56 [Healing Series] Foster Care and Complex Trauma

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/56

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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, what are the psychological and emotional impacts of growing up in foster care, as well as multiple practical tools for working on different pieces of adoption trauma? This is another one you're gonna wanna listen to more than one time because there's so many great takeaways.

Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Jeanette Yoffe. Jeanette is a child therapist with a special focus on adoption and foster care issues. Welcome to the show, Jeanette.

Jeanette Yoffe: Thank you, Haley, for having me. It's great to be here.

Haley Radke: So it's your first time on the show and I'd love it if you would start the way I always ask my guests too, if you would just share a little bit of your story with us and how you came to your career path.

Jeanette Yoffe: Well, I was born in New York City and I lived with my birth family for the first 15 months of my life. I then went into foster care. My mother had some mental illness at that time and needed to be hospitalized.

And then I was in foster care for a duration of six and a half years. And what happened was I was supposed to go back and live with my aunt, maternal aunt in Argentina because my first mother is Argentinian. And it fell through the cracks. So I remained in foster care for a while. The New York City foster care system took some time to figure out what to do, and then I left that foster home and went to another foster home, another home to be adopted.

And so I was adopted at the age of eight years old. And I have two siblings who were also adopted. And I had reunion with my biological brother who was also adopted, but in a separate family and we didn't even know he was in the Bronx and I'm in New York. We didn't know each other growing up, so we got to know each other as adults.

And I've also had reunion, I did find my birth mother 10 years ago and I had reunion with her, which was amazing. And then I only recently had reunion with my birth father, and that was last year. And that's a whole 'nother story and a whole 'nother episode that we can talk about.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Yes.

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes.

Haley Radke: So you are in two separate foster homes, is that right? So like one foster home for a long period of time and then adopted in the second placement?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. Correct.

Haley Radke: And so now you are a child therapist and this is your specialty, is working with children that have been in foster care. And can you tell me a little bit about how you came to do that?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. I actually came from New York to Los Angeles to be an actress. Because I was very confused. I had an identity crisis. I didn't know who I was. So being an actress, oh, it always gave me a script of what to do and what to say. But coming here, I started volunteering with an adoption support center in Los Angeles.

And so I moved here, started volunteering at a group, and this little girl had come up to me and she was so surprised to know that I was adopted too. And I just looked at her and I thought, well, this is odd. And I got down on my knee and I said to her, yes, I am adopted. And it was a extremely profound experience for me because I thought in that moment, Wow, I need to do more about this.

I need to be more involved in helping kids today recognize that, yeah, you're gonna grow up and you're going to be okay. So that was what inspired me to go into psychology and study and have a focus on children, and especially in foster care and adoption. And I just became, I was compelled to do the work, and it also allowed me to do my own healing work and really focus on this piece so that I could be a resource and support to others who have also lived the experience.

So it's been amazing. It's been an amazing journey and I'm just so grateful and I feel so blessed that I can do this work and. It's amazing to be a healer and help people. And also be aware of my own process. Because this is a lifelong process. But I think as an adoptee you're so much more informed. You understand. And parents, when they hear from an adoptee, the reality of their experience, they're more likely to understand and have greater compassion for their children. So when I see that happening, that's the work.

Haley Radke: So many of the guests I've talked to prior have been adopted as infants and we sort of go from, you know, hospital to the adoptive family and we talk about all the issues that come up with that.

There's a huge emotional impact even when you were adopted right as an infant. And then foster care adds another layer onto that, because as you said, there was two different placements. You were with your original family for 15 months, and so there's different pieces of transition there in your formative years. Can you teach us a little bit about that? The psychological and emotional impact of growing up in foster care versus, and or including the infant adoption. What is, what's sort of the differences for you?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. So what I've discovered is as an adoptee who's separated at birth, that is considered a trauma. It's a traumatic incident for that baby. Okay.

When a child has gone through that early separation and then experienced multiple placements, or have lived in their original families for some time, and then were adopted and separated and gone into foster care at a later time, what happens is it becomes more than just a single incident trauma.

It becomes complex trauma. So that is the key term when we're talking about children in foster care to adoption. There is still that primal wound, however, it's much more complex because of the multiple placements, the multiple layers, the memories, the implicit early memories that are stored in the body.

And then there's the explicit memories. What I remember about living with my family and what may have happened when I was there. So children in foster care are carrying so much in their bodies and in their memories. So complex trauma is the biggest piece to understand.

Another piece for foster adoptees, is we tend to self blame and blame ourselves that it was our fault that these things happened. And that's because a child's brain is egotistic. They believe everything happens because it's within their power.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Jeanette Yoffe: Totally normal. However, what I've found working with foster adoptees is they wear it like it's a condition. Like, I'm adopted or I'm in foster care and there's something wrong about them. And what's hard is they cannot separate themselves from their experience. So they have difficulty with this condition that there's something wrong about them, that they were responsible and they should have fixed it. So what can happen is shame can develop, which is very difficult for a child to understand. So there's a technique that I'm gonna teach you later on if you feel that you have experienced pervasive shame. Because you'll find that you're very hard on yourself. You can't, when you make a mistake, you feel like the mistake. When there's a problem, you're the problem. You take things very personally.

So that's a piece for foster youth. So we need to learn how to let go. Separate. And see our experience with objectivity so we can make sense of it, learn from it, and walk, work through it.

There's another piece that is important to understand is that because foster youth have had multiple transitions, they've had multiple relationships, so they have difficulty with attachments, and especially if there's been abuse, neglect, there's been trust that has been broken. There's attachment trauma. So it's so difficult to be able to have a new relationship, feel safe in a relationship, trust that relationship because the blueprint. What's been stored in that memory in the mind and the body will become the blueprint of relationships for the rest of their lives, unless deemed otherwise.

And a lot of the work that I do is attachment focused family therapy. I'm very much working on the attachment, repairing the attachment, and allowing children to feel safe in a relationship again.

We do have a heightened sense of perception of any sense of rejection in others. We're always scanning the environment. There's this hypervigilance going on. Is this safe, is this not safe? And there are the seven non-verbal cues which are very important to recognize and they are eyesight, the way someone looks at you, the facial characteristics, what they're showing in their face. Are they squinting at you? Are they questioning you? Tone of voice, posture, gestures. Timing and intensity of response.

And we're always looking and relying on these seven nonverbal cues for what's safe and what's not safe. And if you think about this, 90% of communication is nonverbal. So when trauma is experienced, the first sense to go offline is sound. So I have to teach parents and workers working in this field to be very aware of their seven non-verbal cues because if you are not aware, you could be causing more distress, more trauma for that child. And we need to create a place of safety and comfort because of what they've been through.

There can also be a learned helplessness that develops for foster adoptees because especially if they remember and have memories of their families. That they could have done something and they feel helpless inside this powerlessness. So they go through life thinking that if I couldn't even help my family, how can I even help myself? So they'll learn helplessness that can occur.

Now these characteristics, some are more heightened for some foster adoptees, some are less. It's all based on temperament, personality, their ability to be resilient, to work through experiences. The amount of support they've received. Therapy is very important.

So these are variables. A big piece, also, is they have experienced a lot of ambiguous loss. And ambiguity for any child is very difficult to contain because there's a lot of questions. Especially if they've had the early implicit memories of trauma where they don't know what happened, but something happened to them.

And then there's the explicit memories of what happened to my family? Or why did I leave this placement to go to this placement? Was it my fault. Did I do something wrong? Did they not love me? So it can be very complicated to work through this ambiguous loss and have even greater questions, especially if someone's not there to help you make sense.

And one of my interventions that I do with kids is we create a question box. Just to hold and acknowledge all of these questions. So they're externalized, released from the mind, placed in a container, providing a sense of, okay, somebody's looking out for these questions, someone's acknowledging, someone's hearing me, and someone's helping me make sense of my story.

So it can feel extremely overwhelming for a foster adoptee to experience all of these pieces. I do six hour trainings on trauma informed best practices in trauma informed care for children and adults, and I have had adults, foster youth alumni and adult adoptees come to me after the training and go, I wish I had this training when I was a kid.

So we also need psychoeducation. We need somebody to teach us these pieces and then teach us how to help us work through and heal and comfort and support these pieces. So there you have it in a nutshell.

Haley Radke: Well, and I mean of course you explain like there, we all have different levels of intensity for each of these pieces. And you know what I'm thinking about the typical older child, in foster care, like teenager. I mean, how many placements have they had? And so those layers, when you get to the teenage years and you're supposed to be forming your identity, I mean, it's complex for adoptees as it is. And then compounded with all of these different relationships and attachments, as you said, it's big stuff. Really big stuff.

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes, it is. Big stuff. So the psychoeducational piece is we need to understand that we are having a normal response to an abnormal event. So that we don't judge ourselves. Like of course our body is trying to work through these memories and that's why they keep coming up over and over.

So we need to learn to accept that piece.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Is there anything else that you wanna teach on this? We could. Talk about how some of these express themselves as we reach adulthood and beyond, if they're not dealt with?

Jeanette Yoffe: Well, we'll have difficulty trusting in relationships, in feeling confident, and building our self-esteem and feeling confident enough that we can go out and take a risk.

Because if we're not feeling secure and safe within our bodies, we're not gonna be able to take risks. We're going to feel held back, unsure of ourselves. And we really need to be a part of a community that understands us, that we don't have to explain ourselves over and over about our vulnerabilities. We, we need to be around other people that have also experienced similar experiences.

So sensitivity within ourselves, and we also will have difficulties in attachments and trusting others. It's really learning how to manage all of these pieces and have a daily practice. You must honor what you've experienced and see it for what it is.

It's there. We can't just make it go away. We get to, is what I always say. We don't have to. It's how we look at it. We get to do this healing for ourselves. We get to repair what happened to us because it's not what's wrong with us. It's what happened to us. We get to learn how to be more compassionate.

We get to re-parent, re mother ourselves. It's an opportunity for growth because we're either in two modes of functioning. We're either in protective mode or growth mode. And we get to decide which one we wanna go move towards, but we also do need to have a community that understands us and supports us in our growth.

We do need to be with an adoption or foster care competent therapist. Because they may say they understand the experience, but they do not. Okay. So I teach County Social Workers, department of Mental Health therapists here in Los Angeles to be adoption and foster care competent because it is, you're dealing with complex trauma.

I also suggest to adult, foster youth alumni and adult adoptees to go to trainings, read books on adoption, read, Coming Home To Self by Nancy Verrier. Really get to know these pieces and parts of you. It's not all of you. There's pieces and parts of you that need to be explored and examined.

And when you find that person that you feel that you can open up to, that you feel safe with, the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to tap into that primal wound. And I remember the day that I did it . I was probably about 21 and I was in therapy . I could feel this abyss like coming up from inside of me, and I allowed myself, because I felt safe enough with my therapist, to go there and I just cried and I cried and it was like a well of tears.

I tell kids that I work with, we're gonna cry buckets. And you know what? When we do that, we're gonna feel better. It's not gonna completely go away. I'm, I am real with kids and adults. It's not gonna go away. However, the way you can see if you're working through your primal wound is it will decrease the in intensity, frequency, and duration. It won't be as intense.

So really see it as an investment in yourself, because the more you go in there, the less it actually will become, and you'll be able to tolerate it more and manage it more because that is the condition. Not having been adopted or having been in foster care. The condition is learning how to manage these psychological and emotional impacts, effects of having lived this experience.

That's the condition. I'm all about helping us see things differently. Because when we can see things differently, change our perception, we can start to trust and go down the road of healing.

Haley Radke: Yeah. That's so powerful. Shifting our mindset to one of healing and what are we gonna do about it, right?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, yes. That's so important. Okay, so you had mentioned that you were gonna share a couple of tools with us. You mentioned a shame technique. Can you go into that? What do you mean by that? And maybe before you do, just, one more, just addressing the difference between guilt and shame, cuz a lot of people say they feel guilty, but if you could explain that would be helpful. I think.

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. This is something I have to explain a lot. Okay. So shame, it's like, and this is how I explain it, shame is like a bubble that surrounds you and in the bubble you see a mirror. And all you see is your bad self. You feel, you see your deficiencies. You see you are not worthy. You see, you're unlovable.

There's something wrong about you. Okay? So because it's a bubble, you cannot see past the bubble. Okay? People who experience pervasive shame who live with this feeling that when someone points out to them a mistake, they can't separate themselves from the mistake. It's all in meshed in one. When you point out my mistake, I feel in that bubble, I'm the mistake.

Okay? Shame will impede the development of guilt because guilt is feeling sorry and acknowledging the other person. You're not only looking at yourself. So that's why it's very difficult for people who experience shame. It's very difficult for them to apologize and take responsibility, and this is a common red flag that you are living in shame because you cannot go to that person and say, I'm sorry, because what you're saying I'm sorry for is, I'm sorry I'm so bad. I'm sorry I'm so wrong.

And I know this because I lived it, and my mother would, oh, I'm gonna teach you responsibility. And she would sit me on the stairs and you're gonna go and apologize to your friend. And she would tell me to do this, and I would fight her to a T because she didn't understand what was going on with me.

It wasn't that I couldn't take responsibility. You're asking me to go to that person and reaffirm how bad I feel about myself. And a lot of kids and adults who've experienced foster care have this pieace. And so how we do this is... and the research shows people with pervasive shame have low levels of the ability to show remorse, take self responsibility. People with high levels of guilt have more empathy for others, are able to show more empathy.

So what we wanna do is help the person separate themselves from their behavior. And so there's a metaphor called the sandwich metaphor. And so the bread on the bottom is the stroking. Okay? So if I'm talking to an adopt foster youth out there, when you have recognized that you've done something wrong, okay, you made a mistake, you showed up late or you blew the stop sign, whatever it is, okay?

The first thing you need to do, the bread on the bottom is say to yourself, you are a good person, okay? You matter. Like you would talk to a good friend. You are a good person, and you put the emphasis on the behavior. And I made a mistake about this.

And that's the burger and the sandwich, that's the lettuce, the tomato. I made a mistake about this and I can learn from this mistake. I'm not the mistake. The mistake is the mistake and I'm gonna learn from this.

And then the piece of bread on the top is the, I love you. You are a good person. You matter. You're gonna get through this. So again, stroking because, and we need people around us.

If you are married or have a spouse or a partner or boyfriend, that this is a vulnerability for you. If you're gonna point something out to me that I've done wrong, can you just tell me first that I'm lovable? I love you and honey, can you not leave the plates hanging off the shelf because they broke today our new plates?

I and I love you, honey. So the emphasis goes on the behavior. And most of the families that I've worked with, I worked with, I had one family who said, Jeanette, that was a single most important piece you helped me understand. It shifted everything in my relationship with my child. So we get to do this work now for ourselves.

When I make a mistake, I do this for myself. I go, okay, you are a good person. The mistake is a mistake, and you are learning. This is how we learn by making mistakes, and I'm gonna learn from this, and I love you. I do the ho'oponopono, the Hawaiian Prayer.

Haley Radke: Oh yes.

The, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. You do that for yourself. That's the difference between shame and guilt. So guilt is the ability to go to that person and say, you know what? I'm sorry that I left the plates on the shelf. I'm gonna learn from that. I won't do it again. I'm sorry that I did that, and I'm sorry that it affected you and the glass broke all over the floor and you got hurt. I'm sorry about that.

So guilt is expressing concern and empathy for the other person, and also having a regard for yourself. We're human, we are imperfect, and the gift of imperfection. Brene Brown's book is a beautiful book to read to help honor and grow that part of yourself so that you can have that empathy for yourself.

I think what happens with kids and adults with shame is they haven't had someone be empathetic towards them. I cried a lot as a kid and my mother would say, stop crying. What are you crying about? And I have approached her as an adult and I said, mom, that wasn't helpful.

What I really needed you to say is, Honey, I'm so sorry. You're feeling so sorry about yourself. I know a lot happened to you and I'm gonna be here and you're sorry and in your sorrow. And the parents get confused. They don't know how to read, and as adults, we don't know how to read our behaviors. We misinterpret our behaviors and we get stuck in our behaviors.

So, and I'm sure the listeners or some are gonna identify and go, yes, that's me. So the tool is really doing that sandwich metaphor with yourself. You are a good person, we're all good people. All good people make mistakes. You're not the mistake and you can learn from it and that's how you grow. But be kind to yourself.

That re mothering. Reparenting because children who've been in foster care and adoption have a lot of unmet needs. So we get to meet these needs and reparent ourselves today.

That's a very helpful exercise. Thank you. Is there anything else that you wanna touch on before we wrap up, jeanette?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yeah, I think there was one piece that is important and that is I use an acronym called pace. It's called PACE Yourself, and it actually comes from attachment theory, P a c E. So you apply these attitudes towards yourself.

P stands for Be Playful. Okay? Be playful so we can lessen the harshness we have on ourselves. Do something fun. Go try something new. Go out of your comfort zone, be playful, laugh at yourself. Laughter releases stress.

A is be accepting of yourself. You may not be accepting of the action you took or the mistake you made, but accept yourself; that you are doing the best that you can. We are all doing the best that we can at any given moment. I hope I'm doing the best that I can in this moment.

Be Curious, C. Be curious. Okay. Be curious about what you're feeling in your body. Trauma gets stored in the mind and the body. So it's through the body that we get to be what's called a sensory detective because trauma gets stored through the five senses. And trauma also can get soothed through the five senses. So the five senses are a sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. So a sensory detect, detective use, look, and explore. Okay. Which sense is heightened for me because that's my vulnerability and I need to learn how to soothe that sense. So be curious. You ask yourself, where am my body? Am I feeling this? What does it look like? How can I help soothe this part of myself? What do I need to do with my hands? Do I need to just squeeze some Play-Doh? Sand? What do I need to do? Do I need to drink some nice warm tea to sooth myself? I use lavender all the time in my practice. I use it before I see a client. I use it with a client. Breathing, teaching myself to breathe and slow down. Okay. And listening to calm, soothing sounds, providing yourself with sensory comfort is very important if you've experienced trauma.

And then E is have empathy. So PACE yourself. Treat yourself with kindness. You're doing the best that you can and do that sandwich metaphor. Whenever you make a mistake or do something wrong, you're learning from it. You'll explore it and go deeper and you can make a difference. And make changes, small changes. Cuz the way we change is in small doses. We can't just jump in the pool and expect everything to just change.

The last piece about healing. I say healing is like being in a whirlpool. Okay. Because you're being asked to change and shift and transform what you're experiencing into something different. Well, if you think about a whirlpool, everybody's going in one direction for a long time, and then you're asked to turn around and go in the other direction. Well, that's what change is gonna feel like.

It's gonna be very difficult at first to put these pieces of practice in your daily routine. And the more you do it, the more you stick to it and just push through and put in that effort. You can have a new rewiring in your brain, a new felt sense of relief, cuz that is the goal for treating and healing trauma.

It's feeling a sense of ahhhh. So the more you can find that relief in your life and it's through the senses using these, some of these tools, you'll be able to feel better and then you will do better. Trust me. And I've done a lot of work on myself and I do practices every day. So it's important.

You matter. You are worth it. I say that to all my clients, over and over. You are worth the effort. We're all worth. We're all worthy. We're all deserving of worth and value. We're here. We get to be here. You have a seat at the table too, so it's reclaiming, naming what you're feeling so you can tame it and work through it.

So I'm pretty serious and very direct with the clients that I work with, that how important it is to put in these daily practices because you matter and we're never going to fully heal. You know, this is a lifelong process. So right at that actually gives me a sense of, oh, okay, great. I mean then this is a process.

You don't have to put all that pressure on yourself. It actually gives you a sense of, you know what, okay. I am going to accept that I get to do this re mothering, reparenting rewiring for myself, and I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna do it the best I can and that's good enough. And give myself permission to do this work.

And you know, a lot of adoptees, they come usually when there's a life, big life stressor, there's a loss they experience and it just opens up that primal wound. And everybody's in their own, on their own journey. Let's not judge each other. Some people are more advanced than others. Cuz like me, I went into therapy when I was 13 years old and I'm still in therapy and I'm a therapist.

It's okay. It's important. We need to take care of ourselves. It's self care. Because of what happened to us and take responsibility and we get to then go into the world and utilize our many strengths, because I also say we also have many strengths. You know, there's all these issues and core issues and well, where are our strengths?

We're very strong-willed. We're very determined. We are deeper thinkers. We feel the world on a much more profound level. That's what makes us amazing creators, visual and performing artists, writers, painters. We can see things that other people don't see because we are very observant. And once we can tap into that strength we actually can do things that we never thought or imagined we could.

And so it's exciting. I always want to inspire adoptees, fellow adoptees and foster youth alumni to, to go... and I created this training... be the archeology of you and go in your primal wound. That is actually an exercise we did. Okay? Walking in the desert, there's a hole cuz it's a desert out there. And you, before you go to the hole as an archeologist does make sure you have your backpack, your flashlight, some boots, and extra set of clothes. Whatever you need, because you're gonna go in your primal wound right now and put the flashlight on.

We're gonna look in this big hole and we're gonna talk about what's in there, and we're gonna redecorate it. We get to go in and explore this part of us, examine it, and redecorate it.

So I've literally done this exercise with many adult adoptees, and we climb in our primal wound holes with our headset on, with our hammer. We're all ready. We climb in there and we create a space of comfort because we need to get to know this part of us. The more we avoid it, the more it's gonna be enacted out and reenacted out in the real world. So going in there and listening, feeling, befriending this part, putting a picture on the wall.

Putting a floor on the bottom and learning how to feel the bottom of it, because we can plant ourselves in there and examine it and be with it and know we're going to be okay.

Haley Radke: And that, and just having the bottom, like as you're saying that I'm like, if we don't go there, we picture it as like the never-ending abyss. Right.

Jeanette Yoffe: Exactly. It gives it some footing. It gives us a, just a grounding because, and that's another exercise that I do, is the grounding tool where you imagine from your belly button to the center of this planet, there is a cord and that cord cannot be broken. And it is extremely powerful. And when you feel that pull. And you have to be standing. You just stand arms at your side. Just go in your mind's eye, in your imagination, and imagine there's a cord from your belly button to the center of this planet. You feel that connection, and then you ask somebody to give you a little push. Your body feels this newfound strength and you feel this connection that you've never felt before.

And for me when I first did this, and I teach this to everybody, is it helped me feel a sense of belonging and connection. And that's that footing, feeling a sense of being grounded.

Because when you're uprooted-- I don't know if you've ever seen the sign language for adoption, but it's literally, oh gosh, it was a little scary to see it. But literally it's like, they're holding their hands together, they're pull something up, they put it to the right and they put it down. That's sign language for adoption. And when I saw that, it just reminded me of this image of a plant being just pulled out by its root, pulled out and put in another, just smashed in another pot.

And there's no sense of this. You know, you're uprooted, literally. So we need to ground ourselves, put that lining in our primal wound so we can get a footing. So we can see it for what it is, and befriend it. And get to know it and live there. Not live there literally every day, but go in there and not be afraid of it. And honor it.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Those are some real, some really good tools. I really appreciate that. I love having really practical things that we can do and your wisdom at on just this needs to be a daily practice and it's a journey. And it's a lifetime of moving forward with that. So thank you. Thanks so much for speaking to those things.

Jeanette Yoffe: You're welcome.

Haley Radke: I'd love it if you would share with us how we can connect with you online.

Jeanette Yoffe: I wrote a book about all the interventions that I do with children and teens and families in adoption, so that you can find that on Amazon. It's called Groundbreaking Interventions, Working with Traumatized Children, Teen and Families in Foster Care and Adoption.

My website is Yoffe therapy.com. I also have a YouTube channel, Yoffe Therapy, and there's a lot of videos on that. And that's how you can find me.

Haley Radke: Thank you. That's so great. I was just on your YouTube channel this morning and watching a bunch of the different videos. You've explained these exercises in depth. It's, they're so good. So good. It's a great resource for people to check out. Thank you so much for sharing with us today, Jeanette. It was just an honor to speak with you.

Jeanette Yoffe: Well, thank you. You too. Thanks so much. It's been an honor.

Haley Radke: I've been on a bit of a break from the show prepping and recording for season four, so I wanna give you a quick update on that.

And I sent out my monthly newsletter last week where I revealed the theme of season four as chosen by my monthly supporters. Thank you guys.

So if you're curious about what the theme is, you can go back and find the back catalog of my newsletters. There's three, so it's not like a ton of things to go through.

Adopteeson.com/about is my bio page, and I have a couple of links there to articles I've written, and there's also a link for the newsletter. And so if you click through on that one's got the back issues. So you can check back on the latest one to see what the theme is for season four. But before I start releasing season four episodes, I'm gonna have a few more healing episodes for you, including the one next week where I invited Jeanette back and we talk about support groups and how to start your own support group, which is perfect timing for me because we have started one here in my city in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

So if you're a listener and you live in the Edmonton area, please get in touch with me so you can come to our next meetup and I'll send you the address. It's at my house, so if you're ever curious about where I record, you can come to my house and see.

Anyway. Tune in next week because you really wanna hear what Jeanette has to say about starting your own support group. This show is literally brought to you by the support from my Patreon partners, and I couldn't do it without them. Truly, Patreon is a website that allows. Creators like me to raise monthly support to help me keep producing this podcast for you.

And as a special thank you for a monthly pledge, I have a secret Facebook group for adoptees only, where we support each other through search and reunion issues, and we get really real about all the things we're struggling with. So come and join us. AdopteesOn.com/partner has all the details. I'm so grateful to be able to do this for you, and I couldn't do it without that financial support. Thank you. Thank you so much.

So if you wanna come and support the show, monthly, adopteeson.com/partner has the details. I also have a one-time donation link on my adopteeson.com page for PayPal, if that's something that you. You're not really interested in joining the group, but maybe you would like to give a one-time donation that is so appreciated and helpful also.

Thank you. Okay. I have a special message from a fellow adoptee to share with you. Let's listen.

(Voice Recording of Christie) Hi, my name is Christie. I discovered that I was adopted at the age of 18 in a fight. And for many years I wasn't allowed to have any feelings about that. In fact, growing up I wasn't really allowed to have many feelings at all.

So I internalized a lot of my emotions and now I was ready to let those emotions out. Through writing and let my story be known. So the past year I've been working on my book, and yesterday it officially became available. Right now it's only available on lulu.com, but in six to eight weeks it will be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and that's l u l u.com. The name of the book is, Why Aren't You Like Me? The brochure said you would be. I hope you read it and I hope you enjoy.

(Haley Speaking) Thanks, Christie. If you are an adoptee and would like to tell us about your book or blog or whatever you're working on, head over to adopteeson.com/connect and click on the microphone at the bottom of the page.

Don't email it to me. I wanna hear your voices. This is a podcast, right? Thank you for listening, and thank you for being so kind during my break. Let's talk again next Friday.

53 Holly NG - Pouring Out Our Feelings

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/53

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season Three, Episode 13, Holly NG, which stands for Nerdy Gal. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I talked with Holly, aka Nerdy Gal, about her reunion with her first mother and some of the instigating factors that led her out of the fog.

Holly also tells us how a technique called dirty pouring has helped her process her feelings. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com.

The other thing you can find on the Adoptees On website is a signup for the new monthly newsletter. I just sent out an email about losing my actual voice and I shared some thoughts about what happens when adoptees stay silent. I’d love to be able to include you when I send my [00:01:00] next note in January. The signup link is in the show notes and it's also found at adopteeson.com/newsletter.

Before we get started, if you're a new listener, I just wanna give you a definition of “coming out of the fog” in case you haven't heard that terminology before, because we reference it a few times in this episode. Coming out of the fog is the process of discovering that adoption had a deep and profound impact on our lives.

Now it's a little more complex and nuanced than that, and if you're interested in hearing more about the process, check back in the podcast feed just a few shows back for a Healing Series episode called Coming Out of the Fog. Okay, let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to the show, Holly. Welcome, Holly.

Holly: Hello. Thank you so much for having me, Haley. I'm so excited.

Haley Radke: Awesome. Me too. So why don't you start out and just share your story with us. [00:02:00]

Holly: So, I was born in 1978 in December, and the story has it that I was placed in foster care until February. Nobody is sure why. I've asked questions, talked to extended family members of my first mother, and my adoptive parents have remembered almost everything up till that day and the day they got me, except for why I was in foster care for three months. So that's kind of something that I struggle with, but I'm hopeful I'll find the answer to that someday.

My first mother was 19, I believe, and my bio father, or I don't know if you call them first dad, first father was, I was told, 21 at the time. It's weird because I do have my footprints, like my family [00:03:00] history. And then I have something that my mom, my adoptive mother, had written down as far as traits go for both mother's side and father's side.

I also have a copy of my birth certificate that was whited out with my names and my first mother's name. When my parents told me that I was adopted, I was probably five, well, probably seven or eight actually. And just like others that I've heard, I already knew. There was a part of me growing up, or there was all of me growing up that knew that I did not belong to my family.

So I remember this was my first trigger, I believe, in life. When they told me that I was adopted, they handed me these documents that were whited out. And I remember them telling me that if you ever want to look for your biological family, you know [00:04:00] you have to go through us. We are the ones that have to help you with this because it's a big process, you know, very difficult. And we have to help you.

So I remember standing there and thinking, I was starting to get enraged, and I was thinking, why do they have to help me do this? Like, why can't I do this on my own? And I can't even, and it was right there in front of me. Like my name was whited out. My first mother's name was whited out and it was just like everything inside of me started to boil.

And I looked at them and I looked down at the birth certificate, if that's what it is, and I held it up to the light and I could see right through it. You could see through the white out. It was so old. And so you could see my name right there and you could see my birth mother's name, my first mother, and that was it.

And then I remember handing them [00:05:00] back the documents and they were just standing there staring at me, like dumbfounded, like, oh my gosh, we'd never even thought of doing that. And so I handed them back to them or handed the paperwork back to them, and I remember going upstairs and going outside to play and I had written her name down and kept that with me until I was 19 years old.

Haley Radke: So they handed you those papers when they were telling you you were adopted?

Holly: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wow. So you found out you were adopted and your name at birth and your first mother's name all in one shot?

Holly: Yes. When somebody tells me I can't do something in life, that has always been my motivation to do something. That was presented to me along throughout my life from them, and I always did it. I always did whatever [00:06:00] they told me I couldn't do. So that was kind of like my motivation, telling me I can't do something.

Well, my first mother, she had named me Holly Anne because I was born December 23. And growing up I was Holly Jean. And so I had asked my adoptive mother, you know, did you guys name me this or did you keep the name or how did this all happen? Because I'm still unclear as to the circumstances and why I was in foster care, like I said, for three months. And they said, yes, we named you that.

And my first mother swears she named me that first, but they said they didn't name after what she did. And it's just, yeah, it turned out to be kind of not a fight amongst family, but a little bit of an animosity, I guess I would say. So [00:07:00] I was named Holly twice apparently. So yeah, I wrote down her name and always kept that on a piece of paper, you know, next to my bed or wherever it was.

When growing up, I would always call. Well, so the phone books back in South Dakota were about an inch thick, right? So you could look up any city, any name, and that was the first thing I did. I went through the phone book and I found the last name of my birth mother. I found that there was another man there, and then there was her name, and that was it.

So I would call, when I was younger, I would call who is my uncle now, and I have spoken to him just recently actually. And I would call and hang up or I would call and say like, Oh, was George there? You know, just to hear his voice. Then I would hang up. Well, one time I called and he answered the phone.[00:08:00]

And I said like, Whoa, is Dwayne there? You know, just trying to disguise my voice, my first mother and I sound identical. I was going to hang up the phone. And he goes, Hey. And I was like, oh my gosh. And I had a friend there with me and they were like, oh. And he goes, Great talking to you. And then I hung up, but I was like, oh my gosh, they're onto me. They know. They know like I'm calling them. Oh my gosh. You know?

Well, at 18 years old I left home and a bunch of my friends and I moved to Arizona. It was the night of being out and much too late and many drinks into it. I decided I was gonna contact my first mother and introduce myself and say, Hey, did you have a child earlier in life?

So I did. I went into a quiet room and I remember my friends at the time were like, Holly, just do it. Just do it, Holly. I was [00:09:00] like, don't be nervous. What's the worst that can happen? So I called her. Immediately when she picked up the phone, I could hear myself and she was like, Hello? And I just said, Hi, um, this is Holly.

And she's like, I'm so happy that you contacted me, Holly. I've been waiting for this for a very long time. So that started our relationship and as awkward as it was, we basically, we were great friends for many, many years. Yeah. We were like sisters. Two peas in a pod in a lot of ways. In some ways, no, but.

I found out I had a half sister. She had her about eight years after she had me and she kept her. She always felt very bad. I could tell, and I always told her, it is not your fault. I never, ever, ever have [00:10:00] blamed her for anything. You know, she told me she ran away from home during her pregnancy because her mother, my grandmother, wanted her to have an abortion.

Her father, my grandfather, said, no, if you wanna keep the baby, then you stay and we will handle this. Okay. So she did end up hitchhiking to Oregon and told me they partied. They had lots of fun, you know, all that good stuff. So I didn't make the connection until just a couple years ago that it was actually relatives of mine that she went to stay with in order to get away from her mother.

Haley Radke: So you said that you were really good friends like sisters for a period of time, and what does that relationship with her look like now?

Holly: Two years ago, and this is when I believe I was coming out of the fog. I still have, you know, some questions about what that looks like, but [00:11:00] I know that I went through something that was like the most major transformation or awareness of my life that I've ever gone through, and everything became so clear to me.

I can describe it somewhat, but I was working a very, very stressful job. I had two best friends die who I worked with. One of them had cancer and I watched him pass for two years. And when he finally was able to go and be at peace, I became super angry at my adoptive parents. Reading up on adoption and the presenting problem and what, you know, a major life incident can bring you to coming out of the fog.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was slowly coming out of the fog. So it takes me a little while to do things, I guess, [00:12:00] looking back in my life than it does other people. And I don't know why, but I was really angry. I wanted my parents, my adoptive parents, to read The Primal Wound. I started The Primal Wound. I could not finish it because it was so painful.

Everything was spot on, and I was still in denial a bit, I think, and I didn't want to hurt my adoptive parents. That's always been my biggest concern is hurting my adoptive parents. So I was going through that and one of the nights of my very deepest, darkest moments, I was so mad I google the agency where I guess I was in foster care.

And there was a little comment section, you know, leave your name, leave your email, we'll get back to you. And here's a little comment you can make. Well, the comment ended up being like a novel. And I was like, I don't think they're gonna get back to me, but it feels so much better to get it [00:13:00] off my shoulders.

And basically what I was telling them or asking them at the end was, what do you do or what kind of resources are you giving adoptive parents before they adopt a child? Because I would love to know what sort of counseling, what do you make them go through? What kind of questions do you ask them?

Do you prepare them? Like do you really sit down and prepare them for what they are going to deal with, you know, with their kids? So they got back to me the next day and they sent me this beautiful email. And they were like, some of the things that you said in your comment section to us, Holly, were spot on and there's something like nobody would ever know.

I was describing like a yellow room that I was in and all I could hear was screaming. [00:14:00] And there was another thing. I had a caseworker, her name was Ruby and I described her, they were like, there's no way that anybody could have known. Like you could not have known this. And I remember starting to remember things that I know that were way back in the subconscious or in the subconscious mind, I guess is what you would say.

And it was really strange. I mean, I was like a head case. We got laid off from the job. My two friends had passed and then here I was thinking, you know what? There is something that you need to do, Holly. I don't know what it is yet, but you need to find your authentic self.

It was just an internal voice speaking to me and I cut my friends out and they were like, what's going on? And I'm like, I just need time. I just need time [00:15:00] or I'm going to lose it. You know? I know that there's something that is calling me right now. Gradually, over the last two years, I've found a lot of answers and everything makes sense now.

Haley Radke: What does that mean that you found a lot of answers?

Holly: Well, I did a DNA test through Ancestry.com, and I found out from my first mother's daughter, my half sister. I had always asked about my biological father and she said, Oh, yeah, I know who he is. It might be one of three, however, we're pretty sure that it's this guy.

So she said he was still alive. Well, over a couple years of hearing that, my half-sister was like, Holly, I have to tell you, your dad passed away in 2009 and I can't bear to watch, [00:16:00] the interaction between you and mom go on like this anymore. So I do wanna tell you that he passed away.

When I heard that, I just, it was like a punch in my stomach. I couldn't believe that she had kept it from me. And so I googled his obituary and then I found through Facebook some of my siblings from his side. So there's one girl and one boy. The boy I look identical to. The girl, I mean, people say we look nothing alike. I could see it, maybe.

So I reached out. He was very forthcoming. He was shocked. He didn't know that I existed. And it's weird because he was best friends with some of my guy friends in high school growing up. So I was thinking, you know, if I would've stayed in South Dakota, I could've married my brother. [00:17:00]

Um, but I didn't. He said that he would do a DNA test and I waited the nine weeks or whatever it was to get it back from Ancestry, and he said that he was doing the same because I wanted to make sure that this was, in fact, my biological father. When I got my test back, he said, well, let me see your test. Let's share results.

And I said, Well, did you get yours back? And he just said, No, I thought I could use yours. I said, Okay, so do you plan on doing a test, taking a test, spitting in the jar and then submitting it or not? And he never did. That was kind of a let down. So I kind of pieced together my family tree and that took a while and then I got sick of it.

But there was one connection, I think, that I made. There was one first cousin, I don't know whose side it was on, that reached out to me and said, I don't know how you got my information, but I don't want anything to do [00:18:00] with you. And I responded back and I said, Well, you submitted a DNA test through Ancestry and we came up as a match. You're like the closest match to me. So didn't mean to disrupt your life. Have a good one.

That's it. I haven't gone back to readdress that. I kind of stopped with that because it just seemed like there were so many close ends, but dead ends sort of, I guess, if that makes sense. And I was just kind of sick of all of it or it was just too much. And so I kind of moved on from that.

Haley Radke: Have you confirmed that like, you know, that's your brother and you know who your dad was and he's passed away?

Holly: It has not been confirmed via DNA. So, no, it's not a hundred percent.

Haley Radke: And so I had asked you before what your relationship was like now with your birth mother. Can you [00:19:00] take us back to that conversation where your half-sister says, oh, by the way, your dad is actually dead. Can you take us back there?

Holly: Well, I confronted my mom and I just asked, did you know that he passed away? And yeah, I didn't wanna hurt your feelings. And so we kind of moved on from that.

Haley Radke: I didn't wanna hurt your feelings?

Holly: Yeah. I didn't wanna hurt your feelings. I didn't wanna hurt you. That's the common theme it seems.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. But like, what about the truth?

Holly: The truth has been, I mean, unless these two families were so close, which I doubt, I highly doubt that they were, it was a closed adoption. The truth for both sides, or both sets of first moms, first dads, adoptive parents. The truth is so far away from reality for any of these [00:20:00] people that it's just. To me, I was always brought up, tell the truth. Tell the truth. I've always been so forward and almost to a fault I'm honest.

My first mother, she, we just kind of left it as is. She came out to Arizona about five times to visit over the past 20 years. Every single time she was here, it was like I was taking care of a child. The first couple times I was like, wow, that's different. But the last couple times it was truly amazing to me at how maybe stuck in whatever depths of despair she's been her entire life.

But also that we need to remember life does move on, not from, it's never gonna change, you know? So you have to at some point [00:21:00] accept responsibility and make the best of everything. And the last time that we have spoken was two years ago during Christmas. It was my birthday. I had gotten both sides of the family together to do pictures, which I thought would be a fun thing to kind of bring the family together.

Needless to say, the day did not turn out the best. And once again, I felt horrible. That night my first mother, my son, and I came back to my place and we're sitting there and something had triggered her. I don't know what it was, but we were all watching a movie and she told me, get up and get me a glass of water now.

And so I was like, this is strange. So I got her a glass of water and set it down and then she said, That's not the glass of water I wanted. I want a bottle of water. [00:22:00] Go get me one. And I just said, We didn't get any bottled water, mom. We got a jug of water, okay? So she flies out of the chair, goes into my son's room where she was staying and slams the door, starts throwing around all the gifts that we'd given her.

Glass is shattering all over the room. I take my son, I put him in my room, I lock the door. I say, Stay in here, son. He is scared to death. And I come back out and I'm like, What are you doing? And she is just in a rage. She grabs her stuff, she packs her suitcase and she walks out the door and she never has called.

She has never tried to reach out except for on Instagram. One day not too long ago where she was making comments on photos that I had and stuff like that. And other than that, nothing. So it was like seeing her walk out the door. [00:23:00] You know, I had my son to take care of, make sure he was okay. So I didn't really think of it at the time, but that was pure devastation.

I mean, it just, it's affected me like no other. But I think when that happened, it triggered me. Everything else happened after that. It was, you know, I lost my job, we got laid off. I'd been working corporate America for 20 years, you know, just working to the grind and then everything just unraveled over the course of up until now.

It was about a year and a half ago now that I found myself in Walmart and I picked up a canvas. I don't even know what I was doing there. It was like midnight. I'm like walking up and down the aisles, aimlessly just like, you know, I wanna say my beard wasn't trimmed, my [00:24:00] hair was awry.

I'm just walking up and down at night. I just see a canvas. I look at a paintbrush, get a couple paints, and I'm like, All right, I don't know what we have here, but we're gonna go with it, okay. I get home and I just kind of squirted paint on that canvas and I'm just going back and forth and it just fell into what it is now.

And I think it was the escape from reality. And I was able to do something where I would do it by myself. I would do it alone. And so when I did it, I would turn on music and I got more comfortable with the idea that I was the one in charge, I was the one that was in charge of making something.

I was in charge of the outcome. It was all me. It was up to me for this piece to turn out, and it was scary at first. After a while, it just became so [00:25:00] exhilarating. [00:25:00] I can't even tell you. It was like freeing to me. That's when I started to look into the dirty pouring and I literally found, I just mixed different things together and I just came up with my own way. But it was the whole process that basically allowed me to heal through being creative.

I played piano my entire life. I was a concert pianist starting from five. I took lessons from my godmother who was very strict. She made me learn to write music and the theory behind it. And I was in Guild. It was like a national honors society, I guess, for young pianists. When I moved out of the home at 18, I traveled 2,000 miles down to Arizona and I've lived in Arizona ever since, I didn't have a piano.

I've had [00:26:00] keyboards, but I didn't have my piano to sit down and just really jam out. And you literally lose yourself in the moment. And you don't have to be creative. Trust me, you don't have to be an artist. When I started painting, I can't even draw a stick figure. I'm not even joking. Like I've never taken an art class. You just have to go with it.

What I tell people is that you have to do it. You have to do it alone. You have to do it scared. You just have to do it. You can't overthink it. In fact, don't even think at all while you're doing it because your subconscious mind will be doing enough of that for you. Your other side takes over with everyday life, you know, with our jobs, our kids, our things we have to get done, the creative is pushed aside and it's screaming to get out.

Haley Radke: Okay, so you said dirty pour and what is that? [00:27:00]

Holly: Dirty pour. I did not come up with that name. But dirty pour is where you take acrylic paint and you add different mediums to it. Mediums are like Floetrol, which is like a paint thinner, or you add like different mediums that artists use.

You can add water, you can add silicone, anything, and you mix it up and then you dump them all together. And then you take your canvas and you dump it on top of the canvas, and as it spreads out, it makes these cells, these different cell-looking things. And that's what I was trying to get to. Just the whole process of it, like mixing the paint and then dumping it together and then spreading it out on the canvas.

It's so gratifying to me. I don't know what it is. It's just so gratifying. I've posted [00:28:00] some on my YouTube. And yeah, they call it dirty pour. And then I just call it my art therapy because it really has, I didn't know at the time what it was doing for me, but it was freeing me. It was freeing me.

I wasn't doing it for somebody else. I wasn't doing it to make anybody else happy. Which is what I know growing up, being pressured to do the piano and to to be perfect all the time. That was for somebody else. It wasn't for me. And so this was the first time at, you know, almost 38 years of age, 37 at the time.

It was the first time that I was doing something for myself, like not getting a master's because of somebody else. Not getting a job because of somebody else, or they wanted me to do it. It was me, this was all me. It is more freeing. I can't even describe it. Because people kind of look at me and go, okay, that’s fun.

Haley Radke: Is there anything else that you've done in the last while? You know, you've done your painting and you said it's been really healing for you. What other types of things have you been doing?

Holly: I started blogging and I didn't know at the time, I think it was 20 years ago when I moved out here with or out here to Arizona with my best friends. We were sitting in a bar, and I remember the music stopped and you could just overhear somebody talking about the other person. And I was always just like, man, do I have to talk about everybody all the time? Like, this is just not who I am.

And then I thought, you know what? If I ever write a book, it's gonna be called When the Music Stops, because that seems to be the story of my life, you know, and I didn't know the significance of it. When creativity comes to an end, I start [00:30:00] to panic because I'm like, how am I gonna let out my frustrations? How am I gonna let out my authentic self? You know?

And so when the music stops has a kind of meaning for always keep the creativity going. It doesn't have to be piano or music. It can be anything, you know, it can be art, it can be underwater basket weaving. Who knows? Like that might be next for me.

Haley Radke: In Arizona?

Holly: Right. Sand weaving, in the heat.

Haley Radke: And how about other adoptees? Have you connected with other adoptees?

Holly: I have. And actually through your show is really how I've connected immensely through social media. Twitter is a big one. I've gotten to see who have been some of the past guests on [00:31:00] the show, and that has been so healing in itself. It’s just reaching out and hearing other people's stories, that we actually are going through the same thing.

I think that's the biggest thing. Like two years ago, I had no clue that anybody was actually feeling the same things as I was. It was mind-boggling. Like I found your podcast. I was listening to Joe Rogan, right? And then I typed in something about adoption. I was like, maybe there's something on adoption.

And yours came up. And I started listening to it and immediately, I remember my son and I had just gotten home, I was in my room and I just dropped to my knees and I was just sobbing. Sobbing, sobbing. Like there is a lifeline. There is somebody that feels the same way. This is insane.

How can this be? You know, like how come it took this long? That's been [00:32:00] amazing. Amazingly helpful. That's been my therapy.

Haley Radke: Wow. I'm so pleased that I can provide you with some therapy from afar through your earbuds. I know you've told me that story before, but I did not remember until you started saying, and I'm so glad that there's been a small piece from our show in your healing.

I love that. It's so good

Holly: And you don't give yourself enough credit, I'm telling you. I'm telling you, girl, like it has been my everything. Because through your show I was able to find people on Twitter or Facebook, you know, those sorts of things. So, yeah.

Haley Radke: Well, adoptees are just really incredible people and so we have like the whole gamut. You know, you're talking about your sister is the good adoptee and you're the angry one or whatever. But overall, we are incredibly resilient and have an immense [00:33:00] amount of empathy for people in a variety of different situations. And even the ones that are maybe in a hard, angry place right now are really incredible people.

So I've had almost all good interactions with adoptees. Almost all. It's pretty good because, you know, we talk about this saying, “hurt people hurt people.” You know, occasionally there'll be that situation, especially online when you can't read tone or whatever, and there's been a couple of misunderstandings.

But yeah, adoptees are pretty amazing. So I'm just honored and humbled at the same time to be able to do this.

Holly: And I say for people that don't believe that we're going through this or that the suffering [00:34:00] is in fact; I describe it as when you're underwater and you are swimming towards the surface and like right before you get to the surface, you start to run outta air quicker and you get that really tight feeling in your chest and it's right before you get to the surface.

And then that feeling right there is like what it feels like. I think when you're out of the fog as an adoptee. On a daily basis or however for which way you go through it. If it's a couple days and then you take a couple days off, or if it's a week at a time. I think, to me, that's the same feeling. And I can say that the day that I was born, I was still free.

The day they removed me from my biological mother was really, to me, the last day of my life where I was the person that I was meant to be. And you can try and find that your entire life, [00:35:00] but you only get so close. I don't think that you can actually ever get back to that place where you were meant to be.

But the other thing that I do truly believe in is that we can choose to live in sunrise or in a dark place, and both are perfectly fine. You know, to other adoptees that are out there feeling this dark-like place, that is fine. Because when people choose to live in that darkness to survive, I can remind those that say, always be on the positive, always think in the positive, that in those dark moments is when you have the most intellectual healing that takes place, in my mind.

That is what has happened with me. In those darkest of times I have learned the most about myself. [00:36:00] So never ever give up. Don't ever give in. But those places of darkness are where you're learning the most from yourself.

Haley Radke: I don't think I've ever thought about that before. But it's so true because when you're the most desperate, then you are reaching for, like what? Like something, something.

Holly: When you've been there, when you've been to those places, it's almost like you have to make that your friend and go like somebody that almost welcomes it. It's really strange because then when I'm in it, I'm like, Oh, why would you welcome this, Holly? But then I'm like, Okay, take a step back and know that you are learning the most when you are in the deepest depths of despair.

You're learning the most about yourself because those feelings and those experiences that have happened to you are coming to surface and they're taking you with them, and now's your time to learn. And when you get [00:37:00] back to the highs again, you know, like, Wow, this is great and this is what I took from that.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. Let's go to our recommended resources, and I would recommend everyone goes and checks out your pictures of your dirty pour, I don't know what to call it, dirty pour artwork?

Holly: Dirty pour art therapy is what I call it.

Haley Radke: Okay. It's so unique and interesting, and I love how you describe the process for us. And you can actually watch Holly, this is very cool, on Periscope. You do a lot of scopes where you show how you do it. So that's been really cool to follow along with as well. It's kind of mesmerizing, right? Seeing the liquid go and move and you're not exactly sure how it's gonna turn out.

Holly: Exactly. There's no recipe. There's no recipe for creativity, you guys. [00:38:00] That's what I want everybody to know. Don't even think about it, just do it. And of course, you're gonna make a mistake. But that's how we learn, right? So there's no recipe when I give the classes on Meetup. And we were the first dirty pour art therapy meetup in the world and in the history of meetups.

So they featured us. And everybody there went in with the mindset of, okay, how much paint do I put in? How much? You know, the people that are really wound tight, they were just dying. They were like, Oh my gosh. And I'm like, Okay, put it aside, don't look at your neighbor because yours is gonna look nothing like your neighbors, whatever.

And I told them, just go with the flow. This is literally a flow. Like you flow, you're gonna dump this, it's gonna flow on the canvas. And they left there so happy. [00:39:00] I was so happy just to see the looks on their faces. Like they really took something in that they'd never experienced.

Yeah. It made me cry because I was so happy for them.

Haley Radke: It was so beautiful to see you plan that and how it all turned out and everything. So neat. And so you're describing that, and I've only been to one paint night. The last few years, this has been a huge trend, right? It's a paint night and they have the canvas at the front and it's like, this is the picture that you're gonna paint.

And the teacher of the class is like, Okay, everybody paint this color on top and then this. And yeah, it was amazingly tense because you legitimately didn't want to make a mistake because you're trying to get your painting to look like theirs. And your style is so different than that. It's so different.

Holly: I don't wanna be like [00:40:00] anybody else. I never have been. If I see somebody with something that I've got from like Goodwill or whatever, I'm like, Nope, nope, can't wear it. Can't do it. 'Cause I like to be different. And that way you're not pressured to follow a pattern.

Like there was a man in the class, literally, he was probably like 75, and his wife at first was like, Oh no, he is gonna get paint everywhere. And I was like, Let him go. And she was a psychiatrist too, and I said, Let him go. And he was running around with paint all over and he was laughing and she was laughing, and she said, I'm gonna try this with my group.

And she works with adults in a mental hospital and she's like, I just don't know how it's gonna work. I said, The same way it worked here, just do it. You might wanna use a little less paint, but just let 'em have fun. Let them be free. So [00:41:00] that's just what it's about.

Haley Radke: So good. Okay. What do you want to recommend to us?

Holly: I would recommend two things. There is a recipe for the dirty pour, and I don't know if you want me to say the recipe here or if you just want to have people go to my YouTube channel and watch it. Because I made two videos tonight and it shows the process.

Haley Radke: Oh, cool. Well, why don't you give us the light version and then send me those links and I'll put them in the show notes.

Holly: I want everybody to actually try a dirty pour. Okay, so the recipe for the dirty pour is you go out and you buy acrylic paints. Doesn't matter what brand. Doesn't matter how expensive. A pouring medium. You can get Floetrol, usually from a Home Depot or Ace Hardware, something like that.

Stir sticks, dollar store, like the Popsicle kind. Plastic cups, a [00:42:00] canvas, gloves, and then just be yourself. You mix the acrylics with the pouring medium. You can put in silicone. You can do whatever you want. And then you pour it all together and you toss it. You do a flip cup thing on your canvas and then let it go and watch the cells appear.

Haley Radke: Cool. Okay. And so you have a video of doing this on YouTube that we could watch for the instructions as well?

Holly: Yes, and I would be willing to do something online for anybody that wants to do it. Who is uncomfortable with still doing it themselves. I would be more than happy to teach people how to do it.

Haley Radke: That's awesome. Okay. Wait, did you say you had two things?

Holly: I did. And I have a book, too. I have a book. It really helped me through some of the darkest times, the last couple years, and it's called Dark Nights of the Soul, and it's a guide to finding your way through life's ordeals, [00:43:00] and it's by Thomas Moore.

He talks about our lives are filled with emotional tunnels everywhere, whether it's losing the loved one, illnesses, disappointment, relationship woes, things like that. Like I was saying before, in those dark nights you can overcome those and he kind of shows you how, when you're in those fragile moments of your life, that restoration is coming and you just have to be able to get through it.

And he kind of helps you see in different ways how to get through those. Even though they're pretty bad. I found that very, very, very helpful.

Haley Radke: Great. Thank you so much, Holly. Tell us where can we connect with you online?

Holly: You can connect with me at www.nerdygal.onuniverse.com.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. And I'm gonna put the link to that and your blog [00:44:00] and also your Meetup link so that if people are in Arizona and they wanna come out and do a paint night with you, they can do that.

Go paint with Holly and um, if you are far away then you can watch her YouTube video about how to do this. And send us pictures if you do it. Tag us on Instagram. Wouldn't you love to see that? That would be awesome.

Holly: For sure. Thank you so much, Haley. I can't even thank you enough. I, and you and the guests. On the show are like the most dear people to me in the world, and I haven't even met you guys, but I seriously love you guys.

Haley Radke: Aw, you're so sweet, thank you.

This episode is brought to you by my generous supporters. I literally couldn't do the show every week without their support. Thank you. If you're looking for a place to find further adoptee support, have you considered signing up to partner with me?

I have a secret Facebook group [00:45:00] for adoptees that is only available to my Patreon supporters, and 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.

We've got two weeks left of Season Three. Next week I've got our last artist interview to share with you, and then I'll have the Season Finale with two familiar voices coming up right after that. And my Patreon supporters have voted and overwhelmingly chosen the theme for Season Four, and it's so good.

I cannot wait to start recording and to share Season Four with you. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

52 Brian - Blank: A Journey in Search of Identity

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/52

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season Three, Episode 12, Brian. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I get to introduce you to Brian Stanton. We have an incredibly powerful conversation, but it includes some difficult subjects including sexual assault.

So if you're around kids, please make sure you've got your earbuds in. This was one of my favorite interviews of the whole year, and so I'm just gonna leave the introduction at that. I'm not gonna spoil anything. Except that we are going to let you know when your next chance to see Brian's play Blank will be, and we wrap up with some recommended resources and links to everything we talk about today will be on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On [00:01:00], Brian Stanton. Welcome Brian.

Brian Stanton: Haley, so good to be here. Thank you so much. I see you here like I'm in your presence, but we're doing this thing distantly.

Haley Radke: We're very far away. But I did get to meet you in person, which is not true of all my guests.

So yeah, we met in Indiana at the Indiana Adoptee Network Conference where you performed. It was such a great conference. You performed your one-man show, Blank, and I just cried and it was amazing. So we'll get to talk about that later.

So thanks for coming on the show. I'd love it if you would start out by sharing your story with us.

Brian Stanton: So funny, I never know where to start, like where the beginning is, you know? Because I think the beginning is when I started the reunion, but let me give some backstory because I think it would help where my mind was at that time and then [00:02:00] where it evolved, I guess.

I was born in 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri, and adopted through Catholic Charities. I'd always known that I was adopted. My parents were very open with me from the very beginning. It was just that way. There were no secrets or anything like that that I had to deal with.

I'm white. I was adopted into a white family. They were Catholic, and I went through Catholic Charities. So, you know, most of the time that means that your mother who gave you up was Catholic. Most likely. Not always. I always tell people these days that I always looked the part back then, you know, when I said I was adopted, most people didn't even believe me.

Which I didn't know how to take at that time. And I always, if my friends never believed me, I would go to my mom, my adoptive mom and say, Hey, [00:03:00] mom, tell 'em I'm adopted. Right? Tell 'em I'm adopted. So that poor woman had to constantly verify the fact that I wasn't her biological child.

Or the other reaction would be, Oh my God, you're adopted? How do you feel about that? Are you okay? And I was like, what do you mean? Uh, yes, of course I'm fine. You know, I live that narrative. Everything's fine. Like I was given away for a reason, for my own good. Right? You know, that whole narrative. I just kind of lived that narrative for a long time.

But my mom and dad, my dad was a little more quiet than my mother, they were always open with me if I ever asked questions. And to this day, my mom still says that I was always curious. I always asked about my birth mother. I always had this feeling that I would [00:04:00] meet her no matter what. I just knew.

I just kind of knew that day would come and I lived in the fantasy world, you know, the “ghost kingdom.” You know who my mother was if I was thrilled about it, she was this beautiful Anne Bancroft woman who would come and save me from this miserable situation that I was in right now.

Or if I was being positive about my adoptive family, then no, no, no. She couldn't afford me. She was hooked on drugs. I mean, these horrible fantasies that we live and that we picture our first mothers as just these fantasies walking the ghost kingdom all the time. Anyway, I always knew that someday I would meet her. I moved out here to Los Angeles, where I currently live, for graduate school, for a theater program specializing in acting [00:05:00] at California Institute of the Arts.

And I went home for the holidays and I was 23, no 22 about to turn 23. Haley, that was 20 years ago actually from right now, now that I'm thinking about it. Oh my gosh. Okay. So this is the 20th anniversary of the upcoming reunion here. So I went home for Christmas. I was sitting in the kitchen with my adoptive mom and my sister.

I'm sorry, I should probably say my mom adopted me because she had a few miscarriages. Both my parents believed that they could not have children of their own. So I came into the picture and then a year after, literally a year after, they were able to have a biological child.

My sister came out, she's one year younger than me, and then they had my brother four years after that. So I actually [00:06:00] I grew up with a brother and a sister who were biologically related to my parents, which is very common. I hear that parents, not believing they could have a kid, adopt right away and then relax into it and have their own kids.

Anyway, I'm sitting in the kitchen with my mother and sister and my mom brings it up. Just brings up adoption out of the blue, information about my birth mother, asking if I was still interested. And then she goes to this cabinet, so to speak, on the wall, pulls out this folder with information and gives me my original birth certificate.

And this is important actually because in Missouri, I was adopted in Kansas City, Missouri, that was illegal. You know, I did not have the right to my birth certificate, to my original birth certificate. You know, birth records were closed in Missouri. [00:07:00]. But a friend of hers worked in Catholic Charities at the time and made a photocopy of it and gave it to her.

What an angel. Right?

Haley Radke: Right.

Brian Stanton: Now I didn't know this. I didn't know it was illegal at the time. Anyway, so I'm looking at it and my mother's name was on the birth certificate. And so my adoptive mother's just like, Shall we call her? Should we do this? Should we look her up? And she looks her up and she is literally in the phone book, her name with her husband.

Her husband's name was in the phone book, right there. So my mom calls her in front of me and I was like, Oh my gosh, mom, what are you doing? I didn't have much time to process, you know? And my mother is a very Italian stubborn woman who will just [00:08:00] do things, you know, just go do things.

And she called her and I'm literally ducking under the kitchen table, like I'm so physically frightened, which was weird. There were foreign feelings coming up, I guess I should say. And her son answered the phone, who we learned was her son. My mom is talking to him where she is, where she's working, uh, what's your name?

And he said his name was Brian. So I have a half-brother with my same name, which I learned is also very common. My birth mother did not know my adoptive parents named me Brian. Uh, so there's that synchronicity there that is very interesting. So I'm trying to process all this and we learned that my [00:09:00] birth mother works at a library in Kansas City, not too far from where we live.

And my mom's like, Should we go see her? Like, what? She's like, Yeah, let's go see her. And a huge part of me wanted me to see her of course. Then there was a part of me that was scared as [censored], I mean just frightened, right? So of course we go and my sister's all for it, Oh yeah, let's do this.

Haley Radke: Oh, sure, you know, it's like there's no impact on her.

Brian Stanton: Oh my gosh. So we drive to this library and my mom goes, You wanna come in? I'm like, No, I don't wanna come in right now. I don't know. I don't wanna come in. And she goes into the library and I literally get, just like I hid under the kitchen table, I got on the floor of the car by the seat and just kind of ducked, you know?

But my [00:10:00] curiosity was so strong. I guess I just let my mom do what she wanted to do, you know? I don't know. It was bizarre this whole day. Anyway, she comes back minutes later, it wasn't that long, and said, I think I saw her. What? What do you mean? You think you saw her? Did you talk to her? No, but I think I saw her in the back doing something. Like, well, what do you mean?

And she said, Oh, well, I talked to the main librarian right there at the desk and just asked her a few questions. My mom can do this. It's amazing. She'll just start talking to someone, asking questions. And then she said she was pretty sure she saw her in the back, but didn't say anything. Just got a look, I guess.

Anyway, I was freaking out. Finally, this all ends with, Well, Brian, let me know if you wanna get in touch with her and I'll do that. I'll call her up and I'll just ask her to write you a letter. Is that okay? Is that what you want? [00:11:00] And I said, Yeah, letter is fine. Uh, so I'll let you know when I'm ready.

And that's kind of where we left it. And I went back to California, back to grad school and I was ready. I don't know. I guess I just needed to process it for a few days, you know, even a week. I think it might have been a couple days when I got back to California, I was like, All right, mom, you can go ahead and make that phone call. You know, I think I'm ready.

And she made the phone call and she called me up and said, Okay. I spoke with her. She's gonna write you a letter. And so I was like, Okay. And I'm waiting for it. I was in my acting class, which was a three-hour class, and we have a break. And I went to the mailroom and I see the letter with her name and the return address.

And I started weeping. [00:12:00] You know, I had tears in my eyes, I was shaking. A friend of mine was right next to me. She gave me a big hug. She said, Whatever you need, what do you need to do? So we went back to the acting class. I told my teacher, I said, I need to leave, I'm sorry. And she's like, No, please, go ahead.

I told her that I was adopted and my mother writing a letter to me. This is her letter to me right now. And the acting teacher was, Oh my gosh. Well, did you wanna open it and read it right here in front of our class? This is an amazing moment. You know what I mean?

Like, no, I think I'll handle this by myself right now. So I go out and go amongst these trees and just sit in the dirt and I'm outdoors and it was actually a gorgeous environment up there. And then I read the [00:13:00] letter and she basically says she didn't want to give me up for adoption.

She really had no choice and she thought it would be best for me. And she said, I'll come right out and say it, I was at a high school party and I was gang raped by a few boys. Obviously that's a lot to take right away. I was crying, just sobbing audibly. I think I literally dropped the letter, Haley, and just walked.

I just walked away, just trying to process everything, you know, and what this means and who I am and everything that I thought I was and all my fantasies that were living up in the ghost kingdom of who my biological parents were and what my life would've been with them and, you know, all of that.

What that means now, [00:14:00] when reality actually hits. I finally gathered myself and read the rest of the letter, and I needed people. I needed people right away. I think looking back, one of the ways that adoption has emotionally affected me is I need touch. I need touch and connection. And I know it's because my birth mother did not touch me right away.

You know, they kind of took me away. They took me away right away, which she expressed to me later. So I actually went back to the class. When you're in a graduate acting training program, you're vulnerable for three years. I mean, you're naked, sometimes physically, but mostly emotionally.

It's this group of people that you bare everything to. So you just go through this with [00:15:00] them for three years. It's really hardcore. I can't fully put it into words what you go through, but I felt highly comfortable with this class of 10 at this time. And I needed them, and they comforted me, and I actually read them the letter.

I was able to process it better with them around me. And then, to top that off, the woman who I was dating at the time, who is now my wife, drove all the way up to comfort me. And, Haley, I don't know about your reunion and stuff, but I cried uncontrollably off and on for probably 48 hours and I didn't understand. I didn't understand why I was crying.

I was just crying. I could be laughing and joking around with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, and then all of a sudden I started crying. All these feelings [00:16:00] coming up. Anyway, we get into reunion, we have that beautiful honeymoon period. I'll revisit the crying in a second.

I write her a letter and then we start emailing each other. Then we have the phone call. And, you know, not only was her name real, not only were the words on her letter real, but then I hear her voice and that's real. And then we meet. We met in Kansas City when I was there for I think it was my brother's graduation at the time.

And when we met physically, everything was so exciting. You know, that honeymoon period when everything's so exciting, you're learning about each other and: Oh, you do this? Oh, I love that too. Oh, I love that music too. Oh, that's one of my favorite movies. Oh, we have so much in common, blah, blah, you know. And when I see her in person, she couldn't [00:17:00] stop hugging me and touching me and crying, and I didn't know how to take that either.

Like, suddenly I was the adult in the room and I felt like, No, I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm great. You made it, you made a smart decision. You know, I'm in this family now. I'm lucky, you know. I felt like I was trying to soothe her because I didn't know where she was coming from.

I had no therapy, I had no idea about any adoption support groups. I was coming in cold, living the narrative that I'd always been taught. You know, my mother gave me away for my best interests. I have a great relationship, especially with my brother and sister. We're very close. My mom and [00:18:00] dad, we’re close. We all have our issues, but for the most part, I've lived a great life, you know.

So I was coming from there. I'm like, Why is this woman sobbing and grabbing me and touching me? And I didn't know how to deal with it. We form a relationship. She comes out, visits with me in California, and, and even the questions, uh, she's showering me with gifts, Haley, and I was like, Oh my gosh, you don't have to make up for your lost time.

That's what I felt like she felt like she had to do. But really I felt undeserving of all those gifts, you know, which I understood later why I felt that. But I kept saying, You don't have to give me all these gifts and you don't have to do all this. It's fine. I'm fine. I met her family for Christmas Eve, or it was a couple days before Christmas, her whole family was there, and my wife and I went and visited and the whole family was there.

She has seven brothers and sisters. She's one of eight. And [00:19:00] it was so overwhelming. I hardly remember that night. Like, I've blacked it out, you know. I guess I'm getting at I just didn't understand where I was, and after a while, I pushed her away and she said, Okay, on your time, I'm sorry that I've been so forward.

So then I write this play and I'm introduced to this world of adoption. I go to my first support group like a year after my first performance, and I'm like, what? You people are here and have these feelings? And I listen to the birth mothers and listen to everything that they're saying and listen to other adoptees.

And I'm like, I understand now. I understand now. You know, I wrote this play just being honest with myself and getting my feelings out there and wrote this journey that I thought I was going on. [00:20:00] But little did I know what I wrote. I didn't fully understand it till probably a year after I was performing it.

Haley Radke: As you're sharing your story, I'm like, Oh my goodness, this play was truly autobiographical. You're sharing all these different scenes and these are all in the play.

Brian Stanton: Yeah. It's crazy, huh?

Haley Radke: Well, the search for identity and this big canvas, or I'm not sure what it is, but with all of the different ways that we may find our identity. Can you give a couple?

Brian Stanton: Yeah, yeah. No, that is a real outline that I was given by one of my acting teachers. It was an analysis of your character. It's actually like four pages long and I just take a little snippet of it. And it's word for word. And I put [00:21:00] it on a tapestry that hangs upstage.

Haley Radke: And you wrote all of this stuff without ever talking to another adoptee about adoptee issues.

Brian Stanton: Right.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.

Brian Stanton: See, I found it ironic that I'm an actor and I feel like I dive into these characters and I know all about these characters and these human beings that I'm portraying. I know so much about them, but I don't know who I am.

And that's what that journey is in the play. As an actor, I thought that was an important point of view. Can I find out who I am by using your outline of an analysis of your character to find out who I am as well personally? And yeah, that's where my show takes the audience.

Haley Radke: Wow. [00:22:00] Can you talk a little bit about that? You were saying that you kept a journal during that time.

Brian Stanton: Yeah. While it was going on, because everything was so new and foreign to me, all these feelings, I decided to keep a journal and I kept it to the detail.

I wrote in it every single day throughout the entire period from when my mother gave me my birth certificate all the way through my reunion and every day, Haley. I kept all these emails as well that we exchanged, my birth mother and I.

I'm gonna go back to the crying thing. I learned this through the birth mothers, but they resort to that time period again when they reunite with you. So when my mother saw me for the first time physically, she was 16 years old, [00:23:00] you know, and I'm a 23-year-old man. Uh, so I understand all that now, and I wish I understood it then. I think I would've handled it a lot better emotionally.

But then I parallel that to me because maybe I resorted. I shouldn't say resort. Does that sound negative?

Haley Radke: Reverted? Is that the word you’re looking for?

Brian Stanton: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. When I saw the letter in her name, I went back to being an infant, to being a newborn, to being a fetus, right? Because the trauma that we experienced, we didn't have any language for so we didn't understand it.

So I think that's why they were such foreign feelings that were just exploding in my body and why I [00:24:00] was crying uncontrollably. Because what do we do when we come out of the womb? We cry. Right? And I must have come out of the womb again right there when I was seeing my mother's words for the first time, explaining everything.

So I kind of equate my experience with that, with my birth mother's experience going back to when she was 16 years old, going through her experience. Right?. What were we talking about?

Haley Radke: Writing. Writing, yes. You were keeping a journal and where I'm headed hopefully is the process of writing and performing.

Brian Stanton: While I was at grad school, I saw a one-woman show by a friend of mine named Joy Gregory, who's an amazing woman. She's actually a writer for television right now. I was just inspired by her. It had nothing to do with adoption, it was just her way of telling a very personal story. And I was like, You know, I think I'd like to do a one-person show.

And she's like, Great. [00:25:00] You know, some people do biographies, pick your favorite person or whatever and become that person. And some people do autobiographies, maybe a story of your life, something like that. And I was like, I don't know. I'd really have to think about a biography. And it sounds kind of hard, a lot of work. What is that?

And she said, Well, you know, you should think about an autobiography. Like, what's your story? I was like, Oh my God, I don't know. I don't have a story. I don't have a story. Oh my God, what does that mean? Who am I? I'm a nobody. Oh my gosh, I'm nobody.

And I just was thinking about that for so long. But at the same time, I was going through the reunion and I had all this stuff written out, and finally I realized, well, maybe that's my story. So I took that feeling of [00:26:00] not having a story and being a nobody and then all this stuff I had written in my journal and I started to combine them.

I mainly was writing, going through, what does it mean that I don't know who I am? What does it mean that I don't have a story? You know, who am I? So I just started asking myself questions. Who am I? And I started writing all these conversations and philosophical, ethereal conversations. And then on the side, I'd start typing out my journal just so I would revisit everything.

And this was a while later and I just was able to mold those two together. A journey in search of identity with the background of my adoption story. That's just kind of how I saw my play at the time. My final year at Cal Arts, I had a guest [00:27:00] director as one of my teachers.

And he heard about my adoption story and he said, Brian, I'm directing a one-woman show right now that is about this. Would you like to come see it? I said, Yeah. He's like, it's down in Hollywood. I've been workshopping the play with her and we're just doing one show in Hollywood. Come and see it.

And so I came and saw it, and her name was Alison Larkin and she did a play called the English American, where she was raised in London and found out her birth mother was from Tennessee, you know? So it was a fun, great play. And that kind of boosted me to really start writing this thing.

Uh, anyway, yeah. So I got friends of mine to read and give me some suggestions. You know, a third eye for the script. They would say, Okay, [00:28:00] I think you're saying this. Is this what you're saying? Because this is what I'm getting.

So that was really great. Because I don't fancy myself as a writer at all. I. So to have somebody just go over my script was really important and really helped me out to make sure I got my point across.

Haley, I'd put it on the back burner, you know, and then come back and write. Or I'd be doing a play, then I'd come back and write, then I'd leave it. So, I mean, the whole process took like 10 years to tell you the truth to really get it going. But when I decided I was gonna do it, I looked for a director. I wanted a woman to direct it, to bring in the maternal, feminine point of view.

So I think we balanced each other out really well. We trusted each other very much. She challenged me, she helped me rewrite sections, and it was something I told myself I wanted to do. I'm gonna do it, fail or succeed, whatever it is. I'm gonna do this.

And then in [00:29:00] April of 2010, I premiered it in Hollywood. I had planned to do 12 shows minimum. I ended up doing 18 shows in Hollywood for that particular run. And then took it to some theater festivals, some solo festivals, as well as theater festivals.

And then I got a call from a woman named Karen Vedder who was planning the Concerned United Birthparents retreat, which I know you went to recently, right? Did you, did you go to the last one?

Haley Radke: I did, yes.

Brian Stanton: Isn't it a lovely retreat?

Haley Radke: Yeah. It's amazing people.

Brian Stanton: Yes. Well, she called me and said, I've heard about your show. You have a show? And I said, yes, I do have a show. I had tried to connect with adoption organizations while I was promoting the show. Right? Just for an audience, that's just what you need to do. There are thousands and thousands of plays [00:30:00] here in Los Angeles. They go on and you gotta find some kind of target.

Yeah. So, of course I reached out to the adoption, but I didn't know really what I was reaching out to. And I had a great meeting with Sarah Burns. Oh my goodness. She first opened my eyes to the birth mother's point of view. I was like, okay, okay. Anyway, Karen called me and she said, Well, we're doing a retreat. It's gonna be September, October, I can't remember, but we'd like you to do your show at our retreat.

And I was like, Great, that'd be amazing. This is what I want to do with this, you know, talk to my peeps, right? And I said, But Karen, do you wanna see the play first? I had no confidence in my play and I was nervous about going or what she was expecting, you know?

I mean, it's not a linear play [00:31:00]. I wear a mask and, you know, bring in the Greeks with it. I have Oedipus Rex in it. I have this avant-garde physicality in it. I say [censored] so many times, you know. I'm like, What are these people expecting? This isn't gonna be a rainbowy type of play, you know. So it's like, do you wanna see it first?

Which is not a good way to get a job either by saying that, but she said, Well, yeah, I'll see it, but tell me about it. But she ended up coming to see it when I was performing it in Hollywood. And they said, It's perfect. It's perfect. Come and do it.

And so when I performed at the retreat, it was the first time I was in a room with 200 some odd people that were all connected to adoption. It was a huge eye-opener [00:32:00]. It was a huge discovery. It was a release. It was an amazing experience. I'm talking about me, not the audience.

Haley Radke: No, I get you. I get you. But what were some of the things people said to you after? Were people openly weeping?

Brian Stanton: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I could hear them during the play, which was really jarring at first, but also moving for me because I'm like, yes, yes, I'm feeling this here now too. So I think I started to become more open as an actor to the piece rather than being skeptical as a writer while I was performing the piece, if that makes any sense at all.

Obviously, I held a Q&A after the show and people were standing up and saying things to me, and then I'd be like, Oh, that's why I wrote this line, you know? And then one guy stood up and said, I have said this line that you said in the play [00:33:00]. I was like, Oh my gosh. So it just created this conversation and it opened up my mind to what I had created. So my art kind of surprised me in a way.

Haley Radke: So often, you know, when I'm talking to people about the things that they've created and they're talking about writing it and going through the whole process and how that's sort of been a healing journey for them.

And it sounds like yours sort of started after you started actually performing it.

Brian Stanton: I did have discoveries while I was writing it, definitely, but not really on the adoption front. Well, Haley, everything I do I think is definitely motivated and driven by my adoption story. I think that I've learned the last several years.

I was working with a friend of mine, we pushed each other, Jay Sefton, a really good friend of mine, talented actor and great writer. We were like, Hey, we're gonna [00:34:00] do this one-man show. We met every Friday. We shared our scripts with each other and we just kind of motivated each other. Where are you right now in this? So I had the bravery to actually put it up.

So while I was trying to discover some of these words, for instance, there was a scene in the play. It was actually towards the end. I present this internal struggle, this internal conflict where there's a box and I flip the box back and forth. I'm talking to myself, to my internal self. I kept asking, What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? And I didn't know, you know. And I'm writing the scene and I'm like, where is this scene going?

What is the big thing that I'm afraid of right now at this moment? And I left the computer. I got in my car and I was driving, [00:35:00] to get a snack and some green tea or something. And Pink Floyd was playing on the radio, which is a big influence for me. And it hit me. I was afraid of being a nobody because I didn't know who I was.

Then I was like, wait a second. That's it! I'm trying to understand who I am. I'm trying to understand my purpose, I'm trying to understand where I come from. You know, all of this just relates to each other. And that ended up being pretty much the climax of the play.

So I did have discoveries and I did discover that, well, adoption does have a lot to do with my identity journey and with all these questions that are coming. So I had that, but I didn't fully get how adoption has affected me until I heard [00:36:00] from other adoptees. And especially the mothers, man. Especially the mothers, really, really opened my eyes.

Haley Radke: Are you in contact with your birth mother now?

Brian Stanton: I am. It's a tough time right now. It has been for the last couple years. It's funny, Haley, I was a little nervous about this interview because I really haven't had a deep conversation about adoption for a little while. Probably since Indiana.

I mean, I was so immersed in it for five, six years, you know, and then I just kind of drifted away a little bit and I was only doing Blank a couple times, two or three times a year for the last three years. So I wasn't sure what was gonna come out. It was like, where are my emotions about all this right now? So this is great.

My birth mother has put the ball in my court completely [00:37:00]. And I'm frustrated by that, really frustrated by that. I've told her, You can call me. You can call me. I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry that I pushed you. I understand that I pushed you away at the beginning.

I performed Blank in Kansas City where I was born, adopted, and raised. And, I think that was a big turning point because I got a lot of publicity. I was in the newspaper, I was on the local news. I was on the local NPR station, and there were a couple things that really freaked her family out because it's a very personal play and it was very personal coming out publicly about that.

And it freaked her parents out big time, which in turn scared her. And since then it hasn't been the same. There was a point where I said, You're not talking to me. I'm putting in all the effort. I understand [00:38:00] you more now than I did then. Sorry, I didn't understand then. I get it.

And I pushed you. I see how I pushed you away. I didn't know how to deal with these feelings. I didn't know how to deal with what I was going through, this rollercoaster of emotions. I'm sorry, but I'm here. I wanna be a part of your life. I want my kids now to be a part of your life.

Please, You can call me too. I'm tired of having the ball on my side of the court. I need you to call me sometimes. She's like, Okay. But she doesn't. I would call her after an amount of time or I would send her a letter or I would send her pictures. My wife and I send her pictures of the kids and I never get a thank you.

I never get a phone call, Hey, I got this. And it hurts right now. It really hurts. I called her to tell her some exciting news about my young daughter [00:39:00] a few months ago, and we hadn't spoken because she won't call me. But when we talk, it's fine. Everything is fine. She tells me everything that's going on. She tells me how she is really, you know?

It's just me doing all the work and I'm tired. I want her to do it. I want her to call me on my birthday, you know. That's where we are right now. It's been a big roller coaster. I mean, I was explaining the honeymoon period and things were great. Then things got a little rough, but then things were great again, and she saw my play and it was fantastic.

You know, she saw Blank when it was in Hollywood in 2010. I use an alias name for her and she came out to everyone, to the audience as her real name. And so I thought it was gonna be great. And then just things turned after Kansas City. It just hit too close to home, I guess.

And it's probably more, [00:40:00] I don't know. But I want more. I'll probably see her when I go home for the holidays.

Haley Radke: What's it like for you to put yourself out there in such a vulnerable position to the audience and the public? I mean, with your story and this piece, I'm assuming what everyone is super duper upset about is just the knowledge that you were conceived in a rape and victims often have shame, plus birth mothers have shame.

Brian Stanton: I know. Can you believe, can you imagine the shame? I know, I know. And they don't need to have that shame.

Yes, so as an artist, as a writer, as a sculptor, as a painter, whatever, you have to find it within you to not hold back. You have to find it within you to not care if you offend anybody. [00:41:00] Otherwise, you start censoring your own voice. You start censoring your own story. You start censoring your own understanding of how you are presently in this world and in your own personal environment.

So that's the first big step that you have to get over. And I was able to do that at the time because I came out of the hardcore theater training, where we wear our emotions on our sleeve and we're honest. And that's where it comes from. I did have it in the back of my mind that I can censor later if I need to, you know, but right now I'm not censoring myself.

But then, once it was out there, it was out there. Do you know? And then, Haley, I've [00:42:00] done a lot of weird [censored] on stage. I have played a lot of characters. I've done crazy things. I mean, from experimental avant-garde to classical to clean, fun comedy, whatever.

But I've done it all, and I've never been so nervous to put that pen to the paper to start writing my story. But I pushed through it and did it. And then to have to perform it and embrace it as an actor, not only as a writer, but as an actor was another big step. So, yeah, it was hugely nerve wracking. Hugely. It was just baring your soul.

But, you know, I'd tell myself I had a story to tell, if people go for it, fine, but then that's what it was. And I became obviously extremely fortunate because people related to it. But I [00:43:00] mean, I've received letters, emails, voicemails, about how Blank has affected people.

But it's funny because some of the people that are closest to me, I drove away a little bit or at certain points because it hit them so personally. I wrote something for a publication or something and I said, it's funny how I can really touch and get close to a stranger, but drive a family member away from me. Someone who I've been close to my whole life.

You know, my adoptive mom at first reacted, she didn't know what to think, but now she really appreciates it. And then It seemed my birth mother really, really enjoyed it, but then pulled away a little bit. [00:44:00] So yeah, it was interesting.

It's a risk. Art is a risk. I mean, that's what art is. You take a risk and put it out there no matter what. It could be anything. But you take that risk and put it out there, and that's what makes it art. You know, sometimes you'll hear people say, Oh, my child can do that.

Well, your child didn't do that and this person did that. They took the risk and put it out there for you to criticize it. You know, that's what makes art. So I knew the risk going into it. I guess, I don't know. But when you live it, sometimes it's harder than what you think you're getting into.

So, yeah, the play took me to places that I never thought that I would be, but I don't mean negative at all right now. I mean, I've discovered so much about myself. I've discovered so much about people. I've understood my parents more. I've understood both of my mothers a lot more. [00:45:00]

I'm a more whole human being because of it. And I'm not saying because of my play, but my play took me to a world that I didn't even know existed. In this whole world, these people have fulfilled me.

Haley Radke: Well, I don't usually do this, but it's almost on the personal side

Brian Stanton: Let’s do it! Let’s go there!

Haley Radke: Well, doing the podcast most of the time it's like 98% all about the guest. And I put a little bit of myself in there, a little bit of my story. But when I did the Season One Finale, I did share my reunion story and I did censor a little bit because I was so concerned that my birth mother would hear. We had a four-month reunion and she's cut off contact and that was, you know, over a decade ago.

So I still reach out to her regularly and I just [00:46:00] never hear anything back. But that is one of my fears, Brian, that maybe she does listen and is this the one thing that is like, now she's never gonna talk to me again, which she already doesn't talk to me. I was curious about that because you're right, putting ourselves out there in this way, it's very vulnerable and we don't know how the people around us are going to react.

Brian Stanton: Haley, if she's listening right now, she is loving your beautiful voice, first of all. You have an amazing, soothing voice. I'm sure she loves you, Haley, and listening to you. Who knows, she could just be listening in private right now and loving every minute of it. But whatever she is dealing with, she's scared to come back.

I don't know. I'm so sorry. I am fortunate that, at least [00:47:00], my mother will talk to me when I call. So when I hear that, it breaks my heart. I'm sorry.

Haley Radke: Thank you. You know, when you were talking about your reunion and how we regress back and how your birth mother was likely her 16-year-old self. And I'm picturing my first reunion and my first meeting with my birth mother and it was the same. She was 15 and so, right, if we get stuck there, we get stuck there. And it's very hard to move forward without addressing these things.

Brian Stanton: I know. So is this helping you, like you doing these interviews and interviewing all of us adoptees and therapists, is this helping you?

Haley Radke: It's free therapy every week, man, it's awesome. Especially when I interview therapists and they give me free therapy.

Brian Stanton: Oh, I bet! Oh, maybe I should start a podcast for therapists.

Haley Radke: Well, I am in reunion with my [00:48:00] dad and that's almost seven years now, and that's like a great, healthy, good relationship.

Brian Stanton: Oh Haley, that's great.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So it's not like all doom and gloom with me, but.

Brian Stanton: Well, so it's funny because the first thing that we think about is our mothers, I think. I mean, there's nothing more powerful than the mother/child relationship, that mother/child connection. And I think that's why so many people identify with the adoptee's story, because I would perform Blank in front of people who had no connection to adoption.

And I'd hear from them and I'd hear their personal stories about their relationship with their parents, or their father left them when they were six, or their mother got sick and passed. It all relates to a larger narrative of the mother/child relationship.

I mean, it's in all [00:49:00] the mythology, that's the connection. In Blank that's why I bring up Oedipus, which is the most obvious one, I guess. I think sometimes what gets lost is what about the father? What does that say about who we are? And what does that connection mean?

I personally the past couple years have actually wanted to put a face to my father. I know that sounds crazy, but you know, I'm gonna go back to the ghost kingdom, to the fantasy world. And my mom remembers two of the guys, two of the three guys, and knew their names. And one of them was in prison and was on the Missouri Most Wanted list.

And the other guy was a cop. I mean, oh my gosh, this is a whole ‘nother story. We could do another hour about fathers. So if you do a season about fathers, I have a whole story for you.

Haley Radke: I'm happy to have you back anytime.

Brian Stanton: But my [00:50:00] point is that my fantasy land became a monster when it was about my father. My father was a monster. I had these monster fantasies and that's not healthy, especially after I've gone through my reunion and gone through all these adoption support experiences with adoption support organizations. I'm like, I can't do it. I need to put a human face to it.

So I was reaching out and I talked to the guy in prison who ended up not being my father, which was a big surprise to my birth mother because apparently I looked like him. But yeah, I was going down that journey for a while. But the other guy who's a cop died, who could be my father right now..

I'm on Ancestry, [00:51:00], I'm on 23andMe, I'm on FTDNA, and I'm doing all that hoping that there's gonna be that one close cousin that gets on, that I can for sure say who my father is. But either way, what I've gone through has humanized my father. No matter what bad choices he made in the past, it has humanized my father and that has put me at peace.

And if this cop who passed away tragically is my father, then, you know, there's a point where I need to say, I need to bury you, as well, and come to terms with that. If that makes any sense at all. I'm a father now, so, you know, I need to find that father within me and always keep it, right?

So there's a part of me that says I'm gonna bury you for now. You are human to me, whoever it is that I'm speaking to, of course I'm [00:52:00] personifying it through this man who passed, and if you decide to rise from the dead and somehow come into my life, whether it's through his kids or grandkids, then I will welcome that fully.

But right now, I may need to bury that side and accept what I experienced and finally discovering a human side to him.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you for sharing that. Let's just talk briefly about healing through creativity and what being an actor is like for you and being able to become these different characters.

You addressed that a little bit earlier, but can you talk a little bit about that and also with the view in mind of the listener and how often we're like, I'm not creative or I'm not, you know. But I feel that creativity is so important for releasing those [00:53:00] emotions that we might not have words for, right? Like your uncontrollable sobbing when you get this letter and those kinds of things. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Brian Stanton: Absolutely. I, um. Oh, gosh, where do I start? Yes, I'm an actor. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. No, no, it's funny because yeah, uh, no, it's a big part of my play for a reason. I'm an actor and, Haley. Okay. Nancy Verrier punched me in the face. Figuratively, not literally.

Haley Radke: Oh, that would've been such a great story.

Brian Stanton: I know, I know, right? So at this CUB retreat, Nancy Verrier spoke, and so I'm, you know, real “primal wound." I'm sure all your guests mention the primal wound. Has every single one of your guests mentioned the primal wound?

Haley Radke: Like 80%.

Brian Stanton: Yeah, I know. Okay, so let me add to that. [00:54:00] So I'm sitting at CUB. This was even before I performed and my first time at one of these retreats, let alone any kind of support group or adoption, family, therapist, whatever.

And Nancy is talking. She was talking about “the chameleon.” Sometimes adoptees have a tough time ordering at a restaurant 'cause they can't decide, like they think there's a wrong answer. Or they go into a museum and they see an art piece and they say, I like that. But they can't fully explain why they like it, because there may be a wrong answer with what they say.

And then she starts talking about being in a room full of people and I'm totally paraphrasing here. Okay. And this is how I heard it: About saying something wrong to another person and not gaining their acceptance, right? So the adoptee kind of takes on this chameleon [00:55:00] nature and can size up a room and say, Okay, this is who I need to be at this moment to gain the acceptance of these people.

And I mean, the room started spinning and I crouched over on my knees, breathing heavily. And this sweet young birth mother, like a recent birth mother, I think she was in her twenties, leaned over and started tapping me on the shoulder and said, Is all this hitting home with you? And I literally yell, She's talking about me, man! She's talking about me, man!

You know, it's like that right person to be and that right thing to say. And because we don't wanna be rejected. So obviously, I'm revealing to you and our listeners that I was the pleasing adoptee, that I really didn't want to deal with rejection and had to please everybody. [00:56:00]

That's part of the reason why I'm an actor, because a) I know who I can be to be this character, right, and b) I like being accepted. Do you know? That's where it has led me. So adoption has a big part of being why I became an actor. So every character that I do is an absolute blast. I love it. So that's, I think, why I became an artist.

But then when I wanted to tell my own story, obviously, that was a whole different avenue. And we all have our stories, man.

Haley Radke: And yet, even in your play, you play like a ton of characters, not just yourself.

Brian Stanton: Yes. And that was purposeful.

Haley Radke: How many?

Brian Stanton: Uh, I dunno. Like 11, including myself. Something like that. Yeah. And I was very physical with it because I wanted and I do have [00:57:00] a slight exaggeration of all the characters that I've played, and they're all based on people that I knew. Um, a slight exaggeration because when I was just Brian, I just wanted to be as real as possible.

Do you know what I mean? Whereas all these other masks that we wear in other social situations are slightly exaggerated and slightly fake. You know? But what is the real, essential Brian? And that's what I was hoping to somewhat gain from that piece, subtle though, it might have been. But you're right, we all have our stories to tell.

And, and you've interviewed fantastic people. I mean, Gareth, I looked at Gareth's art and it's amazing, you know.

Haley Radke: I know, I ordered a print. I can't wait.

Brian Stanton: Oh, you did? Oh my God. I would love to talk to that guy. Because I’m a big fan on David Lynch as well, and Deb's show sounds fabulous, you know.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah. And then Kristen Garaffo talked about you. She came to [00:58:00] Indiana to see your show.

Brian Stanton: And that’s because of Ridghaus, too. And Ridghaus is a great friend of mine. Yeah. And Kristen's play. I was fortunate enough to read an earlier draft of her script, and I can't wait to be able to see it.

And people out here in Los Angeles, Jeanette Yoffe and a woman named Nicole Radmacher. So we put together an art festival, the Celia Center Art Festival, and Celia Center is a nonprofit organization started by Jeanette, named after her birth mother and there were three plays there.

We had an art gallery and Brianna Spencer did a spoken word thing, you know. And so all this art by these adoptees, whether it directly had something to do with adoption or not, or they're just adoptees expressing themselves. So, you know, all these local, wonderful voices, and all of us have that.

And if [00:59:00] you just had listeners, if you just have it in you to just take a risk and start by putting something down on paper, even if it's just for you, you know? And then if you feel like, Hey, I wanna release this and put it out. Do it. I would highly encourage you because we need those voices.

You know, I learned about the original birth certificate thing. I didn't know that it was illegal for me to possess my original birth certificate. I got lucky. But these voices help fix that narrative that the world is living in, you know. And I really think we're starting to wake up.

I really, really believe that. And it takes our voices, whether it's a documentary, whether it's a keynote speaker, or whether it's art, because art reaches us at a different level, a different emotional level. It digs, it kind of hits your soul. It digs a little deeper. [01:00:00]

And whether you say you can understand it or not, it hits you on it on that level that maybe words can't explain. And that's the power of art. You're doing your podcast, you're taking a risk right now because you expressed, is my birth mother listening right now? And what does she think?

You're taking a risk by putting your voice out there and having a chat with another person who's taking a risk, putting their voice out there. And, you know, that's what it is. I think Radiohead said, Stop whispering, start shouting. You know, it’s get your voice out there and whether your voice is through drawing, sculpture, paint, colors, dance, music, whatever it is, like, put it out there, man.

Don't be afraid to fail. There's no such thing as failure. Samuel Beckett said something, I'm gonna paraphrase this 'cause I'm probably gonna [01:01:00] butcher it, but he said like, If you fail once, go back and fail harder. You know, like, do it again. You know, just do it again.

Haley Radke: What a great call to action. I love that. Thank you. Okay, well, I know we could talk forever, but that was a great place to pause and switch to recommended resources. First of all, you are performing Blank again very soon, so can you tell us about that? Because people have to see it. I loved it. I loved it.

Brian Stanton: Yes. This is gonna be an amazing event, you guys. It's Missouri. My home state has finally opened birth records. State Representative Don Phillips helped push this bill through with the help of so many people. You know what? I probably shouldn't even single out names because there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people behind this in every state that help motivate this. [01:02:00] So on January 1, 2018, adult adoptees can request their original birth certificate without a court order. And so we are gonna celebrate on January 1 in the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City. There's going to be some workshops, there's gonna be a couple keynote speakers.

Definitely State Representative Don Phillips will be speaking, and I think Adam Pertman will be coming, and people are gonna be getting their birth certificates, so they're gonna have groups. At night I will be performing Blank in the capital of my home state. So I am thrilled and honored to be a part of this.

It's gonna be an amazing event, man. My first show was 2010 in April, and now almost nine years later, I'm in my home state celebrating our adoptee rights. So this is gonna be January 1, 2018. [01:03:00] Oh my goodness. To learn more about the event, it's called “Breaking the Seal.” If you wanna come and celebrate with us.

Haley Radke: I'm just breaking in because I want to let you know the website is missouriadopteerightsmovement.com.

Brian Stanton: You can even just come and see the play. I think they're selling individual tickets to the play. I'm not taking any money on this. Everything they receive will go to their organization, which is putting on this event and which has obviously helped give us our right.

So, come see us. I also have it on my webpage, thebrianstanton.com. So you can also follow a link to get all the information for that. But it's gonna be a party, man. We're gonna celebrate the New Year in an amazing way,

Haley Radke: And you can bring your birth certificate and it won't be illegal for you to have it. Perfect.

Brian Stanton: I know, I know. And I'm still requesting the original one. [01:04:00] Yes. Just 'cause I wanna do it, you know what I mean?

Haley Radke: Oh, that's amazing. Yes. I encourage everyone that is in the area or you're nearby, near enough to travel, please go and see it because, yeah, I was so moved. Yours was the first performance of its kind that I've ever seen really addressing adoptee issues and so it was just incredible.

Okay. And now what would you like to recommend to us?

Brian Stanton: You have so many amazing recommendations, and they've all touched me in so many ways. A musician that I love, her name is Mary Gauthier. Uh, it's spelled G-A-U-T-H-I-E-R, but it's pronounced Go-shay. She's an incredible woman, man. Adopted, brought up in a pretty tough family, a tough, tough relationship with her father.

She ended up running away, living on the streets, became an addict. And then she [01:05:00] sobered up, became a chef in Louisiana, and then all of a sudden, like in her thirties, she picks up a guitar and starts playing. And now she is a folk musician, kind of Americana. People have described her as like the female Bob Dylan.

But she wrote an amazing album called The Foundling, which takes you through her experience as an adoptee. And it's so raw and so honest and so amazing, and her voice is just raw. When you're listening to it, it's not fake, man. It's just beautiful. And when I first heard about it and I got it, I swear I sat down and I listened to the whole album straight through twice in a row. It was just so moving.

And right now, her new album (Rifles and Rosary Beads) she wrote with wounded veterans. And they each [01:06:00] had a say in the songwriting and she put it out. But that's who she is, man. I mean, she's constantly trying to touch humanity and understand humanity and who we are in this world. And she's got that drive from adoption, really. I mean, I know that drives her. Uh, even though not everything is about that, it's about her life and who she is, and trying to understand everybody else. And I would highly recommend it because she's a beautiful person and a beautiful artist. And music, you know music, it touches us, man.

Haley Radke: Oh, what a wonderful recommendation. I definitely wanna check her out. I know I already follow her on Twitter and stuff. But I don't think I've ever listened to her music. So I will.

Brian Stanton: Definitely start with The Foundling because that's her story. She has this beautiful instrumental piece about her phone call with her birth mother, and she's just talking with her playing music behind, and it's like, oh my gosh, it's [01:07:00] amazing.

Haley Radke: So, okay, if I need to feel some feelings, I will put that on.

Brian Stanton: Do it, girl. Do it!

Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much. Where can we connect with you online? Brian, you already gave us your website. The brian stanton.com.

Brian Stanton: Yes, thebrianstanton.com and I'm on Facebook. You can hit me up. I actually also have a Blank page, which sometimes I forget about. In fact, I don't know if I've actually put the Missouri information on that Blank page, but it's definitely on my homepage. So you can look me up: Brian Stanton, B-R-I-A-N. Stanton. And my website, we do our best to keep that up updated.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I will link to all of those things in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and being so vulnerable. I really appreciate it.

Brian Stanton: It's been fantastic. Thank you for what you do. Thank you.

Haley Radke: Did you know I have a monthly newsletter? [01:08:00] It's new. There's only been one, so far, and I'm sending my next one in just a few days. It's just gonna be a place for me to share my personal thoughts with you and behind the scenes news of the podcast, what's coming up for Season Four, all that good stuff.

So if you'd like to be among the first to be in the know, you can sign up on adopteeson.com/newsletter. And speaking of behind the scenes, I wanted to let you know that Season Three is going to be 15 episodes long. So there's just a couple more weeks to go before the finale.

This episode has been brought to you by my amazing Patreon supporters. Thank you for standing with me. Thank you for helping me to bring you these episodes each week. I couldn't do it without you.

One last thing, I would like to ask you a little favor. Would you take the time to share this episode with just one person today? [01:09:00] Perhaps you know of someone who was adopted in Missouri. They'd probably enjoy hearing Brian's story and learning about the newly open records in their state.

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

Brian Stanton: And you bleep out, you bleep out cursings too. I see.

Haley Radke: I do, I do bleep cursing. And, um, that can be the Derek Frank rule. Um, I'll add that to my list.

Brian Stanton: That's great. I love it.

51 - Nicole G. - Emotions Are Not Our Enemies

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/51

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Haley Radke: You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 3, episode 11: Nicole G. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Throughout season 3, we've been touching on healing through creativity, and today I invited Nicole Gfeller, an art therapist, to share her story.

She dives into some of her childhood experiences and talks about how she went from being shut down emotionally to reintegrating her feelings. Nicole also gives us some practical ways we can start doing art therapy on our own, if seeing an art therapist maybe is not quite in the budget.

She and I actually recorded while she's on a five month trip back to Peru, where she was born. And she'll tell you more about that right away, but I wanted to let you know, you will feel like you are in the city there with her. You'll know what I mean when you hear the sounds of the city.

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 Adoptees On, Nicole Gfeller.

Nicole Gfeller: It was good. You were perfect.

Haley Radke: I did okay. Okay. Now, why don't you repeat your name so that it's exactly correct, and yeah, welcome to the show.

Nicole Gfeller: Thank you. My name is Nicole Gfeller. Yeah, it's hard to pronounce in English because it's a Swiss German name, so a lot of people have difficulties, so it's okay.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you for being so gracious with me, and we are Skyping from very far away. So I'm in Canada, and where are you?

Nicole Gfeller: I'm in Cusco, Peru. Cusco is at 3,300 meters above the sea level, and it's really high, and I'm doing my volunteer work here for five months, working with children that for some reason were separated from their parents. So I'm working with those children and youth, doing art therapy.

Haley Radke: Yes. Oh, I'm so excited to get to talk about art therapy with you. But why don't we start out with your story?

Nicole Gfeller: I was adopted from Lima, Peru, in 1980. So I'm 37 now. And so when I was one month old, my birth mom gave me up for adoption, and I grew up in Switzerland with my adoptive parents. And I had two siblings. Also, they're not my bio siblings, but I grew up with them. And, yeah, we spoke French and German. These are the two languages I grew up with. Then English and Spanish came later.

Haley Radke: So you speak four languages.

Nicole Gfeller: Yeah, so I learned some Italian at some point, but it's not very good anymore.

Haley Radke: And were your siblings adopted as well?

Nicole Gfeller: Yes, they were adopted and they're all from Peru, from Lima. And it's funny because they look much more typical Peruvian than me. And that was always a problem for me because I didn't really look Swiss, but I don't really look typical Peruvian either, because I have green eyes and my hair is brown. And so often here (also in Cusco now), they think I'm a gringa like they say I'm a tourist. So because of that they make me pay more for taxis and everything they sell to me. So I have to defend myself as a Peruvian here sometimes.

Haley Radke: What is that like, to grow up— And so you don't necessarily look like your adoptive parents and you don't even look like your siblings who are all from the same country?

Nicole Gfeller: Yeah, that was really hard. Even though at the time, I repressed a lot of things. So I didn't really, I wasn't really conscious about that. It only came to my mind when I actually came to Peru and realized that they all really look different. But when I grew up, what happened is that I never really talked about my emotions. It was very difficult, very challenging for me to grow up.

A lot of—Like every adoptee, asking about, wondering about what happened and, “What's the story behind…?,” and where I belong. And so when I was 12, more or less, that was the year everything came up flooding. Because I remember there was this trigger point in school where a teacher asked me where I was from, in front of the whole class. And I remember, for me, it was horrible having to say in front of (they were all Swiss), having to say in front of everybody that I was from Peru. And then I hated that teacher for a long time. It was real terrible.

But of course I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my parents that this happened. And this is when everything came up for me. And so this is—I started, being very rebellious, starting to turn towards alcohol to soothe the pain, responding more to my parents. And not being the well-behaved Swiss girl that I used to be until then, also starting to feel depressed at times and having some suicidal thoughts also sometimes.

Yeah, it was very tough growing up in Switzerland in this family. Even though I knew that they loved me, but I was quite a handful, I think, for my parents. Yeah.

Haley Radke: And were your siblings also a handful, or no?

Nicole Gfeller: No, not really. And that was something else. I remember they were often like, “Nicole, but why don't you just shut up and just don't trigger anything.”

And so it was hard, because I was the only one that was rebelling like that. I thought there was a lot of injustice done against me in the family, and I thought I was fighting for my rights, and for not being controlled (in a way). But that didn't really happen that much for my siblings, no.

So I felt even more lonely, because I didn't have anybody to talk to. We didn't really learn in my family to talk about emotions. And at the time, there was no counselor at my school. I didn't know any other adoptees. So it was very lonely. Yeah, I remember.

Haley Radke: I think I've heard that from many different adoptees, right? There's the teenage rebellion or the very compliant. It seems to be like almost always one or the other. Not every time, of course, but…

Nicole Gfeller: Yes. And I feel like I was jumping from one to the other. Like I was also a very—I was a people pleaser, totally a chameleon. I was very good at finding out what people wanted and analyzing their emotional state, and what I could do to have them like me or love me more. But then suddenly, something got triggered, especially with my mom, of course, because I did a lot of projection on her. So it was back and forth. I did, I had both within me. Yeah.

Haley Radke: You talked a little bit about, “We didn't talk about emotions at home,” and now your career is an art therapist. Like, where did that come into play for you?

Nicole Gfeller: What happened is that later, like in my 20s, I was still not doing really well. I was just—All my emotions, like I said, were repressed. But I started noticing that when I was not doing well, I really liked painting, actually. I remember that I liked that in school, but I didn't continue, really, until I started feeling really sad and angry. And so I would really just put all my emotions on this piece of paper, and I just felt really better afterwards.

And I didn't know that this was art therapy. I just didn't ask myself what it was, I just did it. And after the drawing I would usually write some poems, and they were usually very dark, and very sad, with a lot of grief in it, but after some time I just noticed I felt better. It was almost like all of the things I felt inside were outside of me. I externalized them and they were now on this piece of paper.

And then sometimes when I would look at the paper the following day, I would be scared sometimes of the paintings that I did. Sometimes it looked scary with red and it looked bloody and very, very painful. Most of the time, those drawings, I didn't keep them because… I didn't show them to anybody, either, because there was still a bit of a shame around that (around my feelings that there's something wrong with me). But at least I had found something that would help me feel better for a while.

And yeah, what happened after is that first of all, I studied—I went to university to become a teacher. So I was an ESL teacher for about six, seven years. And this is where I really learned to interact with youth. It's quite an art to, I find, to be a teacher and to have this authority, but also be kind to them and have them collaborate with you. So I really like that connection. And after a few years, I realized I don't like the system of giving grades and having to evaluate them based on their skills (intellectual skills). I was much more interested in how they were feeling.

I saw a lot of things happening with those youth, like with drugs, drug taking, or suicide attempts, or eating disorder, or depression. And I realized that with my job as a teacher I wouldn't be able to have access to those emotions with the youth; it was just not my job at the time. So this is where I decided I would like to be a therapist. And because I was still making art with myself and I knew I felt better, I looked it up and I found out that there is such a thing as art therapy, where it's therapy but using the arts. And I was like, Oh my God, this is wonderful.

So I also wanted to go abroad for a while, because I was an English teacher (ESL teacher). So I wanted to improve my English. So I decided to go to Vancouver, Canada. And I looked it up and they had an institute for art therapy. And so this is how it all started. I went there, studied art therapy for a year and did a practicum in a school again, but this time, not as a teacher, but as an art therapist working with children and youth. And I just loved it.

I really noticed how I connect easily with children and youth. And so of course, because I was doing that training, we did a lot of work on ourselves as well. And so this is where I learned also for myself to start acknowledging my emotions, feeling them in my body, because I was very disconnected to my body, my sensations. And then to start exploring them, and expressing them, and shifting them.

Haley Radke: So some of what you're doing right now in Peru is using those skills that you've learned, obviously, and you're working with youth there. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Nicole Gfeller: I see—I'm working in two different places. One is a transition house where women that went through domestic violence escape to this place with their children, and I'm working with the children (also with some of the moms, sometimes). And the other place is this foster home/shelter. It's a place where the children that were separated from their parents and their life until they're either adopted or reinserted in their birth family, if possible, or they stay there. So I see about nine children there.

And it's very touching. I really understand now why I went through this history myself, because it helps me now to connect with them. I just understand them really well. I have a lot of empathy for them. And sometimes to normalize their feelings, I just quickly mention, “I really know what it feels like, because I've been through something similar.” And I can see in their eyes that it really lands with them.

Yeah, so I work, I do art therapy because I also studied counseling and expressive arts therapy and somatic therapy, I'm also adding some of that in there. So I'm doing a combination of everything. Yeah, so what I'm noticing with the children already is— It's so interesting the way they're drawing, there's many things that you can observe. And there's already this need for perfection that you can see. They're always asking me if I have a ruler to make straight lines and perfect lines. And I never have one. And so they’re, “Ugh!”

Yeah, when they have to cut something out, it has to look perfect. And you can just see and ask, “How do you feel if it's not completely straight, this line?” And they're like, “Oh, I don't like it. I don't feel good about it.” So I'm doing different types of interventions, of course, but for perfectionism, I just did one last week and it was funny. I asked this child to make the ugliest drawing ever. And he looked at me and he was like, “What do you mean?” I was like, “Yeah, try to make the ugliest thing ever.” And so it was amazing to see how he opened up and he was… At the beginning, he was very inhibited, and then near the end, he was like, “Oh…” and he was making those movements and cutting paper, this way.

And sometimes I like using humor, also, sometimes in my sessions to keep it light and not always have it so deep. So I'm like, “Look at this, you could really be doing better. This is still good looking. You can make it worse.” And so he's like, “Okay.” It was really, really funny.

Of course there's that. There's a lot of need for control. There's a lot of grief. You can also see in their nervous system, how it's often activated. Some of them really have problems focusing for a long time. And sometimes it's a little bit hard to work with them, because they get up and walk up and look everywhere. So I'm also working on that a lot and emotional regulation helping them connect more with their sensations in their body, because this is something that I wasn't able to do. I was very dissociated. So I was really shut down emotionally, everything was repressed. And we work a lot on that too.

And then building more self esteem by, for example, drawing a tree and on each petal, there's something that you like about yourself. And then I have them read that out loud and ask how it feels. And then I read it to them, and often that triggers something else, and there can be some sadness and grief coming up, because this is something that you didn't really have, someone that believes in you. So it's almost like the wound shows up together with the healing. It's very, very powerful.

Haley Radke: That's amazing. And so as you are walking through this with them, and you're remembering what you've gone through as well, and what you've learned and experienced— Can you talk a little bit about that, and your journey to healing and connecting back with your body, and your feelings together, and what you've done to do that?

Nicole Gfeller: First of all, with making art myself, that was the first step that helped. Second, the second most important thing I think that happened to me is that I had a partner that talked to me about spirituality (and I don't want to go too much into detail about this here. That could be for another show, maybe). But it helped me understand that my soul had a purpose here. So I came here to this life because I needed to learn something.

And yeah, that really changed my whole perspective on being adopted and feeling like, This happened to me. I had no control! And it did–I'm not saying it didn't, but it gave me the motivation to start looking at, What is it that I can do from my end? Instead of, you know, being angry–-angry at everything: angry at my birth mom, and angry at my adoptive families.

So there I realized, There's something I can learn and what I need to learn here is to love myself first, unconditionally, be able to love others, and to believe in myself. Because self esteem was something that I was really struggling with (and I think a lot of other adoptees have that belief pattern as well that, “I'm not good enough.”) So this really helped me shift and it's almost when you find meaning to something, it helps you go through it, even if it's painful. And so that was another step.

Then of course, I did work with different therapists. I also tried more alternative therapy, and I think the culminating point was when I wrote my book. It was very, very cathartic, and I can tell you a little bit more about that, if you're interested.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. So what's the name of your book, and what's it about?

Nicole Gfeller: Yeah. So the name is The Untold Story of My Heart. It's the story that I never talked about to anyone before. Because as I said, as I grew up we didn't talk about the emotions. I never talked about my pain, the wound that I was carrying inside.

So in this book, I decided to put everything out there. And I decided to do that because—Do you remember when the movie Lion came out?

Haley Radke: Yes.

Nicole Gfeller: And I was there watching the movie and I remember I was crying my whole soul out. It was so touching and, but I could see how people in the room (and I don't think that they were all adoptees), but everybody seemed to be crying and everybody seemed to be really touched by that story.

So I was like, Huh, it seems like there's some kind of interest. People are touched by that. And they seem to be interested in these types of stories. And many people had told me before already, “With your story, you should be writing a book or they should make a movie or something about that.” And I was like, “Yeah!”

But after that I was like, I think it's time for me to write things down. And so I started. It was just after I finished my counseling training and I wasn't working for a while. And so yeah, I took my laptop, I sat at my favorite cafe in Vancouver every day. I would just remember stories and emotions that I went through when I was younger. And I would try to go back as early as I can (but I don't remember much from my childhood), but I started more like in adolescence.

And I wrote everything down and all those emotions came up again. I remember sometimes I would start almost crying in the cafe, so I had to go home, because it was getting too vulnerable. And one thing that is really interesting, which already happened (and I could talk about this more later), is when I met my birth mom for the first time.

I had this cough for months, it just wouldn't go away, and I knew it had to do with emotions. And so when I wrote the book, the same kind of cough came up again. And I looked it up, and in Chinese medicine, lungs are connected with grief. It's sadness. All of this came up and it's almost like my body also was purging that and showing, “There's work for you to do here.”

And so I wrote down everything. I try to do it as self-responsibly as I could, because the last thing that I wanted to do is to blame anyone. I didn't want to write a book blaming how I grew up and what other people did to me. So that was sometimes a struggle of—I still have a little bit of that. I don't want to hurt anybody by telling my story. But I think I found a way to do it where I could still express my emotions, but without criticizing anybody. It was just amazing to externalize that again. It's like doing art therapy. It's writing; it’s outside of you.

And by the end of the story, I just felt this change where I was like, I think I'm done with this book and I don't feel like I need to go back to my past and feel sad about what happened, or didn't happen, or what I would have wanted. I really felt it in my body: I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to go forward and now do something. Help other people.

So the primary aim was for me to do healing on myself, basically, and to tell my story. The second goal was also to give a voice to other adoptees and hopefully through my story, have the story, have my book help normalize their emotions, and normalize what they're going through (because this is what was lacking when I grew up). I would have loved to know, “This is normal, with what you went through. It's normal to feel those emotions.” And the third goal was to inform adoptive parents. also. I find that, and also in my case, my parents didn't have some kind of insight into my mind, or my brain, or my heart, because I just never expressed it. (Also, they didn't really ask a lot about it.)

But I think that if adoptive parents had some kind of insight about the beliefs that we have, the thoughts that we have, and what's going on in our hearts, it could help them (first of all), have more compassion, more empathy, and understanding where their child is coming from when the child reacts in a way that (for them), seems completely— (you know, how do you say?)--- which doesn't make any sense. So, to help adoptive parents also understand their adopted children better and therefore also parent them and be able to support them better.

Haley Radke: Is there one or two things you would say to adoptive parents about that?

We were talking earlier about how there's the rebellious teen or the compliant teen. Sometimes, the advice we're giving them is, “You should be asking them. You should be bringing these topics up and…” But like it's super hard with teenagers, right?

Nicole Gfeller: Yes, yes, yes.

Haley Radke: And a lot of us don't even necessarily know that's what we're experiencing in the moment. So do you have any advice about that?

Nicole Gfeller: Just offering to your adopted children that if they want to, they can go to them and talk to them about emotions. It's an offering, and then the adolescents will take it or leave it. But from time to time, just reminding them, “There's a place here for you to come and speak to..” Just that, I think, would already be amazing. If that never happened before, this is like a new door. Then it's up to the teenager to take it, right? (or not).

I think what would help also, is that because children (and also early adolescents), they, like you said, they're not really aware of what's going on inside of them. So having a parent name that for them would help also. For example, “Wow, it seems like you're really sad right now.” Or, “It looks like you're really angry right now. Do you want to talk to me about this?” Or just expressing that and naming that emotion would already give a language for the teenager. And then again, it's up to them to take that or not. (And also of course doing that nonjudgmentally).

To allow the adolescent to have all kinds of feelings, and not just allowing for the “good” emotions and shutting down the negative ones like anger, for example. Because that makes it really hard, especially because we often want to please our parents. So if one emotion is not okay, we're just gonna shut it down, and we're gonna carry it around, and have more and more of that emotion being piled up. And then later when you're 30, suddenly, it's gonna explode.

So I think it's really important to help them expressing those emotions safely, naming them, and telling them that it's normal to have them. Because emotions are not our enemies; they're here to tell us something.

Haley Radke: That's such a good picture: just making space for them, making space for them, and just having the opportunity. And it doesn't mean that every time you bring it up, you have to have this super in depth conversation. Like you said, this is just opening the door and just making sure they know it's there, whenever.

Nicole Gfeller: Exactly.

Haley Radke: That's great.

Now, I think that really transfers to us as adults, for ourselves. How do we make those openings, and space, and opportunities for doing some of the creative work that you have been briefly touching on through our talk, so far?

Nicole Gfeller: There's a lot of arts therapy, art-based interventions that you can do by yourself (because this is how I started as well). Because if someone hasn't really done any work on themselves, if you start exploring the pain, a lot can come up at the same time. So I would really start (and this is how I work with the people I work with as well), with establishing some resources and some emotional regulation, for example, so that later when you go to the more difficult work, that you do have some coping skills and resources to fall upon if needed.

For example, one of the first interventions that I do with children and adults is called “Drawing a Safe Space.” It's quite simple, but it's also very, very important. So especially for people that are dealing with a lot of anxiety, and fears, and also stress in their nervous system, that is a very good one. So basically, it's a self soothing technique. So first of all, you draw a safe space for you. It can be a space that you know, can be, for example, outside in the forest, or near a lake, or a sea. It can be wherever you want. And if you don't have such a space, because that sometimes happens, you can also invent one. You can imagine one. So I've had people draw themselves in the clouds and that painted sky, so that would work as well. As long as you can really immerse yourself in that safe space and imagine yourself there, then that's the most important thing.

So first of all, you draw it, you make it as detailed as you want. It's really important to ask yourself these questions so that it really works well. So first of all: “When you're in that space, what do you see? What do you smell? What can you hear?” And also, “What can you feel, like touch around you?” Because we all have all of those senses; we usually have one or two that are a little bit more prominent than the other.

So that will also help, for you to really imagine yourself in that space. So because when you have that drawing in front of you, and you have answered these questions, then what you could do is to visualize yourself in that space. It's like a guided meditation. And it's usually nice if someone else does it for you, but if you're by yourself that works, as well. So you basically close your eyes and you really imagine yourself somewhere in that drawing of yours. And then, like I said before, start smelling things, hearing things, and touching things, and really allow those sensations to be really felt in your body.

Notice also your emotions, the calmness and tranquility that will pervade your body. And doing that really helps calm your nervous system. Basically, to stop thinking about all the worries and all the fears. This also works a lot for anger. It works for everything. It's really a way for you to center, press the restart button, and then you can continue your day feeling better.

So that's a really nice one. And depending on the client, sometimes it really works well with the guided meditation, and sometimes it's more the visualization (that's the drawing). So that's up to each person. But that's a very good self soothing technique to start with.

Haley Radke: And so you can always come back there, right? You're making this space so that you can always come back if you get really uncomfortable or triggered or... Wow. I love that.

Nicole Gfeller: Exactly. When I do the guided meditation for someone else, I always tell them, “Okay, this is a place, this is your private space, your secret space. And you can always come back to it whenever you want. It can take one minute or two to just quickly close your eyes, imagine that space, and then continue your day. Or you can make it longer, that's up to you.” And knowing that they can always go back there is really also soothing and comforting. Yeah, it's really a resource.

Then there's a lot of other interventions. So for example, for self empowerment and self esteem, what I often do with my clients is have them draw a flower (if they want, or it can be a tree), and then the petals of the flowers or the leaves on the trees will be like a strength of that person, or something positive about themselves, something that they're good at.

And sometimes it takes some time to find that. And so what I asked them is to think of something that their friends told them to help them find positive things and to start writing it down. Or you can also write just cards of positive self statements to you. I used to do that (not here in Cusco right now, but in Vancouver). I have a lot of different cards and Post-its around my house, where I talk to myself those positive statements like, “You can do it.” “You are more than good enough.”

And whatever you need to hear when you're in a situation where you're struggling. Find out what works for you. If it's going to be a drawing or a tree or just some Post-its, or some cards that you carry with you in your bag. Some people do it with a rock or some stones, and you can draw, you can write a word on it. And then remember what it means and then you can have it with you, and during the day if you are struggling, just hold that stone or that rock. And again, really feel—the most important thing is really to feel in your body, because it tells your nervous system, It's okay, I can relax. That will be something else for self empowerment and self esteem.

One thing that I was really struggling with was hope. I was very pessimistic. I didn't have a lot of hope. I didn't have a lot of motivation to do things because I was like, I prefer being pessimistic, because if it's not going to happen, then at least I'm prepared and I'm not going to be hurt. So I had this whole philosophy, which I also describe in my book. Hope was really hard for me.

There's also something you can do there. You can draw and start visualizing that hope as well. I just did it like two weeks ago with an adult client that I'm working with. And she also has that wound of abandonment. And it was just amazing to see the shift in that lady during the session. So I asked her to draw first her hope as it is right now. And then on the side, the hope in the future, the hope that she would like to have. And then we talked a little bit about both and we explore the drawings. I will always ask questions and then I asked her, “Okay, now, so how do you end the drawing?”

It's always like staying in the arts without therapy, not trying to make too quickly a link to your life, but staying in the arts, staying in the imagination and the creativity. So I asked her, “How can you move from one–-from this first drawing of hope to the other one?” But by staying in the creativity (and it took some time), but then she was like, “Ah, I could actually draw a bridge.” And she drew a bridge, and she drew herself on one side of the bridge, still with the kind of hope that she has now (which was really the lack of hope).

And then again, staying in the art, I asked her, “What do you think could help this woman here in this drawing to start crossing the bridge, or to put one foot on the bridge?” She felt a little bit stuck. She was like, “I don't know. I don't think she can do it. I don't think she can really move to the other side.” So we were talking a little bit about that feeling stuck and not knowing if it's going to work.

And I asked her, “But there's something maybe you can add in the drawing. You can cut something out. You can add more color or you can glue something on it. It's very free.” Her face lit up and she added her children on the other side of the bridge and she added some bubbles and they were like, “Come on, Mommy!” You know, “Cross the bridge already and we're here waiting!” And I could see her whole complexion and the way she was breathing, everything shifted. And she was like, “Yeah, I think… Yes, with them saying that I'm going to cross the bridge.” And then at the end, I did another visualization where she really stepped into this future hope of hers and feeling it. And it was amazing to see the shift in her body and feeling that hope.

So this is something that people at home can also do, like drawing hope and seeing what happens there. I find it easier if you have someone that witnesses that with you, but yeah, I think for a start, you can also do that on your own.

Haley Radke: That was beautiful. That was my tear up moment.

Nicole Gfeller: Okay.

Haley Radke: Do you want to do one more?

Nicole Gfeller: After establishing those resources and this emotional regulation, then you could go a little bit into the more difficult work, which is really going in and exploring those emotions.

So one intervention would be to draw the different parts of ourselves, the different emotions that we have and so you can start naming them. For example, for me I had the sad one. I had the one that felt abandoned, the angry one (and of course in this is also joy, right?). But you start naming all of them, and then you start making drawings for each one of them. What do they look like? What color do they have? What size do they have? What shape? This is all very personal. There's no right or wrong way to do that, really. That's important to know with art therapy. It's not an arts class. It's just a way of expressing yourself.

All of those emotions are really—We all have them. They're really normal to have, there's no good or bad emotions. They're all here to tell us something, to give us some kind of message. And it's important to start listening to them. What I would have people also do is to start writing what that emotion has to say. If it had a voice, what would it say? And who knows what will come out of that. It's really, it's talking to you, and then you can answer by writing… You can write a letter to that emotion, or you can write a poem to it, or you can start having (those different emotions), having a dialogue with each other.

What I do with the children often (and the youth), is that joyful part of you, if it had to help (for example, sadness, or anger, or fear), what would it say? And then they come up with the dialogue, trying, so one part trying to help the other part. It's all in the imagination and creativity. And right now it might not make a lot of sense, but when you start doing it and when you're really immersed in that work, it's just amazing the depth and insights that you get out of doing this kind of exercise.

Because art therapy is really tapping into your right brain hemisphere, where the creativity is. It's nonverbal. The arts making and all of that is on that side. And it's really different from our left hemisphere brain, which is about the rationalizing, and the analyzing. So sometimes even talking and explaining what art therapy is (from a left hemisphere perspective) to you (that is also right now in your left hemisphere), listening to me and trying to understand what I'm saying is sometimes hard. So that's why I'm saying the best way to really feel what it's like is to do it yourself.

Haley Radke: And we talk so much about how, adoptees, our trauma is preverbal.

Nicole Gfeller: Totally.

Haley Radke: And so that's why it's so important to access those feelings.

Nicole Gfeller: Exactly. And with art therapy, because you're in that right brain hemisphere, a lot of implicit memories can start coming up. So I'm just going to explain quickly what implicit and explicit memory is.

We start developing our hippocampus, which is the place where our memory, our explicit memories, get stored at the age of two, more or less. And so everything that happens before that, there's no hippocampus around to actually store those emotions, so everything goes in the implicit memory. Also with trauma, if something really overwhelming happens (even after you're two years old), if it's too traumatic for your body, then it will also be sent to the implicit memory. So that's why you have some people that are older and that forget about their abuse or traumatic situation, for example, because it was just too much, too soon, at the same time.

As adoptees, we have a lot of implicit memories. And I remember for myself that sometimes an emotion would come up and I wouldn't really understand why. This is how the implicit memory works. It's like it's triggered by a sound, or by a smell, or by a face that we see, or something. So it's very— We can't really control it. It's like the unconscious.

And so I remember for myself, that when I would hear Peruvian music in the street in Switzerland when I was walking (with the pan flutes, typical Peruvian music), it would bring up this sadness, this grief. And I didn't understand why. First of all, I was very ashamed in the street to suddenly be tearing up and starting to cry. So of course I was repressing it, but I could feel it coming up. And it's so interesting, because that's a kind of implicit memory. I must've heard that before I was adopted. I was in Lima. There's always music, this type of music around. And that came up when hearing that type of music again.

So with art therapy, what happens often is that it's going to bring up some implicit memories. And for it in order for it to not be a trauma anymore is really to start changing that implicit memory into an explicit one, so that it's stored in your brain as an explicit one. You can start making sense of it, you can process it. And it's no longer controlling you, with showing up unconsciously, out of control, (or wherever you are).

So that's one of the advantages, also, of art therapy. There's many others, but, yeah.

Haley Radke: That's a really critical one. So thank you. Thanks for explaining that.

Okay. So you mentioned briefly, you have met your birth mother?

Nicole Gfeller: Yes I did. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. Do you want to talk about how you found her and that?

Nicole Gfeller: Yes. I had given up on finding my birth mother, because I went to Peru a couple of times and I looked for her. And the barrister that took care of my adoption, he said he didn't have any papers anymore. And then I forgot that maybe I should have paid him something a little bit, because sometimes it helps for them to suddenly come up with something, or remember.

And he said, “I think I remember you! There's two versions. Either your mom was poor and she was like 15 and your dad was from Serbia. And he was a sailor that came to the harbor of Lima. Or you came from a rich family, and it happened out of marriage, and therefore that's why they didn't want to keep you.” And so, “Okay.” So for a long time, I thought I was half-Serbian, but it's not true. It wasn't true, eventually. Anyways, I thought I was a compatriot of Novak Djokovic, the tennis man. Yes, but it was wrong.

So yeah, it was interesting, because I went— I like going to those alternative types of therapies and I went to a psychic. And she told me that there was information around my birth mom in Switzerland, I just needed to look for it more. And I was like, “Oh wow, I didn't know, I didn't think– I didn't go there for that.” But this is what she told me. And so I started looking, and making phone calls, and writing emails. And it was a little bit of a hassle, because my brother and I were adopted at the same time. So they didn't want to give me the information, because I could see my brother's information. And then he had to send a letter.

So it was all a bit complicated, but eventually I did receive her name and I looked her up on Facebook. I found her, but then she never answered back. And so I decided to go to Peru. First of all, my partner at the time helped me find her phone number. Everything on the Internet nowadays is crazy. And so we called her. It was so scary and so weird. And also because my Spanish wasn't very good, it was hard to converse with her at the beginning. And also it was really hard to talk to someone that is your mom and starts crying on the phone, and tells you that she feels sorry, and that I should forgive her. And it was overwhelming for me at the time on the phone.

But so I still decided to go to Lima and to meet her in person. I had this idealized image of what it would be like to meet her, because I had met some other Peruvian women here. And they're very kind, and loving, and tender (I find here). And so I was expecting some of that when I was there. And when I arrived, it wasn't like that at all. There was a little bit of disappointment, because it was more distant, a little bit more cold. And later, I understood why: because of course, she never got that nurturing, and tenderness, and warmth, and love herself. So of course, she wouldn't know how to give it to someone else.

But for me, it was like another loss to grieve. I was not at all as I expected at the beginning. I felt like I was, again, I was trying to help her feel better, because of her grief, and her story, and her trauma. And I felt there wasn't a lot of space for me to talk about mine and how I felt. So because I already grew up trying to make my adopted mom very happy, here I had to do that again. So that was, it was… Yeah, it was hard.

So I had to grieve that loss a little bit. And then when I went back right now, just before coming here to Cusco, I just, I felt better. I was able to have more compassion and understanding from where she was coming from. And I didn't have those expectations anymore. I just knew, I understood what was going on in her family and her traumatic past. I can now really accept them the way they are, and I don't need them to be a certain way for me to feel better, because I'm okay. I did my work around that, so that's okay.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm excited to do recommended resources because, like you said, there's more of your story in your book, which is… Because we don't have enough time to touch on everything.

Nicole Gfeller: Yes, I know.

Haley Radke: I'd love for people to check that out. Can you tell us where we can find it?

Nicole Gfeller: The easiest way, I think, is on my website. The website is www.nicolegfeller. com. And there's a link there where you can find the book; it's going to bring you to the Amazon page.

Haley Radke: That's great. I'll link to that in the show notes.

Nicole Gfeller: And I also have a Facebook page called Nicole Gfeller Counseling, where I post sometimes what I do with the children and youth, how I work with them, some interventions. So if people are interested, they can follow me there.

Haley Radke: Thank you. And what did you want to recommend to us today?

Nicole Gfeller: If people want to do more art therapy exercises with themselves, once they did what we talked about today and they want to do more, there's a website called 100 Art Therapy exercises. You can just Google that, and it's going to bring you to a page where there are literally 100 art therapy exercises. It's not specifically focused on adoptees. It's more general. It goes by theme. For example, you want to work with grief, here are a few ideas of what you could do. You want to work on self esteem, or on anger, or communication, etc. So it gives you some ideas of what you could do. So it's a more general approach, but I think it's still… Sometimes I go there myself if I don't have any ideas about what to do. I think it's really helpful.

Otherwise also on Pinterest, I just found out that if you type art therapy in Pinterest, a lot of activities come up with a little drawing also. And it's really helpful.

Haley Radke: Those are so great. And I did look at that link that you sent me ahead of time. And there's—You're right. It's 100. There's so many different things. And each section has such different ideas that if one, you're like, “I can't do that. That's too weird.” The next one will work for you, so... Such a great resource.

Thank you. You've already told us where we can connect with you online, but I just want to thank you so much for sharing your story with us and for just— I'm so excited about the work you're doing down in Peru. You're doing so many good things and I just loved your explanation for us of ways we can make our drawing the safe space, and what we can do once we've established those safe things for ourselves. So thank you, Nicole. I really appreciated chatting with you today.

Nicole Gfeller: Yeah, I loved it myself. Thank you. And if anybody has any questions about other ideas, other things that they can do (more connected to adoption), because we didn't go much into those details. I mean, if they can send me an email and I'd love to answer them and to help them out with some exercises they can do for themselves.

Haley Radke: Thank you. That’s really kind of you.

I used to blog, forever ago. And if you manage to find it, you will be delighted and amused to read some of my deliciously in the fog posts. That's not a challenge, I'm just saying if you read it, take it with a giant salt shaker. And I've been thinking more and more about writing and how I could do that, and I settled on a monthly newsletter. It's just this great way for me to share what's going on in my life and yet not have the thrill that comes with public scrutiny of blogging.

So I'd love to connect with you in that way. So, if you go to adopteeson.com/newsletter, there's a quick signup form. And my next email is going out in a week or two, so if you sign up today, you definitely won't miss it.

This episode, as always, is brought to you by my generous Patreon supporters. Thank you, friends. I truly couldn't do the show without your financial partnership. Patreon just did a little change of how they charge patrons, so if you do have questions about that, make sure you message me, and I'm happy to chat with you about it. The change was a big surprise to Patreon creators, too, I assure you.

Before we go, I need to ask you one favor. Would you tell one person about this podcast episode? I'd love it if you'd share it with someone who perhaps said to you in the past they don't really have the resources for therapy. Maybe listening to Nicole will spark some ideas in them for things they can do on their own to work through some adoptee feelings.

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

48 Julian - Their History Was Not My History

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/48

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Haley Radke: You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 3, Episode 9: Julian. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today, I welcome Julian Kelly to share her story. Julian and I talk about her search for identity, what she's done to build stronger attachments in adulthood, and how her music and songwriting allow her an amazing outlet for all the feelings.

She is wise and talented, and I don't want you to miss anything that she shared. In fact, I was so focused. Here's my true confession: I was so focused on what Julian was saying as I was interviewing her, there's a few minutes where I didn't even notice that we had a bad connection. And normally I would edit that out, but it's just so interesting and good that I know you'll be able to overlook that because we come right back to clear and you'll be able to understand everything. So just so you know, that's coming.

It's just such a great interview; I just loved my time with her. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and all the links to everything we talked about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Sorry for those couple of minutes, but it is so worth it. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Julian Kelly. Welcome.

Julian Kelly: Hi, thank you.

Haley Radke: I would love it if you would just start out and share your story with us, Julian.

Julian Kelly: My adoption story is unique and complicated, just as many others are. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland (according to one source). Another source says that I was born elsewhere in France, so I'm not really sure.

I was adopted by a family. Legally, they adopted me around three years old. During the time that I was not adopted, I was in the system. I was in foster care and also in a couple of orphanages, then was eventually adopted. And my adoption was a closed adoption, so I had virtually no information about either side of my family. Everything that I had was basically hearsay from the social worker. So, when I decided that I wanted to try and find my birth family, I was starting from zero.

Haley Radke: When you just said, “I don't actually know if I might have been born in France,” I was like, What? That is some interesting information that you got.

That, so starting from zero, what does that look like?

Julian Kelly: Do you mean starting from zero with my search or just starting with zero in my psyche, and my being, and my process of trying to make peace with my adoption? Which one are you interested in?

Haley Radke: All of them. Let's start with search.

Julian Kelly: Okay, my search for my birth family was essentially my search for my identity, because my adoption was a closed adoption. So I wasn't privy to basic biological information. In fact, I later found out that the agency even changed my date of birth. A lot of the information that you get comes from the social worker, and it's not written down, and it could be wrong. And a lot of the information that I had in the beginning was based on things that just my adoptive parents remembered that the social worker had said, and weren't sure if they remembered them correctly.

I started with what I thought I knew, which was that the family was located in Baltimore, and part of the family was. The other part of the family was in France. Since I had so little information to go on, what I did was I went on AncestryDNA. And took the DNA test there and that connected me with my father's family.

I connected with them and became very, very close with an aunt on that side. Her name is Manuela and she was incredibly helpful to me. She was able to tell me who was in Baltimore in ‘83 (the year I was born). Then I connected with the adoption agency to try and find information on my mother's side of the family and that was very difficult.

The agency told me that they'd lost my biological mother's file. At one point, they gave me incorrect information. They gave me somebody else's file once and told me that both of my biological parents were deceased. I mean, I really, really, really went through it with the agency. And finally they said, “Okay, we've lost the file. So we have to go to the state archives to search for it. And hopefully it'll be there. And if it's not there, then we can't help you.”

I had to file a bunch of paperwork and they just dragged their heels with searching the archives. This process went on for a number of years; I think it was six years. Eventually, the social worker that I was working with said, “Well, there is another name in the file that belonged to my adoptive parents.” And just on a crapshoot, she thought, Well, did your biological mother try to put another child up for adoption? and “I'm going to reach out to this woman, this random woman, and see if maybe you're her child,” (basically).

And it turned out that my biological mother had at one point, tried to put my sister up for adoption and my sister's information had gotten switched. The file information had gotten switched. So we were able to connect that way. So it was very complicated and frustrating and there were a lot of emotional ups and downs, because I’d get these calls like, “We found her, we found her!” And then a call would come a week later, which would say, “I'm sorry, I was wrong. I had the wrong person. I'm still looking, but I was mistaken. That's not her.”

So I would have these moments of elation and feeling like I finally found my family. And then there would be this horrible letdown that happened twice. The agency also was supposed to hold on to a letter for me that was allegedly written by my biological mother. And I was supposed to be able to pick that letter up when I was 18.

I called the agency shortly thereafter, and they'd lost it. And after briefly speaking with my birth mother, she said she'd also left tapes, like little audio tapes with her voice on it for me, and none of that was kept for me. Nobody knows where any of it is.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh.

Julian Kelly: It was rather complicated.

Haley Radke: That is one of the most wild stories I've heard for a domestic situation (domestic adoption).

Julian Kelly: Yeah, it was really complicated and I think that probably the agency, I think they felt pretty bad about the fact that they'd lost my paperwork, but also were trying to cover their tracks and were worrying about a possible lawsuit.

So in many ways, I think the answer for them was to just drag it on, and drag it on, and drag it on, indefinitely.

Haley Radke: You said you were able to speak with your birth mother.

Julian Kelly: Yes, I spoke with her a few times in April.

Haley Radke: And what did—sorry, I don't… When did you actually start the search? You said it took about six years.

Julian Kelly: The entire search took two decades. I'd actually started looking when I was 13. I started going online to chat rooms and also adoption websites and posting my information. At one point, I even put an ad in the newspaper, just doing everything that I could to find them.

And then finally, two years ago, I located my paternal side. And then just this year, I was able to connect with my maternal side.

Haley Radke: Wow. Okay.

Julian Kelly: Yeah.

Haley Radke: You and I are actually the same age. I was born in ‘83 as well.

Julian Kelly: Oh, okay.

Haley Radke: So I remember doing that when I was a teenager too, posting online in different forums and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Julian Kelly: Yeah. Similar.

Haley Radke: Okay. Let's pause on the search stuff, but you were talking about your search for identity. And so did that start when you were as young as 13?

Julian Kelly: I think my search for identity actually started even younger than that. I remember being in first grade and we had a family history assignment. We had to report on where our families came from and our family tree, and then we had to create these little paper cutouts of the members of our family. I remember sitting there feeling almost paralyzed with this pair of scissors in my hand, because I knew I was an adoptee.

I think that was the moment when I thought—definitively in my mind, I knew that the lineage that my adoptive parents came from was different from mine. And I had this deep desire to represent myself authentically, but I didn't know how, because I didn't have the information. So, I just remember sitting there and feeling so frustrated, because I had no story.

So many of my classmates, eventually after they finished cutting out their little paper people, they got up and they knew the stories of their families. They knew, “Oh, well, my family came from England” and “This is how our journey was, and this is what our culture involves, and these are the foods we eat, and these are…” They knew all of that stuff. And for me, I knew only about my adoptive family's heritage, but not about my own.

I was cognizant of the fact that their history was not my history. Even at that young age, I felt a tremendous hunger to just know what my story was. I remember being frustrated, because I went home and I talked to my dad and I was like, “What do you know about my adoption? What do you know about my biological parents?” And he didn't know very much. And it was really frustrating for me. I remember feeling, Why don't you know?

And then also, around the same time, it occurred to me (very young, first grade), occurred to me that I was essentially living and being raised by complete and total strangers. And it just hit me like a brick wall. All of a sudden, I felt tremendously alone in the world and isolated. And just like, Where is my tribe? Because all of my classmates, the people around me, they seem to have such a deep interconnectedness with their families. And even at that young age, I realized there was something different in the way that my parents and I interacted, and the way that I was attached to them (or not attached to them, I should say) that was different from the experience of my peers.

Haley Radke: So you were adopted out of foster care and some orphanages, so you had– There were lots of breaks in your care, before you went to them.

Julian Kelly: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Do you think that had an impact as well?

Julian Kelly: I do. I really do. And it's really interesting that you said that, because my adoptive mom, she always talks about when I came home (the first time I came home), I'd slept in the car, because I was emotionally exhausted. They said I screamed and screamed and cried and cried, and it was obviously extremely traumatic for me to just be thrown into a new world with strangers that I didn't know. And they brought me over to my grandfather's house, and my adoptive mom would try to hold me. And every time she tried to hold me, I'd bite, and I'd kick, and I'd scream. And she couldn't understand it.

That was before these wonderful books we have now, about the primal wound and everything. And she didn't understand that I'd experienced a real trauma and was literally pushing her away, and wanted nothing to do with her. So it was very evident: I stopped eating for a while and my father had to call my pediatrician. And the pediatrician's response was, “Well, children won't starve themselves. So don't worry, she'll eat eventually when she gets hungry enough.”

I remember hearing those stories, growing up with those stories of those first days (because I don't have a whole lot of memories of them). Everything about it to me now as an adult says trauma. And to me, it seems so obvious, but to them, they thought, Well, maybe she's too young to really have a traumatic experience of separation. Maybe she's too young to be cognizant of the fact that she's been moving from unstable place to unstable place. And that maybe they just had no sense of the fact that I was aware that what was happening to me didn't feel right.

Haley Radke: Some of these feelings about not attaching and the impact that trauma had on you as a little wee person—how has it, has it continued into adulthood for you?

Julian Kelly: The impact as a child was profound. It's funny, I feel guilty saying this, but I felt virtually no attachment towards my adoptive parents. I don't know if that was part of the dynamic or the trauma of being separated, but I felt nothing for them. I think I related to them as caregivers. I understood that they were my providers, and that I needed to behave in a way that was pleasing to them, because that was a matter of survival for me.

So I needed to adapt to their ways, and I think I understood that at a very young age. But as far as feeling true love and bondedness, there was none of that. Then, as I got older, I don't know, I felt such a void. I felt an incredible void. So I sought out a lot of therapy work and really dug deep and started asking the difficult questions of, How do I learn to feel attached to other people? How do I let myself become securely attached to safe people in my life?

And I did that work and it was very, very challenging. And now I feel, I do feel attachment now as an adult, deep attachment in fact. But as a child, I did not.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I think probably there are quite a few of us that maybe have had the similar experience of not feeling connected to our adoptive parents, but so hard to say that out loud, right?

Julian Kelly: Yeah it is. It's hard to say, but I feel like people need to know that this is just the reality of our experience as adoptees. And this is a biological thing. Even as a child, I experienced feelings of, What's wrong with me? Why don't I feel attached to my parents? Why don't I? Even that young, even in the first grade, it was really evident to me that the people around me, the kids around me were far more bonded to their parents than I was. And I never really could shake the feeling that I was living with strangers. And for me, I always felt an element of distrust, and anxiety, and a sense of not fully feeling safe. But most certainly, I never really felt as though I was a full member of their tribe, even as a child.

And the older I got, the more I felt that I was different and not fully accepted because of these differences, and they were just… There were differences, I think… For example, I have a very artistic temperament and my adoptive family is very concrete. Growing up, there was a sense of (for me), I was looking for deep artistry in the world and I was seeking out new ways of self expression, yet I was living in a family where those were not their priorities. And I was lucky in the fact that they allowed me to explore my interests and they didn't try to block my creativity, but they certainly didn't understand it.

Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit more about— You said you went to therapy and that you feel like you finally learned to have a deep attachment to others. Could you talk a little bit about that and what are some of the things you've learned or done to do that?

Julian Kelly: Well, I think the number one thing, and this is going to probably sound a little bit controversial, but I was in a therapy relationship (circa 2006). And it was a really traumatic relationship for me. But in the beginning, it was very healthy. And in the beginning of the relationship, the therapist that I was seeing took on the role of surrogate mother. And in many ways, she fulfilled the fantasy that I had, that I hoped that my biological mother would be. And so I think it just opened something up in me, because for the first time, I felt like I was somebody's child (even though it was a therapy relationship).

In the beginning, I think that she, in a sense, reparented me. And so I went through these really infantile states in the therapy, and made my way through that into adulthood and through that. Just through the experience of loving her deeply and feeling deeply loved, I was able to acknowledge the fact that, Hey I can feel these feelings, I'm capable of it.

And then it just started to happen in other relationships. I realized that I had attachments, deep attachments to people, but I just wasn't even necessarily aware of it. For instance, my grandmother, she and I were very close, but we didn't talk about our feelings. And there was, it was like a muted closeness. It didn't look like what other people had with their grandmothers, so I guess on some level, I assumed that I was broken and I wasn't feeling things fully. But it was more learning to express, and learning to allow myself to be vulnerable with others. After I learned those skills, I was able to move forward, get married, and feel very, very deep attachment to my husband. And just foster that.

I have friendships that I feel tremendously connected in those relationships, but there are still some walls with my adoptive family that are very specific to them, I think, too. In part, I never felt fully accepted by them. And not just my adoptive parents, but it extended into other areas of the family. I was very, very close to my maternal side, but my paternal side just—I think they disliked me because of my racial composition (or what they assumed my racial composition was). And so I grew up hearing some disparaging remarks about people of the race, which they assumed me to be. And it was very hard for me to fit in with that. Yeah, to find my place in all of that, and to develop a solid sense of identity among people that disliked me because of my assumed racial composition.

Haley Radke: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you experienced that. You're still in touch with your adoptive parents, then? Even though you felt detached from them, are you still in contact with them, and did they know you're searching and everything?

Julian Kelly: Yes, even though there have been so many growing pains with my adoptive parents, I'm very close to them, and I don't know if it's a trauma bond, or if it's just… I don't know, I really don't know why we continue to choose to be bonded so much, even though there are many emotional components in the relationship that are lacking.

But they were fairly supportive of my search. I think they felt a little threatened by it in the beginning. I think they were worried that they might be replaced, but after they realized that the place that they have in my life is a permanent one, they just came to terms with things. But I can sense, sometimes I feel—I don't know, it's a really strange thing. It's a really strange thing to be, in some ways more attached to my adoptive family, my adoptive parents, more so than I am to my biological family. Because, you know, I'm in reunion now, and that has been incredibly complex.

It's changed my views in many ways. I feel like the adoption system is incredibly broken. There are so many more things that we could be doing to preserve families and to protect children that we're not doing, just because of costs, just because of greed. And it's endlessly frustrating to me, that aspect of adoption. Yet at the same time, I have to acknowledge that after meeting one side of my family, I'm fairly confident that I would not have had a very good life on that end.

And it's painful for me to actually acknowledge that, but there seems to be some very serious mental illness on one side. I think that based on the experiences of my siblings, that had I stayed in that environment, that I would have shared the same fate (which it would have included really horrible abuse).

So I'm kind of in a weird place, because I'm not pro-adoption. I'm never going to advocate for that being the solution. Yet at the same time, I have to acknowledge that had I stayed in that family, I think I would not have made it to adulthood.

Haley Radke: That's something that so many of us go through in reunion. What if, the what ifs, and yeah, I really appreciate you sharing about your story and all of these pieces.

And what I'd love to shift to, you mentioned that you are artistic and in fact, you are a singer and a songwriter. And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your work there and how adoption and being an adoptee has impacted that.

Julian Kelly: That's a loaded question.

Haley Radke: Sorry. (laughs)

Julian Kelly: (laughs) I've been very artistic from the beginning. Art has always been my way of processing my feelings and just coping with the world, coping with really intense feeling states that adoption imposes on us (in many cases). The themes in my life, even as a child–-I had deep grief about losing my family. And it was grief that I couldn't really talk about with my adoptive parents, because we weren't close enough for that. And I don't think they would have been open to it or would have understood, even, because they have no frame of reference for it.

My way of coping with those feelings and with that grief was to put it into music, so I started to write songs. And my adoptive family realized, “Oh this kid has a knack for music.” And so I was signed to a label called Jazz Street Station when I was just 12 years old, and I started to make test recordings for them. They were writing songs for the Spice Girls and really big bands, and they needed a singer to just basically sing through the songs so that the artists would know what the songs should sound like. So, I started making those when I was 12.

And then I went to Peabody Conservatory for a little while and eventually found myself on the national tour of “Songs from the Soul” and I got to do Dreamgirls. And I've traveled the world because of musical theater. And that's been great, because it's good therapy (for one). When you're on stage pretending to be somebody else, you can push aside all your own feelings and your insecurities (or whatever is ailing you), and you can just leave it in the…I don't know, in the side wings (or whatever) for a little while. So I did that for a while until I got tired of traveling. Then I went back to school for clinical psychology, and met my husband, and I got married.

But as far as how my adoption has informed my music, it's tremendously impacted virtually every area, even down to the characters that I was willing to play. I always, even as a child… Like there would be auditions for a bunch of shows and I'd have to go to Chelsea Studios in New York to go to the auditions for the national tours and everything. And I always wanted to play Orphan Annie, because I identified with her.

As an adult, I released the music album called The Family Reject. And that was an album that was pretty much entirely about adoption. I wrote that in a period of time during which I felt really rejected by my biological family. Also, I didn't feel like a full member of my adoptive family either. So I just labeled myself as a way of taking my power back and just decided, I'm going to put all these feelings and everything that I'm experiencing in the music just to hold on to my sanity. So, music has always been a big part of my life.

Haley Radke: And when you talked about putting your grief into your songwriting, do you do that when you're writing songs for other artists as well?

Julian Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Everything that I write, I just write from a place of truth. And so whatever I'm experiencing in that moment, whatever is really “up” in my life during that time is what I write about. And a tremendous amount of my songs are about relationship loss, and abandonment, and grief, and love. Love has also been a huge theme in my music.

Haley Radke: This whole podcast series, we've been talking about Healing through Creativity. And I love to give people some kind of practical ideas of things they can do to use creativity in their own healing work. Do you have any ideas in the musical realm or songwriting that a layperson like myself could just— What could I do to sit down and I don't know… Could I just write a song? Or, I don't know… I don't wanna put words in your mouth. I'd love to hear if you have a couple ideas.

Julian Kelly: If songwriting is something that's relaxing for you, then most definitely. I think we all have a creative side. It's just that in many people, it's unexpressed. So I would just say, just pick up a pen and a piece of paper and just start writing. Just let it flow, even if it doesn't make sense. And then, eventually, if you feel the need to make something cohesive out of it, you can pull the little gems out of whatever comes out.

And then what I do is I sit down at the piano (and I just almost feel like the music is writing itself when I do it). But I just channel my emotions. I just play what I'm feeling like, I don't know… I don't know how to say it—it's almost like I let the music personify me. For the space of time that I'm sitting at the piano, I become the music and it flows out of me.

And that's how I do it, and I do that from a place of non judgment. So, I think that always helps, if you can be creative, but be creative in a way that it's a safe space for you, to not put a lot of judgements on your work. And to just let it be whatever it is and really respect whatever you create just for what it is. I don't know if that helps, but…

Haley Radke: It's totally helpful, and I really appreciate what you were saying about the non judgment, because I've been talking to other artists that do visual artistry, and they're like, “You're not painting for— to go in a gallery, you're just painting for yourself.” So similarly, this is a good example of that.

Julian Kelly: When I write music, sometimes I think about that. Sometimes I think, How is this going to be received by the world, by the community, by… If I'm writing for another artist, is this in line with their image? Those are things that go through my head.

But for the most part, they're fleeting thoughts and I always come back to a sense of I have to write from a place of truth and I have to express what's true for me. And it's something that I do for myself, really. And it always makes me happy to find out that my music has impacted other people in a positive way. I'm always happy to hear that.

But at its core, it's just me really learning, in a sense, how to just be in the world. And just—music is my place where I can just go and exist without judgment.

Haley Radke: That sounds pretty good. I like that. Exist without judgment.

Sorry. I'm just having this moment where I'm like, That sounds so peaceful and nice. And yeah, it's good.

Julian Kelly: Sometimes it's pretty angry. (laughs)

Haley Radke: (laughs) Okay.

Julian Kelly: Nope, really. Sometimes, I'll have a bad day and I'll sit down at the piano and it’s just vitriol. But it comes out, and it's authentic, and then it flows through. The music, I think, gives it a rhythm and it moves. So things don't really get stuck for me. When I put them to music, it's whatever I'm feeling, it just— When the song is done, it's done. It's done. And then I just move on to something else.

Haley Radke: I love talking about this with you, because I love music, but I don't feel like I'm super musically inclined or, I… But anyway, that's so cool. Interesting.

Okay. Is there anything else that you want to talk about in this area? In your album, like The Family Reject, or your songwriting, or anything else?

Julian Kelly: I guess I feel like it's important to say that being adopted has definitely really, really impacted the way that I express myself, I think, because I felt so pressured into being the person that my adoptive family wanted me to be. Music was a place where I could go to be who I really was. And as adoptees, I think it's really important for us to just find that space where we can just be authentically us.

Haley Radke: So true. Okay. So before we go to recommended resources, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to just tell us, what do you wish that most people knew about adoption?

And, before we started recording, you mentioned that we've had a lot of adoptee suicides lately, even the deaths of some young adoptees. Can you talk about that a little bit? And, again, what do you wish most people knew about adoption, that they don’t?

Julian Kelly: First and foremost, I wish that most people understood that adoption is not something that should be taken lightly. I'm sure you've heard this before, because so many people say it in the adoption community, but it's really true. That for a child to be placed for adoption, that means there was a loss. And I wish that people knew how to really respect that loss. And how to understand that we carry that loss with us for our lifetime, for the duration of our lives.

And I think that, yes, the adoption system is broken and there are so many other things that I wish people knew about adoption. But if I just had to narrow it down to a few things, I would say, I wish they knew to respect our feelings, whatever they are/ And to not impose feelings of gratitude and all of the things that people say we should feel about our adoptions. I've heard so many people say to me throughout my lifetime that I should feel grateful. And I wish that those people would instead let me feel how I feel. And let other adoptees feel how we feel, and understand that our experiences are ours to name. They’re our narratives, and they’re our lives, and it's for us to define. So that's one thing that I really, really wish people knew about adoption.

And the other thing I wish that our community could find a way to accept that we all have these really complex stories and experiences. And all of our opinions are unique to our experiences and they are so nuanced. But as adoptees, it's so important for us to come together and to support one another, so that we can make certain that some of the really terrible things that happened to us don't happen to what may be the next generation of adoptees.

So I feel that it's important for us as adoptees, whenever we can, to put our differences (the small differences) aside. And to come together for the common good, so that we can really, really create a lasting legacy and change the face of adoption as it stands today. Because so much damage is happening. There are so many adoptee suicides. There's so many children that are being killed by their adopters. And we know adoption better than anyone.

Yeah. Those are the two things that I really would say are most important. There's a lot of divisiveness I see in our community a lot, and it's really heartbreaking, because I think that if we could all agree on (not everything), but just a few things, we would be strong enough together to enact the changes that we need to protect our future.

Haley Radke: Earlier you were talking about the importance of family preservation, and I agree with all of those things that you just said. And the more we can work together for family preservation, I think we can change things, too. Yeah, I think we're on the same page.

Julian Kelly: Yes. Family preservation is so understated in our society, in general. It's almost like a concept that so few people I think are even aware of as an option. And I feel like as adoptees, for sure, that should be number one on our agenda. But I know there's a lot of things that we don't agree on, with IVF— And there's just so many opinions, but I think it's really important for us to all find a way to come together.

Haley Radke: Definitely. Thank you for that. Such wise words. I'd love to do our recommended resources now. And so, I want to recommend that you go and listen to Julian's music, The Family Reject, and she's got some other albums and they're on iTunes. I've been listening to them on Spotify, The Family Reject. And my boys have been listening, too. And I also noticed—(they're 3 and 5, so they just love music, too).

Julian Kelly: Aww!

Haley Radke: Yes. I also hadn't mentioned this yet, but you have a documentary and I was watching it on YouTube, Almost Family: A True Adoption Story. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Julian Kelly: I felt like it was important to document my experience. And the more I sought my birth family and ran into obstacles and met with other adoptees, the more I discovered that there are so many things that are broken in the adoption world. And the documentary was just my way of— It's going to sound strange, but almost eulogizing myself, and my experience?

I felt like I was doing something important when I was searching for my family and my identity. And I know that there are many adoptees out there that may never find their families. And I wanted also non adopted persons to see the impact, to see what it looks like for an adoptee who is trying to put the pieces back together.

It's just basically the story of my life. In the documentary, I mentioned my best friend of 23 years was also an adoptee and she committed suicide. And filming that documentary, I think, was also in part my way of making sense of that. I think it could be helpful for other adoptees who have similar experiences or just want to take a peek at what somebody else has been through, in adoption.

Haley Radke: It is really interesting to hear your story, and as you say, you weave some other stories (like your best friend), and it gives us more language and more words to describe our experiences. So many of us, our trauma is preverbal, and we just don't have words.

So any of these things like the podcast, your documentary, your album that's specifically adoption related—all of those things just help give us language to talk about adoption, especially with other people who have no idea what we're talking about.

Julian Kelly: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay. So good. So good. Please, what do you want to recommend to us?

Julian Kelly: The adoptee that I would really recommend is Dominique Crenn. She is an amazing chef. In 2016, she won the Best Female Chef in the World award. She's been nominated for James Beard, and she is the only female chef in the U.S. with two Michelin stars. And she has an amazing restaurant in San Francisco, called Atelier Crenn. And her story is incredible. I don't know anything about her personal adoption views, but she was adopted at 18 months. She was in France. And she refers to her restaurant as her home. She refers to her cooking as her artistry and for me (just witnessing as an outsider some for work), it just seems like it's so deeply informed by the complexities of family that she experienced due to being an adoptee.

So I would definitely recommend that anyone who is in the San Francisco area, go check out her food, but if you can't do that, she is on season two of Chef's Table on Netflix. And she's also on Facebook. I would recommend just checking out her way of expressing her complexities and her feelings, with food.

Haley Radke: That sounds amazing. And you're telling me this now, and I remember I was talking with Anne Heffron (and she's an adoptee). She wrote You Don't Look Adopted. And we were talking about how adoption is everywhere. And she was just like, “I was sick of it one day.” She's, “Oh my gosh, adoption is everywhere,” or whatever. So she's, Okay, I'm just going to lay down. I'm just going to watch a show. She turned on Chef's Table and it was her episode.

Julian Kelly: Oh….

Haley Radke: She's, Oh my gosh, even the chefs are adopted. So it's everywhere. It's everywhere.

But that's such a good recommendation. Thank you.

Julian Kelly: You're welcome.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. So good to talk to you. Can you let us know where our listeners can connect with you online?

Julian Kelly: Yes, I am very easy to find. You can connect with me on Facebook. Type in my name, Julian Kelly, and I'm happy to add people to my personal page or my music page. I don't care. I'm just really lax. Most easily found on Facebook.

I also have a YouTube channel and I have a blog. I blog every few months, but there are some pretty good resources on that blog, especially for people who have experienced secondary rejection in their adoption reunions. So, if that's something that anybody would be interested in reading about, my blog is called I Am a Cherry Blossom in Spring. And I believe I sent you a link to it.

Haley Radke: Yes, I will put links to all of those things in the show notes.

Julian Kelly: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. It's been just so delightful talking with you and we have different stories, but of course I feel some parallels with you as well.

Julian Kelly: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Oh, you guys, Julian is so amazing. Go check out her music. She has an amazing voice. You are going to be impressed. I promise.

I have a new thing. I started a monthly newsletter. I started it a couple months ago, but the first one just went out last week. So “monthly,” that's, loose, in quotation marks. If you want to stay caught up with what's happening with me and the podcast, head over to adopteeson.com/newsletter, and you can sign up there.

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Last thing: next week, I'm going to hit pause on season 3, and we're going to have a break for a special healing episode with Lesli Johnson, where we talk about coming out of the fog. Thank you for listening.

Let's talk again, next Friday.