57 [Healing Series] Support Groups

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/57

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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 talk about support groups and how to start your own, but if that idea kind of freaks you out, don't press stop yet. My guest shares a really great alternative idea to help build supports into your life, and it's free. Let's listen in.

I am 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 back to Adoptees On, Jeanette.

Jeanette Yoffe: Thank you, Haley. Great to be here.

Haley Radke: So you are the executive director of the Celia Center, and I was hoping you could talk to us a little bit about that, where it got its name (especially), and what it is.

Jeanette Yoffe: Okay. So, Celia Center came about because… Let's see, it's 2018 now. Nine years ago, I started a support group. I'm a psychotherapist and here I was working with children of families in adoption, and I wanted to know who was out there like me. Are there–where are the other adult adoptees? Cuz I wasn't meeting many in Los Angeles.

And so as a therapist, I took it upon myself to start a support group, which I called Adopt Salon. I started gathering names and having people come to this group. And what came about from that was the support group became–we became a community. And people would come up to me and say, “Can you do a training on this?” Or, “Can you talk about this?” And I said, “Well, um, I don't have a place or a space to do that, but I'll try.” And so then I thought, You know what? What if I started a nonprofit organization that is devoted to educating the community about foster care and adoption experiences because I…? There was such a need.

So then I started the nonprofit called Celia Center and for me to give it meaning, I chose my first mother's name, which is Celia. And so for me, doing this work, just always, I'm channeling her. Because I had wished that she had a place like Celia Center to go to, to get the support she needed when I had separated from her, the education, the support of being around other mothers, other adoptees. It came from a place of: we need to do more in our community.

And I took it upon myself as an adult now. I get to do these things and I'm gonna do this because it's important. And we are leaders now and we are the ones that need to educate society about our experience. We are the experts. So, and my goal was also to bring the constellation of adoption together, because I had read Michael Phillip Grand's book, The Adoption Constellation, which also inspired me to create this center.

And the constellation is the new term in best practice today. It's the politically correct term, which identifies anyone involved in an adoption. So that's the birth parent, the first mother, the first father, the adoptee, the adoptive family, and I also include the foster constellation. So, the foster family, the foster youth, and it also includes social workers, nurses, spouses, siblings, anyone connected to anyone who's experienced this life experience is part of the constellation.

Haley Radke: So this is sort of replacing the triad, which has had its three points and sort of gives equal to each point.

Jeanette Yoffe: Correct. Exactly.

Haley Radke: Okay, that makes sense.

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes, the equilateral triangle–which they are not equal parts. So yeah, years ago I wrote something on Facebook and I had written, “triad,” and I literally had 150 posts. “How dare you use that word? That's not the word anymore.” And I'm like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. I work with anyone involved in an adoption. I have compassion for all members. I agree, there's no equal part, but give me the new language.” And that's when I found this book and I said, “Yes, that's the term. It's the constellation and we're all here to support each other.” So I wanted to bring the constellation together through Celia Center.

Haley Radke: So, yes. Very good. So can you talk a little bit more about what Adopt Salon is? And also let's just sort of frame our conversation with… So you're in the Los Angeles area. I'm in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I'm actually trying to start an adoptee support group, and I know there's a movement to start more and more across the U.S., North America, the world.

So can you sort of frame it with also, what are some things that we could be doing to do that? Peer support or as you say it, constellation group, all of those kinds of things.

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. Okay. So, and there's different types of groups. So, I run the Adopt Salon Constellation Support Group, so that involves first mothers and first fathers, adult adoptees, and adoptive parents.

So we're all in the room together. And I also include the foster care constellation, so foster youth alum, foster parents, and their birth families as well, and/or foster families. So we're all in there together. Now, I run this group. I'm a therapist, you know, that's a lot to handle for one person to… because you're navigating all these different parts of the constellation.

So that can be overwhelming for someone starting a new support group. If you're starting a new support group (like I had originally), which was, I wanted to do with just an adoptee support group. And that, anyone can do. And so how I did this was, I put an ad on an online newspaper: “Starting an Adoption Support Group.”

And I started receiving a lot of emails. And so, I kept hold of those emails and I said, “Okay, now that I have an interest…” (because you just don't know who's out there). I said, “Okay, great. And now I can go find a place. Let me see, where can I do this group?” So I called around to churches, local adoption agencies, and I said, “Hey, you know, I'm interested in starting a support group in town. Do you, would you be willing to provide us with some free space? This will be a free support group.”

And so I found an agency that provided a space for us, and then I gave it a name; give your support group a name. And you also will need some sort of mail server, or Mailchimp, or Constant Contact so that you can–as you're accumulating names, you can also keep them notified of when the group is.

I like to keep the group on the first Wednesday of the month from 7 to 9:00 PM, so it's consistent. It's the same time on that month, on each month, so people know what to expect. So you wanna keep that consistency. It's an open group, but only for members specified of the group that you're starting.

So if it's just an adult adoptee group, it's just for adult adoptees. If it's just a foster youth alum group, it's just foster youth alums. If it's a co-group of first mothers, and first fathers, and adoptees, fabulous. But only they are allowed to attend. You set that limit on who will be attending your group. And then the other thing is this (and I feel very strongly about this): you need to set some very firm and safe ground rules, because if you don't, things can get out of hand and it can cause feelings of not feeling safe. And it can cause what I call–what is called “secondary trauma.” We do not want to do that.

So here are a few rules that I have for all my support groups, and that is, we support each other here. We do not fix each other, meaning we do not give unsolicited advice. If you, when you share and you go around the circle, I would just say, “Give me your name, what part of the constellation you represent, and tell us what you're here for. Or do you have a question? Are you, do you have a pressing issue? We'll get to you first. And you can share briefly about your story.” So, going around to the group, again, as rules, we don't fix each other. We don't give unsolicited advice. You do need to tell us what you need. You know, “I do need advice. Please fix me.”

Or after you share–because typically what happens in a support group is, you share and you feel this sense of “Whew!” relief. Because you see everybody nodding their heads. Everybody gets you. We need to be seen, heard, and received. That's the beauty of a support group and, you know, everything's online today.

Support groups are important. We need to be with each other, together in the physical realm, not the Internet. We need to see each other and feel each other, because that's how we grow. We cannot do this in a bubble. So I also say, “You can also be here and not share.” And I call it you can be an owl–you can observe, watch, and listen.

That's okay, because I know the first time I went to a support group, I was scared $%!#-less. It was very overwhelming. I didn't know what to do or how to handle, and I wish someone said, “You can just be an owl. You can observe, watch, and listen, and just take it in.” So those are important pieces.

And when I do a constellation group, I do say this a lot. The reason why I bring the constellation together is because… Think about this: If you look at a tree from one angle, all you're gonna see is that angle. This group is about looking at that tree from multiple angles so that we can bridge the compassion between each other, see that we're actually more alike than different, and this is a shared experience. And how do we support each other within this experience, within this constellation?

So it's extremely powerful. I mean, support groups are amazing. I wish they could all be recorded. And actually, speaking of recording, Celia Center– we were asked to film one of our support groups (the single adoptive parent support group, because I've had multiple groups) for the OWN (Oprah Winfrey channel), Raising Whitley.

We supported Kym Whitley when she adopted her foster child, and she hadn't told him that he was adopted. So she came to our support group and we helped her make sense of why it's important (even though he's three), that he needs to know what happened! He needs to know his story. So that was filmed. We did that, and then only last year we filmed one of our constellation support groups on Long Lost Family for (I don't know if you watched that show), Joanna, who meets her birth father. She has a lot of questions, so she comes to our support group, and gets advice, and support, and help. So it's been amazing.

Haley Radke: That’s so cool. Yeah. That's so cool. And can you tell me where does the name Adopt Salon comes from? What does “salon” mean to you?

Jeanette Yoffe: Because of my background being an artist. And I didn't say this, but Celia came to the United States on a work visa to be a dancer in New York City and the salon, the term “salon…” I don't know how long ago it was, but they used to have artist salons where artists would come together, and they would just share ideas and connect with one another, inspire, be each other's muse… And I thought, Oh, that's a nice feel. You know, because I didn't wanna scare anyone. This is, you know, the constellation. There's gonna be a first mother there, and an adoptive parent, or a foster parent meeting a birth mother for the first time. I wanted to take the charge out of it and go, “It's a salon, come to the Salon.”

And I actually used to light candles, lower the lights. I mean, I was very aware of, you know, that sensory overstimulation. I didn't want it. I wanted it to feel safe. So it's nice to do these added touches, you know, lighting candles, creating an environment of comfort and safety is key. So, that's why rules are important.

Yeah, I think that I went over everything you need to do to start a support group. And we usually sit in a circle. You know, cuz it's, you know–we're all coming full circle. And have tissues. Oh, oh, and have tissues.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Don't we! Tissues. Okay.

Jeanette Yoffe: If you don't feel comfortable starting a support group (because you said that earlier), I tell foster youth alum and adult adoptees–find a listening partner. And that is someone that you can call and you both identify and know how it works.

And it could be a call that's every Saturday, or someone that you get to call every week who will be your listening partner–will just listen. Because that, in and of itself, is supportive. And it would be nice to find someone (if you're both not comfortable going to a support group), “Well, we'll be each other's listening partners.”

Again, you don't give unsolicited advice. You just listen, and you receive, and you acknowledge, because that is really important. Because we do need to share our stories. We can't keep it all inside. We need to externalize it, we need to hear it, we need to reorganize it, we need to rethink it. Because it's always, it's always evolving, it's always changing.

It's always feeling a little different, or we're feeling more vulnerable about it. We need a place to discharge, literally, from our minds and get it out of our bodies. So, as you can see, I talk. I can talk a lot; I can talk all day. But it's important. We can, and we have a voice and…

Haley Radke: Well, maybe I should have started with this question, Jeanette, what is the purpose of a support group? So if there's a… Like we are just talking, like if it's peer-run and you go around this circle and you sort of share your stories. Is it just being heard? And is there a difference between that and a therapist-led? Like, is there more of a healing to–I don't know, do you wanna unpack that a little bit?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. And there's different variables. Like I said, if, you know–I would not advise someone new going into this, starting an adoption constellation support group. You have to have done, number one, your own work. You have to not be biased towards any member of the constellation. So, that, I highly recommend, needs to be a psychotherapist (that's dealing with all members of the constellation).

You have to be adoption and foster care-competent and be able to answer some tough questions. Now, I've also run my groups where I have guests come, and share their stories, and tell us what they've learned, or what–it could be a birth mother, an adoptee, a foster youth… So, there can be a teaching component in your group.

You can have a guest come, and there's a...,or there could be– You could have someone running the group who's not a psychotherapist, have a psychotherapist come in for 15 minutes and teach some mindfulness meditation or educate about trauma. So you could have that piece. It's how you establish the group.

We are here to listen and share and support each other in our experience. Again, we don't fix each other. You, you know, as the facilitator–you wanna be honest. You know, “I'm not a licensed psychotherapist. There are some questions I can't answer. I can only answer from my experience.”

As a psychotherapist, when I run groups as (if you're a therapist), you are there to provide the expertise, and knowledge, and education. But anyone can start a support group. However, you do need to be aware that you may be triggered. You have to be honoring and doing your self-care.

There's another group (it's an AA and adoption group that I just went to), that Celia Center is gonna be starting to send out notices about. And that's for adoptees who also have alcohol, and dependence, and maybe alcoholics, struggling with drug addiction. And so that group, all they do is they literally structure it like an AA group, and you have five minutes to share your story. And every time you share, you have a five-minute share. And then they do a meditation, and it's done.

It can be, you know, anyone can ask questions in this group, or we can have someone come in and talk about a specific topic. You can have a suggestion box. "If we bring in a guest, what kind of guest would you like us to bring in?" So you do need to establish, as a facilitator, specifically what type of group this is.

We support each other; we’re here to listen and share our stories. And if you need advice, we will give you advice. Otherwise, we're just here to listen and support one another. And you can remain in contact outside of the group, which is really important. And I do say, and that can also serve as your listening partner person that you can turn to in the weeks when there isn't the support group.

Because a lot will come up. So we do want to create a community–exchange phone numbers, see each other outside of the group, but keep what's said in the group at the group. We don't disclose/share any personal or identifying information with those outside of the group. This is to keep this group emotionally safe, and keep this confidential.

So, I hope I answered your question.

Haley Radke: Yeah, yeah. No, that's really helpful. And in fact, at a conference I was at, I was in a support group for like an hour, and it did have all the members of the constellation. And there was not, you know, a specific facilitator and it devolved very, very quickly. Very quickly.

Jeanette Yoffe: Ooh, yes. You need firm rules. Set the tone. Yes.

Haley Radke: Yeah, so, really adoptee, adult adoptee support group is where I would love to start. And I think that's such good advice, that you really need an expert present to be able to direct the conversation, and do all the things that you've been trained to do, (that a layperson like myself, we don't necessarily have).

Plus, I would have that layer of being triggered and, you know, it's not good! It's not a good situation. So yes, that's very, very wise. Is there anything else you wanna tell us before we wrap up? About the Celia Center, or starting a support group?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes, I actually do. Celia Center–we did our first Arts Festival last year, and we are going to be doing another one. And it's called Giving Voice to Adopting Resilience: Fostering the Spirit of Creativity, and we'll be doing another one in November. And also, I will be doing my one-woman play, which I did 15 years ago. I'm gonna be doing it again.

So I'm super excited to have Celia Center provide this for our community. We're gonna have artists, transracially adopted adult adoptees sharing their stories. We have spoken word artists, we have visual artists, we have singers. We have a dance troupe from San Francisco that's gonna come down and do their piece about adoption.

So, it's a great event that we're very excited about and it really helps transform what we're trying to educate to the community about having lived through foster care and adoption. Now we get to show it through our creativity. It's so much fun. It's empowering; it empowers you. And you actually feel stronger because of the experience, and it makes you stronger within yourself.

And to share it with another–when you share something with another, what's shareable becomes more bearable. So that's why we need to speak up, share our stories in whatever format you choose, because it's very empowering.

Haley Radke: Well, I love that you touched on this. All of my season three was this theme of healing through creativity and so I talked to a number of different artists in various capacities. I don't wanna list them all, cause there's too many, but specifically, Brian Stanton was on the show and also Nicole Rademacher. And we talked about last year's event, and how amazing it was. I think especially, Nicole and I talked in depth about it.

So if people are interested, they can go over and check out that episode. And then, of course, I'll link to all the information about that upcoming event, in November, so that people can come check it out. That's so exciting. I love that you're doing that.

Jeanette Yoffe: Thank you. Yes, there is a video on our Celia Center YouTube channel about the Arts Festival last year. And it's a beautiful video, just showing all the art displayed, and the performers, and it was an amazing event. It brought a lot of people together.

Haley Radke: Yeah. So, great. Thank you. Okay. Where can we connect with you online?

Jeanette Yoffe: Well, Celia Center is C-E-L-I-A center.org. And there's a lot of information on our website there, about our upcoming events, special events. Sometimes you go to Wolf Connection, here in Los Angeles. And again, our support groups are on there. The festival information is celiacenterartsfestival.org. That's a beautiful website for our Arts Festival that you can connect to, and you can always look on our YouTube channel, Celia Center.

Haley Radke: And your website is yoffetherapy.com?

Jeanette Yoffe: Yes. So that's my private practice for therapy. Psychotherapy.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much, Jeanette, for sharing your wisdom with us today. And I hope that this maybe will inspire someone to start their own support group.

Jeanette Yoffe: Excellent. Yes, go for it. Go for it. We need each other and we need to be with each other. It's important.

Haley Radke: Yes, for sure. Thank you.

Jeanette Yoffe:Okay. Thank you, Haley. Thanks so much.

Haley Radke: This show is brought to you by my incredible Patreon partners. Patreon is a website that collects monthly pledges that help sustain the cost of producing this show for you every single week.

As a thank you, I have a secret Facebook group for adoptees only, that you're welcome to join. And we have some really great in-depth conversations there about search/reunion issues that have been popping up from our childhood. And I wish I could tell you who's in the group, but I won't, because it's secret, right? But there are some really, really amazing people who have gathered to build this community, and I would love to include you in that if you would like to support the show.

If that's not something that you're financially able to do, please message me anyway. I have a list of several Facebook groups, and one forum that I like to send people, that are all safe spaces that I can recommend as alternatives. And don't let money be the factor that keeps you from getting support. You know, Jeanette had that great idea of finding a listening partner, and that's free. I just thought that was such a fantastic idea.

I just wanted to let you know about the ways you can connect with me online– so we have the Adoptees On Facebook page, and I'm on Twitter and Instagram @ Adoptees On, and you can also find my personal Twitter and Instagram @ Haley Radke. Or you can find me on Facebook;

I'd love to be friends with you. And if you would like to get our monthly newsletter, you can sign up for that adopteeson.com/newsletter, where I will give you just brief snapshots of things I'm thinking about or learning, and updates about the show. Very last thing. Would you share this episode with just one person today, as soon as we wrap the show?

What if you send an adoptee in your city a message saying, “Why don't you listen to this episode? What do you think? Should we start a support group here?” Or, if someone that Jeanette was describing– the listening partner and you think, You know what? I know exactly who would be a great fit for that.

Maybe you can send them this episode, and then chat about what that would look like for you guys. And if you're in the Edmonton, Alberta area, send me a note. I'd love to have you at our next monthly adoptee support group, here in Edmonton (which is actually taking place right here at my house). So, if you ever wanted to see where I record, you can come to my house and join in our adoptee support group meeting.

Thanks for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

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.

55 Finale - Healing Through Creativity and Community

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/55

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Haley Radke: You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is season three, episode 15: Finale. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Throughout season three, we've been discussing healing through creativity. And for the finale, I've brought in two more adoptees who are absolute experts in this topic.

My guests are Pamela Cordano, a psychotherapist who we've heard on some of my favorite healing episodes, and also (no stranger to the podcast), Anne Heffron, the author of You Don't Look Adopted, which happens to be my favorite adoptee memoir. We discuss creativity and, “Can we actually heal from adoption trauma?,” or “Are we just building up a huge toolbox of coping strategies together?”

Get ready to put this episode on repeat because Pam and Anne have a fire hose of wisdom on topics I hadn't even considered before, like why healing in community means magnified healing. If you're listening when this has just been released, Anne and Pam are also going to tell you about a special event they're planning for February 2018, and even once they get into the details of the retreats, stick with us, because they give some great takeaways to try out, for those of us—you can just go ahead and insert that sad face emoji here from me–that won't be able to make it to the retreat.

If you're listening after the retreat has already happened, I am almost certain there will be another one in the works, so make sure to follow their socials to get details of any upcoming events.

This episode has been brought to you by my incredibly generous Patreon supporters, and so I'd like to dedicate this finale episode to you amazing people who believe in me so much that you are standing with me financially every single month. No words can explain how grateful I am for each of you.

Okay. Show notes, including links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Anne Heffron. Hi, Anne.

Anne Heffron: Hey, Haley!

Haley Radke: And Pamela Cordano. Welcome back, Pam.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Thank you. It's so good to be here. And hi to you and hi to Anne. And hi to everybody listening.

Haley Radke: I am so excited to talk to you guys, because you have something big planned. And so I really want everyone to hear about your event that's coming up.

But first, let's just talk about season three. And we had this thread, throughout, of healing through creativity. And so I was wondering what your thoughts were on that and if you had any big takeaways from listening to any of the episodes, thoughts about healing through creativity. Anne, why don't you start?

Anne Heffron: I listened to all of them at least once, and some of them I listened to a few times. I think if I put them all together, there's hopefulness. Yeah, that's what I took away from season three, was that it's one thing to tell your story as an adoptee, and sometimes that can be—well, it's depressing a lot of the times! But to take that story and then to make it art…

I mean, Brian, I listened to a couple of times just to hear his voice because he was so joyful. And even when he was close to tears sometimes, there was still an energy in his voice that's… I was calling him vitamin B in my head because I was thinking, Okay, this is where the superpower of adoption comes in. When you take what you're given and you make it into something else, like if you sing, or you create jewelry, or you paint, you do needle work…That's the joy.

I did it through writing, but I wrote about adoption so that I could have some credibility in the adoptee world, because what I really wanted to do was help other people tell their stories. Because for me to watch someone go from thinking they don't have a story to tell, or that their story is the same as everybody else's (so it's not worth telling), to seeing in their face them recognizing that their story not only has merit, but that it's actually really important to tell—That is the very, very best thing.

And so when I heard Pam on your show, I was thinking it's her! She's the golden ticket, because she understands how the brain works. And I want to connect with her, because I think it's like when you have two people at the piano, I felt like we could cover a lot of keys together and really tap into people. People who are really stuck and just don't have hope of, how are they special? How are they gonna get out of feeling trapped? And what can they do with their life? What do you think, Pam?

Pam Cordano, MFT: I think creativity is such a powerful topic, and I'm so excited that you're focusing on it, because I think of creativity as being like birth and from the wreckage of our histories, and from the treasures of our lives, what do we want to create? What can we create, that touches us, and touches other people? And makes an impact, and creates a picture, or creates a sentence where there wasn't one before?

And I feel like creativity is exponential healing and offering, in the sense that it touches so many other people. And then they have a new awareness of something about what was either created, or spoken, or written that they didn't have before. And then like our consciousness rises around the issue of adoption.

Haley Radke: That was something I said to a few of the different guests I had on season three: “Do you understand that you are literally changing the societal view of adoption through this particular work?”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right. It’s pioneer work and it's a gift.

It's a complete gift to everybody and it's powerful. Maybe it's the most powerful thing. When I hear about what people are doing with their pain and their stories and their strengths related to adoption in a direct way, I just get so inspired and strengthened when I hear about it. And it's almost like I've been in the closet as an adoptee and I've been parts of other worlds related to cancer, and illness, and trauma, and death. And I've been healing and working on my adoption, but in more indirect ways.

And so, when I heard about this Six-Word Adoption Memoir Project, I was just blown out of the water and I find myself writing my own six-word memoirs on different days (and they change, you know, one day is different from the next). And I just love the project so much and it just makes me so happy that it's adoptee specific.

Haley Radke: I know. They're so fantastic and I don't think I could just write one, like to encapsulate everything. It's…yeah. Yeah. Such a great idea. So many of my guests came up with these really unique ways to express themselves creatively. And don't you find that because our trauma, so much of it is pre-verbal, it's kind of the only way they (it sounded like to me), it's the only way they knew how to get it out of themselves.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I mean, listeners may know that Anne has been on this meme kick lately and I've been writing memes. I've been designing memes that are really— I think most of the world would consider them pretty blasphemous as far as what they're saying about being adopted. So I haven't really gone public with them yet, but maybe—I don't know if I will, but to put a picture together with a word or a phrase was so satisfying.

I basically was awake for two days just doing meme after meme after meme, and laughing harder than I've ever laughed, you know? And it was just so liberating.

Haley Radke: Okay. How do I get to see some of these?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh my gosh. I'll send them to you. I mean, they're pretty risque, honestly. Right, Anne?

Anne Heffron: Yeah!

Haley Radke: Do you want to give us like one, like your tamest one?

Pam Cordano, MFT: Oh, okay.

Haley Radke: No, no, no. I'm not asking Anne, because I know she'll out you in one second.

Anne Heffron: No, I'm not gonna, I would never do that. The two of us, we were up all night and we would just send them to each other. It was so….

Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. I have this really cute picture of these two babies sitting up in diapers. They're looking at each other and their hands are kind of open, like they're having sort of a baby conversation. And I have the words in big blue, bold writing: “How much did you cost?” That's a really tame one.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. [everyone laughs]

Anne Heffron: You know what it was like? And this is community and this is, I believe this is healing in community because you know, when you're a little kid and then you're sharing with a friend something that your parents probably wouldn't like, but you can't? It's like when you first say the word “fart,”or something and you can't stop laughing.

Right? I feel like we got to be children together (doing this) and then we get to switch back to being grownups, which is an amazing thing to do when you're adopted because often the child part got kind of skipped.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Haley Radke: I so feel that. I so identify with that. I feel like I was born and then I just had to be a little grown up.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Great. Can I share another meme, then, about that?

Haley Radke: Uh, yes!

Anne Heffron: You start.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. So I have this little baby vacuuming the house, and it says, “For f's sake, I'll do it!”

And that's how I felt in my house with my parents. Like, “Fine, I'll do it. I'll pull it together. I'll be here to complete your life. Whatever you need, I'll do it.” You know, so it's this angry baby vacuuming meme. With the f-word in it. [everyone laughs] I really like that one.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's good. Those are great. I think maybe you should start an anonymous account.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I thought of it. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Oh, so good. Okay. Alright. Do you have any other thoughts on the creativity piece?

Anne Heffron: Well, because I was thinking about what you said, Pam, about how, at first when I was making the memes, I just couldn't get enough of the fact that there was a picture and words? You know, it was like getting to write a children's book, but I was getting to tap into two different parts of my brain, right? I was getting to choose a picture and then I was getting to choose the words.

And I think if you look at all the guests that you've had, Haley, it's like in their own ways they were playing with pictures, right? Like, even if it was Shannon, she's stitching words, but she's also stitching pictures. And I think that—Now when I'm doing memes, I'm pretty much dropping the picture, because I have the confidence just to do the words. And then you have these people come onto your podcast and they've gone from creating to actually having to use language.

And that's a big step forward, because that's where we want to be, right? We want to be at a place where we can speak our deepest thoughts and feel heard. And so it's like a little kid—they start with Play-Doh, or they start with drawings, and then… But as adoptees, because most people didn't really understand what we were going through, our sense of language was stifled.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I think it's a relief. It's like putting forms of something unlived inside. Like the part of me that never got to live itself authentically because I was too busy being a traumatized infant and small child. And then I was too busy being used by my adoptive parents to complete their dream. I was belonging to somebody else.

So there's this whole voice and self that didn't have its right to full expression. So, to start to find expression that doesn't necessarily follow rules or please people, but is actually honest and real, is completely empowering. When I made my memes, I mean, I was laughing. I felt like my organs were laughing. It was so funny and it's such a relief to say what I wasn't supposed to say or allowed to say. And I almost felt like I was walking a little bit taller. Like, you know: I said it. I spoke the truth. I created it.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. I'm very sorry that I cannot post them online.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I can be twisted. As long as I don't get in too much trouble.

Haley Radke: I won't get you in trouble, I promise.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I do still have a compliant side, after all.

Haley Radke: Good adoptee. Good job. Good job.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah.

Haley Radke: The other thing that we touched on was, “Why do so many adoptees gravitate towards creative outlets?”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Okay. I think it's because we have so much authentic life living and hiding inside of us, that it needs to come out somehow. And being straight about it hasn't worked. Society doesn't mirror our straight expression of ourselves and we have to go around the corner a bit.

And then I was also thinking that, I mean, sure. A lot of adoptees are just smart, talented, artistic people who—but that's not really what you're asking. I just think we have a hidden life and the hidden life needs expression and we have to find a way to do it that feels real enough. But that's… It's sort of like outside of the box of relating to people. Like if we try to relate our truth to our birth families or adoptive families, they often miss the mark with us. So when we create something, there's a satisfaction that won't be found in relationship.

Haley Radke: So I hadn't told my adoptive parents about the podcast, right? For like a year. And then I told them I had a podcast. And then one day my mom kind of called out of nowhere and said, “Congratulations on season three.” So I was like, Whoa, okay, so maybe they're listening. And in our last visit I said, “Are you like listening to some of them?” And she's like, “Oh yeah, I listened to a couple. I got the gist of it.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Wow. [everyone laughs in disbelief] Oh my gosh. Thanks!

Haley Radke: That is— (Sorry, Mom. If you listen to this, I guess maybe you are listening to more.) But that is seared in my brain now.

Pam Cordano, MFT: It's like you heard one, you heard 'em all. Thanks. Ouch.

Haley Radke: I feel like I am having a hidden life. And you're talking about that. I was like, this is me expressing the hidden life. And even when I do bring it and I say, “Oh, here it is. This is like my life's work.”

“I got the gist of it.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. This is my heart, and my soul, and my brain, and my talent, and my special voice I use.

And it's like, “Eh.”

Haley Radke: That was a fun conversation.

Pam Cordano, MFT: But good thing that the rest of us love you so much and that you're changing our lives and helping us so much. So…

Haley Radke: I know. She's not my target audience. I get that.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right, right.

Haley Radke: Okay. With this theme of healing through creativity, just the word “healing” can be a little bit controversial. In fact, at the CUB retreat that Anne and I were at in California, someone asked the panel of therapists essentially that question: “Can we really be healed of adoption trauma?” And, you know, one of the answers given was almost an example of, “Oh yeah, well…I have all these different coping skills built in…”

And so Pam, can you speak to that a bit? Because this is something that you wanted to get to today, was coping skills versus healing. And I really want to hear your thoughts on that.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Well, I really believe it's possible to heal and to do more than develop coping skill strategies. I mean, coping strategies are really important, and to me, they're just the container for the healing.

I know that when I eat well, and exercise and sleep well, maybe even meditate once in a while, my whole system feels better (my nervous system), and that supports me to be able to heal. And healing, I think, is more about feeling different inside yourself in the world, and feeling a sense of belonging to the world and having the freedom to bring toward us what we want and to keep away from us what we don't want. And to really tap into joy, like the joy of being alive.

So you might know one of my heroes is Viktor Frankl, who was in the Holocaust, and he wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. The original title of his book was Say Yes To Life. And so he wrote the book in 11 days, right after he got out of the concentration camps for three years, where he'd lost almost everybody in his family. He found ways to tap into—I would say the meaning of being alive, the joy of being alive through all kinds of ways. Even when he was starving and dying, and trapped and had no possessions, and lost his pregnant wife and everything else in the concentration camp.

And I feel like I've healed a lot (and I wouldn't have said that maybe 10 years ago). But I think when people heal, they feel like there's a path back to that joy, and that vitality, and that saying, “yes” to life. That's what healing feels like.

It's more like the fabric of a person. It's not what a person does. Like, maybe there can be people that have very healthy eating, exercise, meditation, yoga, therapy, habits, but they feel miserable inside. Or they feel isolated, or they feel hopeless, or they hate themselves, or they have negative talk going through their heads all day long. And that's not healing. That's just having “healthy behavior.”

But healing is finding a new way to relate to yourself and to the world, where you feel like you're part of the whole dance of life, really. And that's just too poetic. It sounds too intangible. But I just know that when I have my bad moments (which of course I have them all the time), but when I have bad moments, I know there's a way through them to joy and access to what I need.

With having access to creativity, that's an avenue of expression and of connection that's really meaningful and has so much life in it. And to me, that's a very healing way of being in the world. And then we're not constantly creating (you're not constantly doing podcasts or whatever), but you have access to it.

I would use that as an example, Haley. I would just say, you know, your podcasts are creative. You created this whole Adoptees On, and it's touched so many lives. We can't even count the lives it’s touched and then it's touched the lives of the lives it's touched. The friends, like the connections of the lives it's touched. So, there's this whole exponential kind of touching lives that you've done. And you probably have difficult times with your kids or, you know, whatever… Difficult things happen. But this is alive and happening all the time in your life. Do you know what I mean?

Haley Radke: Are you gonna make me cry on my finale? That is so mean. I can't believe you would do that. Wow. [everyone laughs]

Pam Cordano, MFT: But so even in your worst moment, you can know that, right? That that’s happening. And it's happened. It's real and it's still happening. And you have more in you. So I think that that's an aspect of healing.

Haley Radke: I love thinking about that. Thank you.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Thank you. That’s from all of us. The finale.

So I was adopted at the age of six months. And in my first six months, I was left alone in an apartment by my birth mother, who worked full-time. And I was, I'm sure, very hungry. And she was also physically abusive. I was in two different foster homes, and then I was in a shelter, and then finally adopted.

And so by the time I was adopted, I was— My grandparents told me that I didn't smile, or cry, or show any facial expression at all. I was basically frozen. And I have the feeling now, like when I try to feel what that might've felt like, that I pulled deep into my bones just to try to survive, really.

Something that I've said to you, Haley, before is that for me, moving toward healing has been a necessity. I think I would've died. I think I actually was close to death as a baby, as a newborn in this apartment. And I think that my body knows what dying and freezing feel like, so strongly.

And so healing is about filling out my whole physiological system, opening my eyes, inhabiting my eyes. And moving back into the flow of life and participating with life.

Anne Heffron: It's exactly what I see in the Write or Die. And I watch the people's bodies. People (adoptees in particular) come in and they are coping. They got to this, they're living their lives, you know, they drove their car… But it's like—I watch their eyes and their eyes, they move around a lot or they look down. And their bodies are stiff. It's a frozenness.

And there's a moment in every class I've seen when they realize that— When they feel in their body, they feel the merit of their story or they feel the spark, their shoulders go back, the blood goes to their face and their eyes change. And it happens every time. I think that that's the body. Right? And I think that that's what I recognized in you, Pam, and that's why I want to work with you. It's like you have this vital force.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Mm-hmm.

Anne Heffron: Right? It's like if there's a pool, I'm pretty sure you're gonna jump in it.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. So, I guess what we're saying is that a person can have really good coping skills, but not be healing. They can be more surviving and coping. People who are dying of—(I work so much with cancer). People who are dying of cancer can heal emotionally. They can die on a happy note. And I've seen it again and again. People coming back to life, even if they're in a dying process.

There was something that Anne and I were talking about earlier today, which is that in our brains, we have something called the default network. And the default network is if you—(I picture it like a triangle, although I don't know what shape it actually is). But it's like the stories where we tell ourselves about our lives and who we are, they go around and around and around, and our brains have this negativity bias. So, the stories in our default network are mostly negative stories.

Like we wake up in the morning and our default network is going, and we're thinking, I screwed up last night, and Oh my gosh, I forgot to send in that check. And Oh, my daughter's pissed at me still, and blah, blah, blah (and you know, everything wrong with us). And we can't heal in our default network. Our default network is like a closed system that just goes around and around and around. And so to heal, we have to shift into something called our direct experience network. And that's where something new can happen, where we feel safe enough to let something new in.

And that's really what therapy's all about. So when a client comes to therapy, if they're just sitting in their default network, “Blah, blah, blah, my mom, this, my dad, my husband, my kids…,” they're not gonna walk out of the room any different. But if a therapist can help a client shift into their direct experience network, that's where they're in the moment. They're having a direct experience with one of their five senses. They're probably in their bodies to some extent, and something new can happen. That's where healing happens.

For me, healing has been about doing some bold things to create opportunities for me to have direct experiences. Like, I've done a lot of traveling and I've done a lot of humanitarian work where I'm encountering people who are also having other kinds of problems than I have. And I've thrown myself out of what's familiar to throw myself into direct experiences, and that's where I feel like I've gotten better.

Anne Heffron: Yeah. And I had a similar experience where the healing came from two things: writing my book. (And then, what that actually did was that opened the wound.) But it didn't—that was only part of the journey. What I had to do was come back and actually do the legwork, which was like, How am I gonna survive in the world as an adoptee now? Like I feel physically and mentally challenged by coming out of the fog. I mean, I would've liked to have gone to a sanitarium and just have someone take care of me for the rest of my life, because I was tired and confused.

And I think that then to step up and say, Okay, well I'm gonna start these Write or Die classes, because this is how I'll use the tools that I have (the creativity that I have) to make a living. And to help other people at the same time.

I mean, isn't that what we're all doing? All three of us? I mean, we've figured out what our creative skills are and we're trying to help the larger community, but the adoptee community in particular, because there just aren’t a lot of guidebooks out there (or any, really). I mean, there's books that will tell you how to suffer, but they don't really tell you how to go out and feel okay.

Haley Radke: Hmm. I'm just, I'm just reading. Option B by Cheryl Sandberg. Have either of you read that?

Anne Heffron: Yeah, I couldn't finish it. I didn't really like it.

Haley Radke: Okay, well, I'm not very far in, but she talks about this thing... So Option B is… Cheryl's husband just suddenly passes away and she's talking about how she's learned resilience. And so, you know, all of those things are very tempting to adoptees to hear like, “Oh, tell me more about, you know, how can I survive from my grief that no one will acknowledge?” So in the first section, she talks about the three Ps: personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence when we have a trauma.

And so personalization, meaning, It's all my fault. So adoptees are like, Oh, it's all my fault. I was given up for adoption. Right? It's me.

Pervasiveness: Adoption affects every part of my life.

And permanence. There's nothing I can do.

And this is where– (she didn't write these parts about the adoptee, I added that). But this is where I feel like so many of us are stuck. We're stuck here. And we're learning all those coping skills. And while we talk about healing, we're really just equating coping skills with healing.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes.

Haley Radke: And so I want to hear about moving forward. You were talking about direct experiences and I want to hear all of those things.

Pam Cordano, MFT: So one thing that comes to mind with the three Ps—I read the book and I followed that story and I'm from the same area where she lives in Silicon Valley, so I was really interested in her story and her recovery. So something I've learned is that when we're bonded to our moms, or our dads, or each other, what makes a bond is a call and a response.

So when babies are born, they call by crying, and a good enough mom responds and can kind of be attuned and figure out, “Okay, is the baby hungry or does the baby need help going to sleep? Or does the baby need some stimulation (or whatever).” For us adoptees, our call and response probably got kind of screwed up with, first of all, being with a new mother and then not being mirrored in our grief that we'd actually lost our whole lineage and we're in unfamiliar territory. So there's this disruption in the call response and a disruption in the bonding.

And in my case, I didn't really bond well with my adoptive mother. I just held her at arms distance my whole life and her whole life. So I couldn't call to her, because her response wasn't what I needed. And I think that we adoptees, we have a call that we're ringing out to the world, like, “Help!!” You know, we had a bad time. The culture isn't mirroring it like the– We have disenfranchised grief; we have a traumatized brain. We don't know what to do. We don’t know how to heal, and we need a response coming to us that actually fits us, that actually is attuned to what we actually are asking for in a given moment.

So that goes back to the beginning of what Anne was saying about how this community is so special, because that's what's happening so much on social media is people are calling and other adoptees are responding and they're saying, “Oh, that happened to me too.” Or, “Oh, that's so painful.” Or, “That's so hurtful.” Or, “That's so heartless,” or whatever it might be.

And so being responded to with empathy and attunement is a very big part of healing.

That's where we have a lot of power in our community to work together to magnify the healing by doing work on a group level, like not just one-on-one. Trying to find a therapist who can, you know, understand the magnitude of the trauma of adoption, but actually working in an intentional way together to optimize that we all can respond to each other's calls because we understand this territory together.

Anne Heffron: And I think it's about—as a group, I think what I've noticed with myself and with other adoptees is it's really easy to get caught up in the story. You know, if you go to an adoptee conference, you'll find people telling the same story over and over again. And, I did it. And it's like The Old Man and the Sea in the Hemingway story, where he told his story over and over again. And we do that because we're looking for some kind of sense of finality, but we can't figure it out. So we keep saying it, but the more we say it, it's like a straight jacket.

We become our story and our brain spins trying to figure out like, What is my story? How can I tell my story? How can I… It's important to tell your story, but I think it's also important to realize that we are a body of energy. We are a bunch of cells put together. If I took your body apart, there is no story in your body. But I actually thought my story was going to kill me. And so that's why it took me so long to write it. And when I was writing it, I thought it was going to kill me. But it's not in me, you know? It's a thing, it's an idea.

And I think that what I want to work with people (because now I see this), is your story. It's not something that you have to tell, right? It's not something that you have to find all the details and get it right. You get to tell the story any way you want to tell the story. You get to own the story, instead of the story owning you. And that's where the creativity comes in.

And all of the guests on your show this season told their story in different ways, different creative ways. And it frees you. So then you can go out in the world and say, “Okay, I'm a human being with a certain level of energy and what do I want to do with this life?” Right? You deal with the story part, but then you can move on.

Which is for me, it's such a relief. I don't have to think about my story anymore, because I figured out how to tell it. And the way I figured out how to tell it was, “I'll just tell my story from my point of view because then no one can argue with me and tell me I'm wrong.” But it took me a long time to figure really basic stuff like that out.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I know that in individual therapy and also in group therapy, I try to find ways to hear the story or the essence of the story and then put it to the side. And then see what else wants to happen, because there's always more that wants to happen in this story. We all are imprisoned in our stories and they are hurting us, but we don't know what else to do and we want to make sure that they get their fair weight of the truth in them.

So today I had a client that came to my office who was in a story about her to-do list, that her to-do list is running the show in her life. So I got a big piece of paper and I sketched out this pretend to-do list with big boxes to check things off. And I put it on this table and I gathered the clocks in the office and put the clocks with the to-do list. And I had her stand up in the room and on the other side of the room, I put everything frivolous I could find.

I put these clay objects, I put this little funny plastic monkey thing, and a stuffed bear. And I put that on the other side. And so I asked her to kind of be, you know, walking around trying to figure out what she wants to do with her to-do list, because she says she wants to get out from under its control, but she says it's running her; she can’t. When she picked up the to-do list and she was actually thinking about getting it out of the room, but then she realized that her to-do list was actually keeping her safe. And she had an embodied experience, like a real experience of the fear she would feel without it. And so we're not done yet, but I had a relief, like, Okay, she just started to peek behind the story of the to-do list being so important and realizing that it's actually holding something together for her.

So, she's still grabbing on the to-do list and she went home without– We didn't work it out yet, but she's closer than ever to not being run by her to-do list, because I know that she's going to be thinking, Whoa, you know, there was more to this than I realized. Because she had an experience of it, and that really excites me.

So I feel like there's ways that the creativity and therapy can get around and under our stories. When I was training as an intern, we would use the whole group to help a person move beyond their story. So if these were cancer groups, so let's say there was a man with stage IV colon cancer and he's got a story that he always disappointed his mother, you know, and da dah, dah...

So somebody in the group would volunteer to be that story, and they would stand behind him and say, “You're such a disappointment, you've always disappointed me.” And they would be the mother giving him the story out loud. And then he would say, “Oh my God, my shoulders have so much tension.” So then somebody else would stand up and put their hands on his shoulders and provide some tension and then he might feel something else.

But we're trying to get these things out of the way so something new can happen and it's when something new can happen in our direct experience, that's when we start to heal this into becoming more of who we actually are. And we're not just trapped by these stories.

Anne Heffron: And when you see other people around you doing the same thing, I think, because in some ways terrifying to be an adoptee and to think, Well actually, who would I be without my story? Because maybe, it's the only thing we've had our whole lives, and even if it makes us feel like prisoners, it's still ours.

But you can look across the table and see, “Well, I see who you are without your story.” Right? “You're this beautiful person. You're so much without your story.” And then that gives you confidence that maybe you'd be okay without your story. I find that tremendously helpful.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I really believe in group healing and the power of group healing. It's contagious. We have these mirror neurons, you know, 30% of the neurons in our bodies are mirror neurons. So whatever's happening with you starts to happen with me and then it gets cooking. When groups are all about the story, people leave the groups feeling exponentially worse, you know?

And that's like a bad day on Facebook where it's like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe this. I can't believe that.” Like trigger, trigger, trigger. But when things start to go well in a group and there's enough safety and people start taking risks to move beyond their stories, it becomes contagious and super powerful.

And then the challenge is: How do we integrate it after the group is over? How do we go back into our lives that are organized around our stories? And how do we start to actually translate the healing into our lives? But it's easier because now we know it. Now we know there's more.

Anne Heffron: And also you have community. I mean, you and I have only met face to face twice, but it feels like I've known you forever. And there's something about knowing, you know, when you work with people. Like Haley, even, you know, I've only met– Have I met you more than twice or just twice?

Haley Rider: Just twice

Anne Heffron: Feels like, yeah. I mean, but see, I can't even keep track because you're so on my mind. I love this, because what your intention is to be the best Haley possible. And that makes it easier for me to be the best Anne possible. It's energetic group work, even from a distance. It's amazing. I am a hippie and I'm in Santa Cruz. [everyone laughs] I'm all right with that.

Haley Radke: I don't know what to say to that. It's okay.

So, I love this idea, that group healing. Pam, you said, group healing (right before we started, I think), “Group healing is magnified healing.”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I've been facilitating groups since, gosh, the mid nineties. My first experience with groups was after I got my master's in psychology, I was looking for a place where I wanted to have an internship and I was really drawn to working with cancer, even though I had never had cancer, and my family had never had cancer, and no one I really knew had ever had cancer.

But I know now that it was because when people suddenly get a diagnosis of cancer, the rug is—especially a bad diagnosis (like, you know, something that's incurable or a recurrence)... The rug is pulled out under their feet and everyone who knows and loves them, their lives are completely changed in that moment.

And something resonates for me as an adoptee with that kind of trauma of this quick shift from one world to another, one way of life to another. So I was really drawn to working with cancer because of that. And it was a place I could go and show up because of my adoption trauma. I know that now.

I was trained as an intern at this really wonderful, innovative cancer center and we would work with groups of about 20 people and everybody had a very serious diagnosis. It was people with cancer and their either significant other or someone, a friend, someone important to them. And we would all get together for 10 weeks, one day a week, all day for 10 weeks.

And it was my first experience of what a group could really do. There were ground rules like confidentiality, so we knew anything that was said was going to be kept private. And there were ground rules around not giving people advice and just letting people express themselves without any worry that they're going to have to deal with someone else's reaction to them.

And then we had all these really creative and innovative ways of working with people. And what I saw in the group was people who were dying like withering plants come back to life. It was like the group was water and sunshine to these plants. And even if they died, and many of them, most of them did, they got their twinkle back in their eyes and we had a lot of joy in the groups and people just came to life. I came to life.

And it was my first experience feeling like what a healthy family would feel like. To be an intern at this place, I had to participate for 10 weeks first and really experience it as a participant even though I didn't have cancer. And then I was able to start facilitating the groups with the main facilitators. But I felt like these people were like brothers and sisters, and that the facilitators were like parents. And I felt like they had my back and I felt like I had everybody else's back. And it was a “we” kind of a thing. And my life up until that point had been an “I” kind of a thing, like I felt on my own unless I was putting on a false front to try to survive and get through.

But I wasn't really connecting from a deeper place. And this was the first place I started to connect from a deeper place. It felt like the kind of internship or job that woke my heart up in a new way. And it was healing. It was healing to me. And then it let me know something about the power of groups.

One thing I was thinking about this good family kind of model is that when we feel safe in a group, we know that no one's going to share anything personal we say. We know that no one's going to give us advice or indulge in massive reactions to what we share. We have the space to start thawing, or fluffing up our feathers, or bringing deeper layers of ourselves forward.

And this is really what we're talking about before with creativity, where creativity is bringing something of the hidden life forward. And when we're in a group that feels safe, we can bring parts of our hidden lives forward. And it's not always about pain, and suffering, and trauma. Sometimes it's about humor and joy, and energy and vitality, and dreams that are unexpressed. And just space to be more of who we really are.

I think of groups as being really empowering to the hidden life that wants to happen, not just to the pain, and the trauma, and the darkness that has happened already. And that's maybe one of the most exciting parts. Something so wonderful for adoptees about being in a group is that we often don't see ourselves accurately.

We have our trauma that we live with, and we have whatever stories we tell ourselves about why we were given up for adoption and why we don't fit in, and why this, and why that, and everything wrong with us. And we have this traumatized brain that's just looking for problems to anticipate them and to protect ourselves, really.

So when we're in a safe group and we start to come forward with our hidden life, we start to be seen by people more accurately for who we really, really are and not for who we're pretending to be or passing as to be safe. And that is extremely empowering and exciting, because people don't know how great they are.

People don't know how aspects of them are so unique and appreciated by other people. And so they get witnessed in a group for the fuller picture of who they are, and then the roles they play in their life can expand to more roles. Like, I was always the rebellious, angry adoptee. And so to start to be seen in groups for my goodness and my kindness was just sort of—it changed my sense of myself. Like, Oh, okay, I still am a rebel and I'm still angry, but I'm also really kind. I'm not just bad. I'm also good.

That's so powerful in a group. And that's where groups are like magnified, healing because we don't just have a therapist who we're paying to… you know, it's easy to make up a story and say, Oh, okay, if I finally found an adoption competent therapist, and she's really nice to me and she doesn't argue with my level of trauma I'm describing to her, but I'm paying her. So what is it worth? Does it really matter? Is she just, you know, am I paying her to be nice to me?

But when you get in a group and you have all these people around you, people start to notice things and share how you're touching them and how you're impacting them. And then it's so much more believable to our whole nervous systems. We can kind of, it shakes up our sense of ourselves. We can go, Wow, maybe I am funny. Maybe I am edgy. I had no idea.

Haley Radke: That's amazing. That just like, is lighting my fire to get my support group started here.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah?

Haley Radke: Yes.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Do you hope for that with your support group for people to see each other and be seen in broader ways.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. And you're in the Facebook group. I have the secret one for Patreon supporters and guests, and it's been incredible to see how people share these really intimate struggles that they're having and sharing their deepest parts of them, just as you said.

And then the others come and say, “Oh my goodness, me too.” So that's an amazing level. And in the online community, it's so cool that we can do that. But the in-person is just one more level.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Right! Because our eyes are really receptors, you know, our eyes take in people's faces. And so when we have these faces in front of us that see us and aren't asking us to be different for them (they're just accepting us as we are). And then they're actually starting to love us (like to fall in love with us), and to value us, and to see things in us that we don't even really know. Our eyes drink that in and it changes us.

Our eyes are such important portals. And you know, originally that's what gazing is with babies and infants, is that infants are gazing at their mothers and their mothers are gazing at them. And ideally, that's drinking in being loved and being wanted on this planet.

But we don't all get that. I didn't get that. My eyes at first didn't even really want to look. I didn't want to see what people were gonna look like looking at me because I felt so ashamed of myself. And to wake up my eyes and kind of bring them back to life and be able to look at people looking at me, seeing something good and not just, you know, what I'm ashamed about was really powerful.

Haley Radke: That does sound powerful.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I think that safe and effective group work is worth a lot of individual therapy. I love individual therapy. I love going to individual therapy. I have a great therapist.

Anne Heffron: Tell her about the dog.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I heard a dog trainer say that when dogs are kind of neurotic, what helps them out is that they can walk off leash together in a pack. And we've got these fields. I live in Davis, California. We've got these fields outside of town and we have two dogs and our daughter has one close by. So we'll get the three dogs together and we'll take them off leash into these fields. And I always just think about that trainer saying, “Yeah, that kind of sets their minds straight or it heals them a bit in their, in the brain.”

And I think about us, we're pack animals. I know we're pack animals, too. We're tribal animals. And for me, the thought of adoptees healing in a tribe is so exciting. Like, I just think I've been kind of just sneaking doing it in these other communities. Like I've gone to Esalen and I've gone to all kinds of workshops (because I love them), but to actually have adoption be the center of it– Like, wow, what could happen there? So yes, group healing is exponential or magnified healing.

Anne Heffron: Well, think about what it feels like just in your body. If you're an adopted person and you walk into an office of a therapist who by some miracle is an adoption competent therapist, it's gonna feel incredible because you're gonna feel safe. But you're also one person. Imagine if 10 people walked into that room with an adoption competent therapist. It's like a life raft is sitting in the room, because all of a sudden… I mean, one of the things about adoption, at least for me, is this feeling of aloneness. Right? Like nobody really gets it.

This past year, after writing the book and having people write to me and say that they could have written the book themselves. That's a shocking thing. When I thought those thoughts had isolated me. And so just knowing that there's people out there that think the same way I do, this is what's made me so driven to have more of a healing community, because that's what I feel is missing. It's this, ‘Okay, now we recognize that we're in this together, but what do we do next?”

I mean, we've given ourselves permission to voice our pain, which is extreme.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Healing! And I'm not talking about coping skills. I'm talking about healing. Healing really requires going out of one's comfort zone. Of course it takes, like I said, it takes safety to do that, but it is really about taking a risk and having faith that there's something better for oneself than the story that has become really comfortable (like a comfy coat), that we don't want to take it off because we don't want to lose– That's the little bit we've got is, is that.

I mean, I've gone to groups before where I've thought, What if I didn't share that I was adopted? What if I didn't bring my adoptee trauma in? Could people ever really know me? And I've ultimately thought, No, they really couldn't. But sometimes something else wants to heal or something specific wants to heal, and it really takes courage to step into healing and out of the story.

Anne Heffron: It's hard. It's scary. I mean, it's—I wrote about this in my book, so I don't think my daughter would be mad, but there's, you know… When she was a little kid, she used to suck her thumb, which is a habit. And then we went to the doctor and he said she needed to stop sucking her thumb because it was messing up her teeth. She made it a day, because I said, “Okay, you can have all the candy you want. Every time you wanna suck your thumb. I'll just give you a piece of candy.” And at one point, at the end of the day, she was just kind of sweaty and she looked at me and she was staring at my face. And she said, “Mama.” And I said, “Yeah?” She said, “Can I suck on your nose?” [Everyone laughs.]

And there's that, you know, she's trying to grow up. You know, trying to change and be a big girl, but it's really hard. And when you do it in community–I was there for her, right? So I let her suck on my nose, which if you ever have a kid do that, it is a weird feeling.

But that, I mean it's a strange example, but that is healing and community because the next day she didn't do it, right? And then eventually, she wasn't sucking her thumb. But if it was up to her, she would've sucked her thumb for a very, very long time, because it's more comfortable. And even if you're an adoptee and you're living with your story, and you're in an unhappy marriage, and you're in a job you don't like, and your stomach hurts all the time, it's still safe to you.

And so it's scary to give up those things, even when they cause you pain. But what I found is, anything that scares you, it is a doorway of flames that's worth walking through. It is an invitation. So I used to avoid those doors and now if something scares me, like writing the book or doing Write or Die, I know that the fear, it's a…

I mean, there's a fear of walking into traffic. That's the kind of fear, it's not worth doing. But there I have a sense of, Okay, this is a fear I need to face. And at the other side, there's a world that I didn't even know existed. And so I have to sort of leap into the unknown and just make a game of it, have faith that I'm gonna survive, and that there's gonna be something on the other side. But when you're doing that with other people, it's less scary because then you can commiserate.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. You know, like Haley, I was—my practice got too full this year and I was seeing all these women who are widows and they had so much in common. And I felt like if I started a group for them, they could see each other twice a month in a group and they wouldn't need as much individual therapy and it would be a lot cheaper for them.

And they would have a community to connect with. So we started that last February, and these eight women are just delightful. They've bonded with each other, they understand what each other is going through, and I just facilitate a resilience group for them. And they remind me of adoptees, because their life has changed suddenly and the main person they're bonded to has now died and they don't wanna be in this new world, but they're forced to be in it.

And their nervous systems are all screwed up. So we just had our final group of the year and we lit a barbecue, a fire, and a barbecue. And we burned these things that we wanted to let go of for 2017. And then we made these art projects where we wrote down things we wanted to cultivate and bring in for the new year, but the joy in these women is incredible.

And one of them just started to have knee problems. She's like close to 80. And these other women just showed up with walkers, and canes, and all these things for her. And it's like they have a community. So they're not needing to see me individually, because they've got each other. And so it's just a much better situation for them. And they're healing so much more rapidly than they would if they were all in individual therapy with me. And saving money. Now they can go travel together if they want.

Anne Heffron: With their walkers.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, with their walkers. No problem.

Haley Radke: Well, just like you said, Anne, with people writing to you and saying, “Your book is so similar to my life.” I can't believe the emails I still get from people who just randomly happen upon the podcast and they're like, “This is the first time I've ever heard other adoptees voice these things.” And we've just kept them stuck and silent for so long.

Anne Heffron: I know. It's amazing, because when you start talking about it, you forget that it wasn't always like that.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially now we live in “Adoptee Land.” It's kind of like, “What do you mean, we're the first ones? You don't have all your friends that are adopted?”

Anne Heffron: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay, ladies, I wanna hear about your retreat.

Anne Heffron: What I wanted to create… So I had this opportunity where this famous person gave me her house for three months so I could create my book. And it was like this nest, and it was a miracle. And I was trying to think of, How could I…. So it took me three months to transform my life, and I was thinking, How can I give this to other people, but do it in a compacted way?

And I thought, Well, okay, number one, to make it go fast, you need a really good therapist. Right? Because this is hard stuff. And if you have focus and if you have support, this could go really, really well. There's something about checking out of your normal life for a couple of days. I wanted the retreat to be more than two days; be more than three days. It's a Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and then a Sunday morning. That's a significant amount of time.

Your nervous system gets reset. You get to step out of your life for a while. You make these really good connections. And Pam and I get to dive in deep and with the writing, and with the different therapeutic exercises that we'll do. It's the thing that if I couldn't have written the book and done it that way, I would've wanted to do it this way. This is like the super express train to how to get really joyful.

Well, you know, joyful is not even the right word. I can't say that. I'm more myself since I wrote the book. It doesn't mean that I walk around laughing all the time. I mean, I'm still sad sometimes and I still feel confused, but I definitely feel a hundred percent more grounded in myself. And I think that the way Pam and I work together, there's—we just understand each other and our thoughts. It's like we're feeding each other.

And I wanted to share that with other people. And then I wanted these people that come to us and do this, they'll be their own group. They'll know each other forever for the rest of their lives. And they can teach other people.

And then, I mean, I hope this is the work I do for the rest of my life. I feel like everything I did is to get here: to help people free themselves. We only have this life, you know? I mean, maybe there's reincarnation, but let's just pretend that this is the only one. And you can blow it as an adoptee, you know, you can get so stuck that you die feeling like, Wow, I never got to be myself.

And I think that, you know, Haley, like you, I found you by some miracle, and then I found Pam through you, and then I found all these people through your show. And I don't really believe in coincidence, you know, I think everything happens for a reason. And I think Pam and I are really, really powerful together, and we have so much to offer, and I just wanna share it and have people feel excited.

Adoption, for all of its difficulties, you might as well make it an opportunity, right? Because you're stuck with it. So, let's see how great we can make it.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I happen to really believe in our power to heal, and there's that word “heal” again. Just like if I cut my finger, you know, get a paper cut, I know my body's gonna get to work right away and start healing my finger, even without me doing anything. And I think that for adoptees, given the right soil and given the right support, we can heal. And I think that what's been missing for us is the right soil and the right support.

So, I feel like I really trust that we want to heal, like we want to get freed up to live fuller lives and to connect more deeply and in a more satisfying way, and to become more the creator of our own lives, rather than just this object that was thrown around and bought and sold and treated, (well, in my case, unkindly). And, you know, we want to get back in charge of having our life be like a palette where we get to decide what we put in it and live the best life we can possibly live, whatever that means to each person.

So I believe in our ability to do this, and in some ways, working with people with terrible diagnoses, or becoming paralyzed in accidents, or losing vital people (like we all have, too). Seeing people heal has really shown me—like my body knows we all can heal. If we're given the right soil and help, we all can heal. And I know this. So I want this retreat to be amazing soil with amazing quality help. And I trust the process. I trust we get there and we do the right things in the right ways, we're gonna just naturally heal together and bond.

Anne Heffron: Seems inevitable.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah.

Anne Heffron: Plus it's in Berkeley, which is so beautiful. I love Berkeley.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. So the retreat is going to be in Berkeley, California up in the North Hills (which is a beautiful area of Berkeley), right near this place called the Gourmet Ghetto, where you can walk down and get all kinds of amazing food.

But we picked a giant house that has a view and there's some rooms for rent in the house, or there's like Airbnbs or bed and breakfasts nearby in the neighborhood. We're gonna meet for four days. We're gonna have eight healing sessions. Each session will be three hours. So we're gonna have eight times three hours together.

And then we're also gonna have rest time and you know, take a walk, go explore Berkeley, get some sleep, whatever, you know. So time off as well, because people need time to integrate and just, you know, not just be with people all the time. I think there's some introverts coming who are gonna have their own rooms and just have a place they can just go retreat and get away from people if they need a break, you know?

And we're gonna be working in all kinds of ways with people. We're gonna be using art, we're gonna be using writing, we're gonna be doing a lot of being together. And I'll be facilitating ways of interacting and teasing out this, you know, what wants to come alive versus what's blocking you from coming alive.

And I think that the fact that we're all gonna be adoptees is gonna be just amazing, because there's so much we won't need to explain to each other. And that's just gonna take so many layers out of the way of getting close and connecting. The cost is $625 for the retreat. And then people book their lodging either with us in the house or nearby and pay for their food on their own.

I think we have six people who are signed up and others who are considering it and thinking about it. I think we have three or four people flying in from other places. We're really excited about it. We have a couple of young guys coming and college age, so that's gonna be an interesting mix of men and women, younger and older. And we just expect it to be a really nurturing and transformative experience.

So it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's President’s Day weekend in the United States, so February 15th to 18th. It is gonna end at 1:00 on Sunday, the 18th. And then people in the United States won't have work the next day, so it's time then to either get home or have a day to just rest or integrate,

Anne Heffron: We're gonna come kidnap you, Haley. So have fun being there. [everyone laughs]

Haley Radke: If we're not able to come to your retreat, say we live in England, for example, or New Zealand. My New Zealand listeners wanna come, too, I've heard. Is there an activity that you might be doing at the retreat that you could recommend to us to maybe do at our next support group meeting?

Anne Heffron: I thought of something right off the bat. I think there could be that someone could be listening right now and feeling discouraged that if they don't have enough money, or they don't have enough time, and feeling left out: right off the bat, you could write the three reasons why you can't go to this retreat. And those three things will seem like problems. But what if those three things are—what if they're wonderful things? Like what if those three things are you? So it might be, the three reasons are, 1). I don't have enough money. 2). I don't actually like Berkeley. I swore I'd never go there again. And the third one is, 3). No one's gonna take care of my dog.

Well, you have three things to write about. And the first is, “I don't have enough money.” So tell the story. Write the story, write two pages of not having enough money. And it's not a pity party of not having enough money. It's, “What is it like to not have enough money?” And you treat it with seriousness and beauty, right? It's like you make a little movie out of it. And it's not that saying, “Oh, I wish I had more money.” It's just, “What does it look like when you don't have enough money?”

Or if you say, “I have to take care of my dog.” Well, write about your dog for two pages. It sounds really, really simple, but I think anything that gives you access to writing about your life in a way that's with careful attention is a form of prayer, and that's a form of escape from pain.

Haley Radke: Well, I definitely have FOMO (fear and missing out), so…

Pam Cordano, MFT: Can I add something to what she said?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT: We have a lot of opportunities now to find people online who we connect with, and I would just encourage adoptees to find people that they feel very understood when they share something important to them. When people respond to you in a way where you feel like, Oh, they really got the essence of what I was trying to say, that's a good connection. And when you start to feel like you can move in the relationship: you can be serious, you could be joyful, you could be funny, you can play... All those things are indicators of a good quality relationship.

And so I think that we adoptees need to find as many people as we can. And who is better for us than other adoptees who understand the heart of the trauma, like the heart of the beginning of our lives. And so to have room to move in safe relationships that have many aspects to them is a wonderful thing. Even making subgroups, I mean, there was some talk about, you know, the “cool table” and the “not cool table" recently on some posting, but it's not about cliques. We should really be careful not to form cliques, because we all are so sensitive to rejection.

But trying to find people that just really resonate with us and where we feel good about ourselves, where we feel more like our best selves with them. And that's one thing I found with Anne, is when we talk (whether it's about a problem or about something good), I feel more of a sense of my best self with her. And it's unique, because she understands the pain that I understand. So it's great in that way for me. It's healthy for me to go to her, to call her, and be responded to if I need help. So that's maybe something I would say is: find the right people.

Anne Heffron: Yeah. And Haley, as far as the fear of missing out, I was thinking about— You know, Pam, when you were talking about how there was the mirror neurons, and then we're all connected. You know, Haley, it's like we are as adoptees, we are all connected. And so if one group is doing something, I think it influences everybody.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes. And so it's like the ecosystem.

Anne Heffron: Right. Right. We're one huge group. And it’s an interesting thing.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. And it's a thing that goes to the beginning of this podcast of us talking about how the creative episodes have influenced us, because they have. So what each of us is doing is affecting each other.

Anne Heffron: Exactly. Their successes are also my success because of that they're, “I know that they could do that. That means I could do it.” Even if it doesn't mean I'm gonna be a beautiful singer, but in some way. It's possible. Just even…

Pam Cordano, MFT: More is more.

Anne Heffron: Right. More is more, yeah. Like that. Especially with cake.

Pam Cordano, MFT: And connection, in our case. Adoption connection.

Anne Heffron: Oh, yeah. Gotta stop thinking about food. [Everyone laughs]

Pam Cordano, MFT: What I was thinking about your question, Haley, is that… I'll tell you about a really neat thing I've done with my women's groups this year. I have three groups in my private practice, and they're all with people who have some kind of major loss. What we've done is we've made bridges where they pick two points, either in the room or even outside. And one side of the bridge is the feeling of being constricted and afraid and feeling awful (kind of like how we adoptees feel on our worst days, like we just wanna go hide in a hole, or worse, just not even be here).

And then crossing the bridge, there's a threshold in the middle somewhere. And then the other side is where we feel more expansive and more connected, and we feel part of the world. And we're not just into conserving for our own wellbeing. We're more in touch with our generosity and wanting to share with others, and that's when we feel the best, that's how we are. We humans.

I've had people make their own bridges, they've done it on paper and then they've done a walking back and forth between these two sides and it's really walking between “trauma" and “not trauma.” And we all have those in us. We have the “trauma" and we have the “not trauma.” When we walk over to feel what the “trauma” feels like, and we feel constricted and tight—our muscles are tight, and our eyes are looking down, and we don't wanna be there, and we maybe have some pain... And just as we feel pain, or whatever.

Then walking to where we feel expansive. And we see the colors around us, and we see the world beyond us, and we know we're part of it and we have something to share, maybe. Once people start realizing that's a bridge that we live on all the time— Two hours ago, I might've been on the constricted side of the bridge and then now I'm on the more expansive and connected side of the bridge.

But we need to get to know our bridges, because this is really how we heal. Because when we're on that expansive side of the bridge, that's how we wanna feel. I mean, that's what Viktor Frankl was doing in the concentration camps. He knew he could go take a nap when he was exhausted and feeling awful, but he might go (he was a doctor), so he might go and do some medical treatment on somebody to help them out. And that was a more expansive, connected thing to do. And he knew that that mattered and it was meaningful to people and he felt better inside and he had that power to make that choice.

So anyway, getting to know this bridge is really important to me and it's important to me to help people that I work with (one way or another), get to know this bridge.

Haley Radke: So that's something that you could do together and then you sort of talk through the experience of being on one side or the other, or how it feels to be choosing your side or…

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in a way it's really what a trigger is. Like we might be doing just fine and then suddenly we get triggered by something and we're—Boom! We're on the other side of the bridge and we feel awful.

And it can really feel like we don't have access to anything but that terrible side of the bridge. And we don't want to expand, you know, we don't want to connect. We just want to say, “F-you world,” you know? “I don't wanna be here.” And it can take a long time sometimes to get out of that. That's what being triggered really is, is like landing on the other side of the bridge. And it's horrible.

So, I mean, that's just a metaphor for how to work with it. But it's really the thing that I think that (to me) is what healing is, is like knowing that there's a bridge and knowing how to put one foot in front of the other and get back across it, and getting more and more familiar with the path so that it's not—It doesn't take so long. You might start to take 30 minutes instead of three months.

Haley Radke: When I was talking to Nicole, the art therapist in one of the episodes in Season Three, she was talking about drawing a bridge and what's on each side. And she gave a really great exercise. So if you want to go back and listen to that, that would be something that people could do on their own.

Okay. Can you talk a little bit about what is different about a retreat (like a small intimate retreat like this, with two of you leading), versus a conference situation where you're going to different lectures and workshops? And even some, they have a theme of healing, but it seems like that's an unfulfilled promise. You get to the end of the weekend and there's, you know… It's an unfulfilled promise.

Anne Heffron: I can address that. There's something about when you go into a conference… For me, I feel very, very exposed because there are a lot of other people who are also feeling really exposed, but there isn't one common—

Well, we're all there. I mean, why do people go to adoptee conferences? They go there to connect and learn, but it's very loose. And I think when you go to a retreat, you inherently have a weighted blanket over you, because this is something you're doing for yourself. You don't have to take care of yourself in the same way. It's like you're sitting in a comfortable chair and you get to sit back because Pam and I are running the show. When I went to a writing retreat with about 10 people, it just felt so decadent and I felt like I was doing this for me.

Pam Cordano, MFT: One of the key differences is that (I can't speak to every retreat), but I've had really good retreat experiences, both as an attendee and as a person facilitating retreats. But to me, retreats are safe places to explore new territory, within. And to open up new doors.

And to me, when I go to conferences, I'm more in learning mode and I have a guard up, because I might see someone I'm scared of, or I might have a bad interaction. It's so big. There's not like a safety nest built in. So retreats to me are safe and intimate and they're places to go deeper inside and to heal.

Like I know with my license, I have to go get a certain amount of educational units and I used to go to conferences to get those units, so I could learn about this and that. But now I go to places where I can experience something in an intimate, safe setting, so that I can grow while I'm getting my units. Retreats are like therapy and conferences are like education and networking.

Anne Heffron: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel like after a conference I have to do a whole lot of self-care. Where after a retreat, a retreat is the self-care.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I mean, the thing that people might have to recover from after a retreat is growing, because when we grow beyond the ways our lives are organized, that's a bit stressful, because we have to then figure out, how are we going to make room for this new thing in our current lives? But that's growing.

Anne Heffron: Right. Right.

Pam Cordano, MFT: It's like molting, how snakes molt.

Haley Radke: Well, I love what you talked about earlier, Pam, about the experiences and how that changes you and just the experiential nature of a retreat and all the different hands-on activities and things that I imagine that you're planning.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. I mean, my hope is that people are mostly in their direct experience network, where they're mostly directly experiencing the nourishment of the view and the safety of kind responses when they share something, and the direct experiences that Anne and I bring to the retreat itself. And delicious coffee, or tea, or whatever.

I love the air in Berkeley. It's like wonderful air. And that's all direct experience and I wouldn't want people to have much of a chance to get too far into their default networks, because that's just not what it's about. That's just fortifying the old fortress of pain.

Anne Heffron: Well, it's also like a nurturing river. You're not just being thrown into an ocean and say[ing], “Good luck!”

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah. No, we would be setting up a whole structure for safety at the beginning, you know, from confidentiality to how we talk to each other at the retreat. I'm pretty strict about that stuff, because I know what stuff makes us feel safe and what doesn't in a group. People need space to share without having to worry that they're gonna get, you know, disagreed with or advised or any of that stuff. We don't do any of that. That's not helpful to growing.

Oh, I have a little anecdote, which is that I sent a copy of the writeup to Nancy Verrier, because she was my adoptive mom's therapist for 15 years. And she lives right there near Berkeley, so this is like right near her community. And she's turning 80 this year and is mostly doing phone work now and still some conferences and things. But she was saying she loved the title, because she's really been focusing on moving forward into healing, too, herself. She likes that what we're offering is also fitting with the way she's approaching her work these days (which is more about healing and less about just kind of the very important part of taking inventory of just how bewildering and upsetting this entire thing is). Speaking for myself. You know, it's important that we get our bearings around how hard this has been, but also, and then what do we do?

Anne Heffron: Which is essentially what Haley's been doing with this whole third season, right? Like the first two seasons you're telling the stories and now you're kicking into creativity. A beautiful thing.

Haley Radke: It's something we've talked about before, briefly, about spiritual bypass. Just that very thing you just said, Pam, about recognizing it and acknowledging it, and then you can do the healing.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Exactly. It's really about being grounded in the gravity of this whole institution and how it's impacted people who are hurting from their experiences of being adopted, without minimizing anything. And then it's the, “Then what?” “Then what do we do?” “How do we let our traumatized systems, whether it's ways we've been calling to the wrong places, calling to addictions, calling to people who aren't really there for us?” “And how do we start calling for the right things and getting responded to the right ways so that our lives can become better and we can heal?”

Anne Heffron: My life is definitely a million percent better with you two in this, for sure.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I feel that way, too. You guys make sense to me.

Anne Heffron: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good way to put it.

Haley Radke: It's so good to speak the same language.

Anne Heffron: Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yes. My nervous system's happy right now.

Anne Heffron: Yeah.

Pam Cordano, MFT: I can laugh.

Haley Radke: Well, it has been so lovely to talk to you ladies, and I so appreciate all the different pieces of wisdom and amazing insights that I got from you.

Can you tell us again where can we find the information for the retreat? And where can we connect with you online?

Anne Heffron: The Facebook group for the retreat is called Beyond Adoption: You. I can be reached on my Facebook page, at Anne Heffron, or my email is anneheffron@gmail.com.

Pam Cordano, MFT: Yeah, the best way to reach me is through my email, which is pcordano@comcast.net. That's P-C-O-R-D-A-N-O@comcast.net.

Anne Heffron: Remember, we're kidnapping you.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. I love you girls so much. So fun to chat with you. Did you know I have a monthly newsletter? It's new, sort of. There's only been two so far, and I'm sending my next one in about a week. It's a place for me to share my personal thoughts with you and also any behind the scenes news of the show, like what's coming up for Season Four, the theme and dates of the launch, all that good stuff.

If you'd like to be among the first to be in the know, you can sign up on adopteeson.com/newsletter. If you are passionate about helping adoptees and want to move our voices forward, come and partner with me. Adopteeson.com/partner has all the details. I've had this goal for 50 patrons for a while, and it would be so amazing to hit that before I launch Season Four.

So if you've been on the fence or you've thought about supporting the show, but just haven't pulled the trigger yet, it would mean so much to me. I take monthly pledges that help pay for the cost of hosting and producing the show for you. And I have some great thank you gifts for you, including a secret Facebook group. There's even some unedited episodes of the show if you need something to tide you over until Season Four. So that's adopteeson.com/partner.

This is the Season Three finale. What does that mean? When will the show be back? I'm gonna take a brief break, friends, and I'm gonna be starting to record Season Four and you'll likely see a few healing episodes in your feed here and there just before Season Four gets going.

So make sure you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app and you won't miss an episode. But I will miss talking to you every week, so I can't wait until Season Four starts up again. I just love you listeners. I love connecting with you on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter is my favorite. But I am active on all of those social media platforms.

So you can come find me @Haley Radke and also @Adoptees On. So I look forward to chatting with you on social media during the break and make sure you subscribe to the newsletter so that you will know when the date is of our launch. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again soon.

Outtakes

Pam Cordano, MFT: There's my dog again. Someone just rang the doorbell. Probably someone selling encyclopedias.

Haley Radke: Do they still do that?

Pam Cordano, MFT: No.

Haley Radke: Hopefully it's someone selling chocolate.

54 Nicole R. - Our Story Isn't Told

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/54

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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 14, Nicole R. I'm your host Haley Radke. Nicole Rademacher is a multicultural adoptee and a professional contemporary artist. She tells us about her reunion with her biological parents and her two brothers, and how it has informed her creative practice.

Nicole lets us in on some of her projects, including one that is still in the works, and I'm still in awe of the brilliance of it. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we talk about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Nicole Rademacher. Welcome Nicole.

Nicole Rademacher: Hi. Thank you for having [00:01:00] me.

Haley Radke: Oh, I'm so excited to chat with you. I know you do a ton of different things, which hopefully we'll touch on everything. But why don't you start out and just share your story with us.

Nicole Rademacher: I am a multicultural adoptee. My biological father is Mexican and my biological mother is white. I grew up in a white family. I was adopted into a white family with an adopted brother. So I grew up always knowing I was adopted. I have a really great relationship with my adoptive family.

I always wanted to search out my biological family. It was something that was, ever since I can remember, that was something I wanted to do. I was adopted in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee through Catholic Social Services. I remember when I was 18, I called Catholic Social Services in Milwaukee. They told me when I turned five, they changed the age from 18 to 21. And I was devastated.

Yeah. I was like, No! But I [00:02:00] finally turned 18 and my adoptive parents are super supportive. When I turned 21, I was kind of in a different, you know, 21-year-old state. But just before I turned 26, with the encouragement of a friend of mine, I contacted Catholic Social Services again and filled out the paperwork. I happened to be finishing my undergraduate degree and so I actually got to do it for free, which was pretty exciting.

You know, I thought this was gonna take ages. I'd read about searches where you never find your biological parents or they find you and they don't or they can't meet with you or meet you. You just never get that connection. But I was really fortunate that, I mean, I think I was fortunate that three months later in March of that same year, I was contacted by a social worker and he [00:03:00] had found my biological parents because my biological grandparents, my maternal grandparents had never moved.

And so he still had that same contact information. And my biological parents were married two years after I was born.

Haley Radke: To each other?

Nicole Rademacher: Yes, to each other. Right? Like that's really beautiful and really amazing. And I have this whole family and I have two younger brothers that are full younger brothers.

But it was, uh, really difficult. I mean, as any adoptee that finally meets your biological parents, it's. I remember this bath that I took that was like this eternal bath where I just kept looking at my skin and touching each part of my skin and realizing that it belonged to something other than just me, because for the first 26 years of my life, it had only belonged to me.

And I didn't look like, I mean, even though I grew up in a white family and I totally passed for [00:04:00] completely white, my parents are Nordic and tall and blue eyes and big bones, and I'm, you know, I'm petite. I'm 5 foot two, with dark hair and brown eyes. But it was weird, right? Because you are supposed to be super happy.

But I felt this added layer of, I guess it's rejection. I don't know what the word is. It took me, once I found that out, it actually took me a long time to call them and make the contact. I remember very specifically, like I wrote it. Really, I was shaking. I was at work when he called me and gave me the information, I just kind of stared at that number and those names for weeks and didn't know what to do with it.

I called and I got voicemail and so I hung up and I called again and I got voicemail and I just like wasn't calling at the right time. You know, I remember I talked with him and I don't remember the specifics, but yeah, it's this big [00:05:00] blur of emotions.

Haley Radke: Hmm. Can you talk a little bit more, Nicole, about knowing that your parents stayed together and had more kids and what does that feel like?

Nicole Rademacher: It's kind of cool in one sense because my adopted brother and I, like, there was so much that we could have done to bond as adoptees, but we never did that.

They were just really different people. So it's cool to have another two other options as brother, you know? But it's also like, I don't know. Like if they had kept me and then we'd live together, like would these two people exist? Would I be the older sister? I mean, yeah, but it's tough.

It feels like, especially now being a mom and having a child and he didn't come at a super opportune time, my child. We’d been talking about having kids, but not at the moment that he came. And so there is a bit [00:06:00] of resentment or something at that. I don't know if it's resentment towards them, but it's like, Couldn't you have, like, toughed it out? Couldn't you have figured it out?

But, you know, they were 19, and I remember when I was 19. Thinking like this is the age that they were, and knowing that I was still just a child. So I mean, I have a lot of empathy, but I also have a lot of just unresolved emotions around it. There is an anger, but I think my anger is not as strong, I think, if I don't know.

It's not, it's not as strong as maybe it was before, but like before it was masked by all these other things because I thought I was supposed to be super happy 'cause I was 26 when I met them and really unsure of who I was. I really thought I was still in the fog, right?

And so then learning that, I was like, Well, I'm supposed to be happy. This is [00:07:00] really amazing. Like I don't have to find my biological mother and my biological father, like both of my biological parents, they're together, and I have this whole family and it's like picture perfect and we'll just tie a bow and it's great.

Haley Radke: And yet, what happened next?

Nicole Rademacher: And so I, being 26 and thinking it was this picture perfect bow, like they sent me pictures of them and that was profound. Just seeing my own physical attributes mirrored in ancestors and in people. Within or maybe a month later, I went down and met them all and being the ideological person that I am, I stayed with them for, I think, a week and a half.

Haley Radke: Oh, wow.

Yeah. I know, I didn't know what I was doing. I would never do that now. And I was like, Well, I have a [00:08:00] family so I'm gonna be in this family. Right? My youngest brother was 16 at the time, and so he was in the house, and no one knew what to do. You know, like now looking back at it, it's been 13 years, I didn't know what to do.

I think my brother who was 16 was the only person who knew what to do because he was totally oblivious to all these emotions that were going on. But no one else really knew what to do. You know, like, how do you treat this person that's your child, that's not your child, that you haven't known, that you didn't raise.

And so even though they look like me. I really do look like both of them and I act like them too, which is, you know, that profound thing about genetics. Yet they didn't know me and I didn't know them. And so here we are as adults trying to get to know one another and I didn't see it then. And like the following year I was living in [00:09:00] Europe.

They came to visit and we went on this month-long trip together, and that was when the [censored] kind of hit the fan. There was one point where I did something emotionally, or like I talked to my youngest brother in a certain way, and there was a lot of tension and I had no idea I had done this.

And my biological mom said something to me like, Oh, you really hurt Luis. And I was like, Well. Luis needs to tell me that. You know, and it was like really in your face. Like, who are you? What are you? You are not my mom. He's my brother because he's my brother and he'll always be my brother, but I don't know him.

And I think we still go through these things. Um, I talk with them often. My, who is now the middle brother who grew up as the oldest, his girlfriend's sister lives in Los Angeles where I live, and [00:10:00] so he'll often end up coming here and visiting. And so we have this growing relationship and we're growing it like you do with your extended family, like with your cousins if you don't live in the same area.

I mean, I don't live in the same area as the cousins I grew up with, my cousins that are part of my adoptive family, and so we're growing it that way. You know, there's still weird hurdles. I think for the last two, three years I've really been delving into the adoptee community at least here in Los Angeles, and digitally as well, which is, you know, how I found Adoptees On.

It's really helped me to understand who I am and how all these pieces fit in together and how my relationship is with my biological family. I think it helps that too. It helps me understand the situation that they were in and kind of calms [00:11:00] the anger because I can logically think about it and understand that. But still allow me to feel those emotions, if that makes sense.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I have talked to so many adoptees, more than I would expect, that have been in your situation, who have searched and then found their bio parents are married and have more kids, full siblings, and it's just, like, it sounds unusual, but it actually happens quite a bit.

And so I just think that's so much to process, which is why I asked you kind of how you felt about it, to give some language to people about that. I don't know. It's for me, you know, when I found my parents were teenagers and so there's this sense of understanding of why they couldn't parent [00:12:00] and yet still, there's a lot of feelings like, Well, why didn't their parents help them? And, you know, so it's just like the mixed bag. I feel like we're always like walking that line. Right?

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah. And I think, you know, as an adoptee you always feel like you're this singular being, you're this island out there because you're growing up in this place where no one's mirroring. You're not mirroring anybody and you don't look like anybody around you. And then from all the tales you've ever been told of people who find or could possibly find their biological family is, you know, the parents aren't together and they're all messed up and all of this stuff and blah, blah, blah.

Then I find out that my parents are together and actually they're in a higher tax bracket than my adoptive parents. And you know, [00:13:00] it's like, it's really fantastic. And you know, and then you feel like, Oh, I must be this anomaly. I'm finding that I'm not an anomaly. There's lots of us out there.

And then I know that you've talked to so many adoptees. You know, we do exist and there's a lot around that and I actually, I mean we'll talk about this in a little bit, but that's one of the things that I'm processing in my creative practice. It’s this idea of what could have been that never was.

You know, it's not even trying to decide whether one thing was better, because that's, you know, don't talk about that. Like, I don't wanna think about that. But to sit in a space that never existed and just kind of let it be and feel your feelings with that and just give yourself the space to do that, or I'm giving [00:14:00] myself the space to do that.

Haley Radke: It's so wild to think about back to when we were born and just that, that life ended there. And there's a different life that we're living. I love that, giving yourself an opportunity to process that. And so many of us just, we either go there and we really fantasize about it, or we just totally block it out.

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah. I mean, and it's all good. Like, I've found myself, because that family exists, really kind of daydreaming about it, and I'm like, I don't think this is really healthy for me. I don't think that this is really helping me. So, trying to figure out a space where I'm allowed to do that, but I'm not carrying it too far, where maybe it's [00:15:00] wasted energy, you know, where I really need to concentrate on what's here.

But I don't want to shame myself into not being allowed to think about that.

Haley Radke: That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Okay. I was just like, oh my gosh. So you hinted at it, Nicole, what do you do?

Nicole Rademacher: I am a professional contemporary artist. The point of departure in my work is my adoption and my reunion with my biological family.

So I look at nonverbal communication between people as a starting point and really kind of look at gesture, space and object as cultural facts of that and kind of look at identity construction, ideas of belonging, intimacy, alienation. I've been really delving into ethnography and psychology. So it's not just about me and [00:16:00] my experience.

So I'm starting to understand it in context and how it's shaped by the world around us and how my experiences might also relate to other people and other people who are not adoptees as well.

Haley Radke: And what are some of the types of projects that you would work on?

Nicole Rademacher: So I have a couple projects that are kind of half today that I'm working on right now. I just wanna talk about one of them because it's the one that I hinted at. And then the other projects I'm working on are really community based. So the project I'm working on has the working title “Invisible Images.”

It's taking photographs of my biological family, of them as a family and then figuring out how old my younger brothers are, and then finding a picture of me, like doing the math, it's not very hard doing the math, and trying to find a picture of me. Not at the same age, but at the same time.

So I'm 11 years [00:17:00] older than my youngest brother, so if he looks like he's one, I'm trying to find a photograph of when I was 12 and using this optical toy that was popular in the 19th century. It's called a thaumatrope, T-H-A-U-M-A-T-R-O-P-E. And basically it's this disc, on one side it's one picture, on the other side, it's another picture.

So using the theory of persistence of vision, where basically you oscillate it back and forth and it appears in your mind that the images are together even though they're separate. And it's dealing with this idea that they'll never be together. Like this reality never happened, but what if it did happen?

And then it would be, and so it's only happening in my mind, right? And it's only happening in the mind of whoever's looking at this thaumatrope. And so the strings, there's strings tied to each side, and they're twirled really quickly between the [00:18:00] fingers so that these two pictures blend together. Does that make sense?

Haley Radke: Yes. And I'm just like having my jaw open, like I'm having this moment. Wow, that's incredible.

Nicole Rademacher: And I actually need help to do this because it's so emotional for me and a good friend of mine is helping me. She is actually tracing the images, so I'm finding the images and then I kind of stare at them for a while and I look at them in Photoshop together and kind of freak out, and it's a little bit too emotional for me to draw the images, and so she's actually drawing the images for me.

Haley Radke: What I'm picturing is, uh, sometimes when I go to my bio family's house and every once in a while, you know, they'll bring out some pictures and just looking at old family photos is so difficult for me. Like I love it. I wanna take it all [00:19:00] in and I wanna absorb it all. And yet I'm always like, I'm not in any of these pictures.

It's very triggering. And I have literally pictured, what was I doing at this exact time? And so that's why I'm just like, that's amazing. I love that you thought of that.

Nicole Rademacher: So, I mean, my bio mom. When we met, she gave me a scrap she had put together. She's so lovely. And she had put together the scrapbook of them for me, of her and my biological father before I was born.

So like them when she went to visit them in Mexico and my aunts and uncles, both in Mexico and in Milwaukee, and all my cousins and my younger brothers and, you know, just this scrapbook. And so that's where those pictures are coming from. Otherwise, I don't know. I wouldn't know how to ask her for them, you know?

And I asked my mom, my adopted mother, I asked her to send me a bunch of pictures and she just went through stuff and just [00:20:00] started sending me things and she has no idea what I'm using them for. And I usually post stuff on Instagram or whatever, just to like process based, but I can't bring myself to do it because they all follow me on Instagram.

I feel like I'm not doing anybody right by doing it, but I know I need to do it. So, I don't know. My biological maternal grandfather died recently and I was so touched by actually being included in his obituary, right? I was like, yeah, I do belong.

Haley Radke: I'm actually here. I am in this world.

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah. So, yeah, so like I said, it's half baked. I don't actually know where it's going. I don't know if I use the objects. Right now the objects are just experiments. Oftentimes, doing visual work I usually work in video, so I don't know if they become videos of that and then the object is next to it. I'm not sure where that's going.

Outside of that piece, I have a couple different [00:21:00] community-based projects that I'm working on. One I'm kind of in a pause at 'cause recently in the fall I did a bunch of workshops around it. It's called “Origin Stories,” so it's a community-based artistic project.

It began as just an artistic project where I was exploring these imagined histories that I had as a child. Everyone imagines that you're something else when you're a kid, but as we all know, as adoptees, there's more staying power to the stuff you imagine as an adoptee, especially in a closed adoption, because you could be anyone or anything.

I had always latched onto this idea. I knew my biological father was Mexican, but I grew up in North Carolina and with a white family, and so I had no context for what Mexican meant. I had no idea of what Mexican culture was [00:22:00] except for what I'd learned in social studies class. And I grew up in the eighties, so I knew that there were Aztecs in Mexico. And I grew up in the eighties with Disney and Disney princesses, so I fashioned myself to be this long lost Aztec princess.

And at the same time, I did not have a studio at the time, so I had some space in my house that I was working in, but I didn't really have a lot of time to myself.

I have a son and he was one and a half. So anybody who has kids knows that you don't have a lot of time for yourself. But the one thing I did have is my commute and anyone who lives in Los Angeles knows that commutes can be really long. I had all this time in the car to talk to myself and I began to elaborate on the story and kind of just expand and [00:23:00] explore what it was or what it could be.

And this was the same time that I started going to Adopt Salons with Jeanette Yoffe, who is an MFT here in Los Angeles, also an adoptee. And so that was really the time when I felt I could explore myself as an adoptee and I could explore my community and I really could explore what that particular thing means in my work as an artist.

So I just started creating the story and I'll be this long-lost Aztec princess or indigenous princess, or whatever. I'll make up this story for how this, how this girl came to be. I researched fairytales and I researched oral histories, and so I was like, Well, I'll do this in the oral history tradition. And so I never wrote it down. Every day or almost every day, I would just continue to tell the story and get further and further and further.

In the end, I realized that it really wasn't about [00:24:00] my story, it was about the fact that I could imagine the story and then how can I, as an artist and also somebody who works with the community, how can I inspire, or how can I help be a witness to other people figuring out what their story is or imagining their story.

So that's really how the workshop evolved. So it's called “Origin Stories” and it's been going on, I guess, for a couple years. Originally, it was designed to empower adopted and foster people to record their unique histories. It's about a two-hour workshop.

And the attendees, the participants work in groups to create a story using visual prompts. People will come to the workshop. I'll tell my story as an adoptee and [00:25:00] give a background of the project. So I tell them the same thing as far as imagining myself as this long-lost Aztec princess. And then we talk a little bit about storytelling and what goes into storytelling.

And then in the beginning we're using these tarot cards as visual prompts so that people, you know, people who aren't usually creative always get really shy about it, even though everybody has this creativity. And so I wanted people to be relaxed about it, that they didn't have to invent everything, that they could, you know, rely on different things.

But as I started to work with my community of adoptees and foster youth, I realized that the tarot cards I was using really, um, even though I hand chose them from different decks, really didn't speak to who they imagined themselves to be or who they wanted to be in the future. I began to expand it to the general public, to artists, to people who felt marginalized because I think that's who we are [00:26:00] as adoptees.

We feel marginalized, our story isn't told. Our narrative is like this same narrative that none of us really feel connected to about being saved or lucky or you know, whatever, whatever it may be. And so after the storytelling part, there's this card making part. They make these three by five cards that is something about themselves or something that resonated with them about the stories that they tell in this group. And then those cards are scanned and put into a deck that then get recycled back into the workshop.

You come in, we talk as a group. I tell my story. We go into the storytelling part, where you work in a group of three to five, create the story. You tell it back to the group. And then we take out the crayons and the markers and the watercolors and the drawing pencils and the collage [00:27:00] materials, and then you're asked to create a card of something that resonated with you in the story or something that speaks to you and who you identify as.

Haley Radke: And so what does that do for you and the participants to really write this sort of fictional, alternate story and process that way? Like what, what are some of the things that you're seeing happening from doing this?

Nicole Rademacher: Well, it's been really interesting because as I opened it up to the general public and to people who felt marginalized, I started to realize how many people feel marginalized and how isolated a lot of us feel, whether or not we're adoptees, and how we as adoptees can kind of connect with these other groups.

The workshop itself is I'm sharing something intimate. They're not very large workshops. I think the largest has been 25 people. I'm sharing [00:28:00] something really intimate and I'm asking people to share this time with me. I also do these breathing exercises beforehand to like ground everybody.

Really like the social emotional part of it so that there's this understanding that we're going to share this time together and it's gonna be something personal. And it's not just a workshop. Oh, I'm gonna come and learn how to collage something. It's about something different and it's about something I'm asking them to go a little bit deeper.

And I've been really surprised by what people have done. Some people wanna talk about it and some people don't wanna talk about it. I also still do them with adoptees. And one adoptee had this tracing paper on top of hers and it said “death.” And then when she went to share it with the group, because it was in this adoptee group where we actually go back and talk about it, she took the tracing paper off and just showed the collage and the drawing underneath.[00:29:00]

And I was like, But wait, but you know, I can't say it 'cause she took it off. So there's something where people are connecting with this idea of they can really imagine themselves as anything and who could they be?

Haley Radke: Processing our identity in so many different ways is so powerful when you're talking about, you know, inviting the general public in that has been marginalized in some way also, and having them identify with adoptees.

I have some listeners now that don't have any tie to adoption, and yet they find commonalities with us and some of the different experiences that we share and feelings and et cetera. And I just find that so fascinating. So I love that you are doing that as well and finding those connections.

That's so cool.

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah, and it's interesting because like, oh, in [00:30:00] passing talk with people about just being an adoptee and kind of not feeling like you belong or these ideas of identity and family, things will resonate with them. But then when you spend like two to three hours with them, then you're seeing them produce something creative and I'm facilitating it.

So I'm not actually creating the stories with them, but I'm listening to this story and to that story. And the stories were really kind of amazing because half of it was fiction, or part of it was fiction, and another part was based on one person in the group, something that happened to them and then another person, it's based on something that happened to a friend of theirs or a family member of theirs.

And so it's all this fact and fiction that's all mixed together, and people can't help but bring that in. And then from an activism standpoint, we have to find [00:31:00] connections with other people out there and other communities that are bigger than ours that are fighting for their rights as well and fighting to be heard and for their voice and their narrative to be changed. And I think if we can really harness that, then, you know, we have a way in.

Because there's so many people right now fighting to have their narratives in the general collective society be changed. And I don't know if we're on the top of that, you know, near the top of that list at all. So I think that if we can figure out how to figure out those connections with the other communities that are also marginalized. And commonalities. You know, like people have to bond together. Whether or not you're part of the same group. We all are fighting for common goals.

Haley Radke: And I think there's something to this, like we are showing up [00:32:00] and saying, You know, we're adopted. It actually was a trauma. These are the ways it's impacted me.

Any way we can flip people's picture of adoption. Right? Any way, and to start out by showing our heart and our wounds to someone else, and that's what they can see and that's what they can identify and understand with, like, that's amazing. Oh my gosh, Nicole, that's so cool. I love that you're doing this.

I just wanna go back. You said it's an oral tradition, meaning these don't get written down? Does anybody record them?

Nicole Rademacher: I audio-record them. Right now I've just been saving the audio recordings. I need to go edit them and put them into the archive. I have an archive of the workshops I've done since April, which is since April it's been with the whole card part of it. [00:33:00] That's on my website, and it includes some images of people in the workshop and then some of the cards that have been made in the workshops. Once I finish editing the audio, I'll start adding those to it, and those will just be the stories that people tell.

Haley Radke: Wow. As an avid audio consumer. Did you know that about me? I don't know how, how could anyone tell?

Nicole Rademacher: I didn't know that. (shared laughter)

Haley Radke: No? I know. It's a surprise. Um, that's amazing. Oh, I love that so much.

Nicole Rademacher: I'm a little behind on my audio editing.

Haley Radke: Why does it take a long time? (more shared laughter)

Oh, so good. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing about that. Let's go on to recommended resources. And I mean, for me, your website and all of these different things you've done is an amazing resource for people to check [00:34:00] out. And so you're gonna share that right at the end of the show where we can get in touch with you. But I love that you're adding these audio things from “Origin Stories” and you have videos.

You have, like, it's the works, like all your work is up there. It seems like there's probably not everything, but yeah. Tell us a little bit about what else we can find up there.

Nicole Rademacher: The “Origin Stories” is there. “Gate Path,” which is a piece that I did that was up at LAX airport and that actually looks at privacy and security, which also stems from, you know, my ideas of and my experience as an adoptee.

“Potential Spaces,” which is a project that I did thinking about hybrid cultures as somebody who's in multicultural relationship. And then also growing up as a multicultural adoptee.

“You Are A Perpetual Tourist” which was my thesis piece for my Master of Fine Arts, and that's really [00:35:00] looking at nonverbal communication between children and adults in their lives.

And this is all found subjects. And so really trying to as a voyeur, as an observer, which I find, I don't know if you find this as an adoptee. You're always looking at how people are interacting and who people are, and always wondering if that's somebody you're related to and you're just kind of like dissecting all these little parts about what's going on.

Haley Radke: Oh, yes. Like I feel like I am a people-watcher, but like exponentially.

Nicole Rademacher: Yes, yes! So I took my people-watching skills that I had been honing my entire life and with my video camera and looked at kids in public spaces and how they related to one another.

Haley Radke: There's a video of what looks like a little family and there's a little [00:36:00] boy and they're at the bus stop.

Nicole Rademacher: Yes.

Haley Radke: Oh my God. That's part of it. I just watched that and I was like, oh my goodness, this is incredible. It's very short and there's no words or anything. It was really moving.

Nicole Rademacher: Oh, good. Thank you.

Haley Radke: Oh yeah, so there's all these little gems on Nicole's website, so you should definitely go and look at it. It's just really, really amazing. You're doing such cool stuff.

Nicole Rademacher: Thank you.

Haley Radke: You're welcome. I mean it, I mean it. You had sent me a link to the Celia Center Arts Festival. Can you talk a little bit about that? And Brian Stanton, actually I interviewed him. And he said, Oh yeah, Nicole did this whole thing. And this is what he was talking about.

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So Jeanette Yoffe, she's a marriage and family therapist who's also an adoptee here in Los Angeles. She actually got me and Brian together, so I curated the visual art [00:37:00] portion and Brian programmed, I guess is the proper term you use. He programmed the performing arts part of it, but it was a day-long festival of adoptee work. So we had professional artists as well as adoptees or foster youth that are still teenagers that sent in work.

We exhibited at the Electric Lodge here in Venice, and it was really amazing because we had like over 200 people that came, and we had workshops and we had the performances and we had spoken word poets and then we had all of the artwork up and we had like a couple videos that were going on around too. Like there was a documentary. Brian did his performance at the very end. It was like the show-closer. It was just amazing.

Haley Radke: Oh, Blank. Blank is so good. So good.

Nicole Rademacher: Oh, it's so moving. It's just [00:38:00] no words for that. We also had a panel of some of the professional artists that were involved in the show to talk about their experience. And that was really moving for me and I just moderated it.

But there was one artist, John Christiano. He's a sculptor here in Los Angeles and he had found the call, I think, through Facebook, or something like that, and sent in this sculptural work. And I realized that he'd had a career, you know, he's like an actual professional artist and has studied and sells work and works in a studio.

And so I invited him to be on the panel and he was fine with it. But then like the day before when we were installing, he was like, Well, I don't know. And so finally he decided to do it. His portion, like what he told about his story, was just so moving about how he doesn't get along at all with his adoptive family.

I mean, I don't wanna necessarily talk for him, [00:39:00] but it was really amazing to have somebody who was so ambivalent about doing this to then have something that really touched all of us. And so we're gonna do it again. We're gonna do a very short visual portion of it in November of 2018, but it'll mainly be film and performance.

And it'll be here in Los Angeles on the west side, and if you follow my social media handles, I will definitely be tweeting and posting about it. So, it's a bit away.

Haley Radke: I couldn't believe it when you sent me those links and I was watching, there's like a video recap that is, I mean, I think it's at least five minutes long and it's got all of these different snippets from that day and I was just like, oh my gosh, I wish I had been there.

That's like speaking my language. So, so cool. Yes, definitely gonna watch [00:40:00] out for that. And there was one other thing that you wanted to recommend to us.

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah, there is this cultural archive, so I'm also starting to try and build this archive. I've found that the more I get into my community of adoptees, I'm finding more and more adoptees who are also artists and creative professionals, and I've stumbled upon this.

It's called Adoptee Cultural Archives.wordpress.com. They are a Korean Belgian adoptee, from what I can tell, and they have this list of activists and artists and filmmakers and writers and books and films and shows, like all different kinds of things. It's all about adoption. It's mainly skewed towards transnational adoption.

But for those of us who are not transnational adoptions, it's still just this amazing, amazing amount of information and media and things for us to help us [00:41:00] understand ourselves better, I think, and be a bit more aware. So again, it's Adoptee Cultural Archives.wordpress.com.

Haley Radke: It's huge. Like there are so many links. It's a treasure trove for sure.

Oh, thanks Nicole. Thanks for bringing that to us. I have one more question before we wrap up. Is that okay? You just said something and I wish I had asked you about it when we were talking before, so I'm just gonna ask you now, what do you think it is that brings so many adoptees into working in the creative field,

Nicole Rademacher: Working creatively you're working in this language that's not English or Spanish or French or whatever, this language that has words, right? You're working in something else, and maybe you're a writer but you're still working with writing as a creative art, you know, or you're a comedian, but you're still working with these words in this creative realm. So you're building a different language, whether [00:42:00] it's visual or time, or you're building a different vocabulary.

I think that what we've experienced and the trauma we've experienced, it's so profound that we're oftentimes not allowed to feel those feelings or to express ourselves with it. We have to make up our own language for it, right? So that we can, and maybe we don't even know what that stuff means, but we can feel it.

And working in the creative realm really gives us permission to do that. We don't necessarily have to articulate everything. We can articulate it enough.

Haley Radke: I love that. Thank you. I put you on spot there, but that was so good..

Nicole Rademacher: Yeah, you did. I was like, Oh man. I dunno. Why do you do it? Lemme think about it.

Haley Radke: Oh Nicole, this was so good. Thank you so much for chatting with me. Um, where can we connect with you online?

Nicole Rademacher: So you can connect with me on social media. My handles are at NICRRAD [00:43:00] and that's on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And then my website is nicolerademacher.com.

And feel free to email me if you wanna chat about anything. It's nic@nicolerademacher.com.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you. And for sure, go check out Nicole's website and follow her to make sure you keep up with all the things that she's doing. Thank you. This was just such a great conversation. I loved hearing your story and I can't get that little picture-spinner out of my head. Like I couldn't picture, I don't even know what it's called anymore, but I can picture it and I’m just stuck on that.

Nicole Rademacher: Thank you so much, Haley. This has been great.

Haley Radke: This [00:44:00] show is brought to you by my Patreon partners. Patreon is a website that allows creators like me to raise monthly support to help me keep producing this podcast for you.

As a special thank you for our 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 are struggling with, like coming out of the fog. Come and join us. Adopteeson.com/partner has all the details.

Today would you tell just one person about the show? It is literally by word of mouth that podcasts are able to grow their audience. If you are able to do that for me, it's just such a huge help to raise up adoptee voices worldwide. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday when we wrap up Season Three. [00:45:00]

Isaiah and Griffin: Okay, say it. No, you say it with me. Happy New Years. 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?

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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.