45 Gareth - The Magical Realism of Being Adopted
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/45
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 3, Episode 6, Gareth. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I introduce you to Gareth Price, a magical realism artist from New Zealand. We talk a lot about what being an adoptee feels like and the accompanying anger that Gareth tells me he's dealt with all his life.
Gareth and I chat about his art, his twin sister and his reunion with his birth mother. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to the podcast, Gareth Price. Welcome Gareth.
Gareth Price: Hello, [00:01:00] Hayley. How's it going?
Haley Radke: It's good. I would love for you to share your story with us.
Gareth Price: I was born in Auckland in December 1971. I'm a twin. I have a twin sister, Glenda. And we were both adopted out immediately after birth.
We were adopted out to my parents, Rose and Craig Price, and we lived in Green Lane which is beside One Tree Hill, which was featured on the Joshua Tree album. There was a song, “One Tree Hill”, that U2 did, and if anybody's familiar with that, that's where I grew up.
I've actually heard this from a few of your podcasters, people don't tend to seem to get that interested in the whole adoption issue until they start approaching maybe 20, maybe? Or maybe early 20s or something? And we were the same. It was actually my sister. Even though we're twins, we're very separate people. I'm quite [00:02:00] a reserved chap, and she was very outward and she left home at 15 and she very much acted out.
She was a very angry person back then. She's quite different now. She's lovely. But, and anyway, she was the one who instigated trying to find our birth mother. And we found her on Anzac Day. Anzac Day is a celebration that we have down here. And I think it was, I can't remember what year, it was when we were about 18 or 19.
And yeah, and so we met her and that was as anybody who's gone through this experience, that was utterly, indescribably wonderful and terrifying. It was just so bizarre. It was the most unbelievable experience. Just her walking up the driveway and you have all these images in your mind of what your birth mother may look like, and then when she comes up, she was a little bit different than I thought and probably a bit shorter maybe and things like that and we [00:03:00] connected very strongly over, it must be said, over alcohol mostly for about the next five or six, seven years, eight years and it was really good and then things started to go another way, shall we say.
And anyway, and about two years after meeting her, she got in contact with our birth father. And we connected with him. And that was really amazing. I'm still in contact with both of them. They don't really contact much with each other.
And our birth mother, she lives just out of central Auckland, just on the waterfront in a suburb called St. Heliers. And the birth father lives just down the country a little bit in a place called Coromandel. And the real kicker for us is the fact that our birth mother is also adopted.
She tried to, I believe, this story is a bit confused for me, I'm not sure, I believe that she tried to find her birth [00:04:00] mother at about 18 as well, but she was unsuccessful because the law was a lot stronger back when she was adopted out with the closed adoptions. She's the end of the line on that side, but on the father's side, we've been extraordinarily lucky. He's got three sisters, so our aunts. It's been a very rich history on that side. Yeah, and all this stuff keeps getting stronger and stronger the older I get. I'm 45 now.
It's unusual because you think that finding your roots fixes everything. And it does change some things, but other things change, but they don't really get fixed as such. Like we've got all these wonderful family connections and things, and that's great, but I still don't go along to family gatherings that much because there's always that intense sadness and anger there and stuff [00:05:00]. Even if it's a really good connection, there's still the feeling that this is what we could have had from day one. And it's tremendously…like the relationship is very good, but it's still very hard, and I don't know if that ever really gets fixed, it just gets, maybe, I don't know, maybe I can just start to think about it differently.
I'm really quite philosophical about all this stuff. My sister is a little bit more forthright about it. And the relationship with the birth mother has been slowly deteriorating for about the last maybe 7 or 8 years to the point where, last year she went to Hawaii during the week of her birthday.
And then this year, I believe tomorrow actually, she's actually off to Hawaii again. And I emailed her just to say bon voyage, and she emailed back saying, Oh yes, I tried to be away for my birthday again this year, but I couldn't quite do it. I know that there's this tradition of adoptees having real trouble with their birthdays. [00:06:00] I'm certainly one of them.
And the trouble that she has is so intensely deep that she, I haven't even talked to her about this. I haven't had any real in-depth conversations with her for quite a long time because it's just too raw. And the fact that I had to stop drinking over a decade ago. Maybe if I took up drinking again, I'd be able to talk to her about it. But it's just it just becomes so intense so quickly. There's massive issues there and so much unsaid stuff with her.
And I've been reading on the amazing private Facebook page that you set up, the other people's similar experiences with mostly their own birth mothers, some birth fathers, but how the relationships deteriorate. And because she's got all the guilt and shame and stuff of giving us up. But she's also got the intense anger that comes from being adopted herself. So she's just a [00:07:00] minefield. And it's really heartbreaking because she's such a beautiful person.
She's really wonderful, but if I didn't text her, I would never hear from her. And that's just heartbreaking, because we had such a good relationship for about the first, sorry, admittedly drunkenly but it was good. They were some of the best times of my life, if I was to be really honest.
It was just going over to her house and sometimes with my twin sister and just getting really wasted and just connecting. But we just don't do that anymore. We haven't done it for a very long time, maybe over a decade. And it's sad, you know.
Haley Radke: Do you think she's coming out of the fog and then realizing it's like a whole other level. Birth mothers already, they have what you said, they have the shame and the regret maybe of relinquishing, but then to realize, Oh, I have all of these other adoptee issues on top of that, and then I gave them to you guys.
Gareth Price: Yeah.
Haley Radke: My gosh. [00:08:00] Oh, I feel so much for her right now.
Gareth Price: Yeah, it is. It is very much like that, and I've been in and out of therapy. And every so often I'll try and contact her and I only ever text her mostly, text and email, and I'll gingerly say maybe we should meet up and stuff and a lot of the time she fobs me off and just says, Oh I can't this weekend, blah, blah, blah.
But I can't help but think if she did start to do any of that sort of therapeutic type work, it would just be so incredibly intense for her. It's a mixture between I really feel for her, but I'm really massively upset at her as well. It's two sides of the same thing, and they're both pretty much as intense as each other. It's really hard.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I'm sure there's this part when you're in reunion, you want to be the [00:09:00] child and they should have the parent role, but if she can't get to that place of the parent role, engaging you in conversation and connecting with you in giving something. Like if you're always the one reaching out and doing the giving. And when i'm saying parent role, I don't mean, Oh they need to step up, that's not what I mean. I don't know how else to say that but
Gareth Price: I know what you mean. And we've never had that kind of relationship. It always had some depth to it earlier on, but then it just became more and more surface, and it feels like it desperately needs to be a surface relationship because if anything else starts to happen, it’s like she starts to pull away and for her to pull away in what's already an incredibly fractured relationship is just, well, I hardly ever see her as it is. But I just know that there is going to come that point, probably quite soon because everybody's getting on, people don't [00:10:00] get any younger, etc. And I hope it doesn't happen. I hope I don't explode or something, but I, it's what I really feel like doing. It's horrible. It's nuts.
Haley Radke: What's your sister's relationship like with her? Are they still in touch?
Gareth Price: I think she sees her probably less than I do.
When my sister got married, it might have been about maybe five or so years after we found our birth mother, she didn't even come to the wedding because, I'm assuming, I never talked to her about it, but I'm assuming because she didn't want to see all the the birth father's side that was going to be there and she couldn't face them.
She's just a survivor, she just does what she can to survive. And I certainly relate to that. I'm very much like that myself. I feel like I'm not living a lot of the time as much as I'm surviving, which I think that's the [00:11:00] mentality that I've always had.
And I think from judging by the books that I've read, like the Nancy Verrier books, The Primal Wound and the Coming Home to Self books and various other books, that is the sense that I get that for a lot of adoptees life does tend to be just below the surface. It's all about survival, and swallowing a lot of things.
And putting up with a lot of things that a lot of other people wouldn't put up with just because it's what you know and because you're desperate not to be rejected again and all this kind of stuff, and it's so true. Every day is like that for me. And that's why the art, I'm getting onto the art now, but that's why the art that I do and the music that I've done, not so much these days, but the art is so very important.
Even though it's not directly about adoption, everything is influenced by it and it's [00:12:00] an expressive outlet and it's pretty much the one thing that I feel in my life that's exclusively me and that I can really say, put out how I feel or how I think about whatever. It’s how I make sense of things.
And if anybody goes to the website, the art on it is reasonably surreal and things, but it's mostly symbolism. And if I was to explain the work to you, it's actually a lot of it's quite straightforward.
Haley Radke: Yeah, so why don't you talk a little bit about that? So you are an artist.
Gareth Price: Yes. Yeah. I'm self-taught. I had a great art teacher at my high school. That was really great. He was wonderful. And then I half-heartedly applied to art school after high school, but I didn't get in. I didn't even get an interview.
And then for most of my twenties, I did music. I played some pop music and rock music and things. And I didn't really come back to the visual arts until my early thirties. Primarily because the woman that I was [00:13:00] seeing at the time, she was just finishing up, she was a bit younger than me and she was finishing up at art school.
And so just by being around her doing art all the time, I just felt drawn back into it. And so after work and weekends and whatever, I just got obsessed with painting. And I painted for about three years. And I painted for about three years and then I got up enough work that I thought I could show a gallery and I got into a gallery and the work started selling and I couldn't believe it.
It was just amazing. And that continued for a few years up until about 2012. And that was the highlight of my achievement. There's a work on the website. It's like a big red volcano. It was actually based on the Chilean volcano that erupted in 2011. And I did the painting in 2012. And it was all about those prophecies that came around in 2012 being the end of the world and the Mayan calendar and all that sort of thing. But that was the highlight of my painting career. It won [00:14:00] awards and stuff down here and it sold for a really good price.
But then after that I got more confidence. And I tried a few different things, and sometimes those things worked, and sometimes they didn't. And yeah, people would say I still really like your work, but I don't really want that in my house. Because it was, I'm paraphrasing, they didn't actually say, the work was darker. And it was a bit more experimental. And so the stage I'm at now is doing stuff that's maybe slightly more straightforward. But if that makes any sense.
Haley Radke: You said it's surreal and it has a lot of symbolism. Can you describe some, because you do a lot of really interesting work. Can you describe a little bit more about that?
Gareth Price: I still love Salvador Dali. He's the greatest for me. I think the reason he resonates so much with me is because my adoptive mum used to bring home prints from the library and just hang them up in [00:15:00] our house. You could just rent them like books. And she brought home lots of Dali ones. And I think because all his paintings are about this inner world, like this kind of surreal inner world. And it's full of symbolism and things as well. And that's where I live as a person.
That's where I escaped to and in terms of the whole adoptive mindset, I suppose. And we had a very dictatorial, quite abusive father growing up as well. And so my sister acted out and, like I was saying, she left home at 15 and all that sort of stuff.
She was a real tearaway and I was the opposite. I was very much, I still am, the people-pleasing introvert. I live in my own world. That's what's kept me sane, and that's what Salvador Dali does so well, his landscapes and his figures in the landscapes, they feel very still and they're very calm, a lot of them in terms of the atmosphere.
But there's also [00:16:00] an amazing amount of emotion. There's just so much in them and they just really feel like a kind of strangely safe internal world. And that's what I'm trying to recreate. I spend months doing my paintings and I imagine living inside them a little bit, so it's kind of escapism, but I try and make it relatable for other people as well. It's sort of symbolism. Things symbolize different kinds of emotions and experiences and things like that, you know?
Haley Radke: There's this one painting that I couldn't stop looking at on your website.
There is a house on this beautiful street, and there's a tree in front, and then it looks like the lights, there's a whale in the sky, and there's a woman that looks like she's just suspended, in the air or falling.
Gareth Price: The Resurrection of Ophelia. That's right, yeah [00:17:00]. That one is one of, I think, maybe two or three works that have been commissions. That was one of them.
A guy came into the gallery to see his friend's work and he saw a painting of mine. He asked the gallery owner if I did commissions and the gallery owner contacted me and I said, Yep, sure, absolutely, show me the money. And all he wanted was his house in the painting and I pushed him and pushed him, what else do you want in it? And he would never say. He just said, just do whatever you want.
And I had this idea about doing a large whale just floating around through the sky. And so that's how that came about. But it's symbolism again. It's about the sort of immutable forces of nature and just how unstoppable and incredible they are. Some things that you look around at in the natural world, if they [00:18:00] weren't there, they would be hard to imagine, like Aurora Borealis, all that sort of thing.
Haley Radke: We call that the Northern lights. What do you call it?
Gareth Price: We have Aurora Australis down here, but we hardly ever get it. And it's very faint. I've never seen it. I think you can see it. I think you can see it from the bottom of New Zealand at particular times of the year, but quite faintly.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Where I grew up, which is 10 hours north of where I am right now, northern Canada, you could see it all the time, especially in the winter like that. Like that bright. And so I was like, whoa, that's so beautiful. What about this one where there's a woman talking on the phone and there's all of these
Gareth Price: Insects.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Gareth Price: Oh, that one is the only collaborative work that I've ever done. The wife of a friend of mine went through art school and she did a lot of canvases with all [00:19:00] these, she invented her own 60s, 70s inspired wallpaper patterns. And she just did a whole bit, there's a whole bunch of canvases in the back room of their house just sitting there unused and they're really quite beautiful. And a few of them are not finished. And so I just said, can I paint on one? Because I normally do exteriors but I did this one as an interior and the idea is it's very much reflecting me. The woman in the painting is actually the lady who painted the canvas that I painted on top of. And the whole idea is about people getting obsessed with their own work.
In this case she is an entomologist, I don't know where that idea came from, but she's an entomologist and she's just become quite paranoid. And she's trapped in her house and just imagining seeing things outside the window. And she's basically swamped in her work and it's taken over her life in a kind of [00:20:00] what I hope is a beautiful way. And yeah, it's about how people get obsessive about things in their life. Whether it's your work or whether it's one of your hobbies or whatever it is and how it can quite easily take you over sometimes. Which happens with me routinely with painting. That's what painting does to me it quite a lot
Haley Radke: I love hearing more about this and how things just have such depth of meaning to you. Amazing. So interesting. Tell me a little bit more about how you process some of your adoption feelings through your artwork. What comes out in your painting that maybe surprises you or that you're like literally just trying to expel from yourself?
Gareth Price: Even if it's quite a sort of moody painting, I try to keep the stuff [00:21:00] reasonably bright. Like I really like bright colors, but virtually all of them are to do with just how people deal with trauma or how people deal with obstacles in their life, whether it's addictions or whether it's the adoption thing and family issues.
And it's all about directly or indirectly how people deal with that. A lot of my work is about that. And there's a tremendous amount of anger in them. I've always had a real huge problem expressing anger in a healthy way. I just find it really difficult. And so I find doing painting is quite helpful.
So that's why some of them are a bit darker. The overall emotion that I have that comes through in all of them, some of them are about specific things that aren't related to adoption, but because it's the driving [00:22:00] emotion in my life, it's always there. It's this terror that's not too far below the surface. It's just horrible. It's tremendously alienating and really, it can just be so hard to just get through day to day sometimes, just dragging this weight around. But that's why the podcasts that you do and things are very helpful because the connection there is tremendous.
Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit more about what you said was alienating? Is it because people think adoption is like the best thing ever?
Gareth Price: I guess so. Yeah. There's a strange dichotomy, isn't there? Like if you tell people you're adopted these days, they tend to be a little bit more reserved with their judgment about it. Whereas when I was a bit younger, it was nothing. It was not really an issue. But the reality of it is it's so massive. And even these days, like I'm a huge fan of Reddit. I love Reddit, the [00:23:00] website. But I saw this cartoon the other day, and I've seen this in a few things.
It's just where some kid and his father and they were doing something or other. And then the punchline was he told his son, “you're adopted.” Right? And the whole meaning of it was you thought your life was great, but it was a damning thing for the father to say, if you understand.
And I've seen that in quite a few works, sorry, in quite a few cartoons and things of that nature. Where somebody tells somebody else, “You're adopted.” “Oh, I've got some bad news for you.” “What is it? Am I adopted?” “No, you just have cancer” or something, and it's basically portrayed as this really terrible thing.
And yet when you ask people about it, they don't really have the perception. It's quite hard to get across to people. Even other adoptees, too. Even my own twin sister views it [00:24:00] quite differently to me. And that's been probably the hardest of all because her experience is identical, virtually should be identical to mine, but it's not.
And I guess some people don't really have too much of an issue with it, full stop. They, for whatever reason, have managed to live quite okay. And it hasn't seemingly affected them too much or, I don't know, but what do you think?
Haley Radke: I have lots of feelings.
I've asked some of the therapists before that I speak with regularly, why do some adoptees not seem to mind being adopted? I call them happy adoptees, which is great. That's great. I'm so glad that you can have a great life and not be bothered. I'd happily go back in the fog if I could.
And I remember, I think Leslie Johnson was the one that said, some people are just a little more resilient or they have denial as a defense mechanism. And she was very clear, not saying denial in [00:25:00] any negative connotation, just that, these are not her words, I'm going to mine, but if you're blocking out your losses it's easier to just go on and move forward with life.
But if you really pay attention to them, just like you were saying, you don't want to even go to a family reunion because even if you could be happy there, there's still the other half of you who is just, oh my gosh, I missed out on so much. And you feel angry and you feel sad, and I genuinely understand that because that's exactly how I feel every time I'm with my biological family.
Gareth Price: Is that right?
Haley Radke: Oh yeah, I can't get out of it. I'm literally having the best time and it's so great and I feel like included and I feel like this is where I fit and this is my family, and right in the same moment I'm just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I missed out on this for however many years and what would my life look [00:26:00] like if I was with them?
And I wouldn't have been with them. Maybe if I was with my mother…it's just, you can't turn it off.
Gareth Price: Oh God. Ain't that the truth. Yeah. And the other thing that I keep saying to people whenever I talk about this at length, which isn't that much, is the fact that I don't think any of the problems that we have are necessarily unique to us. But I really do strongly believe that certain issues are incredibly heightened because of the experience.
Like I've seen and heard things through Adoptees On that are very relatable to me. And in You Don't Look Adopted, Anne Heffron's book, about how she would say that she really blows things out of proportion massively in her head, if somebody's late, or just all these things. It's just this [00:27:00] hyper-paranoia that it must be me. I must have done something wrong.
Oh God, why is such and such happening? It must have been something to do with me, and just have to be hypervigilant at all times about everything. And it's incredibly draining. It's incredibly draining. But I'm trying not to live like that, but it's very hard.
Haley Radke: I relate to that so much. If someone doesn't text me back, I think, what did I say? I just, right away.
Gareth Price: Yeah, it's the same.
Haley Radke: They couldn't possibly just be charging their phone or something. It's me.
Gareth Price: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God, what have I done? I shouldn't have used that particular word in the last text. I must have triggered them and now they hate me or something.
Haley Radke: Oh yeah. Yeah. The hypervigilance. Oh my goodness. I so get that.
Gareth Price: Yeah. Truth be told, that's one of the biggest attractions of the art world for me, the fact that I can work on my own and I don't have to deal with as many people because people [00:28:00] are absolutely everything to me, right?
I love people so much, and they make life worth living. However, they can be very draining as well, and going into a social situation just takes a hell of a lot of energy. And I love social situations, but I do tend to avoid them if possible. Or if I do go out, they'll be quite short.
Because it just drains the crap out of me, and I'm just trying to be okay with everybody all the time. It's just nuts. It gives the outward appearance of being a very likable person in some cases, but there's a huge price to pay for it.
It would be nice to not give quite so much of a crap about what people think all the time. But it's just totally how I live. I live by the sword, die by the sword, you know?
Haley Radke: It would be so nice to live that way.
Gareth Price: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. Sorry. That's [00:29:00] so funny. Do you mind, can we talk a little bit about your sister?
So you were saying she was an angry adoptee even as a kind of a younger age in her teens. Left home. And then you said you also have this anger that's inside and that you've dealt with that for a long time. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Gareth Price: I think a lot of it comes from pretty much everything that I've just said.
Even at the age of 45, I still automatically walk into a room and imagine that something's gotta be my fault. Even if I've just walked into the room, it's Oh God, what have I done? And just from holding all that stuff in and from not being able to express anger whenever I've been upset at something, like particularly growing up with a really aggressive father.
Before he died about four years ago, he had about nine months, poor chap, in a bed in the home. So I got to talk about a lot of this and I told him that [00:30:00] I loved him and I forgive him and stuff. But I haven't, I just told him that because I wanted him to die happy.
It's just an example of how it would be better if I'd been able to say no and just tell people to F off or to just basically own my own life as opposed to be living everybody else's life.
Yeah. It's just so difficult to just relax. It's like all this tension from trying to please everybody so nobody will be upset or angry at me ever. It's just unbelievably tiring. And it just mounts up all this intense amount of repressed rage and all this sort of stuff. And, just all that stuff about why the (beep) did he give me up and all this sort of thing.
And you can rationalize it until the proverbial cows come home. But at the end of the day, it's this raw emotion and the frustration that people just don't get it. And [00:31:00] except for coming to listen to you guys and read about your experiences, and just trying to feel included, trying to feel a part of something, trying to live a relatively normal life and just feel like a relatively normal person, because how it feels is not like that. How it feels is it feels like everybody else has got something that I will never have.
And that's heartbreaking. That's what it feels like pretty much all the time. The alienation and the anger from being so disastrously unique.
Haley Radke: I'm just curious about your feelings and your sister's feelings about adoption. Because you said, you grew up and you had these same experiences and yet you feel differently.
Gareth Price: I think that she does still have all these feelings, but she doesn't talk to me. I feel guilty because we don't really have as close a relationship as twins should have or [00:32:00] brother and sister, or whatever. I think we're getting closer as we get older, but she's quite different to me.
She's quite a different person. Like we're, at our core, we're basically the same, but I think that she has the same feelings, like every so often she'll open up a little bit. But it's just one of the two ways to deal with it. It's like you either pretty much shut down as much as you can about that side, because it's just too much to deal with.
Or, you start going into it the whole way. There doesn't seem to be much in between. Especially as you get older, you have to go quite ferociously at it, or you just have to just block it out of your head forever. And that's what I feel like my birth mother has done.
If she started looking into it, my fear is that it would just be too much for her to handle because there's just so much there. And I can understand how people do that, but it doesn't make it any easier, [00:33:00] really.
Haley Radke: Let's shift to talking about what are some things that you have done, like you said that a lot of these feelings come out in your artwork. And you said you've been to therapy on and off. So what are some other things that you've done to pursue healing?
Gareth Price: Listen to your podcast. Um, books are quite helpful. Everything is sort of helpful. Therapy, and I'm reading this book at the moment.
Oh no, I've read the book called Adoption Therapy: Perspectives from Clients and Clinicians. Have you read that one, edited by Laura Dennis?
Haley Radke: Yes, I have it.
Gareth Price: And the Coming Home to Self is the one that I'm reading at the moment and that one is the most intense one I'm reading. I'm having to read it very slowly because there's so much in it. It's like I can get through about maybe one or two pages and then I have to put it down and go, Oh my goodness, that's just intense.
Yeah, but to change the habits of a lifetime, even alter them [00:34:00] slightly, is very hard. And I've had, you know, ongoing addiction problems. Like I had alcohol issues for many years and it's just the numbing out a little bit. There’s the three options which are option one is just living as you are with your pain and trying to get by with it.
Option two is doing a drug or something and basically feeling better temporarily, which is, that's the attraction of it, it's reliable. Or option three is doing therapy which eventually does do a lot of good, but it takes so long. I've done it on and off for years.
And it does help, the best therapy really does help and it's wonderful. And it's made my life a better place, but sometimes all it does is just make you aware of what the actual issue is. It just shines a light on it and makes you more aware of it. Which is helpful, but [00:35:00] initially it's a struggle like when you feel like, Oh my goodness, so that's all that I've got to deal with, oh goodness.
Haley Radke: When you were talking about reading the book one page at a time, I was like, Oh, I've totally done that because I read a page and I'm like, Oh my god, that's another thing I have? Come on, I already have a hundred problems.
Gareth Price: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's an advantage, my fiancée is a psychotherapist. That's an advantage. I feel like when she comes home from work, from seeing however many screwed-up people, and then it’s coming home to another one. It’s kind of like, Oh God, how was your day, Gareth?
Oh, you really want to know? I spent it sitting doing my painting and having an existential crisis for eight hours.
Haley Radke: It's interesting that you say that because you must be while you're painting, you're in this other world, but it's still in your head. [00:36:00]
Gareth Price: I describe myself as a skeptic who lives in a fantasy world. The other podcasts I listen to they're about UFOs and aliens and stuff. But they're skeptical views on them. There's this one called Skeptoid, which I like a lot, and things like that. So I find that stuff really quite grounding.
Haley Radke: I love that your playlist has that and Adoptees On on it. That makes me so happy.
Gareth Price: Oh, I did alright then, did I? Skeptoid and Adoptees On. Woohoo! And there's also another one called Strange Matters, which is good, too. This is where my brain goes from day to day. I think my head is a nice place to visit, but it's not that great living there.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Can we talk a little bit about your relationship with your fiancée? Are you okay with that?
Gareth Price: Yeah, sure.
Haley Radke: I'm curious about how you've [00:37:00] expressed to her your adoption issues and if she got it right away, or like that kind of dynamic.
Gareth Price: Adoption issues to me seem virtually to be all trauma issues essentially. And she's got lots of books about it, and she's studied many years about how to deal with trauma.
And that's essentially what it is. It's healing trauma. Just this year, I remember reading this comparison between being given up at birth and PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, and it really knocked me for six. It's Oh (beep), is it actually that bad?
Is it actually? And all the categories fit. It's just nuts, and that really blew me away. Cause it's like, do you have this and this? And it's, Oh yeah, I do. Oh my goodness. And God knows how many other adoptees feel the same way. I'm assuming there's quite a lot [00:38:00] judging by what I've seen on the good old internet.
But yeah, it is a form of PTSD. And it's like, jeepers, that's so intense. It's been good to talk to her about it. She tells me it's okay, that I can talk to her whenever I want to, but I still try to pick my moments because it's what she does professionally. So I try to not burden her with it too much.
She's really great, and in some ways I wish that she'd tell me to not talk to her about it every so often, but she's never like that. It's like she's too giving, and I don't know why that's a problem for me. That's a very odd issue to have. I don't know, maybe it's something about I don't deserve it or something like that. I don't know, I'm just an emotional minefield.
Haley Radke: Even when you're talking about adoption trauma as a form of [00:39:00] PTSD and when I hear that comparison, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I feel guilty because is my pain the same as someone who is a soldier that comes back from a minefield? It's just one more layer of feeling guilty and having trauma and just, ugh.
Gareth Price: Yeah, I remember reading or listening to somebody who was saying something about disassociation that happens to trauma victims. And that's always been a really big thing for me, dissociative feelings, like this kind of separating from the reality of my surroundings. It happens every so often, and it's really frightening.
And it wasn't until I started reading these books, and, a few years ago now, that I actually started to find some relief. And thank God. Because you just feel completely mad. And panic attacks. There was a period of about maybe two years where I couldn't go to the [00:40:00] supermarket. And I stopped going to the movies because I'd hyperventilate and things like that. It's just terrible.
It's absolutely dreadful. In that sense alcohol was a savior. I remember when I first started to see a psychologist, one of the first things he said was, Congratulations, you learned to medicate with alcohol. That was a very clever thing to do. And I thought that he was being sarcastic, but he wasn't. And that was a very helpful thing that he said. He said it's quite a natural way for you to adjust to your surroundings.
And there's this other thing that was about how when whole towns are destroyed by whatever happens, like some kind of natural disaster or whatever, all these kids and families and stuff, they experienced this great massive trauma, but then they seem to recover from it in a relatively quick way in the intervening years to come, and it's primarily because, this is what this article was saying, it's primarily because the people around them [00:41:00] know that what they experienced was traumatic and they relate to them accordingly.
Whereas with adoption it's not like that. You don't get that. It's like people just see it as this miracle fix and they don't recognize it as trauma. And there's no mirroring of your experience. I think that's the most dangerous thing, and that's the reason why it's so incredibly alienating.
It's like, Hello, I'm being raised by these strangers in this family where none of them look or behave like me. I remember meeting my obviously birth mother, and that was amazing, but even bigger than that was meeting all my birth father's family, a lot of them at one time, and seeing things like their eye shape, or their nose shape, or gestures that they would do, or jokes that they would crack.
That's just unbelievable. You can't explain that to somebody. To actually be able to see, [00:42:00] to actually be able to see yourself in other people when you haven't had it ever is the most amazing gift that I've ever had, ever. And it's true, just seeing your biology reflected in those around you.
If you haven't had it, it's unbelievable to just have it and to just feel that connection. And even things like scent, this sounds a bit weird, but it's true. It's like people have their particular scents, smells and things, they're subtle. But that's massive.
All that sort of stuff, it's like you just get this, just everything. Even if you don't click with them amazingly as people, you still get that biological reflection of yourself. And it's unbelievable. It took me quite a while to realize how big an impact it actually had on me.
Haley Radke: And you grew up with a sister.
Gareth Price: Yeah, exactly, and I grew up with a sister, yeah, [00:43:00] but we are very different. She's blonde and she's got quite a different face shape. I don't know, we're just two people born at the same time.
Haley Radke: I so appreciate you sharing your story.
So for this series, Season 3 is the Creative Series, my recommendations are to go and check out my guests’ work. I go and see Gareth's website. He's got all of these amazing photos of his artwork there. And you could stare at one for a very long time and not see everything.
You've got so many different objects in each painting. And you can guess what Gareth was thinking when he was painting this, all the symbolism. You'll probably get people messaging you saying what does the whale in the sky mean?
Gareth Price: From a purely business perspective, I do have prints. If [00:44:00] anybody wants to buy prints, I'll give you a good deal. But, anyway, I have particular meanings for each painting, but I'll generally only tell people if they ask, because you always bring yourself to the work, obviously. And I think it was the great Picasso who made some comment about the viewer completes the work. And it's very true.
And you bring your own experiences. And I love talking about my work, I really do, but I don't want to push it on people. I certainly will if they ask what something's about I can totally tell them. But otherwise, not everybody wants to know, some people are just happy with the mystery.
I don't know if anybody else watched Twin Peaks, the second series or the third series of Twin Peaks that just finished. It was wonderful, but it was a bit frustrating because David Lynch is a bit [00:45:00] like that. He's very much an artist and he left the mystery hanging open.
That's what art is really good at if it's worthwhile art. I feel it opens people up a little bit and peeks into bits of them that perhaps they didn't know were there. Or they might wonder why they like one picture over another picture, like why did I like that picture? Because it's actually quite dark. Or why do I like that one? I don't normally like that kind of thing, and all that sort of stuff.
I've found that time and again with works of art that I like. What's relatable to me about that? I don't even know. My subconscious liked it before my conscious did.
Haley Radke: I just want to walk through an art gallery with you. You're too far away from me.
Gareth Price: I'm right here on the screen.
Haley Radke: It's true. It's true. Oh I'm having like, you're giving me art lessons. It's wonderful. What would you like to recommend?
Gareth Price: It's a bit tricky for this one. I did think about it a bit. [00:46:00] I don't really know too many artists at all that I know whether they're adopted or not. What I've seen of Shannon Peck. Yeah, I haven't seen that in the flesh, but that seems really pointed and really quite amazing. I think that's incredible.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I got to interview her for Season 3 and dig into a lot of what she did in her exhibit, “Your Daughter is in Good Hands.”
Gareth Price: Oh, great! Oh, that's awesome. I'm trying to have the courage to deal with adoption a bit more directly in the works that I'm doing. Like, I've got this one painting that I'm doing that is almost finished and it's called “The Statue of Eternal Maternity.” And it continues with the theme of people surviving trauma and how they cope with it. But in terms of recommended resources, I think it's art and music. They're so personal, I think I could list a whole bunch of artists that I [00:47:00] like, like Dali, of course, and Alex Gross, and there's heaps of them, but all this stuff is just so personal, and also music is a massive thing for me.
Anything that makes you really feel something is a recommended resource. I just found my lost iPod which I last used about 10 years ago. And it's got all these wonderful songs on it that I haven't heard for a long time. And so I just walk around, just go for a walk and put the iPod on.
And music really helps me emote. If I'm feeling upset about something and I feel like I need to cry or get really angry or something, then I'll go to a particular song and it really helps. It really does. There's a lot to be said for it.
So I can only recommend people to just do what they do anyway, and in that sense just put on their favorite sad song or their favorite happy song, or go on the internet and find their favorite [00:48:00] whatever it is, you know?
Haley Radke: There's a lot to be said about making space for that. Our lives are very full and we're always listening to different things and not necessarily music. For me, I have podcasts always on, but making space for that, going for a walk and listening to some music and stuff. Yeah.
Gareth Price: Yeah, that's the recommended resource that I would say is just to take the time for yourself and, if it is a podcast or whatever it is you listen to, just go for a walk or just take time to feel your emotions, which is the most important thing,
Haley Radke: That feels scary.
Gareth Price: It is very scary. Yeah, just anything that you want that really grounds you or helps you. Helps you emote. Yeah, it just really helps you connect with what you're trying to connect to. It's not really for me to say because it's so personal. I like Radiohead. There's a Scottish electronic duo called Boards of Canada, who I absolutely love, and there's a whole bunch of stuff, there's just [00:49:00] endless amounts of Prince, anything by Prince. This is all personal to me and it just connects me to bits of myself that I was going to say that I can't get to any other way, but that's not entirely true. It just helps, it just really helps if you get that great feeling from a great artist if it's a musical or a visual artist. And just go there if you need to. You know better than anybody what that is. Or alternatively, go to my website and I'll fulfill every desire that you have.
Haley Radke: Yes. Where can we connect with you online?
Gareth Price: www.garethprice.co.nz, G-A-R-E-T-H-P-R-I-C-E. And I've got a few works that I need to put up on it. But it's got a little bit about me, my art on there.
Haley Radke: There's even a video clip which shows some of your work. I watched it today. And you're also on Facebook. People want to check you out there and connect with you there.
Gareth Price: It's Gareth Price and there's a photo of a pelican trying to [00:50:00] catch a fish.
Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing some of your story and really diving into some of the things you've struggled with. I really appreciate how candid you've been with us. Thank you.
Gareth Price: Oh, that's all I did. Thank you very much. I was very honored to be asked. Thank you very much. It's been, yeah, it's been awesome. Thank you so much.
Haley Radke: Gareth has just finished up this piece called “The Statue of Eternal Maternity” and he showed it to me when we had our interview and he just sent me a photo of it. Guys, it's amazing. I can't wait for him to share it. He described it to me as comfort after trauma and it's exactly that and isn't that what we need? Oh, I just love it.
This podcast is brought to you every week because of my monthly supporters and Gareth is one of those generous Patreon supporters. And he's a part of the Secret [00:51:00] Adoptees On Facebook Group, like he mentioned. This private and safe space for adoptees only is my way of thanking you for partnering up with Adoptees On.
It's a mix of past guests and listeners, just like you, who are looking for an intimate and supportive community. Only myself and the other members will know you're a member. That's what secret group means. And if you want to join, you can visit adopteeson.com/partner for the details or you can just message me on Twitter or Facebook or adopteeson.com if you have any questions.
Speaking of adoptees, which we always are, I have a little message here for you from a fellow adoptee.
Paige Adams Strickland: Hi, everyone. My name is Paige Strickland, and I'm an adoptee from Cincinnati, Ohio. I've written two memoirs about my experiences as an adult adopted person, Akin to the Truth and After the Truth.
The first focuses on childhood and growing up. The brand new book, After the Truth, focuses on life as a reunited adopted adult and how adoption influences my teaching, parenting and friendships. [00:52:00] Books are available through Amazon and Kindle.
Haley Radke: Thanks for sending that in, Paige. If you're an adoptee and would like to promote your work on the podcast, head over to adopteeson.com/connect and click on the little microphone. You can record your message and I'd be happy to share it on a future episode of the show. I love hearing your voices.
Last thing today, guys, would you do me a favor and share the show with a friend that doesn't even know what a podcast is? I would love for you to take their phone, subscribe them to this show and one or two of your other favorite podcasts.
This is going to be the gift that keeps on giving. They're happy because podcasts are amazing, right? And you're happy because you look like a technological genius, which you are. And I'm thrilled to have a new listener. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday [00:53:00].
