagined that I was in Michigan still, and anytime he would see a teenage girl or a young woman –I would've been around 18 or so at the time– he would just freak out every time, and have a panic attack, and start following her, and then it was like, ‘Oh my God, I'm gonna get arrested for following young women!’ It really affected his life, and he carried that wound too, you know? And I think that hearing that part of his story, while it was really hard of course. It's hard to hear that. It's hard to hear his pain, but it's also really validating. Because as someone who talks about adoption a lot, sort-of obsessively, and writes about it publicly, of course, we always get this pushback. The narrative that it's, you know, the narrative we all know, right? And what I'm always sort of harping on is there are consequences to this, and families are not interchangeable, and people then live with a lifetime of grief and trauma to varying degrees, and it affects everybody. It doesn't just affect the person who gave birth and the child. My mom's sisters were like, “You know, her father was the one that forced her,” to give me up, and they were furious at her father for years and held it over his head, you know? It reverberates. It moves through multiple generations and multiple family systems, this wound. To hear him say that and talk about how it had affected him for so many years and still does, was just sort of really validating in that way of ‘Yeah, I've been saying this!’, you know? Because I knew it was true. I knew it was true. I've seen it in other people and in myself, and in the way that my reunion unraveled with my mom. Sometimes the pain is just too big that we aren't able to find a way to connect with each other across it. And that's really unfortunate, but it affects so many people. It affects so many people.

Haley Radke: Well, I'm just in conversation with this beautiful woman who is a grandmother of loss. And when she tells me parts of her story, she is just heartbroken because she is the mother that convinced her daughter, “This is the right choice.” And this story is just a few years old that the child that's been lost to adoption. It does, it reverberates. That’s such a good word to describe it. It affects all the generations and further down as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Preaching to the choir. Of course. This is what I get to.

Liz, can we just go back to when you were first meeting your dad and stuff, and you're hiding your girlfriend?

Liz Latty: Yeah! I still feel guilty.

Haley Radke: I mean, I don't know. At least she had a different house to go to. She wasn't, like, under the bed or something.

Liz Latty: Yeah, well, it was just the apartment next door. We were living in really crappy student apartments.

Haley Radke: She had like a glass up against the wall–

Liz Latty: Yeah! Look, the closet is a very complicated place–

Haley Radke: I said hide under the bed, that’s what I– [both Liz and Haley break off in laughter]

Are you comfortable just talking about when you told him that you were queer, how that went? Because you were so scared of that part of your story.

Liz Latty: Well, I can tell you, it's interesting that you asked, because I actually just told him in October.

Haley Radke: Okay. Did he know?

Liz Latty: Yeah, he pretty much figured it out. Which I was very angry at, because I'd gone to great lengths to stay strategically closeted from him! Apparently not good enough. I blame Facebook's privacy preferences and my inability to apparently set them properly. Yeah, I just told them. It was kind of crazy. I stayed closeted from him, like, 14 years. Because I was so afraid. And then once my brothers and sisters were sort-of in the picture for me, and with their mom as well too, right? I was afraid that, you know, I knew it could go either way. Maybe they would be totally fine with it, but if they weren't, what if they didn't let me see my brother and sisters? That kind-of felt like my main motivation after the initial reunion. I was like, ‘I don't wanna get cut off from that.’

And then I came out to my older siblings as they sort of moved out of the house and I had relationships with them. Some of them are now in their early twenties, and so as they moved out of the house and would come visit me, or I'd visit them, I wasn't going to hide my life. If they were going to come visit me and I had a partner– I just wasn't gonna do it. And they were super cool. They're millennials. They don't care. Like, they are also very religious and all of the things, but they're also very much of their generation, and have queer friends, and aren't necessarily bound by what a church, or a clergy member or something, really says. So they were really beautiful and accepting and said, “We literally don't care. We love you. We think you're cool. We don't care.”

But, you know, I had asked my oldest brother, “What do you think that your dad would say?” And he was like, “Yeah, it could go either way. I really don't know.” That was quite a few years ago. And so I was like, ‘Eh, all right.’ We also didn't live in the same place by that point either, so it I didn't see him often or whatever, so it was just like, ‘There's just not really a reason to.’ But I really struggled with it personally, because I'm very involved in queer community, and I write about queer issues, and I consider myself an activist around queer issues. And I understand that the closet is a very complicated place for people, for lots of reasons. Not everybody can be out, depending on where they live, depending on what family they're in. It's not necessarily safe. But I still felt guilty, you know? I was like, ‘Wow. I am this totally out, super queer person, and I'm closeted to over half my family.’ And that felt really hard for me to live that way. So my father and I didn't talk for quite a few years, and then when we reconnected last summer, I was like, ‘I gotta tell him this time. I'm almost 40, first of all, I'm, like, too old to be hiding girlfriends and just, what, like bringing decoys to family events or whatever, you know? Like, come on.’ I'm just like, ‘I can't.’ I said, “You know what, look, we haven't talked to each other in quite a few years, if we're gonna reconnect I want it to actually be authentic this time, and I don't want to have to hide part of my life.”

A lot of people will often say “Well, why do you need to tell everybody?” But most of my friends are queer and trans. I date other queer people who are, like, very physically queer. It's like, you actually have to jump through a lot of hoops. It's not just about like broadcasting your sexuality, right? It's like, I actually have to hide a good portion of my life. And so it felt really important to me to connect with him on a really open, honest, authentic level this time. I was like, ‘What's the worst that can happen? He can not talk to me again? Well, we didn't just talk for the last, like, X amount of years and I survived. I need to know, and I need to actually know now because if we reconnect and start building a relationship again, and then it comes up in a year or two and I'm attached and then it is a problem and it is a deal breaker, that will really suck, you know? So I'd rather know now.’

I wrote him a very long email. And it was actually on National Coming Out Day in October, which is really weird because I'm not like an anniversary– I don't know, it normally didn't feel like something I would do on a specific day. But I just got sort-of emotional seeing other people's really sweet coming out stories posted on Facebook that day and I was like, ‘I'm gonna do it.’ And so I stayed up till 4 in the morning and I wrote him this very long email. Because I wanted him to know how painful my coming out experience had been as a young person, and how much that affected my life. I was pretty homeless and family-less for many years. I mean, I had my own family, like, chosen family and other queer folks.

And that secondary rejection on top of being adopted, it was like, ‘Wow, okay. Nobody wants me.’ You know? And I wanted him to know that. And I wanted him to know that it was also fueled pretty much solely by religion. And also how painful it had been for me to feel like I had to make the choice to hide from him, too. I told him everything. And I also told him that if he thought I was mentally ill, or gonna burn in hell, or could be rehabilitated or whatever, that I wasn't interested in hearing it, he could just let me know that it wasn't cool with him. But I was like, “I've heard every scripture, I've heard every rationalization around– whatever. I've heard it all. I'm not interested. I came out when I was a teenager and I'm almost 40. I'm cool. I love who I am. But I just need to know what your deal is and I need to know that I can be myself around you, and that I can bring people I love around you.”

I sent it to him and I was super terrified. Like, sweating and sick to my stomach, couldn't sleep, and couldn't concentrate at work the next day. And then around 3 in the afternoon, I got an email back from him. In the email I sent to him, I told him, “Well it's National Coming Out Day, so I have a little something to tell you.” And he sent an email back around 3 in the afternoon and he had edited the subject line, and it was all-caps and it said, “IT'S NATIONAL LOVE YOUR QUEER DAUGHTER DAY” with, like, 18 exclamation points. And then he just said all the things that everyone should have said to me when I came out. He recognized how painful it was for me, and he said that he was really sorry that I had had to carry that burden; that there was no Bible, no scriptures coming, no prayer circles; that he is really proud to be my dad no matter what. And then he took it as an opportunity to tell me he was voting for Trump. So it was a little weird!

Haley Radke: Oh my God.

Liz Latty: Okay, he is a comedian. He was like, “So you're queer. So I'm voting for Trump! Who cares?” So, I don't know–

Haley Radke: I'm sorry, I'm, like, bawling over here, and you can probably hear my Kleenex, and now you're– Okay.

Liz Latty: Yes! So, that's the kind relationship we have at this point. Complicated, right? But also really beautiful and it really felt like a gift, you know?

Haley Radke: Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. I am just, yeah, getting myself together. I cry every episode, what's new? Okay. I would love to touch on with you some– just a conversation about activism in adoption. You've wrote some extremely powerful pieces that have been, of course, well received by adoptees like myself, who have been trying to say this, like, “Will you listen to us? When are you gonna listen to us? That there's a trauma attached here!” Can you just talk a little bit about your work in this space, things that have been effective, like, what do people actually listen to? And what kind of responses you've gotten, so for example, to the fairy tale narrative piece.

Liz Latty: Yeah. I mean, overwhelmingly the responses have been really positive and folks have reached out to really thank me for helping them think about it in a different way. And I mean folks who are attached to it in some way, and also people who aren't, which is great. And then you get some trolls that want to tell you about how mentally ill you are and what a disaster you must be– you know, whatever. That has everything to do with where they're at and nothing to do with where I'm at.

So, in terms of activism, it's a scary place to be. It's a really scary place to be. I've been writing about adoption for a really long time. Pretty much since I was five. And I'm a creative writer. You know, I went to school for creative writing and have mostly existed and written and published in literary spaces more often than not, until really recently. I mean, The Rumpus, where What We Lost was published, is a literary space. It was certainly a personal essay, but it also had a lot of kind-of political and historical content in it as well. And then the last one that I did for The Establishment was much more straightforward.

Haley Radke: And that one is Adoption Is A Feminist Issue, But Not For The Reasons You Think. Also excellent. I'll put a link to both of those in the show notes.

Liz Latty: Thank you. Yeah, and I've sort-of been tiptoeing out a little bit more in terms of being overtly political around adoption. I've always been an activist, and I was sort-of nurtured and raised in queer and feminist activist spaces, and then kind-of brought those politics to bear on my experience of being an adopted person. And understanding this experience and the institution of adoption through those lenses, it's compelled me to talk about it more in a more straightforward political way. And I've learned from so many adoptee activists around me that have come before me, and that are considered friends and peers and colleagues now, and have been doing scholarship and activism around adoption for so long.

But it's a really scary place to be, to sort-of step out and talk about the political content of adoption and not just about your own story, because I think that you open yourself up to more criticism. And the argument becomes much more complicated, and requires a lot more precision and accuracy and research and all of those things. But I'm enjoying being in those spaces, and I think that one of the things that it helps me do and the reason why I guess I like to talk about adoption activism with other adoptees more and more, and as much as possible is that, you know, I feel really passionate about actually creating larger systemic change in adoption– or rather outside of adoption. Because I think that adoption is really just a symptom and a failed solution to larger systemic oppressions, and mostly shouldn't ever actually have to happen.

But I think that moving into the political content of it has really helped me in terms of understanding my own story better. And that's one of the things that I feel like I like to offer to adopted people, too, is that, between therapy and being a writer, writing about my own story of adoption, I was sort-of processing it through language and through personal narrative for a really long time. I could only get so far. And then when I started really doing more research and investigation and trying to understand the history of adoption and how it came to be the practice and institution it is now, and the way that it affects different groups of people differently and just all of this, all of the political content of it, it really took me to the next level of understanding my own story and being able to actually tap into a much deeper well of understanding and compassion for everyone that was involved in my adoption. I could have stayed really angry at my first mother for our reunion unraveling for a really long time. But getting more information about what she went through, and then sort-of understanding her not as one woman who made a choice or didn't make a choice, in a vacuum, right? Because that's just not how it happens. But situating her within the historical and political context in which she did and did not have choices, really helped to sort-of– It just helped me tap into compassion more and it helped me get to a next place in my own healing. And then of course, I think, as always, ‘Right, what happens when people make a life around trying to create change within a system or a life experience that they have survived, right?’ Which often happens. That's often how people come to a particular kind of activism or work, right? It's like, you went through this thing and it really changed you or, you know, partially defines who you are in some way, or whatever. And then you figure out how to make that into work, or make that into a life's work of some kind, and engage with other people and connect with other people, and work towards something that hopefully means that other people don't necessarily have to go through what you went through, right? I think too, that then that also helps healing. Because I think being adopted, specifically, can be such an isolating experience and such an isolating identity, and becoming involved in activism and in community helps. It puts some salve on that wound a bit, and it makes you feel– or it makes me feel, at least, it makes me feel active and purposeful and just clear-eyed, you know?

Which is not to say I don't sometimes slip back into feeling victim-y, because I do. And I think that's normal and just human and whatever. But I also have a much larger and broader context and understanding for what happened, that I'm able to pull myself out of that thinking pretty easily if I do have a bad day and slip into that or whatever. And I also have folks that I can reach out to that have also had this experience, and can connect with them. So I think that is really important. And I meet a lot of adoptees who are like, “Yeah, I can't go there. I can't– I'm not interested in the political arena of it. This is just my story. It's just about my family.” And then there's tons and tons of us who are invested in activism, and everybody's got their own journey, right? But I do think that it's important, and I think that there needs to be a lot of change, but I do wonder about how we're going to make those changes. I think there is such a broad range of understanding because there's such a broad range of experience in adoption and how people experience it, and then also how people come to it, that there's a lot of divide within the adoption community about what activism looks like, or what changes need to be made, or what reform looks like, or what abolishing the system altogether looks like, or whatever. Right? There's just a range of activisms. And that's okay, but we're sort-of small in numbers and we need each other. Change happens through numbers often, right? It really requires movement-building. And I think that I often see a lot of divide within the adoption community. And I guess I think about that a lot, and I wonder how we can better forge alliances with each other, and then also looking outward, align ourselves with larger movements that might not know that we’re part of what they're working for. You know, like, movements for economic justice and reproductive justice and racial justice. All of these things are the underlying oppressions that then, you know, adoption is sort-of this “solution” –I know it's not a solution, but, like, whatever– for.

Haley Radke: Right, and I think you said it before, it's a symptom of.

Liz Latty: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's a symptom of these things, right? And so I just wonder how does adoption community align itself with each other, and then also move outward and align ourselves with larger movements? Because we have to. I think we have to. We have to get bigger and stronger and louder. Yeah, I think about that a lot. But I don't really have any particular one answer about that yet. But I think that there needs to be a lot of growth in that area.

Haley Radke: I really appreciate your wisdom on that, Liz, and thank you for those comments.

Something that I touched on with an adoptee, her name's Erica Curry Van Ee, and what she said to me that I had never thought about before, was that adoptees are an invisible minority group. And she was talking about it in the context of, you know, receiving our original birth certificates and how this is a human right, et cetera. Which of course most of us have heard that before, but that was so interesting for me to think about. Because we have been maligned in some way, but yet it's also hard to speak about that, because you don't want to ever say “less than” to another group that has, you know, felt like they've been marginalized. I don't know. It's a sticky balance for me, but I really have been thinking about it a lot since she said it to me.

Liz Latty: Yeah, it's true. I think that's true. I think it is. Largely because we're just, like, displaced and dispersed all over the place, right? We have this narrative in this country that sort-of erases our experience as a trauma, as a symptom of oppression, right? It's just the redemption narrative that folks focus on. And because our pain, because our displacement, because our loss of culture and language and all of the things that adopted folks experience is largely erased underneath that narrative, I think it's true. I think we are invisible to some degree. Though I totally agree with you, in terms of, I think language is really important, right? Language is super powerful and it makes me think about I actually just on Facebook earlier, yesterday or something, I saw this posting about original birth certificates. I think it was for New York or something, I think there's a bill right now that's sort-of passed and it's not clean or whatever. So someone was posting about it and the slogan on the thing said, “Adoptee is the last minority to be denied their civil rights.”

And I just thought to myself, ‘My God, like, when are we gonna stop saying things like this?’ Because it's first of all, just so factually incorrect. And it's offensive and alienating to so many people and groups of people who are denied their civil rights in this country every day. And a lot of adopted people also belong to those groups. So it's not only alienating to folks who are not adopted, it's alienating to folks who are adopted and live at the intersection of, you know, being an adopted trans person, being an adopted person of color, being like– Come on. You know, it's just, it's like, that kind of language is really troubling to me and I just– I don't know. I think that it further deepens this gulf too, within the community, as well, right? Because you're also– you're talking– lots of adoptees– it's just it's–

Haley Radke: It’s so maddening you can't even find the words.

Liz Latty: It is! It's really tough, you know? And I see stuff like that a lot. And it's really difficult, and I think that we need to, as a community, think deeper and broader than that. And that the fight for original birth certificates is important. I still don't have access to mine. It's important work. But it is not the only work. And we can't do that work at the expense of folks who belong to our community as well. And other people who experience the loss of civil rights as well. It's like we're talking about movement-building or aligning ourselves with other movements, right? We're a small community, right? There's what, 5 million of us in the country supposedly –which of course we will never really know because nobody keeps records about us because they don't care– but we have to think about aligning ourselves. Our struggles are not necessarily different than folks who are fighting for dignity and civil rights in other ways. And so I think that we have to really examine that as a community and do better. And do better for everyone and also for our own work, right?

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh my goodness. Well, we could talk about this all day, but– Yeah, what a great conversation. I really love what you said about that. We need to align with other communities and so we really need to watch our language. Because those things that we say can alienate. Yeah. So that's really important. Thank you.

Okay, so let's move to recommended resources. Yeah! I am bringing back something that I have recommended before, but it's so good, I have to recommend it again: Six Word Adoption Memoirs. I don't know if you've heard of this, Liz?

Liz Latty: I have, and I have met its makers.

Haley Radke: You have met its makers, oh my goodness. Okay. So they have been working on this for quite a while and they've just released a Six Word Adoption Memoir video for 2017. And it's so moving. It's a 20-minute video, and it features adoptees as well as first parents. There's even a father and son, and the father was adopted from an orphanage, and the son speaks to how his father's experiences affected him. Anyway, it's very moving. And talking about adoptee activism and things, and how powerful our stories are, you know, when something like this spreads, I think it brings awareness to some of the pain that adoption has caused. It's so beautifully done. Andrew Tash and Derek Frank are the ones behind the project, and I will put a link to that video. It's up on Vimeo, and they have of course a Facebook page. And this was kind-of exciting, I read one of their posts and let me just read it out here: “We shot 40+ stories and only a handful are contained in this video. We'll be working on more stories throughout the year.” So if you follow that Facebook page, you will be the first to know about when they've got new ones coming out. So I really recommend that everyone go in and follow that. And you've met them? I actually was in the same room with Andrew, but we never spoke and he emailed me later and I said, “Oh my goodness. Too bad we can't connect!”

Liz Latty: Next time around, next adoption conference around.

Haley Radke: That's right.

Liz Latty: Yeah. We met down in Atlanta at the AAC conference.

Haley Radke: Ok, great.

Liz Latty: Yeah, it was great to meet them.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I emailed back and forth a little bit with Andrew, just really nice guy. And yeah, I can't wait to see what else they have up their sleeves.

*Liz Latty: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Okay, here's the moment of truth, Liz, what are you going to recommend to us today? No pressure.

Liz Latty: Oh gosh, I know, there's just so many that come to mind. And I think specifically, you know, I'm thinking just around our conversation around activism, a few books come to mind. I think it's just really important for us to know our history, right? And not just our history, our family history, but our larger history as people who have been affected by the system and institution of adoption. And so one really good online resource could be the Adoption Museum Project. Are you familiar with the Adoption Museum Project?

Haley Radke: I get their newsletter. It's actually on my list of things to recommend. So you beat me to it. Go ahead. Tell us about it.

Liz Latty: Yeah, they're a project based out in the Bay Area. You can find them at adoptionmuseumproject.org. They do different kinds of work around adoption through a social justice lens, and there's not a physical museum space at this time, but they do different kinds of pop-up events and installations, and field trips, and think tanks, and all different kinds of stuff around adoption, both the history and the future. And again, through a social justice lens. And they have a great newsletter. Laura Callen is the founder and she sends out a fantastic newsletter with lots of great resources in and of itself. Every month.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. They're so generous with their spotlight, right? They're always highlighting different people's work there, it’s beautiful.

Liz Latty: Yeah. So that's a good one. And then, if you want to geek out –I like to geek out– Kinship by Design is a great book for learning more about the history of modern American adoption. It's by Ellen Herman. And thinking, too, more about how systems of economic and racial injustice really are the underpinnings of adoption, and what that means for our future. In terms of activism, I think some other good resources would be, well, one book that comes to mind is Beggars and Choosers by Rickie Solinger. I would also encourage folks to learn about the reproductive justice movement, as well. And a good place to learn about reproductive justice would be the Sister Song website. They’re a women of color collective based in Atlanta.

Haley Radke: Great, thank you so much. Those all sound fantastic. Liz, thank you for sharing your story with us. It was so moving and I know it's going to help many people to hear your journey.

Liz Latty: Thanks, Haley. It was really great talking to you. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: You can find Liz's work on her website, liz-latty.com. Liz is on Twitter and Facebook at Liz Latty (@lizlatty). I can't even believe this is episode 12 and in my seasons I have 13 episodes. So… math… that means in 2 weeks I'll be airing my season finale. And I don't want to build this up too much, but it's worth the wait, I promise. Jessenia Parmer of I Am Adopted shares her story, and I kept her up super, super late because we just couldn't stop talking. You don't want to miss this episode, so make sure you're subscribed to wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm also going to be launching a monthly newsletter to keep you in the loop. It's only going to be monthly, because no one has time for more email. I definitely don't. You can subscribe to that on AdopteesOn.com. Last but not least, this episode was brought to you by my fantastic Patreon supporters. I can't even believe this, I have 28 generous partners who have pledged to support me monthly so I can continue to produce this podcast for you. They literally make it possible for me to keep these adoptee stories coming. Thank you, friends. Thank you for standing with me. If you want to stand with us to make sure adoptee voices are heard, you can visit Adopteeson.com/partner.

Thank you for listening, let's talk again next Friday.

36 [Healing Series] Perfectionism

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/36

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke, and this is a special episode in our Healing Series where I interview therapists who are also adoptees themselves so they know from personal experience what it feels like to be an adoptee.

Today we tackle perfectionism. Let's listen in.

Pamela Cordano is a fellow adoptee and psychotherapist who specializes in helping you to discover meaning in your life. Welcome back to Adoptees On, Pam.

Pam Cordano: Thank you, Haley. I'm so happy to talk with you again and everybody out there.

Haley Radke: Oh, I am so, so happy that you're back. And today we're talking about perfectionism, and I know a lot of adoptees struggle with perfectionism, but so does the general population, right?

It's kind of a human thing, but I've found just talking to adoptees in general, that most of us struggle with this. Have you heard that too?

Pam Cordano: Yes, I have, and I think in a way adoption sets up a perfect storm for perfectionism to be a danger or a trap that we could easily fall into.

Haley Radke: I am thinking of myself. I think the root is I have to be perfect because I don't want them to send me back. So what can you tell us about perfectionism? What is it and why do so many adoptees struggle from it?

Pam Cordano: Just so we can all really get immersed in this conversation, like, what if for a moment we all just pause and think about how it feels in our bodies when we are in a perfectionistic state of mind?

Like when we're either worrying about doing something correctly in the future or about something we think we did not do well enough in the past, you know? What does it feel like in your body? What sensations are there?

Haley Radke: I feel sick to my stomach right now.

Pam Cordano: Okay. Sorry. And what else?

Haley Radke: My heart started beating faster and I am feeling very aware of everything.

Like I just noticed your sound cut out for a second and I'm like, ah, it's ruined. This whole episode is ruined.

Pam Cordano: Right. So, you know, what I'm hearing in that statement is fear. You know, it's like heightened alert and tension and constriction and like a hyper-arousal and like anxiety and worry and fear.

I mean, it feels really awful in our bodies when we are in a perfectionistic state of mind. I mean, it's very stressful and unpleasant and it takes a lot to manage whatever we're trying to do or not do and feel all these terrible feelings in our bodies at the very same time.

Haley Radke: It's like we're at max. capacity.

Pam Cordano: Exactly. Right. It's like lighting up a Christmas tree way too bright or something. Perfectionism is based on insecurity and an avoidance of negative evaluations from the outside. So everybody can have perfectionism, adopted or not, but the difference with people who are adopted is that first of all, we were relinquished as children. Like we talked about before, you know, children are naturally self-centered and think that they're the cause or the blame for everything, right? Whether it's a divorce or a relinquishment or someone dying in the family.

Anything traumatic or tragic, children think they have something to do with it. They don't understand yet that they don't. So it's really easy to think that we are somehow flawed in a profound way. I mean, to lose one's entire lineage, to be banished from the family, in a way it can feel like a punishment in and of itself.

Like, how come I don't get to grow up with my biological family? What's wrong with me? So there's already some kind of flaw to begin with in the minds of a lot of children adoptees. And then, there's what you said. There's the danger that if I do something wrong or make a misstep or alienate somebody, I could be rejected from this new family.

And so it's like having to walk on a tightrope between two very scary realities. You know that a) I lost my first family, and b) I could lose my second family.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yep. I can see why so many of us could have that in the back of our minds, you know?

Pam Cordano: Yeah. I was talking to my husband, who's not adopted, about perfectionism, and he was saying that anybody can have this and that he, as a child, experienced negative feedback from his parents. So he got really worried about being perfect and he kind of was, in a lot of ways. But I said, Yeah, but at least they were your first parents. You know, like you didn't have that first thing that you had to also grapple with.

Haley Radke: Then there's the adoptees that have had adoptive parents who are narcissistic and, you know, do literally want us to be perfect because we were, I don't want to say this, I don't want to say purchased, you know, but there's that feeling, right, that there's a little bit of ownership over us.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. And we have a role to make them happy and complete their lives, or fulfill their dreams or, you know, be part of the picture they're hoping to create. That we, you know, are coming in on later, after the dream's been established.

So, it's like a minefield, really. I think for an adoptee, it's like a minefield, like kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of a thing. There's a lot to worry about doing things in a way that will keep a person safe.

And that goes back to the trauma of adoption, like fear and trauma and anxiety live underneath this perfectionism. And, like you were saying, it feels terrible in our bodies.

Haley Radke: Okay, so I have struggled with perfectionism forever, and now I've come to the point where I think I'm a reformed perfectionist. That's what I call myself.

But I had this thing happen at university where I had a group project and I was supposed to meet someone on a Sunday, and I just literally totally forgot about it, so I didn't show up. And that had never happened to me before because I have a stellar record, okay.

And it was no big deal, like we rescheduled for the next week. She was kind of surprised that I wasn't there, but it was just no big deal and she was totally over it. But that incident, I still think about that, and like, I think maybe even as often as weekly I still remember that I feel sick to my stomach when I think about it.

And if I ever have another moment where I'm like, Oh, whoops, I almost forgot that thing. I'm like, Oh, see? See, I forgot at university this one group project thing, and see, I'm still doing it.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. So that sounds like trauma to me. Like it sounds like it's like a PTSD sort of reaction. Like there was something so frightening about having made that mistake and there was something so dangerous about having made that mistake, even though the feedback you were getting did not indicate any danger at all.

But inside of you it felt very dangerous. And so you're still being, you know, hypervigilant to not ever do that again, right? And how many years has it been?

Haley Radke: Oh, over 10.

Pam Cordano: And you say you think of it weekly.

So what it makes me think of is that I often think that the stronger the emotional reaction, the older the issue, the original issue. And so, I wonder, how old do you think you were when you became a perfectionist in the first place?

Haley Radke: That's, I mean, of course that's hard to pinpoint. What I often tell people actually is that I feel like I grew up just a mini-adult because I was an only child and really most of the time I was spending with adults.

So I kind of felt like I needed to behave like them. And I was a high-achieving student. I remember I would always have marks like in the nineties. And so if I got in the eighties, then I was like, Oh, that's a fail. You know?

Pam Cordano: Ah-huh. That's a fail. And even that expression describes something about perfectionists.

Or perfectionism that's like all-or-nothing thinking, like if it's not this, then it's totally that, you know. It's one or the other. It's not a gray area kind of thing.

You know, I guess something that comes to mind when I think about you before this forgetting the meeting, is that, and for all of us, is that we would never want to become a perfectionist unless we were really, really afraid of something.

Like it's fear that drives the formation of a perfectionist. Like why else would we put ourselves through such a difficult way of being in the world?

Haley Radke: I, my mouth is open cause I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. I've never thought about it that way.

Pam Cordano: I mean, if you think about an example of, let's say there's a woman named Mary and she is really interested in science and she wants to become a brain surgeon, so she studies really hard and she dots her i’s and she crosses her t’s and she does it all out of her own passion because she just loves the subject so much. I wouldn't call that perfectionism even if she gets straight A's or and does things perfectly. I would call that ambition and passion. But perfectionism is like an affliction.

Like it's, you know, she would be more in a state of excitement and curiosity, and if she failed at something, she might be like, Whoa, why didn't that work? I need to figure out another way. This is exciting. You know, it wouldn't be stressful. It would be more like passionate and exciting.

So we're talking about a whole other animal that's like based in fear and probably something pretty darn scary that drives us to use so much mental energy to check ourselves and hate on ourselves for mistakes and so much mental energy, hypervigilance.

Haley Radke: I was just gonna say, that's what you had said before: the hypervigilance. Cuz if you can't drop any balls, right? Because then you're just the worst and it's the all-or-nothing thinking.

Pam Cordano: It really does feel to me like living in a minefield, like every step is important and a bomb could go off anywhere, anytime, and there's no way to really let down too much or else disaster could happen.

Haley Radke: Yeah, maybe I'm not as reformed perfectionist as I think.

Pam Cordano: Oh boy. Okay, so this example of Mary, the doctor who has a passion for studying and does a fantastic job. She has an inner orientation, like she's doing what she does and she's working as hard as she does because of her own inherent, natural, passionate interest.

And with perfectionism, there's an outer orientation, like we are afraid of a negative evaluation from the outside. So we're screening, we're efforting, we're monitoring our behavior for someone and for something that has to do with the outside.

So I was going to share an example of something that I've done with clients before. Which is when people are just really worried about what others think of them.

And this goes along with feeling a lot of shame, that something about them is that they're bad somehow, or that their badness or their defect or flaw is going to be discovered by others pretty easily. And they work really hard to not have it be so.

I've had them walk around the block before, it's like an experiment, but looking at each person that they see as they walk around the block and imagining what these people are thinking of them.

And usually if the person has low self-esteem and feels like there's something really wrong with them, it can be a really kind of difficult thing to do because it can be like, Oh, they probably don't like me and they probably think I'm whatever. And, you know, Oh I've seen that person before. They don't like me or if they really knew me, they wouldn't like me. But it can be really uncomfortable to have this external focus.

And then I have them walk around the same block again where they're actually, if this makes sense, they're actually inhabiting their own eyes. They're not thinking about what others are seeing. They're only thinking about and experiencing what they're seeing.

Then it's completely an internal experience. It's like, Oh, I love that tree and oh, there's a coffee shop. I wanna get coffee later on today. Oh, I like the color of that woman's sweater. And that's a place where we feel much more safe and comfortable when we're in our own inner orientation.

Haley Radke: I've often heard people aren't really thinking about you as much as you think they are. And we're so busy thinking about that, then we're not thinking, Ugh. Yeah. Wow, that sounds really interesting. I'm curious to try it.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. You know, a therapist actually taught me that, and it was quite profound to do it because often we change most easily when we are having an experience, a new experience. That's what changes us more than thinking in a new way. It's more like experiencing something differently.

So like with this example from your college, the university story, what was so horrible about missing this plan was that it was witnessed by somebody else, right? Like if you had just said, Oh, I'm gonna go to the gym at two o'clock, and then you got caught up in a TV show and you didn't go to the gym. That's not really a big deal because no one sees it. You know what I mean?

That's easier to get over. But when it's witnessed by someone else, then there's room for them to say, Oh boy, she is so irresponsible. Or she's a flake or something like this. So getting into our own system is very, very powerful, and it's a way of combating the power of these thoughts that just go on in circles in our minds about what others are thinking of us.

In a way, the eyes are a metaphor. The eye story is a metaphor for something much larger, and that is that when we are in a perfectionistic state of mind, we're hostage to some standard that we've set for ourselves or that we believe others have set for us, and we're kind of imprisoned in this state.

And the opposite, that's like walking around the block wondering what everyone's thinking and am I doing okay or not? But when we get into our own eyes, in a bigger way, it would be comparable to getting into our own hearts and souls and liveliness. To me, one of the opposites of a mental trap like perfectionism is the question of what really brings you alive?

Like, what makes you feel energetic and enlivened and present, and what do you wish you could do every single day? If you had time or ability? What are your dreams? These kinds of questions are like being in your own eyes. It's like your own self having its say about how it wants to spend its energy and time.

And that just can't happen very much when we are taken hostage by the perfectionistic torture. Really, it's like mental torture.

Haley Radke: And what you said about it being this impossible standard that we set for ourselves, right? I mean, now that we're adults, no one is holding us to an impossible standard. There's standards at work or home, like, just normal people standards.

Pam Cordano: Right. Yeah, of course. And they're negotiable, right? Like when we're sick, we can't do as much. When we're tired, we can't do as much. There's the possibility sometimes of delegating things to someone who may not do as good of a job, but at least it lightens one's load.

So, yeah, the bar is something to be questioned. Who has set this standard and what's driving it, what's keeping it going in me. I mean, to me that's kind of an interesting question. It could be a question that we come to with curiosity, like, what is this?

Why am I not allowed to miss a meeting once in a while? Why am I not allowed to screw up? What's so bad about screwing up? I mean, we all do it.

Haley Radke: Am I having free therapy again? Stop it.

It's funny. Oh my goodness. I mean, when you think about it, really, we don't hold other people to the same standard that we hold ourselves.

Pam Cordano: Sometimes some people don't. Like you may not, you know, you're probably right. Probably most people don't. There are some perfectionists that are more externally oriented, that are really, really hard on others. I've seen adoptive and non-adoptive mothers and fathers be really, really hard on their kids in a way that they're hard on nobody else. You know?

Haley Radke: Because it's a reflection of them?

Pam Cordano: Right. Wow. So I guess in a way it loops back to them. But yeah, you're right, most of us don’t and what you said is true.

Most of us don't hold others to the same standards. I mean, when people forget something with me, I might be slightly annoyed or I might feel a little insecure, like maybe they don't care about me or value me very much. But when I forget to do something and if I do anything that hurts anybody else, I really freak out.

I feel like the whole relationship is in jeopardy. And that I've done some kind of irreversible, I've committed an irreversible crime somehow that I'm going to pay for forever, like a black mark, like a mark I can just never get rid of. That's how I think it can feel. It's extreme.

I mean, it's extreme and it's actually terrifying. You feel that way too?

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm thinking of reunion now, so there's often things. Like, this still happens: I'm six years into reunion and we're in a good place, but there's still some things that I'm like, if I say this, is this gonna be it? Like, is this the indelible mark that will break everything?

Pam Cordano: Right? And I mean, do you think that most adoptees feel that way?

Haley Radke: Well, I know when we are searching, in those first contacts, seemingly, from everyone I've spoken to, when they're preparing the words that they may write in their first letter, their first initial contact, they're so afraid of scaring the other party that their letter has to be perfect. Like, I've heard from multiple people. I worked on it for months. Over and over I redid it, because as if this letter is going to make the difference,

Pam Cordano: Yes. That is just so sad to me. I did the same thing. I agonized over the letter to my father.

It was a six-page letter and I made sure in the letter I let him know, I'm not asking for money, I'm not asking for this. I'm, you know, I was trying to reassure him that I'm not dangerous.

Haley Radke: Yeah. I think there's probably a lot of letters that have said that I don't want your money. You don't have to have me for Christmas dinner. I just wanna know where I came from, right? Just anything to not scare.

Pam Cordano: But then, you know, the deeper truth is for me, I want it all. I wanna move into your house. I wanna be your child. You know, I wanna do-over, I wanna be there for Christmas dinner and the whole thing.

But, you know, you can't.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness, this is true confessions, hey? Me too. Except my dad, usually my dad and my sister listen regularly, so.

Pam Cordano: I know when my biological dad said he heard the Anger podcast, the first thing I texted back to him was, Do you still like me? And I really meant it, like, I was afraid that was it.

And I was quite civilized in that podcast.

Haley Radke: Actually, whenever my dad, when we text, we usually text once a week on Sunday mornings. And he'll often mention, Oh, the Friday show was so great, or whatever. And then I think, Okay, what was in that show? Is there anything I need to make up for, or, you know, it's like when I'm producing it, I don't necessarily think about that because I'm just so focused on the content and having it be perfect for my listeners.

But yeah. Oh, that's interesting. There you go. So he still likes you?

Pam Cordano: He was so sweet. He did an emoji of the face with the two hearts in the eyes and I was just like, Oh, thank God, I didn't destroy everything by an hour-long conversation, you know? But you know, there's something that's sort of intangible about the quality of this perfectionism with adoptees that we're talking about.

It's really like terror, you know, like the terror that one is either flawed enough or powerful enough that they could just kind of ruin everything. Really easily.

Okay. So I think one of the biggest costs of perfectionism is the amount of mental energy and physiological stress and the amount of space it takes that interferes with interfacing with life that's going on all around us.

Like, when we're in a perfectionistic frame of mind, we're not really present for ourselves or for the people around us, or even for the world around us. You know, we're really caught in a private cycle that's hurting us and drawing us away from the world as it is. So that, I think, is the biggest cost and it's time consuming.

My biggest wish for everybody, including myself, is to get really interested and excited about finding ways to pull out of that and into what's right in front of us. Sometimes that's most compelling. You know, looking at nature that's right in front of us, or really bringing our full attention to a conversation we're having, or really enjoying that first cup of coffee in the morning, or putting music on so we don't have to hear ourselves think if we're caught up in something.

But we miss out on precious life when we are in a perfectionistic frame of mind. And that makes me really sad. For me and for everybody.

Haley Radke: I'm really glad that you pulled out that root for us. The fear root, because when I was preparing for the show, and I was trying to, you know, define perfectionism, and I was finding it very hard to put my finger on.

It's so paralyzing. It's so all-encompassing. It affects kind of every part of my life, you know, and I can't be perfect in every part of my life. It's literally impossible. I don't know. I'm really happy you pulled out that fear root because I think that makes it a little easier for me to think about.

Please, will you tell us, what do we do when we're paralyzed with perfectionism?

Pam Cordano: Here's the problem. We can try with every bit of energy we have to be perfect and we can have lots of successes at pulling it off, but there's always the next thing to be perfect about. And the next thing and the next thing, like it's never ending.

So the truth is we're not really going to find our security, our inner security, in perfectionism. It's just this moving target that just keeps shifting to other subjects. If we're afraid, if fear, even now I've changed from fear to terror. If terror is at the basis of adoptee perfectionism, I guess what I'm saying is perfection is not going to quell the fear.

It's not going to help. It's actually just going to keep feeding the monster. You know, more food and more things to think about and worry about and more balls in the air. I actually think that we need to reexamine where we're actually going to find security inside of ourselves. Have you ever read that article called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”?

Haley Radke: Yeah. I vaguely remember, and I remember people commenting about it, like, why are we working on this and this when it doesn't matter. Like, Oh, I really wish I spent more time at work, you know, right. Like, no one has that. But yeah, go on.

Pam Cordano: I mean, I think that the dying actually have a lot to teach us, just us as humans.

So here's one. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. That's the number one regret of dying.

And this is exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about trying to shift our paradigm from living a life that we think others expect of us, for us to stay safe and loved, and instead trying to move more toward authenticity. Living from a place we really want to live from, whether that's similar to our adoptive families or not.

And number two is, I wish I hadn't worked so hard, like you said.

And number three is, I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. And that's one of the ways we protect the world from our flaws and our power to destroy everything in one fell swoop.

I wish I'd let myself be happier. I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. So those are the five regrets of dying. And I guess the reason I bring that up is because I think that we really find our security in living a life that is authentic and meaningful to us. Whatever that might mean.

So that might be a whole other conversation, but this whole perfectionism trap is like a mental hamster wheel that just goes on and on, and eats away time and energy and health and resources that could be put in places now that we're adults that are more meaningful and more satisfying.

Haley Radke: Okay. So you have some practical things we could do?

Pam Cordano: Yeah. There's probably all kinds of things people can do, but I just have three things to highlight that are practical. And the thing I'm most excited about is just how we shift our focus to what actually really enlivens and engages us and brings us joy and pleasure and meaning.

Okay, so the first thing is kind of like an exposure therapy sort of thing. Like, it's kind of fun.

Haley Radke: I don't like this. No.

Pam Cordano: It could be kind of fun to practice failing, or to practice not working as hard as one could, or whatever form one's perfectionism takes. So I have an anecdote that there's this conference that happens in Portland every year, and they had a class or a workshop for people who have a fear of rejection.

And what everybody did in the workshop was they made a pact that for 100 days they would go out and ask somebody for something sort of outrageous that the answer would definitely be no. So that they could for 100 days in a row, experience rejection, just to get used to it. Just to take away its power.

I mean, I remember one time having a client. I said, Can you just dump out my trash on the rug? She's like, What? I said, You know, it might be liberating. Just what if you dumped out the trash on the rug? And so she was into it. She's like, Okay. So she did it and, you know, the world didn't end.

She just dumped out the trash on the rug. And later I picked it up, you know, it wasn't a big deal. So that's exposure therapy.

Haley Radke: Okay, that I can't.

Pam Cordano: You could practice on your private Facebook page, you know, where you could assume everyone loves and trusts you and that everything's solid, and you could just throw some typos in.

Haley Radke: No. I cannot. I also cannot do that.

Pam Cordano: Okay. So whenever there's an exposure therapy idea that's too much, we have to scale it back.

So then you could do a pretend Facebook post with typos. And not post it.

Haley Radke: Okay. I could possibly do that. I was thinking, okay, I can't dump your garbage over, but I could throw a tissue on the floor, like just one.

Pam Cordano: I would totally celebrate that. That would be great. That would be huge.

It's really important for perfectionists to celebrate every little victory because a lot of times perfectionists are always about, always, listen to my language, always about the end game. You know, they want the results and so they miss parts of the journey that can be really fun.

So throwing a tissue on the ground could be a great thing to do tonight. When we stop this, you could go do that if you wanted.

And, you know, I grew up in Silicon Valley and one of the famous mottos in Silicon Valley is “Fail, fail, fail often.” And there's this idea that, you know, it's through failure that we grow and learn and develop and, you know, to people who are not perfectionists failure is quite interesting. Like, huh, this failed. I wonder what I could do differently? I wonder why it failed and all the pieces I could learn from this. Right? That's a whole different way of thinking.

Haley Radke: That's a long ways away for me.

Pam Cordano: Yeah, no, I'm just making a giant map.

I took an improv class yesterday, my very first one, and they had a ritual that when people made a mistake and it was their turn and they messed something up. Everybody threw their arms in the air and went “Woo.” And so it was almost kind of fun to fail because everybody celebrated every failure, and that was just a way to make everybody feel safe.

Like, hey, your failure is not gonna hurt you in the least in this group. We expect it. We're all gonna fail. Let's all celebrate every failure. So it was kind of cool.

Okay, so the second idea is it's kind of a new thing called Tiny Habits. Have you heard of that?

Let's say you want to develop a new habit, like let's say you get up compulsively at four o'clock in the morning to start your perfectionistic schedule or rituals or whatever. A tiny habit would be making a little minuscule change in the direction of healing. So that might be, instead of getting up at four o'clock, you get up at 4:01. And so it's the tiniest little thing, but it moves in the direction of healing.

I'm trying to think of perfection ideas. Like another one would be if you obsessively check your emails or your social media five times an hour, you could say from the four to five o'clock hour, I'm only going to check it four times. So it's not any change that's going to, like, capsize the ship.

It's just a tiny little change in a certain direction. And that's kind of a fun new thing to do because at least it raises awareness of how you're living and it challenges it, but in a subtle way that's not too overwhelming.

Haley Radke: Yes. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't sound scary. That's fine. Yeah, I could do that.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. Okay. Sorry to scare you with the first one.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. When you're talking about going up to strangers and like getting ready to be rejected for whatever reason, I'm like, no.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. But those were like the entrepreneurs who needed to practice rejection.

I mean, with us, it's more like, can we be in a relationship, a friendship, whatever kind of relationship with someone and make, you know, a small to medium, even a large-ish mistake and work it through and calm our nervous systems down so that we can know we're still loved.

Like, is there room for mistakes in our relationships?

Okay. And then the third one is working on how we talk to ourselves in our heads. So, you know, it's easy with perfectionism to have negative self-talk, to be self-blaming, to be going over and over the mistake that was made and all of the terrible implications of the mistake or worrying obsessively about the next one that could happen, or the deadlines or the whatevers.

And so any of those kinds of thoughts can be like red flags that can signal a person to switch gears and think of three things that they're doing right in general. I could ask you, and you don't have to keep this on the recording, but what are three things you're doing right, Haley?

Haley Radke: I am, oh my gosh, this is hard.

Pam Cordano: It is. You don't have to keep this if you don't want to.

Haley Radke: Okay. I put myself in a mommy time-out today. I made a good choice there. I feel like I'm a good mom. And I feel like I'm a good podcaster.

Pam Cordano: I love hearing you say those things. I'm smiling. You can't see me right now, but I'm smiling when you say nice things about yourself.

And I think, you know, when we care about people, we love people, we like when they're happy and we want them to feel good about themselves. And we have a relationship with ourselves and we like to feel good about ourselves too. So the practice of thinking of three things we're doing right in any given moment is a nice thing to do for ourselves.

Haley Radke: You know, when I heard someone today, I'm in this podcasting mastermind with another lady, her name is Kelly Covert, and what she said was, when you hear a friend say something that's self-deprecating, to say to them, don't say that to my friend. When she said that, I thought. if we're thinking of ourselves, like, we should be our best friend, you know, we should be kind to ourselves.

Pam Cordano: And we can say, oh no, let's not talk to ourselves like that. Let's think of three things we're doing right or even one thing we're doing right.

Haley Radke: A tiny habit. Okay, so we have our three practical tips. And what's the last thing that you're super duper excited about?

Pam Cordano: Just that we're all so unique. What brings each person alive is really important. You know, for me it is traveling and I love music and I love helping people. I love being a mom and hanging out with my kids and my husband. I was out in the garden today and it was really fun to pull weeds around the tomato plants, just things that make me feel connected to the larger world.

And what's really important about that is that feeling connected to the large world with something we enjoy is actually a stable place in our brains. Like, if you enjoy hanging out with your kids, that's just not something that can be questioned. That's just a fact. It's just a reality that hanging out with your kids is important to you.

It means a lot to you. I mean, I know kids are hard sometimes, but basically it's something that means a lot to you. So, unlike this perfectionist thinking, it's something more solid. So I guess, if perfectionism comes from a lack of security, then what do we replace that with?

And I'm suggesting that we move toward, bit by bit, recognizing that our security really lives in what's meaningful and important to us about life, about our lives. And because this is such difficult territory because it's a minefield and there are so many dangers with being perfectionistic, it would be great if you or anyone listening or me, if we could find a part of us that's even a little bit excited or could think it could be a little fun to try chipping away at this.

You know, so that there's not like a drudgery or an overwhelm feeling about starting to address it, but more like curiosity and how could we make this fun?

Haley Radke: Wow, that's so profound. And then what a shift that will be, you know, like if we can find healing in this area, that'd be amazing. Even in small segments, right?

Pam Cordano: Yeah. And I think our perfectionists, our inner perfectionists, our inner adoptee perfectionists need gentleness from us and from each other.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. There's so many good things to think about in this episode with you and I know it's going to be so helpful to a lot of us, me included. Where can we connect with you online, Pam?

Pam Cordano: My website is www.pamelacordanomft.com.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you for your time again, and your wisdom.

Pam Cordano: Thanks for the time with you, Haley. I always love talking to you. You can bail on an appointment with me anytime.

Haley Radke: But I wanna come and jump out garbage on your floor. Just one kleenex.

Pam Cordano: I totally want that. Yeah, I totally want that someday. We should do it, like, over Skype.

Haley Radke: Oh, how perfect would that be?

Okay. I'm gonna be so honest with you guys about this. I felt so stressed out about putting this episode out because there's some really personal moments we share. I didn't know whether or not to cut a few different things, and I know there's some technical glitches in the recording. It felt paralyzing.

And Pam even read this really great poem to wrap up the conversation with this beautiful sentiment about perfectionism. I mean, I had goosebumps and I had to cut it because of copyright issues. So instead, I put a link in the show notes to the author of the poem, Mary Oliver, reading her work. It's called “Wild Geese” and I recommend you go check it out. It's really great.

The show notes are on adopteeson.com, and for any of the other Healing Series episodes that feature Pamela and several other adoptee therapists, you can go on over to adopteeson.com/healing. Okay, so we've had the little confessional moment.

You know, it's a ton of work to make this podcast and I just absolutely love doing it. And this episode is brought to you by the generous support of my partners. I have 26 partners on Patreon who are donating monthly to help support my work, and they are literally making it possible for me to keep producing this podcast for you.

Adopteeson.com/partner has the details about supporting the show, and I have some great thank you gifts for you, including a secret adoptees-only Facebook group that is giving me so much life right now.

If you found this episode to be helpful, would you tell someone today? Maybe you have an adoptee friend who you know struggles with perfectionism. You could both listen to this episode and talk about some of the exercises Pamela gave us to work on. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

35 Jemma - Adopted Back

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/35

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Jemma Sullivan: I can't say anything about that because it was illegal.

Haley Radke:* Okay!

Jemma Sullivan: So, that's right. I am not ashamed.

Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season Two, Episode 11: Jemma. I'm your host, Haley Radke.

Can you really be adopted back into your family of origin? Today I get to introduce you to Jemma Sullivan, and she shares some incredibly painful realities of having a narcissistic adoptive parent. But it's not all gloom and doom, I promise. You need to wait to hear what happens at the beginning of Jemma's new chapter with her first mother.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, AdopteesOn.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome Jemma to Adoptees On today. Welcome, Jemma.

Jemma Sullivan: Thank you, Haley, I appreciate you having me on.

Haley Radke: I have followed you on Twitter and I know a bit of your story and you have some very interesting twists, so I would just love it if you would share your story with us.

Jemma Sullivan: Well, I was born in 1971, adopted as an infant. I was premature, so I spent the first three weeks in the hospital. Private adoption. Closed adoption, obviously in ‘71, in the state of Florida. The standard childhood, I mean, it wasn't like anything too major, until I got older and started questioning things. My adoptive mother at the time, we couldn't get along. And I used to question, ‘Why can't we get along? Why can't we– what is it about me that you object to?’ Made the mistake once of asking her, “Is it because I'm adopted?” I was 16. That was when she said something to the effect of, “We adopted you because your mother didn't love you enough to keep you.” And I just looked at her and I remembered thinking, for the first time in my life, ‘This woman is a liar.’ I did grow up with that traditional story of, “Oh, your mother loved you enough to give you away.”

Haley Radke: So all of a sudden the story switches for her.

Jemma Sullivan: Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like when I ask, it's like, yeah, boom. Yeah. I mean there was that. I mean, I didn't necessarily grow up feeling “other”, but I always knew that I was adopted. I don't remember being told, it's something that was always there. I had an older brother who was also adopted. For the most part, I never really “attached”, I guess you could say, to my mother, you know. I always knew that there was a favorite and it wasn't me.

Haley Radke: And so your older brother didn't have that same disconnect from your mother?

Jemma Sullivan: No, no. He was the golden child. And he could do no wrong. It didn't matter what he did. Even if he really did something wrong, he could do no wrong. I was kind of like the “black sheep”, as we used to say. But learning more about maternal narcissism and so forth, doing some healing work, we now consider ourselves giraffes– it's this little story that Dr. Carol McBride tells, about becoming the giraffe instead of the sheep. How you've got this long, tall neck and you're above the trees, and you're looking down on all the sheep, and you can see everything for what it really is, and you don't have to be a part of that.

Haley Radke: I love that analogy. I've not heard that before.

Jemma Sullivan: Yeah, she's got a little video, she talks about it on her website.

Haley Radke: I'll find that and I'll put it in our show notes.

Okay. So some like big separation as a teenager, then, when you have this conversation at age 16. How did things kind-of play out from there?

Jemma Sullivan: I guess when you look at– one of the biggest adoptee issues is abandonment. And anytime in my life when my adoptive parents didn't agree with something, a choice that I was making, it'd be total radio silence, they wouldn't speak to me. And it was usually her, and then he would follow her because he was in this whole– this comes into a faith or religious thing, you know, how you gotta stick with your wife. And he kind of took it to the extreme, didn't matter if she was wrong, he was gonna back her no matter what. So then I wouldn't hear from them for a while. You're kind of on your own a lot.

So when I was, gosh, 21, I got engaged to a guy they didn't approve of. They did everything to foil the wedding. Finally, I just got married without them. Then they confronted me and I just said, “Guys, you were being too difficult. There was nothing– it wasn't worth it anymore.” And they stopped speaking to me about that time. They said, “Okay.” Click! Hung up. Didn't hear from them.

It had been a couple of weeks and a little bit before that I had decided since I was going to be getting married that I wanted to get non-identifying information, and had written to the state of Florida and got that. I hadn't even thought about doing a search or anything. So I got the information just before I got married. I was kind of amazed at what was in there. I mean, there was stuff about my grandmother suffering from major depression, being in and out of institutions and you know, that sort of thing. And then there was this note about how my biological mother had reacted at placing me for adoption, at her state of mind. How she was just beside herself, she was in quite a state. Which to me, I thought was kind of unusual. Because most of the time they stick to the facts, as opposed to, you know, putting feelings in a lot of these things. But that was in there. And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh no, I have to find her.’ Because if there's depression in the family, what could be more depressing than giving your child up for adoption? So I just had this need to let her know I was okay. And then I thought, ‘Well, gosh, what do I do?’ Because this was like 1992 or ‘93.

Haley Radke: And you're just early 20s here?

Jemma Sullivan: Yes, 21 years old. And I had no idea. We didn't have quite the computer system, the internet stuff that we have today. I was clueless, I had no idea what I was going to do. And then I kind-of figured out how to find out, but I can't say anything about that, because it was illegal.

Haley Radke: Okay!

Jemma Sullivan: So, that's right. I am not ashamed. I admit it. I broke the law.

Haley Radke: Okay. Don't confess any further. Okay, so you found your birth mother.

Jemma Sullivan: Yes, so I got her name at the time she had me, and I got how old she was at the time that she had me, and where she grew up. And that was it, that's all the information that I was given.

I was living in Georgia at the time. Drove down the next day. My friend said, “Okay, let's get to work.” We went to the courthouse and started pulling books and stuff out of records and so forth. And of course one of the first things I had them look was, “Just look at death notices.” Because I'm like, “I just– I want to start there. I don't want to go through all this and that be the result when I could have just found out right off the bat.” And so thankfully there was nothing, which was a relief. So I just kind of kept looking through like the Who's Who books, they have all these addresses and it's not like the phone book or anything, but it does give everybody in the household kind of thing. So I said to my friend, I said, “I wonder if I should find her husband,” I said, “you know, I don't see a divorce decree. But you know, she could file in another county.” And so we're like, “Okay…” And the guy that's standing there, he looks over and he goes, “Oh yeah, he's an officer. You see that building over there? That's where he would work.” “Okay, then. Let's walk across the street.” Walked across the street, and of course they're like, “Oh no, he's out at the satellite office today.” I'm like, “Great. Okay.” Go to the satellite office. And they're like, “Oh, he's not working today.” But I'm just looking at them going, “I can't stop. There's gotta be something else.” And I said, “You know what? We're going to his house.” You know, my friend's like, “Well, are you sure you wanna do that?” And I said, “What's he gonna do? Arrest me for knocking on his door?”

So we went to the address that we had seen for him. My friend, who is the same age as my biological mother, decided she was going to say she was her friend from high school and she was trying to find her. So this guy answers the door, she tells him this story and he's like, “Oh, okay, let me get her phone number for you.” And she said, “Excuse me, are you her son?” And he said, “Yeah, I'm her son.” Gosh. So I'm standing face to face with my brother. Oh my gosh. Less than three hours searching. And I just, I probably looked like an idiot. I just didn't say anything. I'm just like, ‘Okay. I can't say anything anyways, because I don't know what he knows.’

So he gave us her phone number and of course at this time I didn't know if his father was my father or any of that stuff. He's not. But anyhow, he's only 18 months younger than I am. That was a little tough at first, but I decided to focus on the fact that I've got a brother. Yeah. I went back to my friend's house and it's now five o'clock in the evening. We started like 8:30 in the morning. So I just thought, ‘Okay, let's do this.’ And I just called; some guy answered, and he's like, “Who's this?”

I was like, “My name is this.” And he's like, “What do you want with her?” And I was like, “Oh, that's personal business.” He goes, “Oh, come on, come on!” And he's just really kind of a jerk. I just finally got so frustrated I hung up. I went in to my friend, well, I said something a little colorful. I was crying and I looked at her and she's “What's wrong?” And I'm like, “My mom's living with a…”

Haley Radke: Bleep!

Jemma Sullivan: And took about two minutes, calmed down, went back in there and said, ‘Okay. Doing it again.’ Called again, and this time a woman answered. She was just like, “Well, who's this? What's this about?” And I said, “Well, that's personal, that's between her and me.” And she's like, “Well, you're gonna have to give me something.”

And I said, “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that unless I tell you why I am calling you are not gonna let me speak to her?” She said, “Mmm, yep, that's what I'm telling you.” And I said– I just kind-of took that [huff of air] sharp intake, stiffen up the spine, and said, “Fine. I'm her daughter.” And you could hear this “Uh!” And I said, “She gave me up for adoption 21 years ago. I don't know if she's thought of me since, I don't know if she wants to talk to me, but I just, I have some questions and I wanna know some stuff. If she wants a relationship, that's fine. If she doesn't, that's fine, but I wanna talk to her. I feel like I deserve that.”

And she says, “Well, I can tell you for a fact that I know that she wants to speak with you, and that she has thought of you very often over the years. I can have her call you at this time tomorrow. She's not available right now, but I can have her call you at this time tomorrow. What's your number?” So I gave her my number and she's like, “Okay, I promise you she will call you.”

“Okay, thanks.” Click! Go into my friend, and I tell her what happened, and she starts laughing at me. “Do you really not know that you were just talking to your mother? Who else would've known what she said?” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you're right.” Of course I'm feeling extremely dense at the moment. But yeah, it was her. And as it turned out, she was sitting there celebrating a two-month dating anniversary with her boyfriend who had no clue about me. So she learned early on in her life not to tell people about me, because people would throw it up in her face. Someone gets angry with her, then they would throw that up at her.

She did call me the next day and we talked for, gosh, forever. And of course, you know, at the time I have to say I was still the “good adoptee”. I was still the adoptee saying, “Thank you for giving me up for adoption to have a better life. I just didn't want you to worry.” And in truth, that was crap– can I say that?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Jemma Sullivan: Okay. Because, you know, it's such a lie that we get given up for a better life. Because they can't promise that. They can promise a different life. I definitely had a different life. But I was still in the dark about narcissism at the time too. So, you know, I always thought it was just me. I thought there was something wrong with me. Because that's the adoptee way, I guess.

Haley Radke: So you found her. And is there a reunion? What's next?

Jemma Sullivan: Yes, we met the next day, at a little bar, a little restaurant bar on the little bay in Sanford. It was called Fitzgerald's Pub. I went to meet her there, and of course I get there early because I'm nervous. I go, and then the time comes, and the time passes, and she's not there. And I'm looking at my watch going, ‘Oh no. She's not gonna show.’ The bartender looks at me and he says, “Uh, ma'am, are you okay?” And I said, “Well, I don't know.” And I just told him, you know, I mean, hey, it's a bartender, right? Share everything with a bartender. So I just gave him a quick rundown of what was happening and he's like, “Oh my gosh. Well this is my first reunion here.” And he said, “I tell you what,” he said, “let me give you a glass of wine on the house. She'll be here. Just settle.” Phone rings; he comes over right after that and says, “That was your mom. She's on her way. She doesn't want you to worry. She is coming. She said to order some food.” Okay.

Well it turns out the reason she was late is because she was curling her hair, getting her makeup just right, Lee press-on nails. Back in the day, you know? Because she wanted to look perfect. But the truth is she was already perfect to me. I knew her as soon as she walked in, because it was my eyes staring back at me. To see yourself in someone else was just unbelievable.

We sat and had a drink, and her boyfriend had a little sailboat moored there, and so we went and hung out there, and I ended up just spending the night there on the sailboat with her, and we talked till three or four in the morning. Then of course I had to go back to my friend’s, because let's not forget, I had just gotten married at that point. And so my husband was back at my friend's. She decided to have a get together so that I could officially meet my brother.

Oh, and I guess one detail that I left out is that I did ask her pretty much immediately about my father, because I wanted to know if it was the same guy. And she's like, “No, that's not.” But she did tell me right away, she gave me his name, where he was from. She did give me a warning, she said, “I'm just gonna tell you: don't expect the same reception.” And I said, “Okay.”

So back to that weekend: we went to Orlando for this party, and basically her roommates made it a late baby shower. So they bought her some stuff she needed, like, for the house or, you know, just little gifts and stuff. And they did this big lunch. So it was really neat getting to hang out with my little brother and my mom. Just talking with her and getting to know her, there was no denying that I was her kid. Not even about the looks, it's the way we look at things a lot of times, the way that we react to things, that stubborn “I can't do what? Watch me!” And she always says –she still says– she says, “I still remember that day like it was yesterday.” And she said, “I could hear it through the phone. I could hear you straighten your spine and get that look.” She said, “You just flipped your hair and you got the look. And you just steeled yourself and said, ‘Fine!’” She said “I could see it, because it's exactly what I would've done.”

Haley Radke: So how has reunion gone for you now? You're into it, like, oh boy, twenty–

Jemma Sullivan: 25 years!

Haley Radke: Okay. Now you've been with her longer than you were apart.

Jemma Sullivan: Yes. Our reunion has been very complicated by my adoptive family. They like to say, “Oh, we always said we'd help you if you ever wanted to find her.” Which by the way, I never recall ever hearing. But they gave me a really hard time for doing it without them.

And I just kind of was like, “Guys, this isn't about you. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you. It has nothing to do with anything about you. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It happened while we weren't speaking, but that was just a matter of timing.” I never claimed my timing was good. I would say, “Hey I'm gonna go see a friend, go hang out with a friend.” “Oh, okay.” And I'd go and I'd see her. “Where you been?” “Oh, with a friend.” Scoot off into my room. This is probably a year or so later. The marriage didn't last, obviously, but like I say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. The fact that my parents were right about the guy didn't change anything.

She was always very gracious, my bio mom. She's always been very gracious with regard to them, trying to defer to them on anything. You know, if I was frustrated and I was with something with them, and I'm talking to her, initially, it was like, “Come on, you know, it's your mom,” and blah, blah, blah, “they love you,” and all that kind of stuff. Until she started kind of really listening to some of the stuff that I was telling her was happening, and then she was just like, “Ugh! She sounds like my mom.” Like I said, my adoptive family was very back and forth with me. It's like you're either in good or you're out. And so if I was behaving, if I was toeing the line, then everything was good. But if I wasn't doing everything they wanted, then they weren't speaking to me. And there would be a period of silence and freeze out. Interestingly enough, the more it happened, the more I started realizing that those were some of the happiest times of my life because I got to be myself, whoever that was. Because I wasn't allowed to be me. I had to be this other kid that they couldn't have. I had to always try to be that other person, the person that they wished they had gotten.

When I had my first child, I was 27. I mean, she was just a little bitty thing. It was not a problem, I'd take her over and my mom could see her. And of course, interestingly enough, she had had a baby about three years prior. So I have another little brother who is 21, he'll be 22 soon. When my daughter started getting to where she was verbal, I had to back off the contact with my mom because I knew, you know, if my daughter said something in front of my adoptive mother, I couldn't handle it if they had treated her the way they treated me, and I didn't want her to ever be in that position.

So, yeah, so I just kind of stayed away and it kind of reverted to birthday cards and Christmas cards and maybe a once-a-year call or, you know, when I was in private, say, “Hey, how you doing?” So sadly, because of that, I also missed out on my brother growing up, you know. And the thing is, my mom was more than happy to share with my adopters. She wanted to meet them and say, “Thank you for taking care of my baby. Thank you for doing what I wasn't able to do,” or, you know, something. But it just wasn't meant to be that way, I guess. My adopters were just not built that way. Yeah. So we just kind of were very casual, distant during all of that.

And then in 2011, I had one final blowout with my adoptive mother. It basically was her badmouthing me to my daughter, who was 12 at the time. Basically saying what a horrible daughter I am, how horrible I was as a teen. Which, by the way I really was not, I didn't get into any trouble. It wasn't until, I mean, I confronted her on it a few days after I found out what was said. I waited a few days to calm down because while what she had said was bad, I was mostly angry that she said it to my daughter, so that was like a huge, huge thing. I talked to her calmly, initially. And she kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and just saying really horrible stuff to me. It's when she said something horrible about my mother-in-law that I lost it, because I have an amazing mother-in-law. Basically, she's like, “Well, I'm just gonna hang up if you're…” And I'm like, “Hey, whoa. If we don't talk this through, then we're done.” And she hung up. And I just looked at my mother-in-law, who happened to be standing there. My mother-in-law was standing there, and she's just kind of looking at me like, ‘oh my goodness’. I looked at my husband and I said, “Okay, then. Guess that's that.” It was just, like, 40 years in the making. At that time I was 40. It was like 40 years in the making.

So then I'm like, ‘okay, I'm gonna have to get my daughter in therapy after this, because this isn't good’. So I started her in therapy to get to talk about it, because she was having a hard time talking about things. And her therapist calls me into the room, says, “She needs to talk to you. She needs to tell you something.” So my daughter proceeds to tell me the big thing that my adoptive mother had said that she had held back from telling me up to that point, which was that she regretted adopting me. That she should have stopped after my brother–

Haley Radke: Oh my God.

Jemma Sullivan: –and why couldn't she have been her daughter? Then they sent my daughter into the little room to play with the kid things and her therapist looks at me and gives me that ‘cut it off’ sign. It's time to cut it off. And that was it. We went no-contact with them. Not that they ever abided by it. They kept kind of doing that. So anyhow, shortly thereafter –that was like in July of ‘11– and December of ‘11, my bio mom flew up the day after Christmas to meet her grandkids and to meet my husband. And that's the first time I'd seen her in 20-some years. It was just amazing. It hadn't skipped a beat since. At first she thought things would go back. She's like, “Oh, you'll go back.” And I'm like, “No, I'm done. I'm done.” Finally, she realized, “Wow, you're really not going back.” I'm like, “No, I told you I'm done. No, when I say I'm done.” And she goes, “Oh, you are my kid.”

So we just kind of moved on at that point. And ever since that we go down and hang out every 4th of July with them, and we were doing these big things. And they came up, my one brother came up with her Christmas a couple years ago. So that was really kind of a cool thing.

And then, like I said, my adopters were not respecting our wishes for no contact. Such that, I live in Pennsylvania, they live in Florida; they boarded a plane and showed up at my door.

Haley Radke: No!

Jemma Sullivan: Yes. And it just happened to be that my daughter was doing an online school program, so she was home. My son was home sick. So I had both kids there at the house, and they show up at the door unannounced. I knew I wasn't expecting anybody, so I didn't just open the door. I looked out the sidelight and saw a car I didn't recognize. Looked a little further over and looked right in her eyes, and shook my head no, and walked away.

They kept knocking for a little bit and they started walking all around the property, trying to look in the windows, walking on the deck. But I had everything closed up so they couldn't see in. So there was that. That was fun. And we started noticing then that our daughters started having very big reactions to them. Like, physical, just shaking and stuff, and it was just like, ‘Oh, we waited too long. We should have done this sooner.’

But, probably a couple of springs ago, I'm a March baby, which by the way, I was born March 20th, but the state of Florida changed my birth date to the 21st. So for 46 years, I've celebrated the 21st, and I just got it changed back. But, we'll get there. But yeah, so March, some flowers arrived with this card that just says, “We'll always love you.” And they didn't even sign it. That exact moment, it just hit me: ‘They're never gonna stop. And why am I so worried about their feelings when they don't even care about mine?’ And I just said, ‘You know what? I need to do some self care here. And what I need is to be with my mom.’ And I called her and said, “Mom, it's time.” And she said, “Time for what?” I said, “Time for you to adopt me back.” She said, “Okay!” She said, “I'm good with that.” And my brothers were good with it. My husband was good. I mean, I had been wanting to do a name change because I'd always hated my former name, and I was going to do the name change, and I'd been talking about that for years. And then I finally just said, ‘No, I'm not stopping at that. My mom adopt me. Go big or go home.’

Haley Radke: Okay, I did not even know this was a thing, so tell me all about it.

Jemma Sullivan: Okay, it is a process called adult adoption. I don't know how many states or countries have this, but Florida does. It is a process that was initially done to allow for children who have aged out of the child welfare system to be able to have a family. If they find someone later, a family that they click with, they could still have that pathway to a family.

And so that's what the law was created for. But I looked at all the little things and I said, ‘Hm! That works. It doesn't say you have to be in the system, doesn't say you have to be a foster kid.’ So I called an attorney, and that was the thing. And basically it's a thing where they terminate the rights of the former parents. And in every other case that they've had, whatever cases they've had, it's been the biological parents. In my case, it was adoptive parents, and let me tell you, the judge was looking really confused for a little moment when we went to court. It was like he was kind of looking around going, ‘Okay, wait, who's who?’ And this, yeah. So we filed, we started with the attorney like in April of ‘16, and then we went to court a couple months ago, finally.

Haley Radke: So early in 2017?

Jemma Sullivan: Yes.

Haley Radke: So you're officially her daughter again?

Jemma Sullivan: Yes.

Haley Radke: And does that mean you get all the rights that go along with that?

Jemma Sullivan: Yes.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Jemma Sullivan: Just as if she was anybody, adopting anybody. I mean, even the wording, it's funny: “as if she were born to you,” and I just laugh, because I’m like, “Uh, ‘cause I was!” So it was kind of funny, but it has its own challenges because I'm twice adopted, twice sealed, now, in terms of records.

Haley Radke: Now I'm remembering when you're telling your story that your mom's friends threw her like a late baby shower, and tell me about the adoption day, because I know something special happened.

Jemma Sullivan: So first, like I said, we had court. And I was there, my husband went with me, my mom, one of my brothers went, and my best friend since high school. Because I knew –I'd been having these dreams right before– I knew that they were gonna show up. Even though they didn't have to be there, because they weren't a party to it; because they didn't have to agree to it.

Haley Radke: Oh, but they got notified that this was happening?

Jemma Sullivan: They got notified, yeah. They actually got an attorney, who happens to be my daughter's godfather. Yeah. Nice, right? And his wife came, because his wife, well, she's known me since I was adopted. She was my babysitter growing up. And she was there, and my adoptive father was there, but my adoptive mother was not there. I just went in and I just kind of kept tunnel vision. I didn't look at any of them. I looked at the judge, I looked over at my mother, and that was pretty much it. And I gotta tell you, I mean, they were sobbing. I felt really bad for them to a point. Kinda like, ‘Well, what do you expect was gonna happen?’

Haley Radke: “Yeah, maybe don't tell my daughter these terrible, terrible things. Not your best judgment.” Oh my gosh.

Jemma Sullivan: Right? Right. Yeah, so I just didn't say anything. And so the judge kind-of walked through, “Who's this person? Who's this person?” And he's asking me the questions, “And who's this person to you? And this? Okay, I think I got it.” He goes, “So this is your adoptive father?” “Yes.” “And this woman is–?” “My biological mother, who is adopting me back today.” He got this look on his face like, ‘Oh! Okay then,’ and you could kind of see him processing that and ‘What could possibly have happened here?’ to be doing this. Like, ‘wow’. It was clearly new to him. He's ready to sign off on everything. He's like, “Is there anything else?” And then the other attorney speaks up and says, “My client would like to say something.” And I'm just kind-of looking straight at the judge, like, blank. Just totally blank. And he thinks about it for a second. He's like, “Mmm, alright, I'll allow it.” My adoptive father was crying and he's like, “We just want her to know, we'll always love her. And all we ever wanted was for her to be happy. That’s all.”

The judge looks at me, and I just looked at him, and he's like, “Okay, then nothing else?” And then the attorney's wife says, “I'd like to say something!” And he turns and throws his hand up –her husband– and says, “No. Stop. No. We're done, your Honor.” So we get up and he, you know, signs the paperwork. We get up and I stop and I turn my back to them so that I can face my attorney and my mom to let them walk out.

They go out, we go out, I turn towards the elevator and there is the babysitter. And here she's making a beeline, right for me. She comes over, she grabs me by the hands, and she's just in tears and just, “So happy for you. I’m really happy for you.” I'm thinking, ‘Right. You look really thrilled.’

She then brings me in for a hug and she's looking over my shoulder and my mom is standing right behind me, and she starts going on about how she's loved me since I was born, and she's been my babysitter, and she's taken care of me and changed my diapers, and all this stuff. And my mom is giving her the same blank look that I was giving throughout the whole thing like, ‘What's your point?’

And you know, of course, this whole time, I mean, she's sobbing and so I have my left hand up kind-of just on the back of her arm. And with the other one I just literally –and I'm a very demonstrative person, so I'm a hugger, you know?– but I just literally did the proverbial pat-pat-pat, and then dropped my hands, my arms and then stepped back. And she just got this look on her face like, ‘Oh, I've been dismissed.’ And it's like, ‘Okay!’ And I just said, “Take care.” And she walked away. And as she walked away, then my mother said something colorful. She said, “And you're the ‘beep’ that also tried to snatch my granddaughter a couple of years ago.” And I looked at her and I said, “You caught that, did you, that's who she was?” And she goes, “Oh, I know who she is.” Because they had tried to get access to my daughter without our permission, when she was 12.

So, onto the fun stuff.

Haley Radke: So yes, tell me about the celebration.

Jemma Sullivan: I had to leave the courthouse and take my husband to the airport and everybody else went back and started getting ready. I knew we were gonna have some grilled ribs and stuff like that. But when I pulled up at my mom's house after coming back from the airport, there were pink and white balloons, and one of those little banner signs that says “It's a girl” strung across the doorway outside. And then inside as well, they had decorated with some streamers and some balloons and had some little, “it's a girl” plates and all this stuff. And there was a card and I had my own little wineglass thing: “It's a girl.” And her neighbors had done that. They've been extremely supportive of us, and especially my mom through all of this. Especially through the years that I wasn't around. They've just been really great people for the family. So then we popped the champagne and got our ribs on.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. I just, I love that for you, I love that you've been able to be, you know, welcomed back into your family of origin, you know? How beautiful.

Jemma Sullivan: I just, the real long and short of it with my father: I called, I got the, “Don't know you, don't wanna know you.” Eventually we did meet and for the one day he did kind-of treat me like a princess, but it had more to do with him than it did with me. His own issues, which I found out after he died in 2013. But I do have relationships with one of his brothers and with my cousins on that side. So, not a total loss there.

Haley Radke: Well, I'm so glad. Oh my goodness. Well, I feel like I could talk to you for another hour, but we have to recommend our resources. Is there anything else you wanna mention before we move on to that?

Jemma Sullivan: I would love to see some people do some actual research into the connection between narcissism and adoption, because I just feel like I have met so many adoptees that have one or more narcissistic parents or with some serious narcissistic traits. It can't be a coincidence that there's that many. And a lot of the same thing, they have to go no-contact because it's just so toxic. And so I just would really like to see somebody really do some more research into that, because I think as adoptees, with all the stuff that we get told growing up and, you know, “be grateful” and all of that stuff, we really are groomed in a lot of ways, to be targets for a narcissist.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I agree, it is so common and we've even talked about it on the show before. Good thoughts, good thoughts. Not easy, but good.

Okay. So recommended resources. I'm taking a little bit of a turn today. I usually really focus on adoption-related items. I saw this article pop up in my Facebook feed from a couple of different “friends of the show” –people who've been on before– and it's called New Neuroscience Reveals Four Rituals That Will Make You Happy. And because we talk a lot about healing and things on the show, I thought it would be good to share. It's a really great article, actually. It's long, but the couple things I really wanted to bring out were the first two rituals. The first one is: The most important question to ask when you feel down. And you're just mentioning, “Oh, you know, adoptees, we're supposed to feel grateful for being adopted and stuff.” But according to this research, actually feeling gratitude does help us to regain some sense of joy. So, not necessarily feeling grateful that we were adopted.

Jemma Sullivan: Right!

Haley Radke: I'm not talking about that kind of gratitude. I'm just talking about gratitude about in your life and exactly what things can you focus on that you have to be happy for and grateful for. And so I think if you are having a down day or something, this would be a really great thing to do.

And then the second thing was to label your negative feelings. So similarly, if you focus on gratitude, you know, you kind of bring up joy for yourself. But if you're kind of stuck in those negative feelings, and you kind-of can spiral downward. I can, I for sure can. So this article talks about the science, actually labeling those negative feelings can help us be like, ‘Okay, this is what it is,’ and then you can move forward and you don't have to circle down. Anyway, that's just a brief little overview. So I would recommend taking a look at that article. I'll link to it in the show notes and so you can check it out. So they're just like, four little things you can do throughout your day if you're having a lousy day, which I've had a few of in the last week, so I needed that reminder.

Okay, Jemma, what do you have for us today?

Jemma Sullivan: Okay, well, the first one is one that you guys have talked about plenty. It's The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. I haven't even finished it yet, but it was so profound to me, that real trauma aspect and acknowledging that. And I just think that it's a read not just for adoptees, but for anybody who loves an adoptee or knows an adoptee. I think it should just be required reading period.

Haley Radke: Yeah, I agree.

Jemma Sullivan: Kind-of hand-in-hand with that is, there is a counselor, Juli Alvarado. She does some public speaking and stuff, and it's about trauma-informed care. And I was recently at one of her conferences and it was phenomenal talking about the different stages in your life when you can experience trauma, the first being pre-birth; at birth; and then, you know, immediately after birth; and so on and so forth. And talking about the neuroscience aspect of how that affects your brain, and the chemical makeup of your brain and what it does. And how it puts you in a feedback loop between three parts of the brain that has to get interrupted to get stopped, to back out of that trauma. And so we react based on those traumas and we're in that fight/flight/freeze. And so it was phenomenal. She's someone to look up and it's Juli Alvarado, and she's on Facebook.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I'll totally link to that. That sounds so good. That sounds like some of what Leslie was teaching in one of the Healing Series we just did, is adoption trauma. Great. And you have one last one.

Jemma Sullivan: One last one, which for me was a lifesaver and it's Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing The Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Dr. Carol McBride. I've actually been to one of her seminars, as well, to work through the book and as a healing thing. It's just basically a healing manual. It talks about recognizing the stuff, what you can do, and different things that you can do to work through the trauma of that, and of being exposed to narcissism. It was a lifesaver for me. Because it literally got me past thinking everything was my fault and it was all me. It was okay to go, ‘No, it really is her. It is her.’

Haley Radke: Yeah. And you know, and it's so sad that it had to take so very long for you, and it had to be your daughter to be injured, you know? So I'm sorry that happened and I'm so grateful you are recommending that book, because I'm sure there's a lot of us listening that can identify with some of those qualities in our adoptive parents. And you gotta put yourself and your family first, no matter what is happening for them.

Jemma Sullivan: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Oh, Jemma, I just wanna thank you so much for sharing with us.

Jemma Sullivan: Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Now, if anyone has questions about your story, they wanna hear more, how can they connect with you online?

Jemma Sullivan: They can connect with me on Twitter.

Haley Radke: So your Twitter handle is @J_R_Sullivan.

Jemma Sullivan: Yes, that's it.

Haley Radke: All right. So we can look you up on Twitter, which is my favorite place to be online. Wonderful. Thanks again for sharing your story. I wonder if it will inspire some people to be adopted back.

Jemma Sullivan: Yeah, I've had a couple of conversations. So, who knows, it may be the next thing.

Haley Radke: Okay, well, if Jemma has inspired you to look into adult adoption, please come and let her know.

I want to thank everyone who shared the show to celebrate my one-year podcasting anniversary, and there are many books and gifts on their way to Joel, Dean, Marnie, John, Stina, Jen, Ruth, Ellie, and Shannon. One amazing way to celebrate with me would be to join my Adoptees On partners. You can donate a small monthly pledge that helps keep my podcast sustainable, and I have some great thank-you gifts for you, including a secret adoptees-only Facebook group. AdopteesOn.com/partner has the details for that opportunity. I also need to tell you that we are nearing the end of Season Two. I've got two more episodes coming up, including an interview with Liz Latty and a surprise special guest for the finale. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts: iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher. I even post these episodes on YouTube and Facebook.

Today, would you tell one person about Adoptees On? Perhaps someone you know has an incredibly challenging relationship with their adoptive parents. You could share the show with them and then talk about it together and support each other in your journeys.

Thank you for listening, let's talk again next Friday.