65 [Healing Series] Finding Meaning

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/65

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Haley Radke: This show is listener supported.

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're talking about finding meaning in our lives, even when we think of ourselves as a mistake and perhaps without a purpose. I also want to give you a heads up. We do discuss suicide in this episode. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Pamela Cordano. Welcome back, Pam.

Pam Cordano: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Pamela is a fellow adoptee and psychotherapist who specializes in helping you to discover meaning in your life. So that is the bio I have had for you for quite a while. But I am curious, what does it mean to you? Meaning in your life?

Pam Cordano: Yes. Meaning is my favorite subject and to me it's almost like the background music that's playing in my heart all the time. And this wasn't always the case. I can tell you how this happened, like why meaning became so important to me. But I can't do it justice unless we talk for three hours, but I can tell you the story.

I had a terrible infancy. I didn't connect with my adoptive parents. I was an only child. I was just holding my breath my whole childhood. I enjoyed college. I met my husband in the freshman dorm and I had some good experiences, but basically all the way until I was in my mid-forties, I think that I was really in conservation or self-preservation mode, and I didn't even know it because I think that I was just hurt and traumatized from my history and from things feeling hard that I really didn't know another way of being.

And so something really huge happened in 2010 and what that was, and you're gonna have to put your seatbelts on cuz this is a crazy thing I'm gonna say, but I had a therapist who was really dear to me. He was like the therapist for therapists and my friends, my colleagues and I all saw him and he looked like Robert Redford and he just seemed like a guru almost.

And he committed suicide. He jumped off a bridge, and this was mid-November of 2010, and it was so shocking to me that he did that. I didn't see it coming and there had always been a part of me, I think about our adoptee community and how prevalent suicide is. And I've met a lot of adoptees who have had suicidal feelings, even if they've never acted on them.

And I would say I've had that my whole life, where staying alive and investing in life felt difficult and hard and the thing I would do on my better days, and on my harder days or when I was really triggered or when I'd have a fight with my husband or something awful, I would feel like, what is the point? And I would feel like my life force would go out of me really quickly and I think that's an adoptee thing. At least I've heard that a lot of people say that kind of a thing.

So there were times when staying alive was difficult. I never really got to the point of actually in any way contemplating suicide, but I've always had a feeling that living is difficult and it's just, for me, it's just hard to live without having that support of generations and generations of my own biology and being split at the root, like the book title says.

So anyway, my therapist kills himself. And then, let's see, four days later I went to Esalen in Big Sur, which is like a place therapists go to get continuing education units and we take cool classes there. So I was in this group and there was a man in the group who was an AIDS doctor from New York, and I told the group, we all had a chance to introduce ourselves, and I said that I was in a really traumatized, not good place because my therapist had just killed himself and that my goal for the weekend was really just to breathe. Yeah, I didn't really have any other goals to learn anything or anything like that.

So we had to partner up with somebody, and I partnered up with this AIDS doctor, and he told me that his father had killed himself when he was one, and that no one had talked about it, and it was just called an accident.

And so there was this similarity in how he grew up not really knowing what had happened. And then he found himself going to medical school and being an AIDS doctor, and he started putting it together that here he was as an adult, trying to save the lives of mostly young men and it had everything to do with his father and trying to save his father who he couldn't save.

So we connected and I thought to myself, well, here's my therapist who takes the path of suicide. And then here's this doctor who lost his father and has this brilliant career and worked so hard at saving people's lives, and he's so invested in life himself. So I was just comparing the two as two kinds of directions. One's going into life, and one was going out of life. And I recognize both of them inside of me.

The doctor emailed me a link to the California AIDS Ride where people ride their bikes from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for people with AIDS and for research and things like that. And so I felt like I had to do it, and I'm not an athlete and I trained for about seven months riding my bike up to a hundred miles a day.

And that the ride itself was 545 miles, and we rode seven days in a row with an average of 80 miles per day. Some days longer, some days shorter. And I've never done anything like this in my life, and it was brutal. It was grueling to be on my bike training and doing the ride. It was grueling, but for me, it was about two things.

It was about deciding I wasn't going to do what my therapist did. I was going to actually do what this doctor did. I was going to move more and more deeply into life itself. And then the other thing that was just crazy that I didn't expect was it was my first time really putting myself out there to raise money and to do something that was going to benefit all these people that I didn't even know.

It was really for others and that was really, as an adoptee who was angry and self-preservational and conserving my own energy, it was really new to open my heart to people I didn't even know and give to them. So that ride down the coast changed everything. It's like it broke something open in me, and this is going to be too long to even explain.

But it was after that I discovered Viktor Frankl who wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning about his three years imprisoned in the Holocaust, and how he studied his own relationship with life itself when he lost everything. He lost his pregnant wife, he lost his parents. He lost all but one sibling. He lost his dignity, his freedom, his possessions, his future as far as he knew, and he still found so many ways that life was meaningful. Even though he lost everything.

And somehow that really resonated with me after the AIDS ride, I started to think about myself and all of us, everybody, because I work with people with cancer and I work with people who have had terrible tragedies change their lives completely. Deaths of children and just terrible things.

So I started to realize what Viktor Frankl said was that, even when we've lost everything, we still have access to the attitude we take toward life's limitations. And I thought about the AIDS doctor. He put his pain into service; and my therapist, he put his pain into himself, really, in ending his life and freeing himself that way, I guess.

There was something about service and moving beyond my own self into something outside of myself and serving something outside of myself. And to me that's what meaning is. And I feel like on a psychological level, on a spiritual level, I think that's what makes us feel better.

So I've studied Viktor Frankl a lot, and I started a group 10 years ago for adults who had terrible problems, like stage IV cancer and MS and paralysis and bereavement. We would meet once a week and we would cultivate, Viktor Frankl style, the things that were still meaningful to them and that they still had access to and ways they could transcend their own selves in service of the world despite whatever they had gone through that had obliterated the life that they once knew.

And I didn't charge them anything for the group. We were just trying this. And then we kept meeting and now it's been 10 years and the same group is still meeting every Monday and we're still working at this. And it's the happiest group of people I know.

It's incredible. So we've had a couple people die who were part of the original group, and then we've added more people in. So now we have eight people and three of the original five in the group. We do service projects and we read really cool books together and we look at opportunities to address things happening in their lives in ways that are more open-hearted and more expansive and less conservational and self-protective.

And I feel, as an adoptee, my relationship with meaning has opened a portal to a whole different perspective of what's possible. It's the thing I rely on more than anything really.

Haley Radke: I'm so moved by that whole story. You've talked to us about Viktor Frankl before and I love hearing what has inspired you to move forward into life. The impact it's had, like that ripple has started so many good things for other people as well.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. And then they have started these other new things for other people. It's crazy really. The ripple effect is just amazing. Like when we start to really think beyond ourselves, which I couldn't have done before.

I didn't have access to it. I just was too frightened and too angry, I think, to even believe that there could be another way of living.

Haley Radke: If you had to make a generalized observation, broad-sweeping strokes, I know, about adopted people, what do you think keeps us most stuck in this area and not able to see the bigger picture of meaning in life?

Pam Cordano: For me, it was just feeling really hurt and even disoriented in the life I was in. There's so many adaptations we have to make to our new families and to the world at large when we don't have that foundation behind us that's intact. It just takes so much energy. And then the trauma, and for me, there was a lot of pain of feeling like I didn't get along with my adoptive parents, so I was just consumed with my own, I don't want to say drama in a demeaning way, but my life felt dramatic, like, from fighting with my parents and huge battles and I had addictions, and everything just feeling really difficult and chaotic, like an inner chaos. So to me it was like I couldn't afford to really think about other people.

And I did that enough with just being adaptive and trying not to get rejected again. So it was like a defense, it wasn't authentic necessarily. It wasn't grounded. It was authentic. I was authentically a nice person, but it wasn't grounded because I didn't have my bearings yet.

So isn't it like Maslow's pyramid? People who don't have enough food to eat aren't going to be thinking about self-development or, what would you call it, healing the wounds. It's no, we need some food. So it's like that. Maybe this had to come later for me.

Haley Radke: I think about that sometimes, working in this space, and about how sometimes it does feel a little bit like why can't we just suck it up?

Because we do have food and we have warm houses, or cool air-conditioned ones if you live somewhere that's not Canada. And, as adults, a lot of us have gone on and gotten married or had children of our own and started new families.

Like, why isn't that enough and is it selfish to think about all of these things that are all of our baggage and stuff? I don't know if I'm taking us down a rabbit trail.

Pam Cordano: No, I think that's what I was saying at the beginning. I don't think it was self-indulgence that made my life feel hard to me, like I was a dramatic person or a self-indulgent person, or even a selfish person.

I think that I was just traumatized and overwhelmed by things that didn't seem as overwhelming to other people as they were to me. So I think it was honest, but this is where the culture doesn't see us as being traumatized, they see us as being lucky and fine. It's really hard internally to make sense of the ways we're not fine.

And to have a place to put it. We don't get that cultural support to help us become more fine. It just gets walled off and we have to deal with it on our own. So I think it's really legit, it's just that the culture doesn't, so it's easier for us not to.

Haley Radke: Fair enough, fair enough. You had a really huge event happen with the loss of your therapist in this very shocking way that's like this wake-up call kind of thing. But what about those of us who haven't had this big experience but yet are still feeling these things you've been describing, like not really knowing what the point is or just feeling, I don’t know, as you're talking about this, I just feel like this sense of being lethargic, right? Like you're just kind of existing, right? Just kind of existing, but there's no zest. I dunno.

Pam Cordano: There's no organizing push forward or something like that. Is that what you mean? I think growing and healing takes a ton of courage, and I'm a huge fan of going out of one's comfort zone.

Like the people who flew to Berkeley to do our healing retreat, I think of them as being so brave because they didn't know us. They didn't know what to expect. They didn't know each other and they got so much out of their own willingness to be brave and to try something that was an unknown.

And even calling a therapist can be scary. Because it hurts so much when we're not attuned to, when we're misattuned to by people. But I think there's lots of ways to heal and grow and experience oneself in new ways. It's not always therapy for some people. For some people it's surfing or it's riding a bike or playing an instrument.

I guess we're all different. For me, I have felt lonely and isolated, and I have yearned for a sense of belonging. And so I have tried really hard to have experiences where I can work at that. Other adoptees might have different focuses.

For me, it was about feeling like a misfit. I don't belong. A ton of shame. How do I feel like I belong on this planet? That my life makes sense? That I deserve to be here? That I have something to offer the world? That I'm not just a mistake that shouldn't have been here in the first place? Like, how do I move into being behind my life?

And not very long ago I found out that Viktor Frankl's original book was titled Say Yes To Life, but his editors made him change it to Man’s Search for Meaning because it was more, I don't know, academic sounding or something, but he was just writing about how to say yes to life. And I think that what I wanted to find was a “yes,” so that my “no” could just be quiet.

Haley Radke: You know what the other thing I find really inspiring about this whole deal is that you were in your forties, and I think that so many people that I have talked to who are just realizing that adoption has had an impact on their life are in their fifties, some in their sixties, and I feel like I'm on the young spectrum.

I'm just about 35 when we're recording this. That to be exploring this healing and all these kinds of topics that we're speaking about, but there's something so freeing and hearing that you were already in your forties when you woke up to this and it's there's still so much ahead.

Pam Cordano: Yes, there's so much ahead. I would never want to go back in time to my youth because I was so unhappy and I was so confused. And I'm almost 53, and I have this idea that my life is just going to keep getting better and better because I feel more and more of a yes to my life.

To life itself. Not just my life, but to life. And so that makes me feel like I feel free in a way that I didn't use to.

Haley Radke: What would you say to someone who's hearing us talk about this and it just feels too big, too overwhelming? This is a huge mindset shift.

Pam Cordano: Right. So what I say to people who I meet in my office who have stage IV cancer, or who are dying, or who are paralyzed, or who lost their child and none of that can ever change is that we can start by finding little things that we connect with that give us a sense of vitality inside of us.

Let's go back to Viktor Frankl. From the prison camps he appreciated sunsets. That's incredible and we can do that too. Appreciating something that's beautiful and doing things we enjoy that make us feel more alive and more connected, and telling stories that mean something to us.

Like the story I told you about the AIDS ride or working with attitudes that we believe in when we're having a hard time. Like for me, the attitude of curiosity. Curiosity is an attitude. So when I'm working and if I start to feel tired or disinterested or disengaged with a client, I know the first thing I need to do is get curious.

And I get curious by getting into my eyes and looking at them with fresh eyes and seeing them. They're here. It's a present moment, being in the direct experience, and then my curiosity keeps me really interested and then I'm more there and then magic starts to happen.

There's all kinds of things that are available to all of us all the time. And one thing that Viktor Frankl says that I love is that meaning is everywhere for all of us. And it isn't that meaning goes away, that we don't have meaningful lives, it's that we become disconnected ourselves from meaning.

And that's a really hopeful thought to me. And I believe it because then it's like it's accessible to all of us, and all we need to do is really tap into it, which is what I love to teach my clients to do, and myself.

Haley Radke: That's a light bulb moment for me, Pam, because as I'm telling you, oh, what do you want to say to these sad people who are in their fifties and sixties who think they haven't done anything and they're stuck and blah, blah, blah.

There's meaning already. We have to wake up to it.

Pam Cordano: Right. It's right there and it's everywhere. It's where you are right now all over the place. Are you in your house right now? So you have two little boys sleeping, is that right?

Haley Radke: Yes. We're recording this in the evening. They are asleep, yes.

Pam Cordano: And your husband's there?

Haley Radke: Yes.

Pam Cordano: Do you have any animals?

Haley Radke: I do. I have a little dog, Lucy.

Pam Cordano: Oh, you have a dog named Lucy. That's so cute. Yeah. And you have friends all over the world?

Haley Radke: I do.

Pam Cordano: And you have a trip ahead that's special and meaningful to you to San Francisco?

Haley Radke: Yes, I do. And I'm gonna get to meet you.

Pam Cordano: Yep. We're gonna meet, and there's stars, and there's the moon and the clouds and rain. And there's just stuff everywhere.

Haley Radke: I think you meant snow.

Pam Cordano: Oh, snow. Okay. Life is seriously like a buffet. It's just there's stuff everywhere. We just have to train ourselves to see it and know it and tap into it and connect with it.

Little bits of meaning lead to bigger chunks of meaning and bigger access to meaning. We don't have to feel all excited about life right now, we can just move into it bit by bit.

Haley Radke: Oh, I love that. And you've given us just our little beginner steps to explore this a little more. I think that's just perfect.

If you were gonna recommend, wait, let me guess. Would you recommend that we read Viktor Frankl's book Man’s Search for Meaning?

Pam Cordano: I would, and when you read it, here's the thing, here's the adoptee's take on Viktor Frankl's book. It's a short book. It's in two parts. Part one is his experience and part two is his theories.

And it's written for laypeople. It's totally readable. And he wrote the book in 11 days, right after he got out of the camps. And what's so cool as an adoptee is, people say, oh my gosh, the first part of his book is so depressing, it's so brutal. Yes, it is. But if you the adoptee like me the adoptee, if we read it looking for these little treasures we're going to find in the first part, that's what the whole thing is about.

He's not writing the first part to say boo-hoo, look what happened to me. He's writing it to say, look what I discovered in one of the worst aspects of being human. Look what I found. And then he teaches us how to find it too. So I find his whole book just miraculous. A lot of people say that his book is one of the 10 most influential books ever written.

It's incredible. So yeah, it's five bucks at the paper paperback store. It's easy.

Haley Radke: So good. Is there anything else that you would recommend as we explore this topic of meaning? Any other books or resources or anything?

Pam Cordano: Yeah, I write about this on my website and I spell it out maybe more articulately. My website has a section on meaning where I break it down and talk about a really cool clinical trial they did with advanced cancer patients, connecting them to Viktor Frankl's work with meaning.

And it was an incredible clinical trial where people who really were done because they were dying, they got a new lease on their life and they became less anxious, less depressed, less despairing, more connected, and really into their life, even though they were dying.

And so it's a wonderful clinical trial that I describe on my website that is really special to me. It's so special to me. I flew to New York to meet the guy who spearheaded this clinical trial. I was like, I have to meet this guy and work with him because I loved his work so much and I felt if these people dying of cancer can do it, then we adoptees can do it too.

That's how I felt.

Haley Radke: Okay, I'm gonna link to that for sure in the show notes. Oh, that sounds so interesting. Speaking of meaning and experiences and all of those good things, you have two different events coming up that I want you to tell everybody about.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. The first one is that Anne Heffron and I are doing adoptee retreats in Berkeley, California. We have one coming up in July, one in November.

The first one that we had in February this year was just a wild success. It was off the hook. I couldn't have predicted how amazing the experience would be. We have 10 adoptees, the two of us, and we just work like mad for four days to have breakthroughs in our healing process and to really utilize the power of a group to magnify a healing experience.

We're taking that to New York and London in January.

And then in October of this year, and in April of next year, a colleague of mine named Patty, who's a Jungian analyst, she and I are leading a group of 10 women on the Camino de Santiago in Spain for a healing pilgrimage to go and experience little ancient towns and walk for eight days in a row, and then meet up with an artist and integrate our experiences.

And the first one got booked immediately and now we're booking for April of 2019. So that's not adoptee-specific, but it's for women between the ages of 40 and 90.

Haley Radke: Wow, that sounds incredible and I bet it's gonna fill up fast. So if we would like to get in touch with you about either of those, where's the best place?

Pam Cordano: My email, pcordano@comcast.net.

Haley Radke: Perfect. I will link to that, as well, in the show notes on adopteeson.com. Thank you so much, Pam, for talking us through meaning. I can tell it's just so dear to you.

Pam Cordano: Thank you. It is. It's my thing.

Haley Radke: So good. Thank you.

If you are finding the Adoptees On podcast valuable, I want to invite you today to partner with me. I have monthly partners from all over the world who stand with me and help support the production costs of bringing you this show every single week. Adopteeson.com/partner has the details for that. Thank you so much for your generosity.

Also, I want to let you know that my trip to San Francisco is coming up. As Pam and I mentioned briefly in the show today, we get to meet in real life. I'm so excited. And so that's Sunday, May 20th. Anne Heffron is going to be teaching a Write or Die class, and we are going to have a meet-up later on in the evening for podcast listeners.

So I'm gonna be there. Pam is also gonna be there. I would love to invite you to come and meet up with us, hang out just a couple hours of getting to know each other in real life. If you're going to come meet me in San Francisco, adopteeson.com/events, as well as our Facebook page on the events tab, has all the details for you there.

I would love it if you would come. Please come. I'm coming all the way from Canada, so it's only fair, right? That you drive a little ways. It's fine. It's fine. It's good. I have goosebumps. I'm so excited. When Pam texted me to tell me she had booked a hotel room and she was coming to meet me, I cried. I literally started crying. I was so happy. So please come. You can be in on that big hug. Big group hug.

And lastly, I just want to ask if you would share the show with someone. Adopteeson.com has all the links to all of our show notes, all of our episodes, all the places that you can download and find the show.

And what if you share it with just one person that you think might be struggling a little bit with finding purpose in their life? I think that listening to Pam talk about meaning and just the simple little things that we can look around for in our life and say, wow, this is so valuable. My life does have meaning.

I think it would be an encouragement to them. So share the show with just one friend that you think might like to listen to this today. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

63 [Healing Series] Triggered Triage Kit

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/63

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Haley Radke: This show is listener-supported.

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 something so many of us deal with: What do you do when you get triggered? Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Pamela Cordano. Welcome, Pam.

Pamela Cordano: Thanks, Haley.

Haley Radke: Pamela is a fellow adoptee and a psychotherapist who specializes in helping you to discover meaning in your life. And today you're going to help us with: we get triggered all the time, so you're going to help us with a triggered triage kit. I love that.

Pam Cordano: A triggered triage kit, what every adoptee needs.

Haley Radke: Yeah, how much do you charge for that? Because I would pay a lot of money–

Pam Cordano: A lot of money!

Haley Radke: –to carry that around with me.

Pam Cordano: We need special purses with bling or whatever. Man-purses with bling. Everybody can have a purse, A trigger triage kit.

Haley Radke: So before we talk about the kit, which is awesome, can you just tell us what does it even mean to get triggered? We see and hear that word all the time. It's like a buzzword now, “getting triggered”.

Pam Cordano: The thing is, we all know what it is, right? Because we experience it. It's really just overwhelm. It could even be trauma. Our system just gets lit up like a Christmas tree with too many lights on it, and it's more than we can handle. And so we get overwhelmed or unable to really tolerate what we're feeling. And we often have our pattern ways that we deal with being triggered. Some of us get panicky and anxious, and some of us go toward addictions, and some of us get kind-of sleepy and disengaged, or disassociated, and we all have our ways that we deal with being triggered that we probably all know, to some degree.

Haley Radke: Okay, I think I've had all of those. Plus stomach issues. Lots of stomach issues for me.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. Sometimes I think that we don't even quite catch the moment it happens until we're fully into it, and then we're like, ‘oh my gosh,’ and we're overwhelmed, and we're triggered. It takes practice, and it takes maybe living more and more years to really get good at identifying when it happens, so that we can catch it sooner.

Haley Radke: Okay. I'm just like, ‘Okay, I need to figure this out. How do I catch it sooner?’ Okay. So last night I was reading a book and my favorite genre is psychological thrillers, pretty much. I almost am always reading one, and I don't know if you read much of those, but I'd say about 10% of them have some form of an adopted person showing up to exact revenge on their birth family–

Pam Cordano: Oh my gosh.

Haley Radke: And you don't find that out till a little later on. Yeah. Nice. What a nice picture.

Pam Cordano: You read this out of choice? Before you go to bed?

Haley Radke: Well, it's only about 10%, I would say, so, you know, most of the time it's okay. But last night I was about halfway through the book and I started feeling a little suspicious, so I went to the end, because I don't like surprises anyway. It takes a lot to surprise me, I would say. I don't know why I enjoy thrillers so much, it doesn't make sense, I know. But I went to the end and I find this out, this is an adopted person who is coming to obliterate her family. And I just got so mad. Yeah. And so I was trying to sleep and I couldn't, of course, because all the things: my heart was racing, and my stomach was in knots, and I wanted to break my Kobo, and it's like this heightened response to something that shouldn't make me, I don't know, I feel like it shouldn't make me that angry–

Pam Cordano: Wait, wait. But who's that saying that it shouldn't make you that angry? That voice is quite suspicious. Who is that?

Haley Radke: It’s me, my inside voice! I don't know.

Pam Cordano: Okay, so can I interrupt this, bring up something about what you just said? How we talk to ourselves when we get triggered is really important. And you and I have talked about this before on your show about having that internal adult that talks to us. So when we're triggered, if we have a voice that comes in and starts to criticize us, that says, “Oh you shouldn't be this upset,” or “You shouldn't be this triggered,” or “What's wrong with you?” Then we're just adding insult to injury when our system is hyper-aroused, and it's super uncomfortable on a physical and emotional level. So how we talk to ourselves with our triggers is something we can learn to do differently. With help. I learned it in therapy.

Haley Radke: Okay. I need to learn how to do that, because I often do have that inner talk, like, ‘Why is this thing that no one else seems to be affected by pushing me over the edge?’ And the other thing that's happened quite frequently, I haven't talked too much about this, but I'm in a little bit of a situation with my church. I would say they probably feel everything is resolved on their side, and I am doing my best to get to that point, but every time we go, in the service now, I really pick up on any time the word “orphan” is mentioned, or the word “adoption” or anything about blood or family, there's these key words, right? And even though in context what's being presented in the service doesn't necessarily have anything to do with my situation, or even with adoptees in general, it's those things plus this conflict I'm having, then the whole rest of the service I'm just like, ‘Yep, this is what happens.’

Pam Cordano: Okay, so I know you're not my client and we're not doing therapy right now at all, but if you were my client, I would ask you to just pause. Because both examples, from reading a story about an adoptee killing their birth family, and then this example with the church, and these words, and the way that we adoptees have an experienced understanding of these words which is different from how they might be talked about at church. These are two huge examples of triggers. I don't know if listeners even listening to this might be like, ‘Whoa!’ and overwhelmed already, you know what I mean?

So actually the first tool in the triage kit is pausing. When we start to notice that something's going wrong in our systems, like we've read a story that's really triggering or upsetting to us, or we're hearing something that we're not expecting to hear, but we hear it and it triggers us. As soon as we start to notice that physiological hyperarousal –like that's what I was feeling when you were sharing the examples– the first thing to do is to try to learn how to pause. Some people call it “the sacred pause”. It's a pause to try to take a good look at what's actually happening in the moment, and to get one's bearings so that they can even know how to start breaking it up into little, more bite-sized pieces, to even figure out what to do.

Haley Radke: So what does that look like when I am, say, sitting in a service and this is happening? What does the pause look like? Does that mean I exit?

Pam Cordano: The more we can start to slow our awareness down –this is mindfulness– and pay attention to what's happening inside of us in the moment. If you were to really break it into a slow motion kind of thing, even if you're already triggered, you might notice your heart's speeding faster, or that your body's gotten kind-of firm, or that your muscles are tensing in resistance to what's being said. Or you might feel a fight-or-flight feeling like you want to get out of there.

And all of this, with practice, can be observed before a decision is made about what to do with anything. So if you were really, really overwhelmed, it might be the best thing for you to quietly get up and exit, because it's just too much. As we learn to bear sensations in our bodies, either with the help of a therapist, or with a meditation practice, or a yoga practice, we become more and more comfortable handling more and more reactions that are physiological and stem from trauma and overwhelm. And that's where we become more able to make choices about what to do next. Because if we're not used to this intensity, these feelings in our body, we might just be used to cutting off our awareness of our bodies, and not even really know what's going on until we're really overwhelmed to the point we have to maybe just go in our rooms and shut the door. Or for other people it might be, like, engaging in some vindictive behavior or whatever. We go into some other action. So ideally, like if I was that little angel on your shoulder and you're in church, and on the other shoulder is the one saying, “Guy, why is this upsetting you? It's not upsetting anybody else. What's wrong with you?” So if I'm the nice little person on your shoulder, I might say, “Okay, hold on, hold on, we don't have to listen right now. Let's just take a breath and pause. What's happening right now?” And the question, “What's happening right now?” is really: “What's happening inside of you right now?”

And the answer is really about sensations, like, “My chest is tight. I'm sweating. My shoulders are super tight, my jaw is tight. I have this urge in my body to just get up and get out of here.” Answers like that would be available with enough loving asking of the self, “What's happening right now?”

And then you might say, “This, that, and this is happening.” And I might say, “Okay, let's just take a couple of breaths.” Because breathing is always good for being triggered. A couple of big breaths. And that changes things in the body and the nervous system. The shoulders can drop sometimes and you can see a bit of breathing, and even just being talked to by somebody inside yourself is helping. And we have to go bit by bit with being triggered of, ‘Can we hang in there or do we have to make a change?’ Like, a behavioral change. Like, get out of the room, or something else, depending on the situation. Put the book down, throw the book away! Put the book in the backyard until tomorrow morning and tell your husband to get rid of it.

Haley Radke: That's pretty good.

Pam Cordano: What do you think?

Haley Radke: Well, I've already calmed down, because I was breathing when you were talking me through that, and I was like, ‘Oh, I've already calmed down.’ That's good.

Okay, pausing–

Pam Cordano: What do you think it was that calmed you down? Was there a moment that you noticed something started to shift into calmer?

Haley Radke: I was doing deep breaths. So sorry for the sound on that, I'll mute it. But I was doing deep breaths and when you said, “And then your shoulders could drop,” that literally happened, my shoulders dropped back and I just felt like my whole posture was more relaxed.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. So, if we say that the first thing in the trigger triage kit is to pause, then the second thing could be to take a couple of big breaths and just oxygenate yourself. And then to ask the question, with a really kind voice, of, “What's happening right now?” and trying to notice what's happening, even in a sensation way, because the sensations are the most honest answer. Our brains could start saying, ‘Oh my God, that woman is such a jerk. I can't stand her! She always does this, blah, blah, blah!’ but that's not gonna get us anywhere.

But if we say to ourselves, ‘What's happening right now?’ and we check inside, ‘Okay, I feel like I'm gonna throw up,’ or ‘I feel like I'm gonna pass out,’ or whatever things might be happening inside of us, if we have a kind voice asking, then our response has a chance to be listened to. And then now we're relating to ourselves in a way that a mother or father might relate to a child in a loving way.

Haley Radke: That feels peaceful.

Pam Cordano: That's good. Problem solved!

Haley Radke: Yeah, I'm good! But this is my recounting of the triggering moment, it's not necessarily the moment.

Pam Cordano: Right. So there's more, so we could go on and say more things about the trigger triage kit.

Haley Radke: What would you do next?

Pam Cordano: Well, something we talked about a lot at the adoptee retreat with Anne and with the participants, was we talked about how there's two different networks in the brain. One network is called the default network, and it's just the same stuff we already think and know, that's based in fear and based in our previous experiences in the world. It kind-of goes around and around in circles. It's just recycling what we already know, it's not open to new information. And so our default network is really that voice that says to you like, ‘Why are you reacting to this story? Nobody else is.’ That's the default network talking and it's just this patterned way we talk to ourselves, that often isn't very nice, because it's fear-based, and it wants us to get in line and pull it together or whatever.

And the other network that's completely unrelated, it's an entirely different network, is the direct experience network, which takes place in the present moment. So that's the place where something new can happen and where we can actually change what's happening with us. And so in the example of being in church where you're hearing stuff and you're triggered, with the example of pausing and taking a couple of breaths, already taking a couple of breaths is in the present moment, it's a direct experience in the present moment.

And then talking to yourself and saying, “What's happening?” The question really is “What's happening right now?” So the answer is going to be what's happening right now, and now we have a chance for something new to happen and for there to be something that can heal in the trigger. Because we're in the direct experience network, where new things can happen.

So to me, therapy is about helping clients get into the present moment and into their direct experience so that they can have a new experience. I never want to sit with a client and have them just tell the same stories with the same emotions over and over again, because they're going to leave the session in exactly the same shape as when they walked in.

Haley Radke: I love what you say about that's a healing thing to go into that, like you're reprogramming.

Pam Cordano: Yeah, you're literally changing your brain.

Haley Radke: And I think what our default is when we're triggered is to run, right? And if we can build these couple steps in, this is giving us the opportunity for healing instead of avoiding it and then always getting triggered by the exact same thing. Because you can't always avoid it.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. And it takes sometimes more than what we do with ourselves, but even if we're in therapy, we still have the six days in between the sessions where we have to deal with life and our own triggers ourselves. It's really the awareness of what's happening in our traumatized systems, and then the kind voice that understands we've got a reason to feel that frightened or angry or overwhelmed.

So we have kindness and we have awareness, and those two things are really going to help us. And that's really what therapists do is they're kind and they're aware and they're investing themselves in us.

Haley Radke: So will you fit in my bag that I'm gonna carry around everywhere? In my kit? Nice, sparkly–

Pam Cordano: Yeah! And then when you– this is what's happening with me is then when you get really good at this you're just gonna kick me out, because you're going to want to put something else in your bag. I'll be in the way at some point. And that's when we know we can handle it ourselves.

Haley Radke: Oh, this is so helpful. Thank you.

Pam Cordano: Another thing to think about with when we get triggered– and of course there are variations. There's mildly triggered, moderately triggered, severely triggered. When I'm severely triggered, which happened to me a couple weeks ago, I can have a feeling of kind-of paralysis. Not physical paralysis, but I don't know what to do, and I feel terrible and I don't know how to get myself out of it, and I have to wait a bit for something, whether it's some rest, or whether it's the right conversation with the right person, or some part of me to show up to help myself. Sometimes I can't do this on the spot, like we're talking about with the church example.

But when we're not that severely triggered, when we're more mildly to moderately triggered, and we pause and we ask, “What's going on?”, a lot of times if we're not used to this yet we have an impulse to do something. For me, if I'm triggered and I just can't cope with it, Ben and Jerry’s sounds really good to me.

And so part of my brain knows that if I eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's, I'm not going to sleep very well. I'm going to feel bad in the morning. Like, I'm going feel like too much sugar in the morning. But what we can do with ourselves or some people, they have other things they do. They maybe they do online shopping, or they're playing phone games, or whatever to try to soothe themselves. And there's nothing wrong with soothing ourselves, but when the soothing behaviors aren't really our goal in the long run –like, I don't wanna play Candy Crush for too long, like half an hour's okay, but I don't want to play for hours– then we can work with ourselves. I can say, “Okay, Pam, I know you want to go play Candy Crush right now. That's fine. You're welcome to do that, but let's just give it five more minutes. Let's see if we can bear this feeling for five more minutes before we go to that.” And that's a way of titrating our tolerance for how we feel. And again, this is not when we're extremely triggered. This is just when we're mildly, we're moderately triggered. So we build in space to experience what we're feeling, even journal about it before we go to the trusted behavior that's going to soothe it or change it.

And then there's always other things, too, I'll just throw these out. Like it's always good to do, if we are up for it, when we feel triggered and we're inclined to be either like, we want to do flight, fight, or freeze. If we can manage it, it's good to do a few gentle yoga poses and be with our breath. It's good to call a friend or somebody that we trust and talk it through with them and go toward a person who's safe. It's good to journal. It can be good to turn on music that is soothing or happy or comfortable music. There's a lot of things we can do. It could be good to go read poetry or some kind of inspirational text that reminds us about another way of feeling in the world. So, we can make a connection to things that make us feel better. That's always a good thing to do, too, if we can manage it. When I'm really triggered, sometimes I just can't. I just isolate and, you know, go down the rabbit hole for a while, and then I've come out and apologize later.

Haley Radke: Yeah, if I didn't have two young kids, I'm sure I would be spending more time in my bedroom with the door closed some days.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. As long as you're nice to yourself in there, it's fine with me. We can’t go in the bedroom and be mean to ourselves, that's just terrible.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. I won't give you any more examples of the things that I've said to myself because it's been worse. So anyway, this was really helpful. Thank you. You mentioned the retreat, you and Anne Heffron run adoptee healing retreats, and there's some coming up. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Pam Cordano: Yeah. We had our first one in February in Berkeley, California. And it was just incredible. I knew we had a good program lined up for everybody, we had 10 people that flew out to see us, but I didn't know how it was going to feel to be in a room with 12 people, all of us adopted. Something about the resonance of adopted people where we don't have to explain anything and we just get to work, really, at what's in our way of becoming more comfortable in our skin and more joyful in having more access to what we want in life. So it was a wonderful experience. I feel changed by it.

So we have one coming up in July, again in Berkeley, and one in November in Berkeley. And then Anne and I, in January of 2019, are going to go out to New York and then we're going to go to London and have a weekend each place. So we're really excited. And then we're going to have a Part Two adoptee retreat for people who have already taken Part One who want to come to Part Two, and we're just going to reinforce and build some new aspects of healing.

Haley Radke: Amazing. Amazing. So if people are interested in attending that, where can they get in touch with you?

Pam Cordano: They can find Anne Heffron or me on Facebook and message us, or they can also email me at pcordano@comcast.net.

Haley Radke: Awesome. And I have links to all of your social media and your websites up on Adopteeson.com so people can find you there too. Great. So in addition to the adoptee retreat, you have something else that's really exciting. Please tell us about it.

Pam Cordano: Yeah. This is not adoptee-specific, but a friend who's a Jungian psychologist and I are leading a group of 10 women on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and we're considering it, like, a non-religious pilgrimage. It can be religious depending on the person, but it's just a pilgrimage of growth and transformation. So we'll be walking for eight days in a row, and then we're gonna meet up with an artist in Santiago and we're going to do an integrating project. And the trip filled up really quickly, so we're really excited about that. And we're gonna have another one in April of 2019, and we're going to do the same thing. We're just going to walk for eight days and spend two additional days on the Camino, an ancient pilgrimage pathway in Spain.

Haley Radke: That sounds incredible.

Pam Cordano: Yeah, it's like one of my dreams to put healing together with traveling. Even though we're not going to be acting as therapists on the trip, I just think traveling in an intentional way is therapeutic in and of itself. So I'm really excited about it, yeah.

Haley Radke: Beautiful. People can get in touch with you for more details if they would like to come along.

Pam Cordano: Thanks, yes.

Haley Radke: So good to talk to you. Thank you for the very, very helpful triggered triage kit. I think that people are gonna find it really valuable. I already do.

I hope you had some good takeaways from Pam like I did, and some of those things seem so simplistic, but honestly, when you are in the moment and you're having this experience that is so emotional, that's what it takes is those tiny little steps to bring us down back into awareness of what's really going on for us.

So I want to challenge you to try it. I'm going to be trying it out, too. Lots of deep breathing in my future, friends. If you would like to come and meet Pam in person, and myself, and our friend Anne Heffron, who Pam does these wonderful adoptee retreats with, come to San Francisco, come and meet us in May! Sunday, May 20th, Anne is gonna be teaching her Write or Die class, which I'm very excited to take from her, and then later on in the evening, we're going to just have a hangout meetup. Just hanging out, that's it. Excited to spend time with listeners and some former guests of the show and you can come, I would love it. If you check out Adopteeson.com/events, has the details, or you can go to our Facebook page and click on the events tab there. All the details are available for you and I'd love to meet you in real life.

This show is listener-supported, and what that means is there are so many of you standing with me, actually donating to the show monthly as a financial partner, which helps keep the show going. You are helping to cover all the production costs and all the behind-the-scenes things that it takes to run a podcast like this. So I just want to say thank you so much to my generous donors. And if you feel that this podcast is a valuable resource, if you have learned something from it or if you know another adoptee that would find value from it, I would really love it if you would consider partnering with me. Adopteeson.com/partner has details of how you can join up monthly, or there's a one-time donation link right on the homepage of Adopteeson.com. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And another way that you can help support the show is by telling just one person about this episode. Maybe you know of an adoptee that struggles with triggers just like me, and they would find some of these tips really, really valuable. So I'd love it if you would just text them right now and say, “Hey, have you heard the latest Adoptees On episode?” Or send them a message on Facebook. I think it would be really helpful for them to learn these techniques that Pam has taught us today. Thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

62 Doug - Digital Relationships

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/62

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Haley Radke: This show is listener supported.

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

I am honored to introduce you to Doug Umberger today. Doug has spent hours and hours interviewing adoptees to find out how digital media has impacted their search and, eventually, their relationships with biological families.

He shares his personal journey of searching for his birth mother through digital media channels and how, ultimately, what convinced him to press pause on his search for now. Doug recounts a few of his participants' experiences for us, and I want you to listen with me for both the benefits that relationships via digital connections have brought, and also some of the relational pitfalls.

We wrap up with some recommended resources and make sure you stick around to the end of the show to hear details of our upcoming San Francisco Podcast Meetup. And if you are a Canadian adoptee, I also have one more recommended resource for you. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Doug Umberger. Welcome, Doug.

Doug Umberger: Thank you, Haley. It's my pleasure.

Haley Radke: Well, I am so excited to talk to you because you have done some really interesting research about adoptees and you have spent many hours talking to adoptees just like I have. But first, before we get to that, I'd love it if you would share part of your story with us.

Doug Umberger: Certainly. It's so nice speaking to you, first and foremost. I mean, I'm kinda starstruck at the moment being able to listen. We were just talking about the fact that I have been in your shoes for like sixteen hours, just interviewing adoptees. And you have this angelic voice, so pleasant to hear. And I have this goofy elephant sound, so I apologize for the sharp juxtaposition to your viewers. [they both laugh]

Haley Radke: I'm gonna have to cut all of this. No, that's so funny.

Doug Umberger: That's good.

So my story, I guess. As a SparkNotes, bird's eye view, I was born in 1990 in New Jersey. I was born out of Catholic Charities, which was an interesting perspective as an adoptee, because my adoptive mother worked at Catholic Charities for which I was adopted from. So she adopted along with my dad, my sister, and myself.

My sister's five years my senior, so she's five years older. And for whatever the reason, I have always gravitated towards my adoption story. I was always just acutely interested from the start. And it's always been because both of us were adopted, sort of this transparent part of the household. It was nothing to be ashamed about. It was embraced. It was celebrated and it was a proud part of my identity.

And it's funny in hindsight, because I'm thinking about, you know, some of my adopted friends (which are few and far between). But I have one in particular, as I was vetting through the college search process, I asked her, I was like, “Are you writing your college essay on being adopted?” And if she did, and she said something anecdotally and, you know, our conversation sort of just shooting the breeze. And she was like, you know, “Being adopted is unique, but it doesn't make us any more special than anyone else.” And as I continue to hear your podcast, I hear that perspective, you know, sort of sporadically through a few different adoptees. But, just something I was always really proud of.

And I had a unique adoption story. Again, nothing too far off the beaten path or out of the ordinary, but my biological mother was a twin. She was adopted herself, so there was kind of a foundation there. And I always felt this tenacity from a very young age to connect in some way, shape, or form. So I knew it was going to be this very long term, strategic plan over the course of my life, that in due time I would love to meet with Linda and sit down and just to have a conversation.

Over time– I went through just one foster care before I was adopted, and I was very young, I think about six weeks or so. But nevertheless, the foster mom shared a story by way of Catholic Charities. And I heard those stories that are passed along–these sort of fairytale fantasies of sorts, they sort of snowball out of effect. So I just, for whatever the reason, I remember being told that my mother was sort of a groupie of sorts. She met my father, who was a musician of sorts. They had a fling and they were too young, so they put me up for adoption, and that is the fullest extent of what I knew.

I'm going into it. So there was a lot of ambiguity and just mystery that really piqued my interest from as far as I could remember (a very, very early age). In 2008, perhaps 2009, I was perhaps a senior in high school or so, I decided to move forward, once I was a legal, consenting adult, to move forward (with the paperwork, to start the adoption search process). And just, I recall (almost as if it was yesterday), sitting down with my mom and, you know, going through all the paperwork and just having these conversations of, “Are you emotionally stable? Are you ready for something as momentous and grandiose as what you're about to embark on?”

So we submitted the obligatory paperwork and I guess in a matter of time we got something in response saying that it would've been a little costly to move forward in the search. So we kind of tabled it (and appropriately so– I was about to enter college). So I figured, why not just revisit this in a couple of years, when I have a better head on my shoulders and perhaps a little bit of a better mindset.

So college happened, and then I sort of forgot about it for a little while. I got a job professionally (just took a couple years). And then in 2016, something came about, where my mom passed along (by way of Facebook or some sort of social media). She was like, “Hey, just so you know, New Jersey is officially passing the law for adoptees to receive the original birth certificates.” And I was like, “Oh, wow!”

After all of that time, you know, back in 2008/2009, when we went through everything that we went through and all the money that it was going to cost for it to be as seemingly trivial as for me to submit an application fee and a paper application or just a request form to—I think it was Vital Statistics (the name of the office in Jersey).

It just seemed such a sharp contrast for everything that I could have gone through at such an extenuating rate. And for me to just submit a paper application was really, really jarring to me. So near the tail end of 2016, it was passed. In the beginning of 2016 in December, giving biological parents a full year to sort of redact their information. And I submitted and, you know, sent along the application and sort of concurrent to that process (and on the other side of the same coin), I decided to submit an AncestryDNA. Which was fun. I didn't expect too much to come out of it, because I had non-identifying information (but just very brief, just hiccups into my biological parents' life). First name, last name, know where they were born. That's pretty much the fullest extent of what I knew.

So, you know, the AncestryDNA–I submitted the saliva sample or whatever I had to send along in the vial and it came back. And I had a 98% match with somebody. And I'm gonna revisit that story in particular, because in a matter of just a couple of weeks (I think it was two or three weeks), I got this piece of paper in the mail. And, you know, I opened it up and I figured it was like a confirmation of receipt or something along those lines. It was something, in hindsight, I did not emotionally prepare for it because I just opened it up. It was a thin envelope. It wasn't anything too out of the ordinary of your everyday typical bill, but it was in fact my original birth certificate. It was a scanned version, but nevertheless, all of the information was disclosed: my mom and dad's full names. Their entire stories were just listed there on paper.

And so all of this was sort of culminating. It came about while I was in the process of finalizing my master's degree at Louisville University, which is where I work, and just received the degree. Shameless plug: Go Greyhounds! I was receiving a master's degree in Digital and Emerging Media, so it was part of the Communication Department. And the majority of my portfolio (my academic portfolio) was actually catered to higher education and international recruitment, for which I work. But, you know, sort of the capstone thesis and the big final project is a 70 page thesis on the topic of your choice, but it has to be within the scope and in the general realm of digital media.

So I said, “Oh boy, I do not know the language of adoption psychology. I am not an expert in this field in any way, shape, or form.” But I felt some sort of calling (almost) to write my thesis on how adoptees and closed adoptions use social media to find their biological parents and did that through the search process. So as I sort of perused Google Scholars, and Google Books, and EBSCOHost, and just such a wide array of different online databases, and virtual libraries, I didn't really find much.

I was not necessarily perturbed, but I remember being frustrated with how little research and how scant information was out there in this industry, for something that is so vital to so many individuals. And being at the cusp of digital technology, as the Baby Boomers sort of transition over to Millennials, and as digital technology and social media sort of is drawn to the forefront of just being an invaluable tool and resource for millions of people around the world (regardless of the circumstance). But for adoption in particular, I felt the need to move forward with it and I certainly decided to do so.

So that's sort of the foundation. And there's a lot of context there, and there's a lot of moving pieces, and a lot of ways to pivot. I don't want to put the ball in your court, Haley, but…

Haley Radke: Can you tell me, did you end up finding your biological family? You said you had a 98% match. Is that something that you want to talk about?

Doug Umberger: It was, and to this day, remains perhaps the most eerie coincidence that I have ever had in my entire life. So this 98% match via AncestryDNA. I don't even remember her name. She was a pleasure to chat with and sort of shoot the breeze. And we were bantering and going back and forth. And as soon as I received the information from Vital Statistics, I immediately rounded back to her and I was like, “Hey, I have all the information.”

So I disclosed it, I laid it all out there for her, and I'm like, “We have a 98% match. What are the odds? Do you know, you know these people's names?” And, and she responded (and I kid you not here). She was like, “Well, while I do not know either your father's full name, your mother's maiden name (or any variations of those names), I do, however, live in the same town for which you were born and directly across the street from the hospital that you were born in.”

So, here I had this match via AncestryDNA, who (well, inadvertently) was just a part of every nook and cranny at the very early and beginning stages of my search process, which was really difficult for me to come to terms with. I sort of just squashed it and I was taken aback, obviously, but I moved on.

So that was very fascinating for me to understand. But then I sort of just brushed it aside and I erased it, because I was in the process of trying to meet with all of these participants that I was gathering information from. And I was in the heart of my own research that I was sort of spearheading at the time. So it was sort of a parenthesis and just a punctuation that really just took me by surprise. So I left that sort of as face value. It was kind of unfortunate, but just again, a very strange coincidence that continues to keep me up at night at some points in time.

Haley Radke: Okay. So just to clarify, she's told you that she just knows your town, and the hospital where you were born, and stuff, but that she's not necessarily related to you? I don't understand.

Doug Umberger: Yeah. She had no—Something that I learned, Haley, to be frank with you… Throughout, you know, all of my discussions that I had with so many people and the hours that I've spent just diving headfirst into the research, is that everyone and their mother apparently is a genealogist. Everybody in the adoption circuit has this innate sense of being a genealogist, and she some way, somehow, was also one.

She had records going back to the early 1900s on her genealogy and nothing showed my parents' names within that family tree of sorts. So she was pretty confident in her analysis. And I just took that as is and decided to move forward. So I sort of, again, pivoted over to social media and just Google and basic search browsers on the Internet to continue with my search.

Haley Radke: Using the names on the OBC?

Doug Umberger: Correct. So my dad was an easy way to start. I mean, I just Googled his name with quotations around. So it sort of simplified it into that term. So I guess, qualified the search a little bit or expedited it a little bit further. But it immediately came up to public records, you know, Whitepages and the like. I never had any interest in moving forward with meeting my biological father. I can't quite tell you why. I just never had as much of a connection as I did with my mom.

And I don't know if that's the backstory. I don't know if it's just the fact that I never really had an image or a persona for him. So with my original adoption records, I received just one photo, and it was actually a photo of my mom (who, to reiterate, was an identical twin). So it was kind of, kind of interesting on the envelope it said, I think, “Doug's mom is the one on the right or the left,” (whatever they notated).

But they're practically wearing the same thing. They had big, blonde, curly hair. So it was just a comedy of errors and kind of a farce (in a way), just to be in that situation as a 7-year-old, and to revisit it as an 18-year-old, and now in my late twenties, also to have the same photo.

But I never had a photo of my dad. And, likewise, as I sort of delved into social media, he never had any form of Facebook or Twitter–not that I would foresee him to have a blog or Instagram. But there was no trace of him. There were just a few points as to where he lived in North Carolina, which was fine. I sort of just closed off that part of the search process.

And I diverted and spent the majority of my time and attention on what I had ultimately sought, which was finding, and meeting, and establishing, and cultivating a relationship with my mother (which I knew was going to be incredibly more challenging than almost effortlessly finding my dad). Because it was still the maiden name, she was a twin.

So I looked in online yearbooks, and online newspaper clippings, and (obviously) social media. And for both my mom and what would be my biological aunt, for both of their names, I didn't really find much. There wasn't anything on the surface. There were some leads, but nothing that was concrete or gave me solace or the confidence I needed in order to initiate communication or have a further conversation.

Mind you, I had viewed, initially, 2017 to be this short term strategic plan of sorts being like, “Okay, in December I will submit the paperwork. I will move on with my life. Maybe after six months they'll round back and they'll say, ‘Oh, we found your records (or whatever the circumstance).” I did not expect the turnaround to be as rapid as it was, so that took me off guard a little bit.

So we're still in early January. This is the beginning of 2017. It is the new year. It has only been a week since I've received this grounding information that has forever warped the trajectory of my life. So I'm just casually and recreationally between work, and my other activities that I'm part of, and a part-time job, I'm just sort of scouring the Internet for whatever I can find. And then one night (again, sort of inadvertently), I landed upon what was my biological aunt (so my mom's twin’s wedding photo clipping, with her maiden name… (Was it her maiden name? I'm trying to think about this….)

It was her new married name. I know that much, but I guess the maiden [name] was in conjunction with her married [name]? So it was enough to move to the first five pages of a Google search, theoretically. And I, of course, had to open and sort of investigate every single one of them in order to find anything that I needed.

So I ended up seeing this clipping. And just by the look, this hauntingly similar facial structure– Because myself and my mom, we look very much alike (and naturally, based on the process of elimination of being an identical twin, my aunt does as well). So I felt pretty confident. I knew it was her. So I had a better understanding, now that I had my aunt's married name. And I used that information to leverage as much additional identifying information as I could possibly gather.

So, just taking copious notes and using it to my advantage. I ended up finding an online obituary (which would've been for my grandfather). Not biological—this would be just paternal adopted grandfather (because, remember, they were adopted themselves).

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm.

Doug Umberger: But nevertheless, I found the information that I needed (which was my mom's new married name). So I used that, and I Googled and used social media. So I just tried to cast my net as far and wide as I possibly could. And I found the information for which I saw, and it led to a turbulent past (which is fine and completely understandable). And, you know, there was something so sobering about the experience and finding everything and having it fully come to fruition, some decade and change later (after initially submitting the paperwork).

But it was sort of at that time that I decided I have what I needed. And I was pleased with the methods, and the calculus, and sort of the strategy that I took in order to receive it. And now I am going to put all of my eggs into the basket of my master's degree. And I'm going to pick the brains of 16 adoptees with radically different perspectives, and stories, and ways that they found (or perhaps took a similar approach in finding) their biological parents.

So I ended it quite there. And again, an incredibly long-winded response as to my personal timeline. But this is all context as to why I decided to write about this as much as I did and to research as deeply as I did.

Haley Radke: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I don't want to go forward without just saying I'm sorry to hear that you found this troubled past and, you know, that's tough. It's sort of a period—

Doug Umberger: It’s enough.

Haley Radke: Well, you know, if you're not comfortable reaching out because of that, it's kind of like—it's just, I don't know. Yeah.

Doug Umberger: It's totally fair. That's valid. In full honesty, Haley, I have more interest (and this is what the utmost respect for saying what I'm about to say) of actually reaching out to my biological aunt.

Haley Radke: Oh…

Doug Umberger: Who is incredibly successful and has a family. And this is not to bring too much to the surface, but once I received her married name and I had much more omnipresent information that sort of spanned the Internet, I did find her Facebook. And I saw her kids and I remember showing my mom. I was like, “Oh my goodness, her kids look identical to me and looked just like I did as a kid.”

So that was something that, again, was just spectacular (all the same), but also doubly more convoluted. And almost equally (if not more) hurtful, because I should be reaching out to my biological mother. She has been through so much; she doesn't have any kids. So, you know, needless to say, it's kind of a precarious circumstance.

But there's no way of telling that far down in the next chapter or leg of my personal and professional life, [whether I] will not reach out to my biological mother. I still might one day, but I just wanted to be really cautious and trod very carefully into the territory that was presented to me. I needed to be really strategic there.

So that was, you know, my grounded philosophy and I decided to confidently just stop it in its tracks and to move on with my life. And, you know, looking back in retrospect, I'm really proud of that decision. I don't think I give myself as much credit as I probably should.

Haley Radke: You just sound so wise about that. And I think this is a good spot to transition into talking about your thesis, because you talk about people searching and the impact social media has had on that—how, you know, it's changed the way we search and then subsequently connect.

We find people so fast, it's so immediate. And there is no room for this space to process or even (used to be) write letters back and forth, you know?

Doug Umberger: Mm-hmm.

Haley Radke: And you slowly build that relationship? So I think it's really putting a strain on reunions, this fast, fast, instant kind of connection. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. Why don't you tell us about your thesis and some of the things that you've discovered?

Doug Umberger: So truly, in the same breath, it's worth acknowledging that I saw, and found, and spoke to two sides to the same coin. Thankfully, there were individuals who used either, a DNA provider (through AncestryDNA or 23andMe), and there are 10 (plus) different providers like that. But those are the two perhaps most notable or credible in the industry. But there are people who found their biological parents (or a parent, for that matter). And decided, albeit beneficial, that they used and utilized technology to sort of expedite the search process, which they should deem successful and reap the benefits thereof.

There were a lot of individuals sort of on the borderline of being a Baby Boomer and I guess transitioning to the Millennial Era (that sort of odd purgatory, if you will, or in between that), they are in a situation where they know that their first move needs to be consistent over a finite period of time (but a time no less). There were so many different anecdotes of people saying, “Yes, I have a Facebook. I have a series of different social media platforms. I'm glued to my accounts, but I do not want to initiate communication in any form of digital fashion with my biological parents.” And I found that totally valid and fair.

Haley Radke: Oh, can you unpack that a little bit? What were their hesitancies for connecting on social media?

Doug Umberger: I guess too much of a good thing, you know? They didn't want it to spiral out of control or for things to move too fast. And I think that's just, and I think that was a sound approach.

And to the complete contrary, there were people who immediately took to social media. And, in turn, their search processes eventually turned to a reunion. And before you knew it, you know, (two circumstances within just a couple of weeks of receiving their non-identifying information and finding their biological parents in some way, shape or form), they were practically at a family reunion with them.

So I just saw this smorgasbord of different methods and strategies. Because my focus going into this thesis was, of course, what media was used in the search and in addition to what media (of course, how, when, where, why did they use that particular one)? So like all those intangibles. But you know, did it bolster or inhibit their search or their relationship after the fact? How much of the relationship was sort of contingent upon social media?

So I had all these different questions that I got to piggyback off of, but I did not expect for the themes to emerge as quickly as they did (not only dovetailing adoption law and state to state different resources). I ended up getting really in the weeds on that and I regret putting as much time as I did in that. But also just adoption psychology and the focus of this was digital media, but it was inevitable.

And I should have seen it coming where all these thematic elements of, you know, finding one's identity, and curiosity, and jealousy, and nature versus nurture and naivete. All of these intangibles were so quickly brought to the surface. So it was tough to sort of qualify it all and just to compartmentalize them. And that was the part where I realized that this is going to be an emotional rollercoaster.

And for, you know, nine months of my life, I was just—I woke up winded. And some of these conversations, they gave me life and my heart grew three sizes. And it was just a delight and a pleasure. And I'm still connected to some of my users and participants to this day. But also there were some that just kept me up. And the heartbreak, and the trauma, and what they had to undergo in order to get to this point in their life...

There was one person in particular; Cheyenne is her pseudonym in my paper. I think she alludes to something to the tune of like 10 hours a night for months on end, searching for her biological parents. She was, Haley, I kid you not, I think a member of—I think she said over 10 different DNA providers. So Ancestry, 23…I list them all in my thesis. But she was nothing, if not relentless. And she did this for decades. She spent to the tune of thousands of dollars back in the day to sort of vet the search process and to find this information. And nothing ever came to it. And in the process she actually cut ties and unfortunately, I guess, sort of conjured this distrust in her adoptive family (her adoptive mother and her father). I believe her brother was a part of that equation, as well. But in all of this effort that she put forth in finding her parents, she ended up almost completely eliminating communication and their relationship. So, you know, that was heartbreaking in and of itself.

All this, suffice it to say, she ends up finding her biological mother. And I think she put a restraining order on her within a moment's notice, or she contacted the FBI saying, “You know, if you ever contact me again, I'll have you sued.” (That's for lack of a much better term. I don't remember the exact language, but again, that was one of my first discussions that I had). And for it to be such an arduous, grueling…just to drag your feet through this search and for technology to be a silver lining, honestly, and a saving grace. And hopefully she finds some comfort. But, you know, that is one of about 15 different examples that I had to sort of undergo through this.

Haley Radke: Can you talk a little bit about just what differences you sort of observed, just talking in particular about digital relationships versus connecting with family members outside of social media? I don't know. Were people like phoning people? I don't know.

Doug Umberger: So, I have an interesting one. I have–-And I guess I would consider him like a faux friend, if you will. We are Facebook friends. I do have a pulse and sort of a beat on his life (and it will be interesting sort of at the tail end of this particular anecdote). But his name in the thesis is Scott and he's exactly my age. He lives in the heart of Manhattan. He was adopted from the Ukraine, which is sort of the foundation here.

But he, too, sort of on a whim—I think it was like an AncestryDNA sale... You know, those cookies in the sidebar and you see them all the time, I feel like the whole adoption circuit has this sort of plastered onto their digital screens in some fashion...

Haley Radke: Oh, they are targeting us hardcore. Yeah. Yeah. [they laugh]

Doug Umberger: That's another conversation for another day.

But in any event, he (this is sort of akin to my own experiences) he found through AncestryDNA, this very high match who he, I guess, qualified to be a cousin of some way? But in any event, he did not have any non-identifying information. He didn't really have anything, but he wanted to find his biological parents (as much as possible). So this was a very unique case. This was very much an anomaly, an outlier from the whole other portfolio that I sort of formed here in these adopted users.

But he decided, because international search processes were very costly (and certainly something that he didn't want to take out a loan for,necessarily), he decided to create a GoFundMe page. He and his cousin came up with that idea, or lack of cousin (whomever that individual was, through AncestryDNA). The two were like, “Huh, maybe GoFundMe. We'll throw it out there just for kicks. We'll see what happens.”

And he woke up, he said, a couple days later, and he had more than adequate and sufficient funds to, you know, get the search. He just posted something onto Facebook, and his friends and his family members were so quick to contribute and to give back and to be a voice and a champion of his search process (which he found very endearing, and understandably so).

So he hired, for lack of a better term—what is the term? He reached out to a search person who focused particularly within the realm of Ukraine. And within it just a sort of a moment's notice—I think it was maybe just a week or a couple weeks or so, he ended up having all of the identifying information for both of his mother and his father.

So again, in a very interesting turn of events, because they were still in Russia or Ukraine, they were still abroad, and certainly overseas. So he decided to create an account with–I know the shorthand is “OK,” and “VK” (those are two separate social media platforms over there that are sort of similar to our Facebook, for instance).

Haley Radke: Okay.

Doug Umberger: Yes. “OK,” exactly is one of them.

Haley Radke: Oh no, I'm just saying, Oh, that's interesting. “OK.” I've never heard of that.

Doug Umberger: I haven't either. But he used those accounts and Google Translate to reach out to his parents. Just on a quick (and rather funny) aside—I will never forget this, but I remember for both of his parents (because he reached out to his biological mother first and his father soon thereafter), both of which were no longer together. But he reached out to his mother with this, I think what he compares to be something along the lines of like a LinkedIn or like a professional cover letter.

He said he was so formal in his prose and everything was so eloquent and, you know, he stayed up for nights just to write this passage and he sent it along through this foreign social media site by way of Google Translate and the mother almost instantaneously just responded with like, “Oh. Hi, Scott! How have you been? I missed you.” (Or something like, so tough for him to understand and to conceptualize.)

He just thought it was so goofy to—he considered it like the typical goofy parent just for them to be like, “Oh, hey! How have you been?” Like, just by and large, the most fascinating response. And they continued to communicate through Google Translate and through these social media platforms, and they cultivated this amazing relationship over time.

And eventually he and his biological mother had formed such a strong digital bond that she decided to disclose the father's information, which he (Scott) had mentioned again (just very sort of jokingly). He was like, “Oh yeah, my mom just basically said, ‘Oh yeah, he's Facebook friends with me. Just look for this name and my friends, and you'll find him. That's your biological father.’” So again, just trying to come to terms with how strange the international barriers are for the adoption process and adoption communication and those parameters and sort of that ethical insight that we (domestically) have. And again, these situations, they're so different, but his were hysterical. He was just cracking me up. So eventually, over a couple months, they all started communicating with one another. And just recently, I think a couple months ago, I saw on his Facebook that he actually flew over there and he met with everyone over the course of like two weeks.

And he was just trying to understand how he would go about the communication process, because everything thus far has been through a translation service and provider. So he was like, “How am I gonna say, ‘Pass the salt’ in Ukrainian or Russian?” He was like, “I can, you know, brush up on Rosetta Stone…” But in the grand scheme of this conversation, he was like, “I just can only imagine how just terrifyingly funny it's going to be with just a basic communication platform.” So that is just one small example of a digital relationship that sort of spirals itself out of control.

Haley Radke: I'm just picturing—what do you do? Like, do you bring your phone along and type in what you want to say to them? And then you like… [they laugh]

Doug Umberger: I don't know what he did. I give him all the credit in the world, though. Like what insurmountable opportunity.

Haley Radke: Wow.

**Doug Umberger:**And he took full advantage of it. And thankfully, everybody was, you know—They had such a good rapport and everybody was on good terms, so there were no regrets, whatsoever (which is so inspiring, on so many different levels).

Haley Radke: That's incredible in just a digital, a true digital relationship. I mean, what would've happened had this been, you know, 30 years ago? That's it. Like he doesn't find them. Right? [they laugh]

Doug Umberger: Exactly. That is exactly the case. I had another, he had searched, I think for like 20 years for his biological parents, and then— This was one of those that was a little easier to understand, because he (or a little more serendipitous, allow me to say). His name, I think, was Wayne (in my thesis), but he submitted an AncestryDNA, received his biological parents or a biological brother. Somebody in his intermediate family immediately decided to initiate conversation and has had a flourishing and blossoming relationship ever since.

So that is, again, something in sharp contrast. Whereas 20 years ago, he did not succeed; he picked himself up, and certainly tried again.

Haley Radke: Hmm. What are your thoughts in the end after doing this research? And, you know, when I started asking you about it, I was like, “Well, you know, it's good for you to have made the decision to put the brakes on.” Because I thought…I mean, social media can make things go so fast and it can be so challenging then, to build a deep relationship really quickly. I understand the challenges it brought into my life.

Do you have some concluding thoughts on it? Advice for people if they're searching and they're using social media to reach out? Anything about that.

Doug Umberger: In addition to sort of casting your net far and wide, it is important to understand, I think, how the calculus and the strategy of where to start and how it could potentially end. And that timeline is contingent upon a few different things. So the way that I perceived this from the get go was: there are two sides to it. There is the digital technology side, Facebook media, Google searches, and the like. And then there's a route, perhaps a little more scientific. So AncestryDNA, 23andMe. Again, I thought those were going to be two sort of autonomous paths, and they inevitably sort of intersected very quickly (and early on).

And I've noticed that as a recurring theme and thread across my participants was, you know, the vast majority of them it seems dipped their toes and tested the waters of a lot of different resources that are available for anyone. And I think that is the power and the necessity of just basic anonymity when it comes to being who we are and where we are in 2018, in this global village and digital universe.

We are not using a platform that is specifically catered to adopted people. We are using the same one that your grandmother decided to create an account on the other day and now likes all of your photos (or whatever the circumstance). That was an ode, by the way, to Scott (the one from the Ukraine). Because both of his parents, as soon as they found out that their biological son reached out to them, they decided to go onto his Facebook and they liked every single photo that he had ever posted in the history of his account. Which, he just woke up and he was like, “I had like 817 notifications, because my biological parents from across the globe decided to go on and just like all of my stuff.” So in any event, I digress. That's just a quick aside.

But yeah, as we envision the future of digital technology (and I don't wanna fall down that rabbit hole of thoughts of where we are going), but just to take stock and inventory of what we have (and, you know, perhaps it can save you a little bit of money). And it can be the necessary mask and facade that some people need in order to comfortably move forward in their own identity, but also to create new relationships digitally (in person or otherwise).

You know, this research that I took a year out of my life (and at times was so trying and taxing on my psyche), it revolutionized the way that I treat social media, but also the way that I view social media. Because again, this is something at the expense of anybody. It's just so tough sometimes to put to terms and hopefully that is but a notion of where I came from.

Haley Radke: Hmm. Thank you. So my last question for you, before we go to recommended resources, is: Thinking back to the fact that your bio mom is a twin, and she herself is adopted, is there a chance that that connection on Ancestry truly is related to her? And that she's not searched, she's not connected with them?

Doug Umberger: To answer your question, yes. But I don't want to position myself to be the bearer of that news.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm.

Doug Umberger: Something that I noticed, and this is somewhat similar and in the same line of thought, but one recurring and quite fascinating underpinning to my research, was the fact that there were so many adoptive mothers (in particular) who were the ones to sort of spearhead the search process for their children.

And once the search sort of came to fruition, and once the adoptee met up in person (or met, rather, digitally) with their biological parents, the adoptive mother felt very much threatened and regretful of making that decision. It has led, from what I could tell, I think about four (maybe three?) very dissonant relationships over the course of years. So I have learned to be cautious and very tactful in that approach.

And biographically and scientifically looking at it, certainly there's probably some sort of bloodline there? But I don't feel the need to be the one to push in the event that it doesn't pan out as anticipated or expected.

Haley Radke: Okay. That is so fascinating that you say so many adoptive mothers led some of those searches. That is really interesting to me. I have not heard that before. I've heard from a few people that, you know, their mothers maybe ask them, or whatever, if they want to search, but…

Doug Umberger: I think, yeah, I think they were sort of just a muse. In some cases, they had a voice in the situation or they sought their good counsel, perhaps? But, you know, my mom is a prime example of just a glowing resource and just a wealth of knowledge and insight and…

You know, I did find it very perplexing that those who I interviewed had those similar storylines, and that was a very unfortunate ending. But thankfully that's not a universal concept or approach nowadays. It's literally just a flip of a coin, so it can pan out in either way.

Haley Radke: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. That's so interesting. And I am really so much more curious about your research and I could talk about this a lot longer with you, but you know, we're running out of time.

But I really do want to recommend that people go and check out your thesis, because in addition to seeing all of the research, and you've got descriptions of your interviews, you've got brief vignettes of each person's story and experience (as you related a couple of theirs to us in this interview). Thank you.

And also, of course (just like any academic paper), you've got multiple sources. And some of the statistics that you bring forward (just in the very beginning), these two studies… Let me think here. One is in the 80s and then one is just a couple years old, about the percentages of adoptees that search.

All of those things are just so interesting to me. And even as we started, you were talking about how little academic research there is, and I mean, I think that still holds true today. But you have gathered some very valuable research in your paper, so thank you for that.

I really think people would find it very valuable to not only just read your thesis, but also to check out some of the sources that you've brought together here.

Doug Umberger: I really appreciate that. Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Doug Umberger: Yeah, I was gonna say, I certainly hope to continue as an advocate in the adoption circuit in some capacity. And whether that's just something as simple as presenting at a conference or just continuing these conversations in some form, I do not want this to just sort of meet its end. I want to continue just sharing in people's experiences and these 16 participants that I spent (meeting in person and by phone and via email) and spent, I think it was—

We were chatting about this earlier, (what was it like?) 20 to 24 hours of my life was spent just sitting and talking to people about their adoption stories and the tactics and methods that they use to sort of leverage success, or failure, or some weird merge of those two. And some 70 pages later, I mean, the statistics are steep. There's a lot there.

But I really enjoyed being qualitative in this and not getting too lost in the weeds on numbers. But more so, just hearing out and simply picking the brains of these stories and the people that matter most. So, I'm glad I got to put it on paper. I cannot be prouder of what is out there.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know what my job is, right? So, I totally get it. [they laugh]

Okay. So here's a question for you. How do you feel that doing this and connecting with these people has changed you?

Doug Umberger: I feel as if it validated some of my experience, or some of my decision making to stop my personal search process. I think that's the most simplistic answer in response to that question, other than the fact that I did find genuine interest in learning everybody's stories. And there are still some times where I'm just, you know, chatting with someone and out of nowhere one of their experiences or one of their stories is unearthed.

Then I sort of just think about it and it resonates for a little bit further, but it changed me in a lot of ways. And it's funny because I'm at times a wordsmith. I mean, I was a speech major in college and I teach as an adjunct for speech (part-time, after work). But through this process, I cannot emphasize enough how just speechless I was throughout every single conversation that I had, albeit digital, or over the phone, or otherwise.

I had never been to a point where I did not know the right words to say, and there were countless occasions where I was just mute. And that continued for hours, and in some cases, days on end. And that's something that I was never used to or exposed to in my life. So that changed me. I don't know for the better or worse, but it brought a very different and invaluable perspective to my life that I never would've received otherwise.

Haley Radke: Well, I'll confess to you now, you know, these shows are edited. I have been struck dumb on more than one occasion myself during interviews, but that doesn't play well on a podcast. So those get edited out, those big giant silences where my jaw is open. So… [they laugh]

Doug Umberger: Oh, goodness.

Haley Radke: So you're not alone. Okay. What do you want to recommend to us?

Doug Umberger: I am actually going to pay homage (or perhaps an ode, whatever you want to consider this) to one of my participants who recommended to me a book called Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter. I, to be frank, only bought it recently, and I'm still in the process of reading it. But it, nevertheless, provides a pretty stark perspective of foster care.

And I have listened to your podcasts of, you know, individuals who have been through so many different types of foster care systems. But just to be in a situation where you are cognizant and you cognitively are able to sort of understand what you are going through, but to toggle between so many different locations and meeting different people. But all the same in the process, sort of finding your voice.

I'm a champion and advocate for speech. After I was adopted, actually I think I had a hernia or something like that. I was just a little toddler (it was right after my adoption), but I ended up having a little bit of a speech issue, so I had to go through speech therapy. So I am very much a proponent of finding your voice in any capacity.

And I think adoption is a very unique example to bring into speaking up, and making your voice heard, and just thus far what I'm reading in Three Little Words, which by the way are, “You are adopted.” Three Little Words, I think that have been very powerful, and moving, and endearing, and inspirational. So I look forward to how it is going to sort of pan out, but that is certainly my recommended resource.

Haley Radke: Great. Thank you so much. I am excited to check that out. I love memoirs, especially. And so that sounds really good. I will link to where you can get Doug's thesis online, so that will be in the show notes.

And Doug, where can we connect with you?

Doug Umberger: That's a loaded question, Haley. So for just receiving a master's in Digital Media, you would expect for me to be glued to the digital universe. But I have a Twitter. I have an Instagram. My Instagram is fun, @Doug Umberger, U-M-B-E-R-G-E-R. So I'm a hobbyist photographer, but that has absolutely nothing to do with adoption. My Twitter is the same handle, Doug Umberger.

Haley Radke: Well, wonderful. We will see you on social media, but not all the time.

Doug Umberger: I'll see you there. Drop a line from time to time.

Haley Radke: Yes. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us and also your research. I just found it so fascinating. So, thank you.

Doug Umberger: It has been lovely, Haley. I really appreciate this opportunity. Thank you so much.

Haley Radke: I promised details on the upcoming San Francisco Podcast Meetup and a one more bonus recommended resource for Canadian adoptees. On Sunday, May 20th, I will be in San Francisco and my friend Anne Heffron will be offering a Write or Die class that I will be taking from her with some of you. So that's Sunday, May 20th in San Francisco.

And following the Write or Die class, we are going to have a Listener Meetup with myself, Anne Heffron, and also one of my favorite therapists that has been on the show multiple times, Pamela Cordano. So come and meet me, and Anne, and Pam hang out. I know there's already some of you traveling from out of state to get there, so that's pretty amazing. I'm very excited. I'm gonna have details for that on adopteeson.com/events. And it's also on our Facebook page, on the events tab.

Okay. For Canadian adoptees, and Australian adoptees, and anyone who's interested in the political advocacy area. As I'm recording this, it's March, 2018 and that's when the show will be released. This week in Canada, there have been Senate hearings on the Adoption Mandate for Unmarried Mothers in Post-War Canada. I learned about this from Valerie Andrews. She's the executive director of Origins Canada. I was able to watch a two hour Senate committee hearing on this topic. So that's what I want to recommend to you.

If you're like, Well, that sounds really boring. I know. I know. It does, but I want to encourage you to watch it anyway. It was not boring. In fact, it was so powerful and moving. So, Valerie Andrews and four other women all testified before this Senate committee. It's a standing Senate committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. They each got seven minutes to share their personal story as well as their professional and volunteer experience working with first mothers and adopted people. Talking about supporting them through a reunion and adoption issues in general.

I have to tell you, these women are so strong. Their speeches were so good, succinct, and clever, and exactly what we want to say about adoption in the public eye. They were thorough. Their wisdom showed through. Their years and years of experience; they were excellent. So if you want to learn how to craft your story in a way that is meaningful and powerful, all of these testimonies are things that you could learn from. Also, they were able to respond to questions from the senators.

To me, it seemed like they were really listening, they were really understanding. And I think that you'll learn a lot from watching it, as I did. And of course, I cried. I cried a lot, because some of the stories were so moving, and so sad, and some just made me very, very angry. The injustice, the absolute injustice for women who were forced to give away their babies. So, I'm going to set up a link to that in the show notes for you.

The other thing that was mentioned several times was what Australia has gone through similarly in hearings about adoption and ultimately resulted in an apology from the Australian government. So, that's what this is moving towards, an apology from the Canadian government. And they're also talking about interacting with several of the churches represented in Canada: Catholic Church, United Church, et cetera. And so there was a little bit of discussion about that, too. So I really recommend going and watching that, setting aside time to learn from these women.

There, that's my bonus recommended resource for you. I am so grateful that I'm able to do this podcast for you. And I just want to say a big thank you to each and every one of you who listens, those of you that share this show on social media and with your friends and with your support groups, that means so much to me. And also those of you who are donating financially towards the production costs, I appreciate that so much. If you want to partner with the show, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to hear about the details.

Okay, one last thing. The show is going to be on a break for next weekend because it's Easter weekend, and we are going to be away with my husband's family. But we'll be back on April 6th with a special episode, a healing episode with Pamela Cordano, that you don't want to miss. Make sure you're subscribed in your favorite podcast app.

Thank you for listening. Let's talk again, soon.

61 Paige - In the Workplace

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/61

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Haley Radke: This show is listener supported. You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season Four, episode 3: Paige. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Paige Strickland shares with us today about the complexity of building relationships in the workplace as an adopted person many years into her career.

Paige has a unique vantage point to give us an overview of what it was like 30 years ago, if you even broached the subject of adoption reunion with a colleague all the way to present day and what it's like for her now. We talk jobs, the difficulty some of us have building friendships, and the extra layer of feeling inadequate that some of us contend with daily.

We wrap up with some recommended resources, including a chance for you to connect with Paige in person coming up, and as always, links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Paige Strickland. Welcome, Paige.

Paige Adams Strickland: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I think we met in person, is that right?

Paige Adams Strickland: I think we did a year ago at the… You were at the Indiana…?

Haley Radke: Indiana Adoptee Network

Paige Adams Strickland: Indiana Adoptee Network Conference a year ago. The one in Bloomington?

Haley Radke: Yes. Okay. I thought we met there. Yes. So good.

Well, I'm so pleased to talk with you today, and I'm gonna ask you a question I've never asked anyone that I've had on the show before (so I'm kind of excited).

But let's start out with, why don't you share some of your story with us?

Paige Adams Strickland: I was adopted in Ohio in the United States in ‘61. I was placed in 1962. I was 13 months old when I was placed. I'm assuming the adoption went through within six months of that. I grew up in the same town, lived in the same town my entire life (except for a three year stint in Florida. Then I came back). In ‘87, I started my search, because I realized I could (because I was born before that cutoff date in Ohio).

Haley Radke: Oh, say more about that. What's the cutoff date in Ohio?

Paige Adams Strickland: Well, there isn't one anymore. Yay! Because in 2015, they changed the law back. But prior to that it was, you had to be born and adopted in the state of Ohio before January 1st, ‘64. And since I was ‘61/’62, I was in the open records era. Now, my parents that adopted me never realized that.

I think at the time, the only thing that went through their mind was getting a baby, you know. And they didn't think about laws; they didn't keep up with anything. They saw what they wanted to see. They heard what they wanted to hear, and they got what they wanted. And it was a “closed” adoption, so they just went on with life after that.

But the law said, “Yes, but…” You know, and so I found out from watching a TV talk show back in the eighties, “Oh yeah. I could find my birth family if I wrote to Columbus and sent them this, the registered check or whatever (for 20 bucks or whatever it was),” and found my birth family. So they sent me a birth certificate and with all the information my name change document, my decree of adoption, you know, everything matched up and it was all, you know, correct information that I got from the state.

And so then I started searching, and I found everybody. And so that was pre-internet, of course (because it was the late eighties). You know, it's been good. It's been successful. Not everybody gets as lucky as I got, but I got lucky. So that's the really fast version of history. [they laugh]

And my sisters (my birth mother's other daughters), my sisters there, we're planning a 30 year reunion/get together something or other this summer. Because in July, it'll be our 30 year anniversary.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. So I don't know what we're gonna do yet. You know, there's talk of going to Disneyland. There's talk of maybe just hanging out at somebody's house for a week and just hanging out. I don't know how it'll work out. I said (I told my one sister), “The most important thing is just us being together. I don't care where it is, how we do it.”

Haley Radke: That's amazing.

Okay, well here's the question that I never ask anyone and–

Paige Adams Strickland: Alright. Bring it on. Bring it on.

Haley Radke: And I do it on purpose, because people come on to talk about their adoption story and their experiences with adoption. So I never ask: So, what do you do for work?

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. Technically, I am licensed as a Spanish teacher (7-12), in Ohio. So you know, if you go legally by that, that's my answer. Right now, I'm working as a special needs aide for high school kids. I've got junior high through high school kids in a special ed classroom. They're semi-contained, meaning we don't contain anybody and shut the door anymore, you know. They are integrated in other classrooms as well. So sometimes we're aides in other classrooms with other teachers, with our students, supporting them as needed.

We collaborate with our main teacher in our classroom and we can collaborate with the other teachers of the main subject areas. And we all work together, and it's great. And I love what I do. Every day is different. And even though I'm an aide and not a “teacher teacher,” it's the best of all worlds. I just love it.

Haley Radke: Hmm. So you trained to be a teacher?

Paige Adams Strickland: Mm-hmm.

Haley Radke: And you sent me sort of, it was almost like your resume. So I saw some of your past jobs. Because what we're talking about today is relationships with our coworkers, and just living in the workforce as an adoptee. And how that is different than someone who's not adopted.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. Sending you a resume was kind of like, “Well, here's my work history and here's what happened to me.” And you know, I'm sure there are non-adopted people that can also relate to some things that go on, but you know, I know how it worked for me. That's all I can say there. And still works for me. It's not like I'm retired! [they laugh] I'll be working till I'm 80 or 90, I'm sure.

Haley Radke: Well, when you love what you do, right?

Paige Adams Strickland: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's really great in that way, in that I am happy with all the work I do. I started out (aside from weekend jobs and babysitting and all the other little small job things that people do), my first real “professional” job after college, I got a job teaching Spanish. And I was very fortunate, really, to be able to get a job in my city.

And I have to give my husband some credit here–we were honeys at the time and he was new on the computer (at the time). And he helped me crank out a bunch of application letters and thank you letters to interviewers and things like that. I basically sent out 50 applications all over town, got a few callbacks for some interviews, got hired with a job offer at one place. I mean, that's how tight the job market really has been.

It was in a private Catholic school. And I've actually worked in two private Catholic schools, because the first one I was at, I was laid off after four years (because they had declining enrollment and some money issues). I got reabsorbed into the system in another Catholic high school in the same city here (we're in Cincinnati). Pretty much, I've got 20 years in the archdiocese. That's what I've done as a main job to start with, until this aide job with special needs kids came around.

Yeah, I was a Spanish teacher. It was a great job. But I never fully felt like I fit in. And part of that might've been because I'm not a Catholic. I remember my first boss said, “Oh, well we hire people from all walks of life.” It was kinda like, Oh, I'm the token non-Catholic from all walks of life that you're hiring. Okay, well I'll take it. You know? I'll deal with it. It's a job. I don't care about anything else. It's a job, you know, it's a nice school, nice people, nice place. You know? And that's the job that only lasted four years because the enrollment declined.

And then I got hired somewhere else, fortunately, because somebody knew somebody who knew somebody. And that's how I kind of got hired there. But again, I went through–it was almost harder there. I don't know why, but it was even harder there to feel accepted and feel like I was one of them. And I was just as qualified and just as good as any of them.

I'm sure the adoptee part of that played into it. Some of it was, again, I'm not of that faith, so there was always sort of a dividing line between “me” and “them.” And some of it was, I just questioned myself. I think adopted people in the general sense have a lower self-esteem and they question themselves. They question what they do, they question how well they do it. They worry all the time that, Something's gonna go wrong, somebody's gonna reject me. And so I kind of had that weight on me all the time when I went to work.

I loved the kids, I loved what I was teaching. Most of the people I worked with, I loved them. But there were a few, you know, but then that's true in every workplace. There's always a few turkeys everywhere you go. It doesn't matter who you are. It's just how it is.

Haley Radke: So what's it like, just being in the staff room and chatting with your peers or in a staff meeting? What are sort of the day-to-day interactions when you're a teacher with your colleagues?

Paige Adams Strickland: I learned real early on, “Keep your mouth shut and listen.” There are a lot of people (and I don't have a master's degree, so I always felt, too, that maybe I was lesser because I don't have that master's degree). So maybe what I had to say didn't hold as much weight as somebody with a higher degree.

And I don't know if that's true or not. I do not work in a setting like that now, but at the time where I felt like, I'm not worthy enough. Yet here I am because I am the token Protestant. [they laugh] I just kept my mouth shut a lot, let other people talk (whether it was good stuff, negative stuff). There was a lot of negative stuff, a lot of complaining about kids, a lot of judgment about people, and I just—I'm not into that. I'm just not into that. I'm not into confrontation, I'm not into the negativity, especially when it comes to kids learning.

It was hard for me in school. I certainly wasn't gonna be “that woman” for anybody else. The thing I learned– When I was a kid in school (and I wanted to be a teacher my whole life), to not be “that person,” “that teacher,” or that one that makes a kid cry. You know, I never wanted to have a kid in my classroom that went home and cried to the parents or somebody because they had the meanest Spanish teacher in the whole world, or something. You know? I just, I didn't want that. I don't care how easy or nice I have to be. I am not gonna be that person to somebody.

Haley Radke: Yeah. You said it's like, “you gotta keep your mouth shut” kind of thing. Were there any events or circumstances where you felt like you needed to speak up about something?

Paige Adams Strickland: Oh, definitely. Yeah. As an adopted person going through my search and reunion… Okay. I knew where the church stood on that kind of activity (which pretty much wasn't in line with what I was doing), which was— Even though I didn't even have a Catholic Social Services adoption. My parents that raised me went through Hamilton County Social Services or Welfare Department. It was totally public. It had nothing to do with the church, but knowing that I was still doing something that their church would never have really approved of or liked (because I was beating a system in a way), I had to keep my mouth shut about that.

And that was kind of awkward. I had a couple of coworkers that I could trust, but I still really felt limited in what I could share. So, and because I didn't wanna… I was a rebel. I was a questioner, I was a rebel. I was, you know, not like the rest of them in that kind of way. And I remember, there was one year we had a pregnant student in the building. And again, back in the eighties this was still like, “Ooh….,” you know? And in the eighties in a private girls school (not like public schools today, where you have like 12 of them, you know)... Back then, when it was still very conservative and very like, “We don't talk about these things” kind of setting and her locker was really close to my room.

But I didn't know her. I didn't teach her. I had no dealings with her at all. I only knew who she was because she was the pregnant kid. And you know, out of like 450 kids, she kind of stood out, and so I knew which kid she was, even though I didn't really have any kind of a relationship with her. So I never knew if I could say anything to her. And I knew she was giving her baby up for adoption. I didn't know what resource she was going through, whether it was Catholic Social Services, or whether it was through county welfare. I just couldn't ask too many questions, because I just didn't know this kid and I didn't wanna impose my opinions or beliefs on her. But, you know, I think about her a lot still. I wonder what happened to her.

Haley Radke: Paige, can you tell me, did you ever have any conversations with colleagues about your reunion or just being adopted? Did that ever come up?

Paige Adams Strickland: I have now. At the time, when I was going through it, there was one colleague I could discuss it with. I still kept it to a minimum, but I could discuss it a little bit. And you know, she was pretty accepting about it, but even she was like, “Well. Just lay low. It's really cool what you're doing, but we gotta lay low.” And so that was how we dealt with it.

But now, I work in a workplace where I don't– It came up Friday. I was talking with somebody I work with and I was saying, “What are you doing this weekend? Well, I'm having dinner with my sister tonight. And my other sisters, we're planning this 30 year reunion and, you know, we might end up in Disneyland. I don't know. We have to plan it and we've gotta figure out where we wanna be and how much we wanna spend and all that kind of stuff.” She was like, “Oh, that is so cool.”

So, yeah, now I can talk about it very freely. And another really nice thing— At the start of the school year (last tail end of August), we had a little seminar day before actual back to school day. This little session we had, we had some students volunteer to come in and it was a “What is it like for a day through the eyes of a teenager at this school”? And we had a panel of like six kids come in (very diverse panel). They pretty much had a sampling of every type of kid you think of that would be in a high school. It's like putting the cast of Glee together, you know? If you will?

They all asked us, too (at the start of the little workshop thing), everybody sitting in the room, “Whether you were a student or whether you were an adult in the room, share one “special” thing about yourself that other people probably don't know.” And so I shared that, “I'm an adopted person and I found my birth family, and I'm in reunion, and it's awesome.” And the kids on the panel were like, “Whoa, that's so awesome. That's so cool. What's it like?” You know, I mean, the response was wonderful. You know, that's what everybody should be saying: “What's it like?” Not like, “Oh, well, what's wrong with the family you have?” You know, I mean, the kids— This is the thing, the kids get it. The kids understand.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. Well, and as you say, over time, you know, reunion has become more normalized. So you were saying, talking to your peers now, it's sort of (I don't know), “normal.” It's just sort of part of life.

Paige Adams Strickland: Right, yeah. Thirty years now. Yeah. I've watched the sort of—what do you wanna call that—transformation maybe is the word? Of,“Oh, we don't talk about those things. We might be breaking rules if we talk about those things. Somebody might not approve if we talk about those things.” All the way to, “Cool. Tell me more. Tell me all about it.” It's kind of nice. I'm seeing that change.

Haley Radke: Have you ever had to navigate a really awkward conversation about your views on adoption that may be different than some of your colleagues? For example?

Paige Adams Strickland: You know, I haven't had anything much with the people I work with, and mainly because years ago I just kept my mouth shut.

Haley Radke: Right?

Paige Adams Strickland: I know when I got “zip my lip" here and just like “fake it till I make it.” And if I wanna keep my job, if I want people to get along with me, and I want to get along with them, and I don't want people to see me in some sort of a different awkward way, keep my mouth shut and blend in.

I had a job (this was again, back in the eighties), it was a retail job. Of course, no teacher makes enough money, right? So we all moonlight and do extra jobs. And I had a mall job (right in the eighties that was the thing). Everybody had mall jobs, because if you had a mall job, then you got a mall discount.

Oh, I worked in a little clothing shop. They sold cutesy, little preppy men's and ladies clothes and it was great, because it was stuff I could wear to work. It was stuff I could wear out socially. So, I mean, I loved the clothes in the store. You know, when I was a kid, I'd see the store and I could never afford anything in there.

And then I got a job in that store. It was like, “Oh, I get a discount! Yes!” So, and I was there three years and I loved that job. I was with coworkers where we all felt like family, you know? And it's like they can pay you crap, but if you are working with people you love, you'll do it because it's just such a nice environment.

Right. And I came to find out over time as I was working there, it was a little mom and pop family owned business. My manager was a good buddy of the owner, so that's how he got placed in the management position in the store I was at. I found out he was an adoptive father. He and his wife (obviously, then was an adoptive mother), and their kids, when it was summer vacation or spring break, would work in the store with us. Sometimes the rest of the time they were in school. But again, it was like, I better keep my mouth shut here, because he's an adoptive parent. The mom, she's an adoptive mom. You know, the kids are still teenagers working here. I don't know if I should share anything. They might not want me “corrupting” their kids or putting ideas in their kids' heads.

I couldn't share that part of myself because I didn't know how it would be received here. I was in Ohio with an open record going, I'm gonna find my birth family because I got an open record. You know? So I didn't want the kids to feel bad because I could do something they couldn't do. I didn't want the parents to feel bad, because I was doing something kind of rebellious, and maybe they didn't want me putting ideas in their kids' heads.

Again, that was the eighties. It's not now. If I were to take a job at a mall now, I don't think it would matter. You know? Yeah. It's different now. It's so different. So it's so much better. And you know, some of that's because of what we see on TV and what we see in the news. People are better about acceptance, tolerance, and diversity. You know, it's a good thing.

I have a student now who's a mentally challenged person, but she's lovely. She really is, but she is a part of a kinship adoption, so a much older second cousin adopted her (so her adoptive mother is actually a second cousin). Her birth mother kind of plays the role of a cousin, although it's really her birth mother. She does have contact with them because it's all the same family, at least on the one side of the family. I don't know about the birth father. I don't know anything there, but the birth mother (because she's actually a cousin), you know, they're all in touch. The birth mother also had some mental challenges and psychological challenges, which is why she couldn't take care of the daughter.

And so this goes with that modern thinking of, you know, if an adoption has to happen, can you go the kinship route and keep the child, at least in the family? With the blood relatives, give them an authentic history, be able to be honest and open about who's who and what's really going on? And you know, with this kid a couple of years ago, she had to turn in that project with the family tree, which many adopted people are like [barf,] right? I don't…

Haley Radke: The dreaded like

Paige Adams Strickland: triggering

Haley Radke: project. Yes.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. And I wasn't working with her at the time that this happened. Another instructor was with her. But I heard about it and I just kind of kept my mouth shut. And Let's see how this turns out. This is gonna be interesting. You know, I have other students that I need to tend to. Let's see… But I’m just watching. Let's wait and see. Well, this girl, she rocked the world. She turned in the biggest, fattest, blown up family tree you could ever imagine that any typical, any kid could have turned in. It was gorgeous. It had everything on there. It had more than the teacher ever dreamed would have turned up on any kid's project. She really kind of blew it out of the water. You know, like in the way that she could redefine, “What is family?” and, “Who's related to whom?” And what that looks like. And it's not the same for everybody.

Haley Radke: I love that.

Paige Adams Strickland: It was a special needs kid of all kids that could do something like that and get up there, kind of like with pride, you know, waving her fist in the air, saying, “This is me, this is where I fit into it. Any questions?” And yeah, she had the best project of anybody. Out of probably 75 kids that turned in a project that day.

Haley Radke: Yeah. What a testament to her kinship adoption and her situation.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. And it was just so unique and so eye-opening for other people. I'm looking at it going, Hmm, I know all about that stuff. Hmm. But you know, other students and other teachers looked at that and they were like, “Wow.”

Yeah, and I'm over on the side going, “Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Haley Radke: I love that story. So good.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Okay, so Paige, what would you say just about this conversation in general, like is there a place for us to be talking about adoption in the workplace? I mean, you just gave a really great example of how you've got this connection with this student and you were talking about interacting with those kids on the panel previously.

Paige Adams Strickland: Mm-hmm.

Haley Radke: And having those kind of discussions. How about with peers? And I'm just kind of talking in a broad sense (not necessarily in your situation), but broadly, you know, we can feel that reunion and maybe our adoptee issues are so intensely personal. We only kind of share them with a few of our inner circle.

So can you speak to that a little bit?

Paige Adams Strickland: Again, now I share with everybody. I don't hold it back. I mean, that's part of who I am. It's part of how I live my life. This is part of my family. It's part of my circle of people. For example, when my birth father passed away and I needed to take a bereavement day, no big deal. He was my birth father, you know? He wasn't my “father father,” but he was my birth father. I got to take my bereavement day. Same as if he were anybody else. It's different now. One point I might have been afraid to speak up about that, but I work in a setting where it's not a problem anymore.

But yeah, and I work with people now. I'm very fortunate, you know, they're all…they wanna hear about it, you know, they're excited, and they're curious, and they ask questions, and they don't think of me as some sort of goofy rebel that's breaking a bunch of rules or doing things we shouldn't talk about. So it's really nice. I have freedom now.

Haley Radke: That is so good. I guess my other question for you is: Do you feel like being adopted has impacted your work in any way, maybe even your decision for a career that you've gravitated towards? Do you feel that it's impacted how you work, how you live as an employee?

Paige Adams Strickland: Well, I know I was raised with a good work ethic. So, I mean, I had to work for stuff if I wanted it, you know, if it was a new bike, I had to work for it. If it was a privilege, I had to do something to earn that privilege (that kind of thing). You know, after having done all my search and finding my family, it's wired into me as well, to be a worker, to work hard for the things you want, and do a good job.

Don't stop. Mediocrity, because everybody that I work with in my family, or everybody in my family that I know, we're all kind of the same about our jobs. And you know, that's an important thing. I mean, that's our livelihood. It's part of how we define ourselves.

I will say this, it's real interesting. I started out as an educator and now I'm working as an education aide with special needs people. I have one sister who is an education aide, but she went the tech route and she's in the library, but she's still an aide like me. And then I have two sisters that work with mentally challenged adults, so they get the people that I have in high school a few years later, when they're adults. My one sister that lives here in town, we've actually had some of the same people. It's just, I get them first and then she gets them next.

Haley Radke: So are you saying careers are genetic? Whoa.

Paige Adams Strickland: I think there could be, in some ways, a link if you're drawn to some similar things and it's just temperaments It's, yeah…We have similar callings in that way.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Paige Adams Strickland: Similar, the way we just look at people, and things, and what's important. And three of my sisters, that we've all kind of gone in very similar paths as far as who we work with, and the way we work, and what we like, you know? And what we get out of our workday. I think that's kind of cool.

Haley Radke: Yeah. That's so cool.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah, I think it definitely has made me more understanding of kids that have unique needs, if not always special needs (like the way we think of special needs with learning challenges, or problems, or something). But just kids that aren't—they don't fit the typical mold, you know? Because I never saw myself as a kid that fit the typical mold, because I knew I had a different start from 99.99% of the kids I ever went to school with. I was kind of drawn to, “That's the kind of people I wanna work with,” you know? And even going into Spanish education, Okay!” (I'm gonna go in and study something that people might see differently now. But at the time, Well, this is a unique thing. This is kind of an exotic thing. There aren't that many people in my area that speak Spanish.

Now, of course, now you'd laugh at that because there are a lot of Spanish speakers and yeah, I was just drawn to things in people that were like not the norm. So in that sense, I'm thinking, Yeah, maybe adoption could have had something to do with that. You know, if I wasn't an adopted kid, what would I have done? I don't know. Maybe I would've, you know—My dad was in sales with the phone company. Maybe I would've been more of a sales and marketing kind of person. I don't know.

Haley Radke: Is there anything else you want to say to us on this topic about just navigating relationships with colleagues, navigating life just in the workforce?

Paige Adams Strickland: As an adopted person, I know for a long time (I don't think this way now)--- But for a long time, especially when I was first out of school and not that experienced yet with work and stuff, I kind of saw myself as the help and not as an equal with other workers and I think that goes with that low self-esteem thing that a lot of adopted people go through.

I'm not saying every adopted person goes through that, but a lot of them do. They question things about themselves and their existence and their worthiness (and I know I did). That may have held me back a little bit and messed with my confidence level, my self-esteem level. It was–(I don't feel that way now), but I felt that way then and now.

I'm glad to be where I'm at doing what I do. And I think a lot of adoptive people, too, they have a hard time making friends and thinking that the friendships they do have are secure, that people won't just up and leave them or move on (and that kind of thing). And it was hard to make work friends when I was starting out.

I think some of it, too, was I was in a very intense environment (and it had nothing to do with me), but I was too inexperienced at the time to know that. And when that bell rang and kids left and you got to leave, like, I don't know, seven minutes after the buses left (or whatever your contract said), people just left. It was not social. People were kind and nice, and you sat with them at lunch or you passed them in the hall and people would say, “Hi.” But man, when it was time to go, you were done. You know? And there weren't a lot of friendships outside of work.

You know, what do you do when you're young and you're trying to make friends and you're done with college and you're not living with your college friends anymore? How do you make friends? You know, you try to find some maybe at work, and I wasn't finding that for a long time. And I thought that was me. Maybe something's wrong with me, you know? And I think adopted people are very prone to that thinking. But I think also now looking back, I go, Oh, it was the environment I was in, too, where people were fried and they just wanted to go home and go on to the next thing until they had to come back the next day and put their work game face back on. I didn't understand that at the time, so it was like a rejection feeling even though it maybe wasn't. I think we're prone to thinking we're being rejected when we aren't, but it sure feels like it. You know, if you apply for jobs somewhere and you're lucky to get an interview after like 50 applications. And you get two or three interviews and you're like, Well, what's so wrong with me? You know, the odds are with 50 or 100 applications and all I get is three interviews.

You kidding me? Well, you know, the economy's bad, too. I mean it, times are what they are and then you get the interviews you get and then you hope you get the one job offer out of all that, you know? So it's very hard, I think, when you're, you know, applying and trying to go through that process and (literally) being accepted by other people. Again, authority figure people, all over again, and this time it's not like I'm hoping they'll pick me as a worker, is what you're going through, instead of as a kid. I think that's a hard thing for adopted people to be able to separate business from social. Business from just non-business.

Haley Radke: Well, and your personal worth as a human.

Paige Adams Strickland: Right. Right. It's already been messed with a little bit. And then you add this element on top, which all people go through, (unless you're maybe self-employed). But still sometimes self-employed people have to go out there and find clients, and still you have to deal with, “Does this client want me or do I have to go find some other client?” I think that just adds an extra level of complication, you know, for workers, for adopted people who are in the workforce, trying to make connections, meet people, network, be accepted, be hired somewhere because of your worthiness. Because it's a job, and money, and your life, and your independence, and your bills, and your everything.

Other than being adopted, is the other thing you define yourself as all hinges on whether somebody there in a suit, in an office is gonna accept you. So that's hard, I think. So, it's hard, anyway. I'm not saying it's not hard for other people, because it is. You know, I've seen what my own kids have gone through going to get jobs and things, but you know, when you're adopted, you add that layer to it of, Here I have to go through this again, of somebody thinking they want me. How can I convince them, am I good enough?

Yeah, and you know, my best advice would be: You do the best you can. You go to work every day, you do all the things you're supposed to do, and you just keep plugging along and have that determination. And reward yourself (if you get a chance, you know, buy something for yourself. Go out, do something for yourself on Friday or something, you know, to get yourself through that). To affirm to yourself sometimes that you don't get that affirmation from the employer or from the coworkers, and you know it has to come from within, that intrinsic thing. Reward yourself and take care of yourself, if you can't get it from the workplace. Even though you still have to go to work, just keep at it.

I work (again), multiple jobs, too, because I tutor, I teach fitness, I do other little things on the side like that. And so I know if one job, for some reason— And that's the other thing, we deal with the loss thing. If we lose a job, I think it hits us like a bus. You know, not just because of the money, but because it's a loss. It's a void in our lives and it's like, Here we go again. Crap. You know? And, and I can think of worse things to say, but we're gonna be on the air. Right? [they laugh] So, but yeah, fill in the blank with your own favorite word.

Haley Radke: Right. Well, thank you. I appreciate those thoughts.

Paige Adams Strickland: Sure.

Haley Radke: There's so many of us that are in the workforce and are just, that's sort of your life, and then adding on as an adopted person, the layer of complexity to that. That was really interesting. I really appreciated that perspective. Thank you.

Okay, so we mentioned right at the beginning that you and I met in Indiana, and so for recommended resources, let's move into that segment. You are actually presenting at the Indiana Adoptee Network Conference, which is coming up in April. So, it's April 20th and 21st, 2018.

Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about your session? And you're doing it with Lynn?

Paige Adams Strickland: I think I'm doing it with Lynn Grubb. So, I don't know if you've interviewed her before, possibly? Maybe?

Haley Radke: I haven't, but I talked to her extensively in Indiana last year.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, she and I are presenting and— it's funny the way I met her. I'd written a book. I googled and found Lost Daughters online, and I was looking for sources of people where I could promote my first book to. And somebody there at Lost Daughters said, “Well, talk to Lynn Grubb. She lives not in the same state as you. I'm gonna have her review your book.” Turns out Lynn lives maybe 55 miles away from me. It was like, Wow. It's like almost like we grew up in the same region together and everything and never knew one another. And then she got a copy of my book to review and that's how we met. And it was great.

Haley Radke: Hey, it's Haley butting in from the future. I know the recording gets a little sketchy right now, so I just wanna come in and make sure you have the exact details and dates here before Paige tells us about her specific session.

Again, it's Indiana Adoptee Network Conference. It's called Racing to Records, The Final Lap. It's going to be in Indianapolis, Indiana. That was hard to record. Just so you know, that's not my first time trying to say that. It's a Friday and Saturday, April 20th and 21st, 2018.

And in addition to Paige and Lynn's session, you can hear from past guests of Adoptees On, like Becky Drinnen, Shannon Peck, Ridghaus, and Anne Heffron. We'll all be presenting different workshops and a myriad of other guests. So go on over to their website, indianaadopteenetwork.org to check out all the details for registration, who's coming, who's gonna be there, where you need to book your hotel, all of that.

Okay. I wanna let Paige explain what her session is going to be with Lynn. And it's called, “I Have my OBC, Now What?”

Paige Adams Strickland: And, Lynn Grubb and I will be co-presenting on “You have your OBC, now what?” (your original birth certificate). We're going to talk about all the things that potentially could happen in the thought processes as an adoptee, you might go through. What to maybe think ahead about and anticipate before you contact people, what to say to people when you are contacting them, try to troubleshoot before you open a can of worms... You know? Because they could be good worms, they could be not good worms, but think it all through, is pretty much it.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Very good. And you have a lifetime of experience with reunions, so…

Paige Adams Strickland: Right. Yeah.

Haley Radke: You are an expert in that. Lynn as well.

Paige Adams Strickland: We both have gone through it and, yeah. Of course, we both went through it really before there was a lot of technology. And you had to find people the old school way, through phone calls, and public records, and courthouses, and things like that. And I mean, now what happens when you find somebody in 10 minutes because you found them on—you googled their name and found them on Facebook, you know, and…

Haley Radke: Like I did with my dad, yes.

Paige Adams Strickland: I couldn't imagine. I mean, yeah, if I hadn't found my sisters when I did, eventually we obviously would've found each other on Facebook by a certain point. Some people are open to that. My sisters knew I was out there. My sisters on my birth mother's side, they knew I was out there, so they were totally game for it.

So it would've been a, “Oh my God, there you are, oh my God, there you are… Oh pictures. Oh!,” you know. But then there are other people that would be. “Wait a minute. What? What my mom did, what my dad did what? Real what? You know, my grandparents never said a what?” It's a really fast shock, I would imagine, for people that find other people that fast or get found that fast.

Haley Radke: Yeah. A lot to navigate. That's, yeah... Very complicated.

Also, you have written a couple of memoirs, isn't that right? Can you tell us about…?

Paige Adams Strickland: I have, yes.

Haley Radke: Tell us about your books.

Paige Adams Strickland: The first one I wrote was called Akin to the Truth. My husband thought up the name, so I've gotta give him credit for that. So, Akin to the Truth.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yes. And we're punny people. We like little word play, things like that if we can get away with it. And it was about growing up as an adopted person and what that felt like as a kid and a teenager. And you know, of course there's sometimes when you don't think about it, and times when you think about it all the time. And you know, it was how I dealt with it. And then going through the search process and getting my birth certificate and what that was like, and finding my original family.

The second book is a sequel to that. It's called After the Truth, because it's after I found people, and after I knew a lot of what the truth was about what happened to me, and what happened to my family, what it's like to be in reunion (but as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as a worker, you know what that was like). You know, I'd go to my job, but then I'd had this “secret life" thing going on. What it was like, just…yeah.

As a mom with my kids, with my birth father–He was in my life. Then he exited my life and then he re-entered my life. And my kids as tween-aged kids got to experience that “re-reunion” with me. And so they met cousins for the very first time. And so it was really cool for them, too. And I raised them telling them everything that was going on from the get go (as much as I could, you know), so that they'd be prepared. Because I was hoping for the day when he'd come back around.

Haley Radke: The less surprises, right?

Paige Adams Strickland: Right. Yeah. Because who's gonna pick up the phone when you get that phone call?

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Paige Adams Strickland: You know, and watch it be a 10-year-old, you know, and not you. So I wanted my kids to be prepared for what might happen someday and what to do if you got a phone call like that. Or you have these “mystery people” out there somewhere. [They laugh.]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness.

So, okay, well, so how can we find them?

Paige Adams Strickland: They're on Amazon.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Paige Adams Strickland: So yeah, that's the easiest answer is just to say on Amazon. Okay. Yeah, I keep books in the back of my car, but unless you know me in person, it's really hard to hook up with me and just buy a book out of the back of my car.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

Paige Adams Strickland: They’re on Amazon, on Kindle and print. You can get 'em that way, so…

Haley Radke: Okay, cool. Yeah. Well, I'll link to them in the show notes as well.

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah. Okay. And I will probably have some at the conference too, so…

Haley Radke: So you can get an autographed copy.

Paige Adams Strickland: Perfect. I'll sign them there.

Haley Radke: Yes, yes, yes. Okay.

Paige, what did you want to recommend to us today?

Paige Adams Strickland: Yeah, I recommend watching This is Us if you want to see a realistic portrayal of what an adopted person is like, and what they go through (especially in adulthood). They do show, because the show is done in flashbacks. Sometimes you see what the adopted person may have gone through in their childhood. But the adulthood portrayal is really spot on. I can tell you that. I know there's some people that still don't like it, because they don't think it's real enough. I mean, it is what it is. It's TV, but it's so well done and it's so– I love that show. I really do. And I love everything about it, not just the adoption story.

I think it's just so well done in general, you know, there are many aspects to it that–the whole thing, the whole family dynamic story of the entire thing. But I think the adoption in that story has been portrayed as realistically as it gets for a TV show.

Haley Radke: Mm-hmm. And can you just tell us the thing you emailed me about Randall in the workplace?

Paige Adams Strickland: He's kind of like a perfectionist guy, right? Wanting everything to go really well and not have–He’s a character. Again, it's not a real person, but he's a character wanting acceptance so bad and wanting approval so bad, and he's a super achiever in that kind of a way. I think that fits really well with (a lot of times) the adoptee personality, even if you're not in a job where you're making super mega bucks. But whatever it is you do, you want to be accepted and you want things to go well, and if things go wrong, you feel like it's because of you for some reason. And the character Randall plays–that's it. I mean, he has got it nailed.

Haley Radke: I am not caught up. I watched almost all of Season One and there were a couple things that just made me really emotional and I was like, I don't know if I can handle it. So I paused for a bit, but I do intend to go back and, and watch it as it goes on.

But, well, thank you so much for talking with me today, Paige. And can you tell us how can we connect with you online?

Paige Adams Strickland: I am mostly on Facebook. That's probably my biggest hangout of all of them. I'll be under Paige L. Adams Strickland. I do have a blog. It's on WordPress. It'll be under stricklandp.wordpress.com. That would be the way to find me there. It'll say Akin to the Truth. If you see big old sunflowers, then you know you hit the right button.

Haley Radke: Oh, perfect. Thank you. Thanks for sharing your story with us, and thanks for navigating this sort of tricky topic.

Paige Adams Strickland: Thank you, Haley.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. We're having a meet up. I'm so excited. I am coming to San Francisco with my husband in May, and so we have added one extra day onto our vacation so we can do an Adoptees On Listener Meet Up. I also asked Anne Heffron if she would teach her Write or Die class to me and to you, and she said yes. So on Sunday, May 20th, from 2-5, you have the opportunity to take Write or Die from Anne Heffron in downtown San Francisco. And following that, from 6-8, we are going do a Listener Meet Up. So that's going to be just hanging out, chatting together. So if you are interested in connecting in real life with other Adoptees On listeners, please—I would love it if you would come.

So if you'd like to find out more details, you can go to adopteeson.com/newsletter, and sign up for the newsletter. I'll be sending out details right away with that info. And also on our Facebook page, there's an Events tab, so you can find out how to register for Anne’s class. If you RSVP there, then I can let you know the location of the Meet Up. And of course, both of those will be in downtown San Francisco and location TBD (when I have a better idea of how many of you there's going to be). So please come. Please come. I'd love to meet you in person and there's already a few of you signed up, so I'm so pumped. I love it.

Speaking of listeners, you're so awesome. You're so awesome. Did you know this show is totally listener supported, and it's because of you that I'm able to do this weekly? And I literally couldn't do it without your help. Whether you choose to donate monthly or maybe do a one-time donation, you are saying you believe this show is a valuable resource for adoptees. That you want it to continue, and you are paying it forward to other adoptees who will find the show in the future and get connected into community. So important. If you'd like to stand with me, with other adoptees and support the show, head over to adopteeson.com/partner and all the details are there. Thank you. Thank you so much for your generosity. I sincerely appreciate it.

I've been thinking a lot about the conversation I had with Paige and at the very end when she was describing her session that she's gonna be giving in Indiana and she talked a little bit about finding your biological family in this new digital age. And so next week, we are literally talking about that. How awesome—digital relationships. I'm interviewing someone who has done thesis work and a qualitative study of various adoptees who have searched and found their biological family through social media. And so we talk about that and it's so interesting.

So I hope that you are subscribed to the show, so you won't miss that episode. You can find the show in any podcast app that you love, and I'd love to have you as a subscriber. Thanks for listening. Let's talk again, next Friday.

60 April: I've Claimed It

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/60

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Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This show is listener supported.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Season 4, Episode 2, April. I'm your host Haley Radke. Today I want to invite you into a discussion about relationships with ourselves through the lens of identity and race. April Dinwoodie shares her journey with us of growing up brown in a white family, navigating relationships with her adoptive family, and how she has come to claim her own identity.

We also touch on the recent closure of the Donaldson Adoption Institute and what April sees as the way forward in the advocacy movement. We wrap up with recommended resources and, as always, links to all of the things we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com.

And, if [00:01:00] you're interested in hearing about a way to meet up with other Adoptees On listeners, stick around till the end of the show for a fun announcement. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, April Dinwoodie. Welcome, April.

April Dinwoodie: Thank you. It's so good to be here, Haley. Thank you.

Haley Radke: And I love your podcast. We'll get to that later, but a fellow podcaster, so fun to have that on the show. You, too, know the power of podcasting and how it can bring us together, so I'm so, so glad to talk to you. I'd love it if you start the way we usually do here. And would you share your story with us?

April Dinwoodie: Yeah, it'd be my honor, and thank you for creating space for all of us and it's definitely been a medium that I've learned to really appreciate in many ways. So I'm grateful for it.

So, it's one of those things where [00:02:00] I always knew I was adopted, right? My family's white and I'm brown, so I don't remember a time when my parents sat me down and said, okay, April, this is, uh, this is something we need to tell you. I just always knew, not in a negative or a positive way, just that that information, on its own, was just basic, real information. Like I was adopted.

What came with that were many layers of search for identity and belonging and things that I'm now totally plugged into and know I can almost pinpoint exactly when some of those moments were happening in my younger years that I couldn't make sense of then.

So, you know, my family is one that's a typical New England family. Born and raised in New England for several generations and my parents met in 4-H, so they were really small and then were high school sweethearts and married right out of college. Excuse me, out of high school and [00:03:00] started, you know, took some space and time actually, not because they wanted it, but because of the universe and biology, it took a little while for them to get pregnant with their first child, my oldest brother.

Once they had my older brother, they had my younger, older brother 11 months later. And then three years later they had my sister. So when I hear my parents talk about that time in their life, it was just a pretty basic decision. Like, you know, we wanted another child. Ideally a girl. So my sister could have a sister.

And in that time they knew some folks who had adopted. It was just not a thing, right? Not a lot of people were doing it, but they thought, hmm, all right. Like, it might be a way to, you know, sort of round out our family, so to speak. And there you have it.

They kind of went about the process [00:04:00] and went to a foster-to-adopt agency, a children's friend and service in Rhode Island. And, you know, I tell the story when my parents got the call. They said, we have a girl. She may be biracial. Right? And they really, you know, didn't think too much about that, right? There wasn't a point in time where they, I think, really mulled over it too, too much.

And so the wheels were spinning at that point. I had already been in foster care for about seven months before I was placed with my adoptive family. So I spent a little bit of time in foster care and very little time in the hospital, from what I can tell with my birth mother, Helen. You know, this was the way that my family decided to expand their family, and they really didn't give race a whole lot of a consideration. And, you know, it became and has become for me a central theme in my identity, like, you know, figuring that stuff out.

So, I thought everybody had a brown kid at home until I went to kindergarten [00:05:00] and I was looking at brown kids and there weren't brown kids. I was like, oh, maybe they come on another day. And I was like, oh wait, it's been like a week or a month or I don't know how long, but there aren't that many brown kids. Like, okay, so that's kind of weird.

My family was just so kind of tight that I just thought my family was like everybody's family until it wasn't, you know. It was just one of those things and then it still was just my family, until it wasn't. Like when someone would make reference to me.

And it happened more often than I care to really admit, but people used to think I was a Fresh Air kid, which, for people who don't know, the Fresh Air Fund is a program where inner-city kids, usually black or brown, go to the suburbs, usually white and spend the summer. So that had happened to me and, and I'm like, fresh air. Of course. Yeah. I love fresh air. It's the best.

Because people would say, is she a Fresh Air kid? How nice. And as I get older and move to New York, I was like, hmm, I get what they were talking about there. [00:06:00] So, and those moments, too, are just kind of like, well, I never really remembered exactly what someone said, but I remembered how exactly I felt. I remember sort of someone tightening up and tensing up or kind of feeling uncomfortable and kind of looking up and going, like, why, why is this happening right now?

Or people trying to touch my hair, you know? I mean it's so interesting. It's like this intersection of everything was normal and everything was so not normal. That the abnormal sort of became normal, and you kind of tackled what you could with what you had.

As I've grown a little bit more tuned into this stuff and smarter about what I need in terms of my healthy identity, I tend to ask for more. And don't always get it from my family. I don't always get it, but I have also come to realize that they're giving me what they can. And that foundation of love really is above and beyond any bits of cultural and racial identity that they could have given me. So it's a kind of a delicate balance, right? [00:07:00]

It's a delicate balance because I talk to families all the time, like, oh, you really have to do better. And at the same time, I kind of give my parents a break. So it's a delicate balance, you know?

Haley Radke: Well, I can't imagine. I mean, I get that delicate balance. And what I'm thinking back to is the episode of your podcast where you interviewed your father. And I don't really remember exactly what question you asked him, but I remember when he answered, I sort of gasped because I was like, wait, we're not supposed to be colorblind. And his answer sort of indicated that we don't really see racial differences.

I don't know. That sort of seemed like what he was saying and I was so curious how that made you feel, because you did kind of explain to him like, Well, we don't really do that anymore, dad, kind of thing. [00:08:00] Um, it was much more eloquent than that.

April Dinwoodie: I don't know. Not so sure. I didn't feel eloquent in the moment. It felt two things. I felt, one, there were a couple times in those podcasts, if I'm completely honest, where I was like, okay, that's gonna get edited. And I have the benefit and blessing to work with an amazing producer who is a dear friend of mine, a long-time friend, and he's like, Nope, not gonna happen.

Like, you invite people to the table, you've got to let them have their experiences. And that's, again, why it's so instructive to prep for those conversations and have those conversations. But, man, is it really hard because what you realize is that it isn't just about you, it isn't all about you.

Other people have experiences and sort of juxtaposed with what my father was saying about this idea, this quite well-intended, I think, but really Ill-informed on some level idea of being colorblind is what I learned [00:09:00] about his upbringing that I didn't know before. And the things I know about his upbringing are not easy things.

There was a lot of disconnect in his nuclear family in terms of relationship and especially to his parents. That got really challenging in my preteen years into my teens and early adulthood. So, you know, there's this thing where, yeah, I kind of was like, yeah, that's not how it works really.

But there was also this really beautiful place of love and understanding and forgiveness that I was able to, I think, put forth, and I think he as well. But there's going to be a space where that's just not his experience. I mean, the closest thing that I can sort of come to is the period of time, and this is me making sense of it. [00:10:00]

I don't know that my parents would actually agree with this, but this is how I see it when they were first married and didn't get pregnant for several years. I think there was a feeling of being “less than,” feeling outside of the group and just feeling like what's wrong with me?

And, you know, there's a thread of that in being a minority, right? There's something that can be looked at in a way to say, okay, well that's kind of how sometimes it can feel and to be a person of color in a white environment or just to be brown in the world, period.

So, I try to find those threads and, then also, the biggest question of all is, how am I gonna take a man who is in his seventies who has never really had to be outside of his place in the world, [00:11:00] which is white and privileged, where is he to find these tools? There's also reality, right? And at some point you kind of stop fighting against that in a way, at least I do from a certain perspective because there's so much that I do get.

So I would say it's actually a tight rope walk versus delicate balance, right? But it's one that I'm willing to walk, you know, one that I wanna walk and one I wanna keep trying to figure out how to manage because my survival depends on it. Like my healthy identity today depends on how I process that and how much I push and how hard and what type of risks I'm willing to take.

Haley Radke: Can you go back to that idea of white privilege? So I'm not transracially adopted, I don't have that experience, but what I've heard from some other adoptees is that, [00:12:00] growing up they are a different color than their white parents but when they're with their white family, they are treated as though they are white.

And then if they're apart from them or once they become an adult, then people just see skin color and they're treated differently. You alluded to that a little bit with your childhood and being the Fresh Air kid, but can you speak to that a little bit more?

April Dinwoodie: So there was a sense of belonging that I found and I felt like people were quite proud of themselves when they did welcome me. It's very interesting, right? I could see now when I look back, there was a thing where people felt good about welcoming me and that that could have had to do with the type of person I was, too. And I'm sure it did have something to do with that, but I also think there was this like, oh wow, like, this is really cool.

[00:13:00] You know, like there was this sort of novelty to it, especially in my town. But separate and apart from them, for sure, there was the belief that, especially people who, which was rare, but it did happen in our small town that didn't know me and didn't really get the joke that, oh, wait a second, she does belong in this family, or she does belong here.

And there were many different ways, I think, of not believing that I really did have a family here. You know, there were a couple kids at school who were like, no way, that can't be true. And down to what's so important to note here is that, and I didn't realize this until my universe expanded and I met other transracially adopted people, mostly men who had darker skin than I did.

Right? Clearly, my experience growing up where I grew up would have been very different if I was a dark-skinned black boy. [00:14:00] While things did shift for me, going from the cute little girl with the fuzzy hair to like the sort of awkward teen to the high-schooler who was popular and had friends, but you know, had a hard time, really, dating and things of that nature.

Yes, there were racial slurs and all of these things that happened, but I think it paled in comparison to having my light skin and my sort of in-between hair that really kind of created definitely a safety net in a way for me that didn't exist, wouldn't have existed had I been a dark-skinned black boy.

And I recognize that full on eyes wide open. And I have no [00:15:00] issue talking about this. There's a certain level of privilege in my family and being white and from New England and all that, but then there's like the layers of privilege that come with skin tone. And good hair. You know? I mean, it's gotten good. It hasn't always been good. I'm gonna be honest.

Haley Radke: You know, I'm laughing, I just listened to your most recent episode of your podcast, so people will have to go and listen to that to hear the inside joke about an ex-boyfriend commenting on your hair.

April Dinwoodie: Mm. We've gone there. It's been a long road, but we've gotten there.

Haley Radke: Well, that's another thing I see in adoptive parent groups more recently, just knowing how to do that when it's transracial and it's different and it's stuff that probably they don't think of when they're setting out to adopt, I guess. Um, anyway, I don't want to speak for adoptive parents.

April Dinwoodie: [00:16:00] Well, I can speak for some just because I work with a lot of white transracial parents who are adopting transracially and I think they're thinking about it more than ever before out of sheer urgency. Right? And my workshop has gone from 20 years ago being what my white parents didn't know and why it turned out okay anyway to the urgency of seeing color and adoption in foster care. Like a dramatic shift.

Now the content's the same, you know, to a point. But there's a lot more real talk and it's not as cute and cuddly, it wasn't even cute and cuddly when it was, it was just a catchy title. But at the end of the day, the spirit and the tenor and the tone of these conversations has shifted, and I think it's important to acknowledge that because I feel like physical and emotional safety today, creating that for kids of color regardless of whether they're being adopted [00:17:00] by white parents or not is something that, um.

Funny, I was invited to go back to my hometown and speak to our local women's group that's very politically engaged and the whole idea was that we would talk about tough conversations and race class and culture differences. And I just basically gave the same talk I would give to parents who were adopting potentially black and brown kids and they were white, because I feel like everything I talk about is like what everybody needs to be doing anyway.

It's kind of interesting that it comes to that. So. We were saying this so clearly from that point of view, but I feel like all the content in there is like really for everybody.

Haley Radke: Yeah, that's right. And your podcast, I know we'll talk about it again later, but you just changed your tagline to “What Adoption can Teach the World” and I think there's a piece of that thread there. [00:18:00]

Okay. Can you talk a little bit about going into your adult years and what is it like to understand that you're biracial? And, please correct me if I am misspeaking, I want to be really sensitive and I feel like I don't know all the right lingo. So can you speak to that a little bit? Finding out that you are biracial, if you had a conversation ever with your parents about that and just living in this world that way?

April Dinwoodie: There was a sense that from the non-identifying information that I received during the early stages of my search, it was clear that my birth mother was white and therefore based on the obviousness of my genetics and how I looked, I clearly had a dad that was a person of color.

So I just always believed, and I used to tell [00:19:00] people, that Harry Belafonte and Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched were my parents and they were too busy in Hollywood to take care of me so that's why I wound up in, I mean, that all made sense to me at that point.

And it was a great story to tell. Of course, the reality of life took its course. And I really kind of was settled into the fact that, above all, I started saying that I was a person of color, like, a long time ago. If someone pressed me, I would say, well, yeah, I'm biracial, but it's kind of obvious, I'm still brown.

Like, there's nothing that can be taken away from that. So it's kind of like that is true, this idea of being multiracial or biracial, but at the same time I'm brown, period, the end. I'm not white. [00:20:00] And so I think that isn't a conversation I've necessarily had with my family, but I feel like I've claimed it in other ways.

Moving to Harlem, you know, identifying with different pieces of entertainment and entertainers and music and things like that. And now my parents weren't like just, you know, sitting, listening to, I mean, certainly we did listen to John Denver and we listened to Fleetwood Mac and all of this, but there was also plenty of Nat King Cole in the house and Stevie Wonder.

My family is pretty open and almost like the non-culture family. Like there's not one culture that we just wildly celebrate. It's kind of like we're all over the map, which is partly why I feel like there was a lot of space for me.

But at the same time, you know, I just kind of went after it, you know, I did my own kind of personal investigation and finding my space. [00:21:00] Would I have liked more help and guidance with that? Absolutely. Was it something my parents were up for? No, I mean, just, no. They were trying to raise a family and survive.

I mean, I didn't really see that and it doesn't, you know, again, it doesn't make them bad parents. It's just a reality that I now can understand and appreciate it on some level. It doesn't make it any less easy to think about the times when I was truly embarrassed about looking the way I did and my hair being the way it was. It doesn't take any of that away.

But it sort of calibrates it to some degree that allows me to kind of use my experiences to help share with other people that might be interested. So, I mean, today it's different. I mean, my mom says this a lot. She's like, I just thought, gosh, when we adopted you, it wasn't symbolic of racial justice or equality or anything like that.

[00:22:00] That wasn't the point. But her idea was that things were moving in a different direction. And as we sit where we are in 2018, it doesn't feel like that's the case, right? So it feels like actually harder to be adopting a kid transracially than it was when I was being adopted. There's just a lot more to contend with and there's a lot more expectation. Right?

There's just a lot more out there. I mean, we're, we're talking right now. This didn't exist. No one was having this kind of conversation. So a parent now, they can run, but they can't hide. Right? Like, this is coming for you. All this stuff's coming for you. The adoption stuff, the racial identity stuff, the relationship stuff, the inequities of class, the, some call and they wouldn't be wrong, a marketplace of adoption. So this is not swept under the rug anymore.

[00:23:00] We have to deal with it. And a lot of times, I see it happening and it's so interesting. Like I see people like us having conversations and kind of putting it out there. But I also see young people. I may go into schools and have my little affinity groups with young people, and man, they are not messing around.

So we're pushing up big time and it's not just us. It's the next, the future generations that are turned on and plugged into this and they're saying, hey, mom and dad, what about that birth parent, what about my birth mom? Is that her name? What was her name and where is she?

Like it's happening. Like there's just no two ways about it. So it's a lot harder than it was, I think, when I was being adopted.

Haley Radke: Did you ever have any pushback from anyone even in your extended family when you were sort [00:24:00] of more interested in exploring this and, like you said, you moved to Harlem and were more interested in exploring these other aspects of yourself?

April Dinwoodie: No, um, never that, I mean, uh, no. You know, I remember the first apartment I lived in Harlem, and it was not a super safe spot. But my family just came, like, we're coming, you know, and my nieces and nephews, they let my nieces and nephews come without them.

Like I remember taking my nieces to the African hair braiding spot and they were the only two white girls in there. And I think they trusted me enough and they loved me enough and wanted to be in that space. There was never any pushback there. Where the pushback has come has been, you know, I think there's been an awakening of sorts for me in terms of feeling confident [00:25:00] to vocalize certain things or to say, Hey, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

And I think with all of the swirl of the NFL Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. I mean, there have been conflicts around that. And, you know, the way that I think we've decided to deal with that is to sort of not deal with it, right? Because I read this article, I think it was in Modern Love, it was a while ago, and it was this gentleman who had found his biological sister and she lived in Florida.

He lived in the north, and they were very politically opposed. And he basically was like, I just found her. There's just no way. I don't care if she's the worst diehard Republican ever. There's no way I'm giving up that love. So I find myself in an interesting sort of predicament on some level.

One, it's not that dramatic that there is massive conflict and we can't be in the same room together. It's not that at all. Just a difference of an understanding of something that's [00:26:00] happening that we choose not to talk about anymore, because it just isn't a healthy or helpful dialogue to have.

So I find that I have to create space for that kind of conversation elsewhere, and I do. It doesn't mean that it feels good to not be able to have it in the space where I really should be able to be exactly 100% myself. But you know what, this happens across any type of family structure and system.

So is it more pronounced in families formed and expanded by adoption where there's differences of race and other things? Sure. But I don't think it's unlike other situations where we gotta put plastic forks and knives around the Thanksgiving Day table because you know it's gonna get heated.

I mean, I think that's a baseline right now. And I feel like we've at least figured out how to see past it, through it. And I have, you know, those other conversations [00:27:00] elsewhere and I've created that space that I've had to, and I don't have a choice.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I think that'll be really helpful for people to hear, you know, that they're not alone in that. It's kind of this thing where it's so important, you really do feel like it's necessary to talk about, but at what cost?

April Dinwoodie: I mean, this is really the real kicker, right? It's a real challenge. It's like, how do you make sure that you are able to live your true self and identity and you know there are risks involved, right? Again, I believe that's true throughout the entire spectrum of the family experience.

I just think this is why this idea of adoption teaching the world is kind of the empowered place I've arrived at [00:28:00] because I don't know any people that are better equipped than adopted people and people who are in the extended family of adoption. Birth parents, adoptive parents, siblings, the whole matrix. There are tons of challenges, but there's an awful lot of solid reflection, real tough working and deconstructing of identity and family and all of that.

And I think it's useful, and I can say that now in my forties and feeling pretty settled, but I just want our experiences to be instructive for not just other people who may share the experience, but for other people who have no idea about this experience, but have felt outta place in their family or, you know, there was a disconnect, there was a divorce or remarriage.

I mean, [00:29:00] my parents split up when I was in second grade and we didn't see my grandparents again for many, many years. So these separations and these really hard family situations are just not unique to adoption. However, we know from research and lived experience today that adoption is kind of the thing that we know more about, right?

And why not use that information and our experiences to, one, heal ourselves and be whole and be as engaged and plugged in as we can be. And then, take a stand and be empowered and be like, I know something you don't know, or I know something and I can help you maybe. Or at least I can validate your feelings of belonging or not feeling like you belong or identity.

I don't know, it's just time to sort of flip it a little bit, you know. That flip-the-script thing has been around and it's just a beautiful thing and it's ushered in, I think, some of these empowered feelings, but I think it's all going to the next level.

Haley Radke: [00:30:00] I love that that sense of empowerment coming from that place is so much more effective than some of what I see is people who are powered by rage or hurt, you know?

April Dinwoodie: Yeah, that's real.

Haley Radke: It is. That fuel only lasts for so long and it's only one direction. I think there's a lot of wisdom to what you're saying there.

April Dinwoodie: When I look at my experiences, the challenges I've had just sort of pale in comparison to some of the perspectives I have gotten from the people I'm close to. Either young people who have aged out, had adoptions disrupted, have abuse, neglect, trauma that is unimaginable to adopted people that I know that were adopted at birth and had trauma. That's unspeakable all.

[00:31:00] I mean, there’s all this perspective that happens, but I just think I had a pretty damn lovely life growing up, right? We didn't have a lot, but we had this container of love and real openness. And just this welcoming sense of my family is very unique and it's amazing. And anybody who knows my family who has spent time in Rhode Island would vouch for that, right?

If I had imagined. I did fine in school. I wasn't a super great student, but I wasn't a bad student and I made it through college. I did well, and I've had a fair amount of personal professional success, whatever you wanna say. But I just think like, gosh, what if I had sort of gotten those additional layers of what I needed for my healthy identity? Or what if I didn't get rejected the second time by my birth mother? [00:32:00]

So the whole idea of even talking, saying those things at the risk of making my family feel like they weren't enough, which they were, I think, okay, parents today, like double, triple down. What makes you uncomfortable? Go deeper with that. Go figure out what happened in your childhood that makes it impossible for you to go there with your kid. Just go deeper. Because if you go deeper, you are like what you can present as a pathway for your kid is, like, unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

Haley Radke: That is so true. And I have a lot of, you probably get this quite a bit too, I have a lot of adoptive parents emailing me, asking for advice, and the thing I really want to say to most of them, I can't because it sounds snippy, but it's: Work on your own stuff first.

April Dinwoodie: [00:33:00] Look, it's not snippy. I go to a lot of conferences, right? And I see a lot of amazing professionals that stand up often. And it's kind of the same stuff. Now, this is no knock against some of the people I've seen and some of the amazing practitioners out there, and professionals love, love, love, right?

But it's oftentimes like the adults putting upon a young person, how are we going to help them with their healthy identity development? And not once do I hear, I mean, not once yet. I'm sure it has happened and maybe I missed it. I doubt it. But a parent going, like, I had to work on myself first in my trauma, before I could help my kid with their trauma.

Like it's something that we place on the shoulders of children as if it's something for them to figure out versus us guiding them. And again, there's amazing practitioners out there, but it's like the spirit of how it's presented in frame sometimes is kind of like nothing to see here. We gotta just take care of this kid.

[00:34:00] And the truth is, you gotta take care of yourself. Your little self, your big self, your middle-sized self, your grown self. And you gotta keep working at that in order to be helpful to your kid. And, again, just take this with a grain of salt from the woman who doesn't have any kids, right?

So it's all well and good, but I do believe that, and that's maybe why I haven't had kids at this point, I don't know, or one of the reasons, there are probably many, but you know, that it's such a serious and such a monumental idea that I don't think anybody should even consider it without, like, I think there should be a home study for anybody who's gonna have a kid biologically or not. I just think there should be, period. A really good one, like the best home study ever.

That's really hard. And it's not about resources, it's about, you know, identity and spirit and talking with your partner about how you'll discipline, you know, like all [00:35:00] these things. I mean, it kind of feels like a little bit of utopia or like I'm wishing for things that are just out of touch.

I don't know, like in looking at where kids have really thrived that I've known and where kids are struggling, it would've been a really big deal if the parents of these kids had had a lot more sort of preparation and thought, adopted or not.

Haley Radke: Yep. I am a mom to two small boys and I think, how did this happen? And I mean, I know how it happened, but I'm not qualified for this. The only adoptee issues they are gonna have are the ones I pass on because of me and my stuff, which I'm always working on. So, I don't know if you're gonna have an answer for this, but would you advise white parents to adopt transracially? [00:36:00]

April Dinwoodie: So I've seen a lot of examples of parents who really get it and are determined to do everything in their power. One, like the beautiful thing is admitting that they're just never gonna truly get it if they're not a person of color, if they've never been adopted. I mean, let's add in that too.

If you don't have the experience of being adopted, it's really hard for you to know what that's like. So I think we have to sort of start there. I don't think there's ever gonna be a really seamless way to sort of bring that experience to life for someone who just doesn't have that experience. I mean, that could be anything, right?

[00:37:00] So that's the first thing. But the most badass parents I know are first admitting that. No, first, full stop. They're like I get that I'm not gonna get it, right? But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna do everything in my power to get it.

It doesn't mean I'm not gonna pipe up when someone in my workplace says something inappropriate. It's not like it's gonna stop me from marching into the school and making sure that my kid isn't being inappropriately disciplined. There's like a kind of stand-up parent and sets of parents that I know that stop at nothing to make sure that their kid is physically and emotionally safe.

So I've seen it work and I'm witnessing it work, and certainly I feel like I'm a product of parents where it worked, right? Like, I have no psychotic issues. I'm walking the earth every day and I'm doing good in the world. There’s still pain and hurt to be healed, but they did a damn good job with the resources they had. So I don't believe in this idea of it not happening. [00:38:00]

I do believe in, first and foremost, making sure that, one, family of origin is explored to the nth-degree to make sure a child can stay within their family of origin. That's just in any given situation. I think especially so when there's race and culture, elements to be considered. But as we all know, I also feel like an adoption or a permanent situation for a child or person should not be impeded on the basis of any type of qualifier, right?

If there is willing, appropriate family based on a home study and based on all the legal constructs that exist, some are more loose than others, when you get into private adoption. But I would just say that if we are not being extra, extra mindful and challenging every possible nook and cranny of that experience.

[00:39:00] Like, I hear all the time, oh, well, you know, we'll do all this stuff. We'll go to this and we'll go to that. And I said, I think you need to make sure that you actually don't let the first time you hear the N-word be when your kid comes home from school.

Like, you gotta read some books, you gotta watch some historic programming. You've gotta have black friends. Somebody asked me, oh, how will I learn how to do my kid’s hair? I'm like, well, ask your black friends. They're like, uh, we don't have black friends. Well, there's your first problem.

So, you know, there's a continuum of like plugged-in parents. There are ones that really wanna be plugged in but are clueless, and you gotta take them by the hand. And there are some that, quite frankly, just don't feel like it's an issue at all and are putting their kids in danger.

I mean, so across the board, all these things are at play, and professionals are really the ones in charge right now of ensuring that these things don't go under, under-explored, under-appreciated, under-discussed. [00:40:00] The professionals are in charge of that.

Haley Radke: That's a pretty good answer. All right. Okay. Let's shift. You recently had a change. I saw an announcement in January that the Donaldson Institute was coming to a close. So you were the chief executive there. Can you speak a little bit about what's happened? And, you know, what I saw on Facebook was a lot of grief. People were very, very sad that Donaldson was closing.

April Dinwoodie: Mm-hmm, there was definitely a lot of grief. I mean, look, it's definitely been a tough year. Plus it hasn't been an easy time all the way through. I mean I've enjoyed the work; I've learned so much. I've been so inspired, empowered. [00:41:00] I've also felt like I got my butt kicked more than once.

And I underestimated, really, the challenge of being in this work 24/7. I mean, when I was in corporate, I could take a day off from being adopted. When I was working at Donaldson, I couldn't, and that I underestimated all that.

And plus I underestimated the lack of solidarity and community that existed in our space. I didn't expect that even though I'd been doing conferences and work in this space for a long time before taking the position, it was really kind of shocking to me. And it still does shock me when there's all of that kind of like real swirl of not so nice stuff that happens as we've all seen and experienced.

Sometimes things just run their course. I mean, of course, I feel there were times where I'm like, oh my gosh, I let everybody down. I mean, look, there's a board of directors, there's an executive director, chief executive, and there are donors, and this is all everybody's, these nonprofits are everybody's, right? They're not just, they don't belong to one person. [00:42:00]

I think it becomes that, and I think the Institute had become that over time. It felt as though it was one person, but it was really a collective, and I just feel like what people will never know. They'll know some of the things you can look at. You can look at financials, everything's an open book in the land of nonprofit. You can look at our track record and the leadership that came before me and my leadership to say that good work has been done.

But what people won't see are some of the shifts, the personal shifts and the relationships that have been built over time that I honor and their work will continue. You know, it was really important to me to have the work archived and it will be archived and it will be accessible.

First of all, I'm with you, I'm with everybody who feels badly, you know, and those who are angry. I mean, there's all kinds of emotion attached to this because I do feel like it was an organization that really needed to be [00:43:00], but like there's only so much we can do to sort of move things in a forward direction from a financial standpoint. You know, that's just the bottom line.

And we needed a lot more robust fundraising. We needed just more engagement overall. I think there was a misconception about the Institute for a long time that we just had like a big pile of cash and we just really never did. I mean, there was definitely funding there, but we were not an endowed organization and we relied heavily on donations and our one fundraiser a year.

So there's a lot of complexity to it. I did my best to lead, you know, with grace and integrity and the honor of what I think the community needed, but at the same time, there were changes that needed to happen and there was a vision that was yet to be realized. And, you know, there was a time that came where it just wasn't sustainable anymore. [00:44:44]

And, again, I think the thing that I am most proud of, the thing that people won't ever see, are some of the massive shifts that I've seen people connected to this Institute make on behalf of themselves, their family. And those relationships will endure, you know, well beyond, the Institute, and the work will be there too.

So, I do appreciate everybody's good wishes. And for those who can even identify a little bit, who've done this work, it's so emotional, right? There's such a passion for it. There's such a gravitational pull to doing this work that, when it was ending, it was like, oh my gosh, I can't even believe it.

But at the same time, oddly hopeful because maybe there's a new direction, a new path for things to take and maybe one that was necessary.

Haley Radke: [00:45:00] So that's my next question for you, actually. April, before we do recommended resources, last question. What do you see going forward in the advocacy for adopted people? Really specifically, that's my audience. What do you see for the future, for yourself and for the adoptee movement?

April Dinwoodie: There's been such an energy and a passion from the community of adopted people to make change and to have the voices being heard. I mean, it's just been remarkable to see all of that kind of taking shape. You know, what I realize is that there really have to be more adopted people in positions of leadership. And I would say a lot of that has to do with politics and policy.

And I think there was a point in time where I really questioned whether I should go from for-profit to non-profit. And one of the things that I do realize is that having a position of power in a corporation is that where there's a lot of money and power, [00:46:00] there is influence in that. And so I want adopted people to know that there's a place for them, you know, across the continuum of professional and volunteer and advocacy space.

But, just as the same way I feel about women and people of color, I think adopted people, as a group and as a people to be seen, need to really be in positions of power and influence and then use those positions of power and influence to further what we need as a community, but also, again, for a larger idea of what families really need and what children need and building healthy identity. Does that make sense?

Haley Radke: Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. We are gonna move to recommended resources, and I had to laugh because we're gonna recommend the same thing and that's okay. It's totally fine because this is a must listen. [00:47:00] April's podcast is called, Born in June, Raised in April, and I have recommended it on the show before.

I wanna hear from you what your great desire for your show was when you created it, and can you tell us a little bit about what you sort of started doing and the shift that you've made recently? So, I'd love for you to just explore that a little bit.

April Dinwoodie: Sure. Well, it sort of wasn't my idea actually. I had been doing a lot of writing and I had come to claim this idea of my birth name being June, which I found out through lots of different layers of my search, and my adoptive parents naming me April, both giving me the name Elizabeth, and being born in October.

So this idea of adoption throughout the year kind of inspired me to think more about what happens in the course of a year, month by month. [00:48:00] that is instructive and maybe even interesting or less explored areas of adoption.

For me, it was kind of like when my friend Josh was like, hey, let's do a podcast. Actually, no. It was actually my biological cousin who is the one who had the idea for the podcast. I have to give her credit for that. And she said, you really should do a podcast. It could be a thing for you. It'd really be great.

And then of course I talked to my friend Josh, and he was like, I'm in, let's do it. And so, all that to say that people outside of adoption kind of look at you and go, adoption? What? I don't know. Who cares? That doesn't impact me.

But, you know, family relationships, identity, the struggle for belonging. This idea of health and imperfect parenting and all these things are something everybody can identify with. In a way, the calendar was so inspiring to me because if we don't celebrate these things or we don't even acknowledge them, you kind of know they're happening [00:49:00] regardless of religion or whatever affiliation you have to tradition throughout the year, you kind of know.

You know, Valentine's month, you sorta know that it's Christmas. You know these big monumental things end up being devices to have conversations that I just sometimes feel that especially the adoptive parents aren't really recognizing. So, you know, when I talk about Thanksgiving and having a lot of extra people in your home who may not have your same value system or even the same language, and how they talk about things and how they look at the world, you gotta make some space for your kid.

Like you gotta just make sure or say, hey, if you don't wanna sit around the table for dessert, you don't have to, honey. Or, let me take you out for a walk, you know, for a little while. Like, just to be tuned in to some of these. That's just one example.

[00:50:00] So the podcast has just been like a way to look at adoption throughout the year and the recent shift that we made was, you know, there's a lot to learn. And from this empowered standpoint, it's like adoption can really teach people a lot of things. And then we have this space, I'm looking forward down the road to having the tougher conversations about money and looking at why adoption happens in the first place.

And so talking politically, religiously about some of these things and to do it in a balanced way, right? And, and to not be so that people have the ability to turn off and turn away. I would much rather create space to have the open dialogue so that we can manage it, you know? A little bit better than we have.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. So I've seen a real evolution of your show, right? Your first year or even longer, the episodes were just you and very brief and, as you said, the theme of each month, [00:51:00] whatever that may be, Mother's Day or Christmas, as you said. They were about 15 minutes, some very short episodes.

And then you've gone on to interview friends and colleagues. And the episodes I would recommend that people go listen to right away are when you are interviewing your mom in one month and then your dad and another. Those were so powerful.

And what a beautiful thing for you to open that up to us, that we can have a peek in at such an intimate relationship.

April Dinwoodie: Well, I mean, I think the thing too is like, uh, maybe I've mentioned but it has been, I don't know what I was thinking half the time. I'm like, did I really just do that? Like did I really ask that question? I mean, there's so much love there, but I'm also, like, I have to be so vulnerable, you know? [00:52:00] And I have to be like, it's their experience to have, you know. So I've learned so much about myself and about my journey of adoption through other people and interviewing them and having these conversations.

So it's sort of odd to recommend my own thing, but I don't know that there has been something else that has really brought me a really deep and new understanding about this experience and how it might be helpful to other people. I don't know.

Haley Radke: Of course as a fellow podcaster, I agree. I agree. And I have grown so much in the last couple of years of doing my show as well, and, you know, I'm interviewing people about their experiences and the whole time they're talking, I'm just like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I totally get that. Oh yeah, right, right. And then I'm also taking notes. Like, well, [00:53:00] I guess I need to bring these points to my therapist. Perfect. Okay. Oh, so good.

April Dinwoodie: Lots to talk about.

Haley Radke: Yes.

April Dinwoodie: And lots to connect on and, but, man, I just, you know, this space that you create, Haley, it's time, right? It's time. And it is empowering and that's kind of what I want it to be. I mean, look, everybody has their own true life experiences and challenges, but we've got a lot to share and a lot to talk about. So to be able to have that space is pretty remarkable.

Haley Radke: Yes, it is. It's so good. Thank you so much, April. Would you tell us where we can connect with you online?

Facebook is June in April. Instagram is June in April. Twitter is June in April. And then I have a website, aprildinwoodie.com. So any and all of those. And then the podcast is on iTunes, Born in June, Raised in April.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. [00:54:00] It's been so good to talk with you, and I thank you so much for your insights.

April Dinwoodie: Yeah. It's a pleasure and an honor, truly. And I thank you for making the space and for all that you're doing to get these conversations out there.

Haley Radke: Okay, friend, I have an exciting announcement. My husband and I are going on vacation. I know. So exciting for you, right? But we're coming down to San Francisco in May, and so I asked Nick if he would be okay if we added one extra day so that I could do a podcast meetup.

And so I wanna tell you about that and how we can meet in person, because that is my favorite, favorite, favorite thing, to connect with you in person. I asked Ann Heffron if I could do a write-or-die class with her, meaning learn from her, not teach it with her, learn from her.

And she said yes. So Anne is going to be teaching a write-or-die class in the afternoon from two to five, and then [00:55:00] later in the evening from six to eight, we're gonna do a listener meetup. You are invited to both or either of those events. And it's going to be on Sunday, May 20, downtown San Francisco, California.

And then the listener meetup is just hanging out. Hanging out, chatting, and I know there's a couple people that I've had on the show as guests before that are considering coming too, so I'm very excited about that. I'll let you know who else is gonna be there, but if you wanna find out more details about that, I will be writing about it in my upcoming newsletter. So adopteeson.com/newsletter.

And, also, if you just go over to the Adoptees On Facebook page and click on events, there's a link there with all the details on how you can RSVP, how you can sign up for Ann's write-or-die class. I'd love to meet you if you're in the San Francisco area or if it's easy for you to come and travel there. That would be awesome. [00:56:00]

And so that's, again, Sunday, May 20. Can't wait. Can't wait to see you there. Oh, I also just wanna say a really huge thank you to all of you who have signed up to partner monthly with the show through financial pledges on Patreon. And also some of you have sent very generous one-time donations. So thank you so much.

Your support literally keeps the show going. You are helping cover all the production costs and making it possible for me to continue this podcast weekly and produce more content for you. I'm so grateful, and I also wanna say a big thank you from all the future listeners who are going to discover Adoptees On and find their community here. They will do that because of your support.

So if you think this show is valuable, if it has made an impact in your life, I would love it if you would [00:57:00] stand with me and partner in this way if you're able to. Adopteeson.com/partner has details on how to become a monthly supporter and how to join the Adoptees Only Secret Facebook Group.

And also on adopteeson.com there's a one-time donation link, if that's something that you'd like to do. Thank you.

Okay, friends, that is it for today, but I have another awesome show for you next week, so make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find all our social media links on adopteeson.com.

Let's talk again next Friday.