134 [Healing Series] Cross-Cultural Intergenerational Trauma

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/134

---

Haley Radke: This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adopteeson.com/partner.

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 have a returning guest, [Marta Isabella Sierra]. Marta uses the Internal Family Systems model, which you may hear us refer to as IFS during the episode, and she taught us about IFS in episodes 69 and 71 of the podcast. If you want to go back and check those out, it's very interesting.

Today, Marta gives us an insider's view of her year-long trip to Colombia and what barriers there can be to a cross-cultural reunion. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, [Marta Isabella Sierra]. Hi, Marta.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Hi, Haley.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. A lot of time has passed since you were on the podcast and a lot of things have transpired. So can you give us a little snippet of your story? it's been like well over a year since you were on just to orient us to your story, and I'd love to hear what's been happening for you.

Marta Isabella Sierra: So I was born in Bogota, Colombia, and adopted by white parents from the States, grew up in Connecticut. That's some of what I had shared before. I started searching for my mom probably in 2015, 2016.

And found her in March of 2017. We're coming up on our three-year anniversary this March. And so that had pretty recently happened, I think, the last time that I recorded. But I think I had already gone down. I was about to leave, I think. When we last spoke.

Haley Radke: I think you were prepping for your trip. And you had shared that you had done DNA testing, but actually how you found her was through a private investigator, so that was pretty interesting.

Okay. So preparing to do a trip down there. How was that? What does a trip mean? Because it's a little different than what I pictured in my head.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I just want to back up and say the reason that we decided to go live down there, which is “we” as me and my partner and our two animals as well, we took our dog and our cat, really was because I unraveled after my first trip back after my reunion trip. I had a really, really hard time.

I just want to say that in case any of your listeners relate to that and just normalize that the first connection can be super dysregulating. I had a really hard time being away from my mom.

Haley Radke: So just to clarify, you mean, you went down to meet her and then as soon as you came back you were out of sorts.

Marta Isabella Sierra: Yes.

Haley Radke: Okay. Wow.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I was just crying every day. It felt so excruciating to be away from her. My IFS lens on it, right, is that my little baby part was in a panic, right?

Last time I left her it was 30 and a half years, and it's really hard to explain to the preverbal traumatized baby that lives inside of you that it's not the same thing that's happening. So I was having a pretty hard time. Yeah. So eventually my partner offered that maybe we need to just go spend some time down there.

Maybe that's what I needed. So we started looking into it, started planning, and yeah, the plan was, so a year, a little over a year, we figured it would be, not exactly a year, but yeah, we left May of, gosh, what would it be? 18? Yeah. Through July of 19.

Haley Radke: Wow. And what did you think when you were planning that trip?

I mean, that's sort of like a huge, that's not sort of, it's a huge life change. For a whole year. What were your expectations? Did you have any?

Marta Isabella Sierra: I don't think I had any. Actually, I don't think at that point I would've said I had any concrete expectations. I came to learn over the course of my time there that my secret wish was to be cut and pasted back into my family, right? What we all wish. I just want to be reacclimated and put back in. And it's just so impossible that that's how that's going to go. So I think it was many months, though, before I realized that.

I would say the first big adjustment was, compared to your reunion trip where everything's about you, right? It's almost like you're a baby again, right? Everyone's like, welcome to your new family, and you meet all the people and there's parties for you, and everything's “what do you want? Oh, you like fish, we'll make fish.” And you're so celebrated. Of course, living down there, everyone has their lives, they're doing stuff.

And just even navigating how much time are we spending together? Who's initiating that? Who's not? What does that look like? Feeling really uncertain about that all the time. Kind of some of my earlier memories of just navigating what is it to just be here and what do these relationships look like right now?

Haley Radke: So broad picture first, you are raised in the States. White family. And then you go to Colombia. What is that like for you, just culturally being in a different culture?

Marta Isabella Sierra: It was amazing. Mostly, I mean, it's different, of course, and I have lived other places. I have experienced culture shock before. There was certainly some of that.

But for me being a Colombian woman and being surrounded by Colombian people, being in the majority for the first time in my life is still something that's so comforting to me and so great. And then you have the layers of that though, right? That I'm easily still identified as “other” in an interesting way.

Even though I look like I belong there, it's like people can smell it on you. It's interesting. I had to tell my story multiple times a day. If I leave the house, I have to tell my story. People are always asking questions and I have a very American and bougie-looking dog that draws a lot of attention to herself.

So everyone's always asking about the dog, which sort of outed us as American pretty quickly. And people don't understand adoption there at all. So the questions would always be kind of interesting. I learned over time how to set boundaries and not tell every single cab driver my entire life story if I wasn't in the mood.

But I also tried to use it, when I was able, to educate a little bit about the process. But, yeah, it was really amazing to be immersed in my culture and also, of course, really hard. Not everything about it is amazing, of course.

Haley Radke: So where did you live when you were there?

Marta Isabella Sierra: We lived in Cali. My family lives in Cali, which is the third biggest city in Colombia, and we lived in a pretty downtown area in a neighborhood called San Fernando in Parque del Perro, which is a really nice little park. It's kind of touristy, really. There's lots of restaurants and things, but it was a nice area to live in.

We had a two bedroom apartment. We had a lot of space for not a lot of money. And yeah, that was its own decision, right? Whether to live with family or not. For people that have done this before, that's a big decision piece. And I think if I went down as a single person, I would've probably lived with my family, which would've been a whole completely different experience for sure.

I'm glad that that's how I did it. And that's what my experience was, even though I know in some ways that it meant a trade-off. We spoke English at home and so my Spanish didn't get as strong as I would've liked it to get if I were completely immersed in it.

And with technology, like, I was still watching Netflix in English on my computer. So I wasn't as immersed as I might have been in a different situation. But aside from that, the support of having my fur babies and my person with me was just incalculable in how much that helped me navigate a lot of grief, really.

It was just another layer of grief work because it's all around me every day right? What I lost.

Haley Radke: So here's what I'm picturing in my head. You go and you're with your family for a meal or something, and then you go home to your apartment with your partner and your animals, and then you're like on your own again.

What is that feeling like? Even knowing you can go back again and see them tomorrow? But just even that little separation?

Marta Isabella Sierra: That piece felt okay and felt kind of needed. Even on a short little trip, my first trip, it was like, okay, I have to go back to my Airbnb, right? I need a moment.

So it was actually really grounding. I came to really love my apartment and feel safe there and need to go there sometimes to just bring it back down a level because everything's so intense.

Haley Radke: I guess I don't yet have the same experience. I'm not transracially adopted, transculturally, transnationally. I don't have any of that. And so reunion for me as a domestic adoptee looks so very different.

Like you literally moved countries to build this relationship. Can you teach us a little bit about the challenges and the things that maybe someone like me wouldn't even have considered or known about?

Marta Isabella Sierra: It's all this little stuff. And what I came to learn really is that Spanish is one of three language barriers, I would say. And the second one out of those two is definitely culture and misunderstandings about that. And even if we understood exactly what the other person was saying, like literally saying, it was still confusing.

And I'm really lucky to have had some great supports down there, including some bilingual friends and a translator that I worked with who also helped me with some documents and legal kinds of things, but she would come around and help with translating, and I found that ultimately more what she was translating than Spanish was cultural stuff that I didn't understand.

A really easy small example is that Colombians put themselves together pretty specifically. Colombian women, especially, like no matter the socioeconomic status, you can see the difference, right? But even a woman with not a lot of money probably, her sneakers match, her shirt matches her earrings, and her hair's done and her makeup's done. It might not be done the same way as someone that's higher class, but that's what you do. And that's not who I am.

Haley Radke: Are you a little bit of a casual girl, Marta? Sorry, I should say casual woman.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I lived in Seattle. I came from Seattle. So even the transition from Boston to Seattle, the American listeners will think this funny, was a downshift for me and a letting go of what's appropriate in public.

And I just don't care. And certainly if I'm emotionally dysregulated, right? Like, I don't care at all. And so some early conflicts with my mom would be about her asking me questions I didn't understand why she was asking me, or criticizing how I showed up, or my hair?

And, but her assumption sometimes, like I'd wear a lot of messy buns. I have really long hair and I mostly wear it up in a messy bun on the top of my head. And her assumption if I showed up like that was that I didn't shower that day and, like, why aren't you taking care of yourself? And it was like, what? I showered like before I left. I don't understand.

So we just had to navigate that one piece. But it was, of course, being criticized by your mom. It’s a trigger. So it was difficult. At first I didn't understand. And finally we had to come to this piece of her belief is you put yourself together and you look nice because it's nice for the other people.

And my view is I don't care about the other people. I'm not going to do something for other people that's not authentic to me, right? And that's specific to me, but it's pretty American, too, I think in some ways. And that's an easy in-way into that. Colombia is a very Catholic, patriarchal country and that's difficult for me.

I strongly identify as a feminist and there's a lot of things that are norms there that were difficult for me, and I would say this was one layer of it, right? That as a woman, I owe it to the world to be like nicely packaged every day and be something that's nice to look at. And I just was never gonna tow that line.

But we had those conversations and she came to accept that about me. But you know, still, the preference is still under there that I would make more of an effort.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. That's a really great example. I'm kind of getting a picture here. Do you have another example of something that was just really lost in translation?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Well, everything's in its own little compartmentalized box. Colombia has been through a lot of war, a lot of really terrible times. I was born in the middle of that. There's a lot of us that were born and adopted out during the time in which there was so much violence and other things happening in our country.

And so anyone around my generation, when we're coming back, our families that were left there experienced all of that. It deeply affected them. Besides other legacies of intergenerational trauma around single moms and not being able to move up in socioeconomic status sometimes, no matter how hard you work. The caste system there is pretty set.

It's hard to advance. The economy is difficult. So there's lots of complex political and socioeconomic stuff going on. And then there's this history of war and trauma that's so normalized. People that visit Colombia are like, Colombians are so amazing, they're so happy. They always have a smile on their face.

That's a survival mechanism. There's a lot underneath that. That's how we survived. That's how my people were strong and kept moving forward. But in that, there's this denial of the trauma and of things that have happened, and things just kind of get put in neat little boxes and left there.

So, one example is my mother's father, my grandfather passed six or so years before I found her, my abuelo, and the story that I got about him at first. I had a lot of grief because he was presented by my mom as this great man and he was a professional musician his whole life. And I always sang and danced and did theater and so I saw this photo of him and I just grieved for that, that I had this amazing abuelo that I would never get to meet.

It was a solid many months in to being down there that I started to hear other stories, that he was pretty abusive, that he was unfaithful, that my mom's older sibling actually is not from my grandmother. And that there's more, and that who knows how many more there are, right? And all of these different things that I didn't hear at first because it's just not normal.

It's not normal to share all the things, you just share the things that are more comfortable and everything else goes in little boxes. So I rarely got all of the information upfront, which for me, and I think for a lot of adopted people, it's: Tell me the truth! Like we wanna know the truth.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Marta Isabella Sierra: So what is truth? What's a cultural definition of truth? It's just all so layered and so more than anything, this affected my relationship with my brother, my oldest brother who's younger than me. If you had asked me six months in to my time down there who I was closest to in my family, I would've said him.

We were really close for a lot of reasons. He's a little separate from my family for the reasons that I'll tell you in a moment, but also he just lives separate from them. He has a partner of 11 or so years who has a daughter, so he kind of has a stepdaughter. They have two dogs. The only other person in my family that had dogs. Once or twice a week we would go down to where he lives, just 20 minutes, half hour in a cab, and take the dogs to the park.

And I just spent the most time with him, I would say, week to week. And we're close in age. There's lots of things that we have in common. He was just really, really special to me. And there has always been this lingering story about if he had a daughter or not, and the story that he had always told me was that he didn't believe that it was his daughter. This happened when he was 16.

And so in April of last year, it was time for us to take this big trip to Llanos. That's where my family is from. It's out in the eastern plains. It's a pretty big journey and it's a very different part of Colombia. And I was going to meet her.

I was going to meet my niece, and I just needed to know the truth from him before I went and before this stopped being a concept and started being a real person. I had also kind of gone to battle about it for him, and I felt protective of him because this specific topic had caused so many rifts in my family.

And it all came spilling out when I saw him before the trip, that this is his daughter, that he refuses to look at any of it. He won't take a test, he won't be in her life. He sort of blames her for the sins of her mother. They were 16 when they were together. I think she was maybe not good to him and possibly cheated on him. And he blames her for it.

And so she's not being raised by her mother either. My niece is raised by her maternal grandmother, so she's essentially an in-family adoptee, right? So I go there and I meet this girl and I fall head over heels in love with her. She's 14, she's super smart. She doesn't understand why this is happening to her. She has a lot of questions and there's so much vulnerability there.

But she's tough and I see a lot of myself in her. And I just felt bonded to her really quickly and we had a lot of talks about it. And, she's a teenager, so she didn't spill her guts or anything, but I made sure that she knew that I'm here for her for always and for whatever she needs.

And so even since coming back, I've just taken a little bit more of an active role in her life and she's really important to me. So after that trip, my relationship with my brother really split. I couldn't accept it. It just was so painful for me that he could turn her away when he had been so loving and accepting to me.

I mean, it's still, I mean, obviously I'm getting choked up talking about it. It still doesn't make sense to me. Emotionally and logically in my clinician brain it makes total sense. Whatever happened with my niece's mother was traumatic to him. He's put it in a box and he won't touch it and that's really normal there.

That's how you survive, right? You just keep moving forward. And, but it cost him so much. I think it cost him a lot and it cost him our relationship, which in his eyes, I've abandoned him. But I just had to do what was best for me. But that's a moment where I do have compassion about why he's doing it.

And I still ultimately decided to draw a boundary. Because it felt, for me personally, it feels disloyal to her to not hold him accountable for his actions. And it breaks my heart. I still miss him every day. So yeah, that's a big piece of my experience down there with trauma and with the denial of it.

And one of the last things he said to me when we were communicating over text was, let me know, let me know when you've resolved your traumas. It all got put on that I have a problem with this because of my trauma, instead of any ownership.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I'm so sorry. That sounds really challenging and I think this is so fascinating how you describe that in Colombia they just don't really get the concept of adoption when you're talking to strangers and whatnot.

And yet, you go down there, you are this professionally trained person and you can see trauma all over. How is that for you? And in general, or more specifically if you want to talk about your family, but even just in broad strokes, just looking at the culture?

You talked about how they've had all of these challenges in war and things, and I know that, especially, I mean I'm living in Canada, it feels like such a privileged nation, that I can just go to therapy and it's so different. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Marta Isabella Sierra: Again, it's just, there's so much going on underneath this surface. There's this image, that now I'm wishing I had pulled it up before we started talking, but about cultural awareness. It's like the image of an iceberg and I just really liked it because it talked about the top things, right? Like foods and the flag and the different pieces of it.

And then under the water were all of these other pieces that make up any given culture, right? Which is like histories of trauma and roles in the family. What do those roles look like? What are the responsibilities? And just all of this under-stuff, right?

I would say that there's just a lot of pain and people in pain that don't even understand. I'm super empathic and so I would feel everything. So like me saying my apartment was my safe space, like sometimes I would just get way too overloaded being around people and I had to go home and reground because I always feel what people are feeling even if they're not aware of it, which was a lot. It's a lot of information to get when no one wants to hear the feedback really.

And another example would be my baby brother who's my world. He has struggled his whole life with depression and anxiety, but has no words for it, right? And so we would have really deep conversations about that and about him starting to understand what it is. Why shame is a very, very common language there. A way of communicating, a way of controlling. It's a lot of shame that goes on and certainly in my family as well.

And so we've been naming that for him. There's a reason that you feel this way. This is when you're spoken to in this manner, over time this is what it creates inside of you. This might be part of what you're feeling. And I think he found that extremely helpful and has made a lot of changes in his life to take care of himself in a different way because of the conversations that we had. I'm really proud of him.

Haley Radke: I love that part. Like the influence you could bring down there and to your family and just your wisdom and sharing that with them.

Marta Isabella Sierra: But it is new information, like you were saying, like it's new information to them. It's something they don't have access to. They don't get any education around it.

And nobody goes to a therapist down there unless you have a serious psychiatric condition. Like your medical doctor has told you that you need to go. It's a completely different mental health culture and it's just not talked about.

So you had said what a great thing that you could teach that I think is so complicated. Not just that role, but specifically add on the layer of being an adoptee, right? Because I already have parts of me that feel responsible for other people.

And so you add that piece in, right? That I'm coming back into my family system, that I'm viewed as having more access to a lot of things, right? Financially, but also education, all of these things. And so there is a view that I'm to make an impact. So there's an overt feeling of that.

And then there's my own internal stuff of I'm supposed to make everyone's lives better. That gets so sticky, I think, and I have a lot of feelings of failure with my other brother. I feel like I failed.

And because I used my own story. I used research, I used all of this is what's going on for her. Is this really what you want to do? And I couldn't break the wall of his protective system that will not go near this trauma of his, right?

And so I do have parts of me that feel like I failed. That feel like I'm supposed to heal my family and like I failed in that manner. And so it has pluses and negatives, I think. But there's definitely a lot of my family that I have made an impact on and that does feel good, but I just want to name that has two sides to it and that I think when we go back into these family systems that have been dealing with so much for so long and that we can have that wish, that's a great wish, and we can certainly do some good.

But I had to ask at what cost at a point.

Haley Radke: Well, I thank you for sharing that because I've gotten questions from multiple adoptees who have higher access, they're more wealthy and then they will reunite. And then there's this expectation from the original family: oh great, you're gonna help us out of this.

And so I imagine that boundaries would be so challenging in that situation. And then even my question to you was, well, you're this therapist and you can come. But then I'm trying to be like, oh wait, you put yourself in Marta's shoes. That's not your role in the family.

You're not there to go and fix everybody. And even as a therapist, you're not counseling your friends and family here either, right? That's not a thing. So yeah, you got some layers there. Holy smokes.

Marta Isabella Sierra: So I have a little cousin that is being raised by my sister. They took her out of a bad situation and my sister is raising her. She's seven now. My little che, she's my little sweetie pie. She has experienced a lot of trauma in her young life. We're not exactly sure what, but that's part of why my sister took custody of her.

And I would be called in to kind of weigh in on things around that occasionally, which was always interesting. And I don't work with children. I don't specialize in working with children. I barely know how to talk to children in a casual setting, if we're being honest. So I didn't really have anything to offer clinically other than she needs to see a therapist.

But there's resistance around that and it's not the easiest thing to find, even if you are open to it. But her suspected abuser is her father and he is in Llanos. That's where I was talking about. So part of that trip was also that she was going to be around him. And I had a real problem with this, of course, being who I am and being a therapist and I had many conversations about it.

Ultimately, I had to let it go because I'm not her guardian. I don't get to make these decisions for her, and it's very complicated. But the view is she's never alone with him. So there's like this protective element, right? We're watching her. Don't worry, nothing will happen.

Nothing new will happen. And she's asking about him. She wants to see him, which I'm not around for that. I'm sure that's true, of course. Why wouldn't she want to see her father? We know that children in the face of tremendous abuse will still want their parents, of course.

And so their view is, yeah, well, that was a long time ago. He's changed a lot. And also a little tinge of that's just how men are. There's this acceptance of abuse from men in my country that upsets me deeply. And so, yeah, I had to let go. It's not my decision. I've said my piece, they listened to me and they ultimately decided what they're going to decide.

And so that's, again, a piece of yeah, a man did something horrible. It doesn't register. It's just so normalized. Similar with the stories about my grandfather and there's just so much around infidelity, around physical violence, around sexual violence. It's just what else is news today?

Haley Radke: Well, I thank you for walking us through a ton of different insights that you had through your over a year there. Year and a half, almost 14 months?

*Marta Isabella Sierra:** 14 months.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay, man I'm struggling today. My goodness. Okay. Thank you for walking us through those insights. You've had well over a year you spent with your family and in Colombia, and I think this will really help a lot of adoptees that are considering searching and reunion, especially when it's in a different country and not sure what to expect. And I think we don't hear about these things in depth enough, so I really appreciate your thoughts on that.

Marta Isabella Sierra: I think that the other thing that I realized through going and being down there is that I think the whole periods of honeymoon and transition into regular reunion, when you're talking about international adoption, are so skewed because there's not a lot of physical time together.

And so I think the honeymoon could go on, I don't know how long, but I think that mine cracked open around April of last year. This big thing happened and then in the aftermath of it, I was like, oh, I think my honeymoon just ended. Like I hadn't thought I was out of it. I had more identified it with that kind of first three weeks, intense infatuation, can't-breathe-without- you kind of phase.

But actually I think it's like that first part of a relationship until you learn these are full human beings, which for me even was many months in to living there.

Haley Radke: I can't imagine. I mean, even as you were talking about staying down there and not knowing if you're going to get invited to this or are you going to see them then, like all that kind of real life.

Wow. It's just, I don't know. You had a huge life change in that time period. And I can't wait to hear more about what you learned. I'm so glad that you're coming back and you're going to talk to us a little bit more on the next Healing episode, a little bit more about your experience, and I can't wait.

Okay. In the meantime, let's press pause till we get to that episode next week. And where can we connect with you online?

Marta Isabella Sierra: My practice is (old link removed) and that's pretty much the best way to get in touch with me. There's an email on there. (email martasierralmhc [at] gmail [dot] com)

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Next week Marta is going to be back on the podcast with us, as I said, and make sure you're subscribed because you don't want to miss that episode. She shares some very intimate and vulnerable things she experienced while in Colombia, and whether you're in reunion or not, there are some giant takeaways that we can learn from her experience and apply to whatever we have going on.

So I really appreciate her sharing and her willingness to open up that way. You don't always get that from therapists especially, there's so much of a “you're the client, I'm the therapist” kind of barrier with a lot of professionals in that capacity. So I really appreciate Marta opening up in that way.

And, I mean, wow, how much more valuable info can you get than someone who is literally living out how to do this, how to do this in a healthy way. I'm so appreciative. The other thing I want to say is, thank you so much to my monthly supporters. You guys know I say this every week, but it's honestly the truth.

I would not be able to do this show without you. If you want Adoptees On to keep going and helping adoptees around the world navigate reunion, and search and rejection and all the things we talk about regularly, please support the show. You're saying with your money that you think it's valuable and you want it to continue.

And I have some big dreams of where I want the podcast to go and I can only do that with your help. So if you want to say yes and say yes, I think the show is valuable, and you want to join in in supporting it, go to adopteeson.com/partner and you can find out all the levels of support and the bonuses.

There's another weekly podcast that we do, Adoptees Off Script. Right now we are in the Adoptee Reading Challenge 2020 mode. It's so fun. We're reading adoptee-authored books in a variety of categories, and I am just really loving it. So adopteeson.com/partner to help the show continue to exist in this world.

And I'm just so thankful for those of you who shared the show with a friend. Maybe you know someone who is a transracial, transnational adoptee and they are searching right now and things are looking promising, they might find. This would be such a great episode to share with them, something to think about ahead of time before you're in it.

And I don't know how you like to listen to the podcast, but I love listening on my phone and I just download podcasts right onto my phone. And so if I'm out doing stuff on the, I was gonna say on my commute, you know, to my basement. No, but if I'm driving to the grocery store or whatever, it's with me, it's already downloaded and I can listen to whatever I want on my podcast app.

It is so easy. I love Overcast. But if you have an iPhone, there's a podcast app built right into your phone and if you have an Android, you can listen on Spotify. It's very easy. Just search Adoptees On and if you're sharing the show with someone, you can show them.

You can be the podcast evangelist and show them exactly how you like to listen. I appreciate that so much because sometimes that's a bit of a barrier for people. So thank you for doing that, and so much talking. Why is Haley talking so much today? Okay. I'm gonna stop, but I just want to say thank you so much for listening and let's talk again next Friday.

132 [Healing Series] Advocacy

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/132

---

Haley Radke: This show is listener-supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to Adopteeson.com/partner.

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 are talking about public activism and advocacy, the costs that's associated with it, how to hold our boundaries. This is such a great conversation. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Melanie Chung-Sherman. Welcome, Melanie.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Hi. Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Haley Radke: I am so excited we get to talk again because last time we were talking about microaggressions and emotional labor, and there's so many themes about working in advocacy and speaking up publicly about adoption. And you were challenging us on a number of things. I really just want to continue that conversation with you. I see you posting regularly on your public Facebook page, challenges about adoption, different adoption topics, and racism, and all sorts of things. And when I see those things, Melanie, honestly, I'm just like, ‘Whoa, how is she taking on this giant job and replying to the comments and all of that?’ That's a lot. When we talk about emotional labor, that's a lot. You're paying a price. So do you want to talk about that a little bit? What made you decide to challenge us in that way and really pay the price for speaking up publicly?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: It's been an organic process because that's always been part of who I am. In general, I mean, even from elementary school, I would be the person advocating for individuals who may not have had the same access to rights. Like, I remember I even had petitions going on about things that were happening about the teachers.

Haley Radke: You know what, that doesn't even surprise me. That doesn't surprise me in one bit.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Especially growing up in this pretty much all-white community, and this Asian kid was challenging the status quo. Another thing that drew me into social work and into the profession as well, because it just kind of fit, I'm like, ‘Oh, not only is it backed by a code of ethics, but there's a whole group of people, they do that professionally. This is fun! And I get paid for it!’ But more than that, it’s coming from a space, that I would look and I couldn't find the integration of these observations. I couldn't find books, and I couldn't find –particularly when it came to the intersection between mental health work, my years of working in child welfare, from administrative positions, to case management, and then as a therapist– I kept seeing the themes and it would always feel siloed to me. And so even when I post, it would be nothing that I wouldn't share out publicly, verbally, or things that I haven't shared in other circles with individuals.

And again, I think social media has allowed a different kind of platform, but there's also then a dual responsibility. Not only as a licensed social worker where I think about code of ethics and really where my boundaries are professionally, and trying to stay in my lanes, but then also pushing up against what the status quo may be. And I really try to hold a responsibility, not as a provocateur. It really is coming– I've been hearing about this and seeing this for a very long time. Particularly when I'm listening to clients and loved ones. We have a really unique space in our adopted community, because adoption is a salient theme, and that's kind of where it ends. Because so many of us have different lived experiences, so I'm fascinated by the nuances of that.

And then what does that mean within our community and then in the broader community as well? Because so much of my formal education, and just my interest in terms of reading, it really has been then looking at, ‘Well, how has this impacted– How is this policy? How do these historically –the laws, funding, all of these things– all come back to oppression?’ And when we really then dig underneath that, we can start deconstructing even the things within adoption. Because adoption really lives and breathes in the world that, as I was sharing from the last podcast, holds a hierarchy of oppressive power and privilege standards that trickle all the way down.

And so just moving into a space like, ‘Oh gosh, well, the intersectionality within our community is broad and diverse, but it's also pretty thematic. And it's pretty predictable.’ And so learning about that, I'm like, ‘Oh, I can't just keep that in, to myself,’ because these are the things I'm sharing, between colleagues and clients, I'm just curious about. So sometimes it's also a space of going, ‘Huh, I'm gonna put it out into the universe because I don't think I'm the only one who's been thinking about that.’ You know, there's so many other amazing researchers and clinicians, and academics, and activists and advocates who are doing amazing work in our community, adoptee-identified people. And so I also want to give cred to them because their voice also inspires mine and other activists through the years. It comes at a cost, and that's where we have to be really mindful. Because there's times I'm just exhausted by it. But I know that I'm not the only one holding that, and having the supports of other friends, particularly in our community, has really been a life-changer and a lifesaver. Because there's very few, I think, that function in that space. But it's definitely not off-limits to anyone else who chooses to do that. I think that people have to be really mindful of the cost.

Haley Radke: Well, before we go into the cost, yeah, wow, I'm curious because you were saying that you share publicly the things that you have shared in person, with people or at an event when you're speaking. That's what I'm sort of getting from what you said. How did you first decide which pieces of your story were going to be accessible out that chain? So, that you've told in person, or on your Facebook page? Because I think there's a trickle there that can easily get into a waterfall, that you can't take it back. Especially on the internet, right? It's out there, it's out there. So that's peace, like, to make the conscious decision of ‘What part of my story am I going to share and at which level?’ If it's between friends, or public, out there forever, right?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I think the boundary is really important and I think that it's been actually through mistake and trial and error– So, I started working within adoption almost, I'll age myself, about 20 years ago. And I was young, I was naive, and I was not out of the fog, per se. And so I had overshared quite a bit at the behest– and also the pleasure. I would get the affirmations and accolades from agencies. I was the quote-unquote “good adoptee”. And it wasn't until I went to grad school back from MSW, and then started working at Child Protective Services out of Dallas, I was an investigator for a number of years, and it changed my narrative. It changed my life. And so the things that I wish I could retract now. The internet wasn't as prolific as it is now. I do see that sometimes, particularly with those who are just moving into the space where they're finding their voice. So I'm also thankful it wasn't as prolific, the internet.

But at the same time, the decision consciously now, that what I would share online is the same thing that I would share in person, and that I stand by, or that I've written, or I've had materials published, things that– I can literally stand in front of my children, and hold that narrative with both pride and –it doesn't have to be in this beautiful, perfect package– also in a real, honest and authentic space. Through a lot of private work, through my own therapy and through the support of loved ones and chosen family, I can now share this out in a much more constructive and also, I think, integrated way, that ‘Yeah, this is a truth and this is a part of my life.’

But it's also then, underneath that, undergirding that, there's a message of, ‘In what ways will we bend the walls?’ I really try to be conscious that the things that are shared out that are personal, it's not so centered on my own experience or voice. As in: ‘Because Melanie's a Korean adoptee and she says this, it must be for all.’ No, no. I really want people then to think on a much more dynamic and complex level, and then kind of see where that goes. And I'm mindful when I share that out, whether I'm speaking in front of an audience or I'm speaking just one-on-one.

So I think that's really important: finding the balance between what you want to share out personally to get a point across, that doesn't lend itself where you begin to lose that part of your own story and identity authentically; that it is my authentic parts that I've done a lot of work on, so I can share it out, not because of the things that happen that I have to. And that's why I draw a line, particularly when people ask really personal questions, particularly if they're asking about my background, or like my [unclear: sounds like “adopt”; could be “adult” or “adoptive”] family. Or I'm very private when it comes to my children: “Not at all. That is their narrative.” And I think for adoptees, most of us are really attuned to the protection and privacy of that, that ‘My storylines are mine’. And I have to be responsible and own that: of what comes in and then also how it goes out. But that's come through a lot of mishap and mistake, naivety, impetuousness. Like, there was this space of, like, ‘I gotta share it. People have to know.’

Haley Radke: Well, one of the things you said actually in our last episode when we were talking about microaggressions, you mentioned that it can be, I think the word you used was “intoxicating” in the beginning. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Absolutely. When your story is validated, and it becomes real– at least for myself coming out of the fog, I was thinking I was all alone in this. And then I had a tremendous privilege and opportunity to hold these spaces in terms of training, and speaking at conferences, and doing all these other events in adoption. It can be very intoxicating, and it was. I would get the immediate validation or feedback or “You know so much about adoption, and you do all these things!”-- to a point, and then it becomes toxic. Because without really sitting back and A) taking care of self and B), really being then held accountable– My other loved ones would be like, “You know, I just, I noticed these things that–” It was loved ones, it was also friends within the adopted community, close friends who would come back and say, “When you're sharing this out, I just have a question about that.” And so actually, not in terms of confrontation, but in terms of love and kindness, to go, “When you share that, I have questions about that. What is the motivation behind that?”

So I've been really privileged in my life. I don't want a lot of “yes” people. I want people who are going to challenge what that's going to be and look like, and hold us to a really high standard when we have these platforms. We have to –when we have the privilege to do that within our own community, but particularly out in the broad community– we have tremendous responsibility of what we do with our words, with our actions, with our story. Because I'm also thinking now as a parent. Whatever I put out there and how I share this, the legacy of adoption, and the legacy of how this gets downloaded, also impacts generations that follow. Because it's out there on the internet. This will be out there. And so I really hold that as well, to try to balance what we say and do.

Haley Radke: I appreciate that, yeah. I appreciate you saying that.

You used that word “cost”. “There's a cost to this.” How much does it cost you? No, tell us a little bit what you mean by that, because I think we probably have an idea, but maybe not the whole picture.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I'll say this, it's one thing when I could talk about safe topics like attachment and trauma, and really kind-of pushing back related to the pathology, especially with adoptees and labeling and names. It was another thing when I started talking about integrating race and racism, and sexuality and identity. That was almost a line for many. I lost friends, people I thought were friends. And I've also lost speaking gigs. I've lost credibility in some circles.

At one point it was intoxicating, those spaces within adoption communities where I could get out and be this platform or voice, as that adoptee that seemed to have it all together. And now, “You're talking about oppression? We can't talk about that. You just stay in your lane and do this.” So the cost has been emotional, it's been mental, it's been physical. It's come at a physical cost as well, where I've got to be really mindful, and I'm very protective of my time and energy because that can quickly get away from –myself at least, but I've seen that particularly in our community, of just doing, doing, doing, and not sitting in the space of discomfort, not sitting in the loss. Because that cost has been loss. And I don't know about you, but I, for myself, I don't like loss. I don't like complicated grief!

Haley Radke: Have we had enough loss? Have we had enough? Come on!

Melanie Chung-Sherman: It’s been a lot. And so when we speak about these complex subjects, it comes at a cost of relationship, and that is what I've grieved the most. That's times that I'm scared the most, of things that I want to say or put in writing, and then I'll delete it or I'll hold it. And many of those, even posting or even talking through it, I'll practice it out with someone else, for accountability. Because, ‘Am I in an energy, am I in a healthy space?’ that I can handle the pushback, and I can possibly even handle interpersonal connection that's going to be challenged. That's been hard. That's been really hard.

Haley Radke: Do you have any thoughts on this, maybe talking to an adoptee who has been online a little bit, kind-of putting their toe in the advocacy space and speaking up here and there. Do you have any words of wisdom for someone like that, and maybe challenges to those of us who have been in it for a while, but maybe our boundaries aren't quite firmed up yet? Thoughts on that?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I think for those who are just starting, having a really good confluence of friends and peers and loved ones who can really not only love and support you, but also hold the words, not in a space of pushback, but accountability. If you have others with lived experience, you can really speak into that. One of the things that has been a life saver has been mentorship, really seeking out mentorship for those who have gone before. And that’s been everything, just hearing from others who have been in the roles of activism and advocacy, particularly in our communities. And sometimes that's hard, because at least for Korean adoptees, the first wave started a couple decades ago, but it really started taking off in the nineties. So it's been harder to find other mentors outside of a generational lived experience. But there are many, so I look at that in awe. And I also seek out counsel and wisdom. And we don’t have to agree –I'm not asking for agreement in all things, because that's pretty boring– but I think, a consensus of just mutual respect and wisdom. So those who are just starting, find other people that you feel like, ‘I wanna sit at their feet and just know.’ I've had amazing mentors, particularly women of color, who've been doing this work and can really just, “Sit down. You're gonna be tired. How are you taking care of yourself?” Like, “In what ways are you protecting your family? Are you protecting your voice?” Because even in this –we've talked about loss– I have to share that I've also gained amazing friendships, and amazing allyships, and those who are accomplices, in ways that I know if I stayed in the same space a couple years ago, I would've never been exposed to those with this hunger and passion– of all legs of the triad and outside in the community. And so that has been remarkable. So even if it comes at a cost, there are also great gains and we've gotta find that balance.

And for those who are doing this who are tenured, or battle-worn, we talked about the self-compassion and taking care of self, but then also constantly learning. And I think also then opening up, always giving the credit to those who've come before. And I think that's really, at least for myself, that's really important that we are giving voice to so many different perspectives. We can all learn and grow, and integrate new kinds of ideas and materials. I think because, not just as a transracial adoptee, but our narrative as adoptive people, we can move and navigate into a lot of different spaces and really sit in spaces –that many other people may find uncomfortable or unknown to them– in a really genuine way. And I think that opens up a lot of opportunity to really get to know someone else's story outside of our own without defense, really just sitting there. And that's what I encourage for all of us to do. I have to remind myself to do that cuz we can get really entrenched and ‘It's gotta be this way. I've been working so hard! I can't believe they're saying that! This is, oh–!’ and get really defensive. And I think that's also coming from, at least for myself, my own lived experience of: I'm waiting for the microaggression or I'm waiting for them to aggress, versus: I'm sitting here and I'm listening and then I'm going to take that in.

And then continuing to build healthy boundaries for yourself. It's okay to say no.

Haley Radke: Oh, yes. Love that one! The one other thought I wanted to share, you kind-of triggered this for me right at the beginning of this conversation, was just talking about how there are other people doing the same work. I'm reminded that when we do need to take that pause and kind of step back and just be like, ‘I just need to peace out for a minute,’ that the others fill the gap for us, right? And vice versa. When someone else is on their social media break, others will step in. So it's not all on your two shoulders.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Oh, it's too much. And I think that's part of the healthy boundaries. And here's the thing, there's no monopoly on need. That's really a psychotic idea, like, ‘Without my voice–!’ There is no monopoly on that. It's there, we got it.

Haley Radke: That's the twist on “there's room at the table for everyone,” because there's no monopoly on need, that's so good.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: You'll find where your voice is valued, and then remind yourself of the value of your voice. And part of that is also rest and rejuvenation, restoration, as much as it is in engaging. And then holding whatever balance that you need to take care of. Because right now I'm on a social meeds cleanse and it feels good. I'm just holding multiple things and it's okay. You're like, ‘Okay!’ I really respect when people do that. And it's more than social meeds cleanse, it's, like, cleanse on books and the things that I am literally digesting on a daily basis. And really being mindful, not shutting out the world and not pretending it doesn't exist. The more work that we do, particularly in advocacy and activism, I was sharing with you before, it's in the forefront of my mind, and the drumbeat in the background. And sometimes I have to remember it's okay if it goes in the drumbeat, in the background, so I can be present for the things that I love and the people I love. Because when I can do that, I can fill myself up and be ready for the next thing, and invite that.

Haley Radke: I love that. Thank you. That was a perfect note to wrap up on. Thank you so much, Melanie, for your wisdom in this area.

I'm assuming when this gets posted, you'll be off that social media cleanse, so where can we connect with you online?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I may be back by then!

Haley Radke: You'll be back, you'll be back!

Melanie Chung-Sherman: You can find me on Facebook on Melanie Chung-Sherman, LCSW, PLLC. You can just Google that, and that's my professional page. Also, mcscounsel.com is my website, and then Instagram, @mcscounsel. And I'm not as ‘on’ on Instagram. I'm pretty specific in where I'm going to share out, and where I have the bandwidth lately.

Haley Radke: I've learned so much from the conversations Melanie is having over on her Facebook page, so make sure you're following her there. That's my extra plug for that.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Thanks.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Oh my goodness. So much good information from Melanie. I just value her insights so, so much, and I hope that you will re-listen to this episode. I don't say that every time we have a therapist on the show –I do a lot of the times, I feel like, in the Healing Series– but this week's and last week's, especially, I think Melanie hits on so many very deeply important topics. It can be easy for our brains to just kind-of scoot on past those points and go on to the next thing she's talking about, but I think there's a lot of things here that would be really helpful to revisit, for myself personally. And, you know, we're in this new year, 2020. Maybe you've thought about, ‘I don't know, maybe it's the year that I'm gonna make my first therapist appointment. Maybe I'm going to actually look at this adoption stuff a little deeper. Maybe I am going to join up with a state that's looking at changing some laws about adoptee access to original birth certificates…’ I don't know, maybe you've got some big plans going on. I challenge you, don't let this stuff settle down to the bottom of life.

It's easy for busy work and taking care of your family or friends, or just you doing whatever, going to work, whatever you do on the daily, it's very easy to let these deep things kind of just set at the bottom and to just let them go by. But just, can I challenge you? Don't do that. If 2020 is your year to take care of yourself, to actually look at doing some activism or advocacy or whatever that looks like for you, don't let these things that you hear from amazing experts every week, don't let that just settle to the bottom and don't do anything about it. Maybe it's the time to re-listen and take some notes and think, ‘Okay, what is my next step here?’ And I would encourage you to find an adoptee adoption-competent therapist if you have the financial means to do so. That's some of the best money I've spent, truly, in my healing journey.

So anyway, thank you so much for listening. I want to thank my monthly supporters: without you, this show would not continue to exist. There are some fun new things, new changes, new things happening over on Patreon, so I will be telling you about that coming up soon. If you want to partner with me monthly, Adopteeson.com/partner helps keep the show going. And I appreciate so many of you who have signed up and said, “Yes, I think Adoptees On is important and I want it to continue to exist in this world.” So thank you so much for that. Thanks again for listening, and let's talk again next Friday.

131 [Healing Series] Microaggressions

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/131

---

Haley Radke: This show is listener-supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to Adopteeson.com/partner.

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 are talking about microaggressions. Oh my goodness, this is so interesting. Okay, let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Melanie Chung-Sherman. Welcome, Melanie.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Thank you. I'm so excited to be on. I've been following your work.

Haley Radke: Aw, thank you. I'm so, so joyful to have you on the show today. I can't believe it's your first time on. I already said this is embarrassing to me that you haven't been on before, so welcome. And since it is your first time, would you mind just sharing a little bit about your story with us so we can kind-of get to know you a little bit?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Right. Well, I am a transracial, international adoptee and one of the end of the first wave of Korean adoptees. I was adopted in the late 70s and placed in the land of gazillion adoptees in Minneapolis, MN, and my adoptive family moved my brother and I and my youngest brother down to Texas, my youngest brother being biologically born to my parents and my younger brother is also KAD –Korean adoptee– as well. So I was raised in pretty much the Deep South, outside of Fort Worth, TX, and have really established my roots and wings there, out of all places. Where I feel both at home, and then sometimes as foreign or international or– just in terms of my own lived experiences, I’m walking in the world holding a lot of different identities, particularly as a woman of color, an immigrant, and a transracial adoptee in the South. And that's really framed the work that I do today, and the work that I do within the adoption community, and advocacy outside the adoption community with more marginalized populations.

Haley Radke: Yeah, that's got to be a varied experience you've had there, to say the least. Can you just tell us, just briefly, how you decided to go into social work and then into therapy, and just a little bit about your work in that area?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I think like for many –I definitely cannot speak for all– I really look at the numbers of adoptive people who enter into the field, helping professions specifically. And I don't believe that I'm any more unique than the rest, who are doing some amazing and challenging work specifically in social work, mental health, and helping professions.

From a really young age, I knew that I wanted to be able to lift up others in a way that was unique to the stories and the lived experiences that my brother and I had. We grew up pretty much in total whiteness. Just to give some context, the high school that both my brother and I graduated from still had the Confederate flag. We sang “The Spirit of Dixie” in every homecoming, every football game, and it was indoctrinated and normalized. It really wasn't until I moved out of that space that I really began to realize just how impactful that was, particularly within an experience as trying to fit into a community there, and then at the same time trying to really build identity. Nothing mirrored that experience. In a lot of ways we had to align within the community, and even then, at a young age, I still felt it was incongruent, but I didn't have the words to say what it was, nor did I have anyone to really mirror back about how obtuse it was and how strange and odd it was for kids of color, particularly Asian kids, to be in these spaces.

As a social worker, I got really involved when I started working in the adoption field, and that was really the catalyst into learning more about the social work profession. But my undergrad was actually in theater. I finished at Texas Wesleyan University with a bachelor's in theater arts, which I always say is the most expensive therapy that I'm still paying off. In terms of identity formation and deconstruction, I could be all these things, and I didn't have to be parts of myself, and yet I found a lot of myself in that. And I think that's also given me a space to be much more comfortable in other people's difficult narratives.

So I could try on all these characters and storylines, but was always drawn to loss. I was always drawn to characters that didn't fit within the box. It really was other adoptees, as I moved into mid-adulthood –it really wasn't until my late 20s and my early 30s, that I really started establishing friendships within the adoption community, particularly in the Korean adoptee community– that I started putting the pieces together: ‘Oh, that's why I've been doing this.’

And social work just fit. I fell in love with NASW's code of ethics and the values, social justice being at the core of our six values that we hold. The dignity and worth of a human being. The importance of human relationships. I mean, all this spoke to the very fundamental parts of myself that didn't always align with the spaces that I grew up in or the spaces I existed in.

I think I've always been comfortable in tension. I think most adoptees are. Within ourselves, I think there is this space that we can really hold the complexities of the narratives between things that are congruent and make sense, and things that don't. And I know that social work, and learning about other people's stories and holding that with great esteem, privilege, and respect as I hear –particularly from those whose voices don't always get heard– is really exciting. It's challenging and hard at times. It's heartbreaking at times, but yet it's humanizing. So I was drawn into the profession and, yeah, here I am. I love it.

Haley Radke: That's beautiful and it's also heartbreaking, right? And you talking about liking to be in the conf– not conflict, but in the challenging spot. Whew! In the tension? Yikes! That makes me uncomfortable. Okay. I feel like I don't fit there. But yeah, we do. We do live in that space a lot of the time.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: And yet you have this platform and it is! That's an exciting part of our experience, I think.

Haley Radke: Yes, well, I notice you challenging people regularly over social media and calling to our attention some of these really deeply seated things and really pushing us to look deeper at so many different issues. Which is so admirable, and as I just said, that makes me really uncomfortable a lot of the time.

But a lot of adoptees, we're navigating these microaggressions constantly and some of us don't even realize it. We are going to focus in on talking about microaggressions today, but can you tell us what is a microaggression, and just put your adoptee slant on it because a lot of us, we might have heard that term before, but not necessarily know what it means or how it would apply to our own lives.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Right. How I describe it, particularly when I'm working with clients, particularly adoptees who are clients, is it feels like a death by a million paper cuts. These are comments or statements that may not have the intention of being pejorative or may not have the intention of being negative in the impact, but they can be othering, and they can feel marginalizing. They feel heavy. And they feel like there's something within the very core of my identity that someone has made a pretty flippant statement.

So it really is stereotypes come alive in small to large actions, or comments or dismissals. You know, the microaggressions, particularly towards adoptees, the things that we've heard: “You should be so grateful that you're adopted.” Well, it's very loaded and it's silencing too, so it shuts down deeper dialogue because automatically there is this visceral sense when it's happening. I myself still get flabbergasted. There is that part of me, that young part of myself that will always be there, the pleaser part, the ‘don't leave me’ part. The ‘I don't wanna be rejected’ part. And yet also the advocate and the fighter: ‘I've worked really hard to get to this space, to utilize’ voice, and ‘I know what's happening here’.

Microaggressions can be based on any part of our identity, but I think particularly as adoptees, we really hold, for so long– I think one of the most challenging parts of –for many, not all, but for many– we'll call it ‘coming out of the fog’, is actually deconstructing the denial, deconstructing the statements that we've heard throughout our lives. I've had to deny parts of how incongruent or how disconcerting that was internally for myself, and put that into another context to go, ‘Wow, that was actually harmful,’ or ‘That was hurtful,’ or, ‘And that's not in my mind’. And so I think sometimes microaggressions in a lot of ways can also be a form of psychological gaslighting.

So it's, “You look like your parents must have done a really great job!” and “You really look like you've got it all together!” Kind-of that ‘good adoptee’ modeling and that reinforcement. Or “Aren't you glad that you're not an orphan? Because can you imagine what your life would've been like?” And so it's these automatic assumptions that sometimes can be microaggressive, but if it's a millionth time, it can be full-on aggressive.

Then, that paradox between, ‘I don't want to be the angry adoptee–’ that pejorative, which is really gaslighting, that's really silencing. Whenever I hear an adjective before an identity, I'm like, ‘Ooh, that's a big red flag.’ Because it is another form of silencing, othering for the benefit of those in spaces of power and privilege. And when we really deconstruct adoption, at the core of that, it really is a power and privilege dynamics, and oppression dynamics, and that is the things that are unspoken. We are not socialized to talk about it. We are not prepared to go there, even on a verbal level, much less to integrate that into the emotional parts of our psyche. If we've grown up in denial, like, “You are just like everybody else in the family!”, and now, especially as a transracial adoptee, I'm like, ‘No, I know full well there's a whole other part of my identity or story.’ I may not have the words for it, but I think particularly when these things happen on a developmental plane, when you've grown up with it, when it's become part of your own vernacular, internally, it is very hard to extricate externally. And that's what makes it– it can be quite exhausting. And so when adoptees, when many begin to regain the voice– and I don't even think it is like I'm regaining this new voice. It's like I've watched with awe and curiosity because it's something that's familiar to myself as well, it's the integration of what's always been there: that infant part, or the toddler part, or the multiple homes that I've been in, or the multiple placements. For someone to sit down and say, “Yeah, that happened to you, and there's some words for it,” I think that's a power within many adoptee spaces, is the affirmation, the validation, absent of full-on microaggressions.

And also being then aware of the intersectionality of microaggressions that can live and breathe within our own community, that different types of microaggressions, or the historical underpinnings of that, they are different. And I think that is just as we contextualize and get even deeper into our own sense of our voice and self –this could be anything from sexuality and the integration of racial difference, even within our own community; gender identity and expression– that there is a platform of understanding what microaggressions and othering is. I think that's a space to start with, and then going even deeper underneath that, where we can really look at what is inclusivity and ‘giving’ voice.

And I think that's hard. I've watched it, or at least experienced it, within portions of our own adopted community. Because, gosh, when my voice has been compartmentalized and dismissed in silence, when I finally get to these spaces and I can do that, there is this part for myself, I have to be really mindful of how that downloads, how that looks, how that may feel for somebody else, whether they're just beginning their journey or whether they've been doing advocacy, activism and different types of work for a long time. I don't think we're ever really there. I think we can just continue to build on each experience.

Haley Radke: So having this lens now that we're like, okay, I think we could recognize when someone says something to us, and it's a microaggression, when you come to a point of strength and you think, ‘You know what? I think I'm gonna push back on this a little bit,’ how would you respond to someone –or would you?– to correct them?

You were listing off some of the examples, and one thing I hear from so many adoptees, especially if they maybe are telling their reunion story, for example, the first question they'll get is something like, “Oh, well, what do your real parents think about that?” What would be a response that you could give to something like that?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I think it is so individualized and one of the things that I've found, like in terms of our lexicon, almost this space, like, I've never really interacted with other groups of identified people where we have to validate family members before we can validate our experience. Does that make sense? Like, “I had a really great– I love my parents! I love this!” I've never been to other professional conferences where I've had to share out– or expect that maybe the keynote or other speakers who hold different identities, that they open with, “I had a really great childhood!”

Haley Radke: Right! So, I love that you're pointing that out because one thing that we saw last year was the Red Table Talk when Angela Tucker was on, and I mean, let's not go down too far down that rabbit trail, but just the fact that, “Oh, and her parents are here!” Like, what other conversation would they have with someone where they're like, “Oh, let's talk about this topic, and let's see what your mom and dad have to say about it!”, right?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: Right, right. In psychotherapy, I’ve not gone to a conference where we're talking about neurobiology and attachment indices, and the speaker or the researcher is now referencing their parents in particular, or that the expectation is that they do, in order to legitimize their own body of knowledge and research and experience. And so I hold that when we get those questions, I think it's okay to pause. I think it's okay then, even in this space of just being curious, many times I'll just ask: “I'm curious what you mean underneath the question?” and I'll just wait. Because I think then there is this onus, in terms of our own sense of our own dignity, our own energy, and our own space of integrity as adopted people to be able to hold– I get to hold the floor. I think being able to take that pause and step back and go, ‘Huh, what am I feeling here?’ For myself, I always consider that, and then actually turning the question, in terms of emotional labor. I mean, it's laborious to continue to do advocacy work where we are constantly sharing out, literally, parts of something so private, so personal, without, really, the respect response, the bidirectional response, just in terms of being able to be seen by other individuals. I think it's okay for us, or at least for myself, to take that pause, ‘Now, I'm wondering what they're actually asking.’ Even though I also know, underneath, this is the millionth time this has happened. We get asked these questions. It also then, it's not a dereliction of our own sense of our voice, but I do think that it places the onus on the asker.

We are constantly –adoptee; askee; panelist; all these different things– we’re kind-of put up on this stage or these platforms, to not only share out, but then also conversely share so much detailed information, that f the asker hasn't even done their work to metabolize it, I kind of weigh the question itself: ‘Do I even wanna engage in this?’ Because how much do we have the responsibility to constantly teach and train? Social media, particularly for those who've had more marginalized platforms or voices –not as victim spaces, but really as we weren't getting published– we can look historically at the research and the literature for decades, who held the narrative. And being able to, in those spaces, for adoptees as well, to go back and look at where we've come from, what's out there. And as much as I have a responsibility, if I accept a position where I'm speaking out, or speaking into a subject that's related to adoption, I've done my work. And I fully recognize that not everybody is going to be on the same page or in that space, but I do ask if I'm asked to do, let's say, a training or a keynote on transracial adoptions specifically, I've really now embedded into my ask-back, “What is your organization doing to support and actually to elevate the voices of adoptees, elevate the voices of people of color, elevate the voices of our LGBTQ community? And in what ways after I leave here will you do that? And in what ways before I come are you going to prepare for that?” So it's really not a bookend. You know, that adoption by the voices of adoptees isn't like, “Oh, we'll just do this…” It’s almost– it's patronizing. If you really want my voice, then please honor when I'm giving you resources. Use these resources because I know I'm able to do this work because of great sacrifices made by other adoptees who have really had to go through tremendous challenges just to even hold space, and I always want to honor that.

And so even before answering some questions, sometimes I may ask, “I'm curious–” I'll ask an audience, “What works have you digested? What works are you interested in?” Because I'm not speaking for all adopted people. That's a dangerous platform to be in. I can speak from a lived experience and through collectively, professionally, what themes are coming up within the work that's being done. But, “What else have you done?” as well. And I think then making a decision. ‘Do I want to teach here? Do I have the bandwidth?’ And I think for adoptees we need to learn how to take really good care of ourselves, value that space.

Haley Radke: I appreciate that challenge, truthfully, because I think, yeah, I'm kind of hoping for, like, the magic answer you can give when someone gives you one more paper cut.

But I love that idea of thinking about, ‘Okay. What is this really gonna serve in the long run? If I don't say something, or if I do…’ and really our self-care is really paramount.

Melanie Chung-Sherman: I think the self-compassion piece –I appreciate Dr. Kristen Neffs work on self-compassion– is paramount in a lot of the work I do, in terms of integrating and speaking into experiences, particularly when I'm working with clients who identify as adoptees.

We can really move into spaces quite quickly in terms of over-functionality, perfectionism. And it really is coming from genuine, visceral spaces and experiences that we've had. And so particularly when we move into the realms of advocacy and activism related to any kind of platform in adoption, the personal is political. The political is personal. The policies, initiatives… and then coupled with microaggressions, because those who hold space in terms of power and privilege– the dynamics have already been there for generations, they've been there for decades. And so holding self-compassion of, ‘When do I choose to bend the walls today? And when do I choose to take–’ it's not taking necessarily a step back, but a breath in. To be like, ‘You know what, I have done what I need to do in terms of the work.’ And if I'm doing that work, then part of that's going to entail really having a good therapist –I'm all about that, especially as a mental health professional– but then, even for myself, to be able to come back to someone with objectivity to really help center and actually just kind-of deconstruct and get in there and really talk through ‘What is my motivation for being here? What still fills me up? What helps keep me going? And what are the things right now, if I were to write these down and I were to name them out, the things that are exhausting me, the things that have been harmful?’

Because when we work in spaces where oppression and power dynamics are significant, I worry about individuals who say, “I'm not tired. I can do this all day long. None of it bothers me.’ Even that self-defense, what is that girding up in the spaces that are the most vulnerable? In the spaces that for many, at least for myself, it's hard to be vulnerable. Because vulnerability can also lead to abandonment ,and vulnerability is scary, and it's an unknown quantity. I, myself, I'm great at, like, I want control, I want predictability. I need to know what's here. Like, even before we came on, I knew that I had to have water, and coffee, or some kind of liquid. So all my close friends and colleagues know that it's a safety mechanism for myself, but it's also a compassion space of, like, ‘I know what I need,’ to take care of myself before I do.

But as we're talking about self-compassion, I think it's really important for adoptees in particular to really know what their limitation is. And I think that's hard when you're really beginning to put your voice out there and people are listening and you're getting feedback. It can be really addictive, it can be intoxicating. It can also be quite energy-draining. You know, Brené Brown talks about the “vulnerability hangover”, and I know whenever I speak specifically in spaces for adoption, I'm gonna need a good 24 hours of, like, a ‘social meeds’ cleanse, and a cleanse, like, in general, and really being with, ‘Who are the people that love me and support me? What are the things that bring me beauty and comfort?’ and when I have the energy and the time and space, then you know, ‘At what point do I wanna engage, and then at what point am I going to kind-of hold back a little bit?’

Haley Radke: Thank you so much for sharing that. I want to pause you because I think we are gonna talk more about this in our next episode. Thank you so much, Melanie. I really appreciate your thoughts on that and I think there's a lot of learning for us to do here. So I'm going to challenge people to take a few minutes and really think about what Melanie shared with us. In that, where can we connect with you online?

Melanie Chung-Sherman: So my website is mcscounsel.com, and you can also connect with me on Instagram @mcscounsel. And you can also connect through my professional Facebook page, you can just type in “Melanie Chung-Sherman, LCSW, PLLC,” and that will pull up the professional Facebook page.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Wow. Did that give you enough to ponder for, I mean, days and days and days? I think this is an episode that bears re-listening to, and I truly think there's so many pieces of the real, deep story of adoption that takes layers and layers of understanding. And Melanie hit on so many high points, so many. So I really think if you give this episode a re-listen, you're going to hear something different, probably the next, I don't know, 10 times you hear it. And this is a great place where we can have conversations like this is over in the Adoptees On Patreon group. I have monthly supporters of the show, if you want to join them, Adoptees on.com/partner, and we have several levels of benefits. One is a weekly podcast that's called Adoptees Off-Script. One is an adoptees-only Facebook group, and we have a lot of really good conversations in there. So those are some of the benefits to supporting the show, and plus then the show gets to continue and live in this world and help other adoptees.

So thanks for considering that. I really appreciate it. Adopteeson.com/partner if you want to join us, and if you want to say with your money that Adoptees On is important and you want it to keep existing with that.

Ooh, I'm so excited. Melanie's going to be back next week, so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our conversation next week.

Thanks so much for listening, let's talk again next Friday.

126 [Healing Series] Surviving the Holidays

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/126

---

Haley Radke: This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adopteeson.com/partner.

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 are taking your questions about surviving the holidays. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Lesli Johnson. Hi, Lesli.

Lesli A. Johnson: Hi, Haley. Glad to be here, as always.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh, so good. I love talking with you. You're so wise, and give us such good advice. So excited. I realized that our last “Surviving the Holidays,” (our very first episode together) was three years ago. So it's time to give it a refresh, hey?

Lesli A. Johnson: Okay, let's do it. I can't believe it's–that was that long ago, but I trust your math.

Haley Radke: I double checked on the website: 2016. So you gave us some really great tips, and I have reposted that episode multiple times. And I've even heard (I don't know if you know this), a couple of different support groups have played it at their meetings, and discussed your techniques and given their members extras. Oh, yeah.

Lesli A. Johnson: Wow! That's wonderful. I'm so glad to do that.

Haley Radke: It's so great. So, let's talk about it. Navigating the holidays as an adopted person…I mean, holidays are stressful for everybody anyway, right? There's all these expectations. There's all this stuff to do. Your calendar gets full. You've got, maybe, multiple commitments and all the things. So it's not–I mean, it's a big deal.

Lesli A. Johnson: It's a big deal. Yeah. I think it's a stressful time for many people, and I think you hit one of the keywords: expectations. So I always tell my clients, kind of approach the holidays with–maybe you can lower your expectations.

Because it's a set kind of a setup, I think, for disaster sometimes, if we have these expectations that everything is going to be perfect, or going into it expecting everything's going to be horrible. Maybe a better way might just be to expect that it's going to be however it is, and really embracing some self-care techniques and ways of working with…activate triggers or activations in the moment. Sort of prepping yourself and having a toolbox of stuff to pull from.

Haley Radke: I love that. Okay, let's start with that. What are just a couple things that we should just have in our toolkit, ready to go if we know that something's gonna be a challenging event?

Lesli A. Johnson: Okay. Well, I think the one thing (this isn't necessarily a tool)--but it's the acknowledgement that when we go back into our families that we grew up with, oftentimes we're immediately catapulted back into that role that we were in our family.

And our other family members treat us like the little sister, or the little girl who didn't have good table manners. And so if we can recognize that we might be doing our work all through the year, our extended family members may not. So again, I think it's about adjusting expectations in terms of practical tools.

You know, I think we talked about this, I guess three years ago (like you said), but just giving ourselves permission to remove ourselves from situations that are uncomfortable. I think as adopted people, a lot of times we had to kind of go along, and I think as adults we, it's okay to say, "Excuse me for a minute." And take a walk.

Or if you're sitting at the table and get activated, do some real grounding techniques: feeling your back against the chair and feeling your feet on the ground, just to kind of get back into your body.

Haley Radke: All right. I think we should dive into some questions from listeners.

So Lesli and I both asked on our social media, if you had questions about surviving the holidays and we got so many questions. It's quite the deal, so we are gonna get to as many as we can.

Now the first one is actually–I thought we would start here because so many of us, even just thinking about this, we're like thinking, Okay, we're juggling our families and maybe we're half juggling bio or adoptive. But I want to start here, because there are a lot of adopted people who have not connected with biological family, or are estranged from biological family, or their adoptive family–either by choice or they have been disowned for searching.

I mean, there is a huge amount of adopted people who are just on their own and they don't have that extended family, either bio or adopted.

So one of the questions we got was, "Am I wrong for not even being around any of my bio or adoptive families during the holidays?" Can you just talk to us about surviving the holidays if you are not connected to family? That can be really challenging and bring up a lot of feelings for someone.

Lesli A. Johnson: Sure. I think that's a really good point, is that a lot of times people don't have family to spend holidays with, and so what can they do in terms of taking care of themselves? Are there friends that they can connect with? Can they do something special for themselves? So I think, again, it's that self-care so that they don't have to maybe be by themselves.

Or alternatively, I know some people who actually use the holiday periods to do things on their own; that they really don't want to be around other people. And that's okay. It's–I think, again, giving yourself permission to do what feels good for you.

And if it doesn't feel good, if you're–if there's loneliness or anxiety, really checking in and seeing what might help with that. It might be that it's spending time with friends rather than family.

Haley Radke: I've also heard from a couple of people that have challenges with the holidays, that they will plan a trip to just get out of there, right? Like they will not just do stuff on their own (in their own city), but they will take a trip somewhere and go to a nice, warm place and they can think about other things rather than having maybe some of those familiar reminders of staying at home.

Lesli A. Johnson: Right, right. Yeah. I think about tradition and people… I think there's sometimes an expectation that generations have to carry on traditions. And I think there could be some intentionality there–picking and choosing what intentions the person wants to carry on and which ones they…

If they want to start a new tradition, and that might be taking a trip over the holidays. That's, personally, what my tradition is now with my partner. He does not care for the holidays for his own reasons. And so we do go away. We go away for a bit between over Christmas and New Year's.

And that has become our tradition and certainly our family members. Some of them were disappointed, but you know, that's okay. It's okay. I don't–I mean, this sounds sarcastic and I don't mean it to be, but nobody's ever (that I know of) has ever died from disappointment.

And, again, if (and I don't mean that sarcastically), although it sounds bad. It's just–it's okay to talk with our family members and explain why we're not gonna attend, that we're not comfortable, or that we're creating new traditions. And it's okay. It's okay to do that.

Haley Radke: Well, okay, so one of the questions is "Is it really okay to skip or change traditions for the sake of my mental health?" So yes, you're saying it's okay.

Lesli A. Johnson: I think it is okay. And I think others would agree. That's not to say that it's easy and it's not to say that people who are changing their families' traditions aren't gonna be met with unfavorable responses.

And again, it's okay. It's not about convincing other people to agree. It's just about stating with you and using "I" statements: "I'm not gonna be able to attend this year because I've made other plans," or "I'm not gonna be able to come to Christmas Eve because Uncle Joe repeatedly makes me uncomfortable."

Whatever the "I" statements are, but that it's not about convincing other people to agree. It's more about just being able to talk about our boundaries and limitations.

Haley Radke: All right. Let's talk about those conversations a little bit more. Here's a question: "I haven't told my adoptive parents that I'm spending Thanksgiving with the other side (which I think they're meaning their biological family). How do I be tactful and objective when maintaining boundaries rather than being defensive?"

Lesli A. Johnson: Hmm. That is a lot of question in that question, and I can't tell from the person if they actually want to share that they're gonna be spending Thanksgiving with the other side (presumably their biological family), or not.

But again, I think it's important to keep in mind that many adoptees have grown up in families where they had to do a lot of work to protect their adoptive parents. That they've been kind of conditioned to be the good kid, the good adoptive adoptee. And maybe for this person, that's asking that question, it's an opportunity to have a real honest conversation with their adoptive parents.

And again, the question wasn't completely specific, but I think that, just considering that they're no longer…The adoptee grows up, the adopted child grows up. So that they're no longer that child. And can they begin to have those adult conversations with their adoptive parents that include some of the hard, but honest parts?

Haley Radke: Okay. Let's do this. Can you give me two different statements they can use? So one is, "We're not going to Thanksgiving because we're going to spend it with someone else." Or, "We're not going to Thanksgiving. And we wanna keep it (the reason) private."

Lesli A. Johnson: Again, just being very honest, "Mom, Dad, we have this long-standing tradition of coming to your house for Thanksgiving and…"

Again, it's hard because I can't, I don't know if this person is in reunion, and if the parents know. But that could be an opportunity to say, "And since I have discovered I have more family, I'm choosing this year to spend part of the holiday with them."

And again, it's navigating a new dynamic, right? Couples have to do this all the time when they have to switch between their family that they grew up with and then their partner's family, back and forth. So it's having that hard conversation.

And again, "Because I'm in reunion, because I wanna be a part of Jim and Donna's life, because this is important to me–I'm choosing to spend Thanksgiving there," maybe. And then if, again, it could be an extended conversation. Maybe, "We could do something the following weekend." Only if that feels comfortable though, not to appease their decision.

Haley Radke: And then if we–maybe they don't know that we're in reunion, and we wanna keep that private.

What's the phrasing that we can use and how do we kind of shut it down if there's more questions that we're not ready to answer?

Lesli A. Johnson: Right. Which I'm guessing ultimately there would be, if you said something like, "I'm choosing this year to do something different." My guess is the natural response would be, "Well, what do you mean? What's different?"

The best thing to do would be to say, "I'd rather not share. I'm not comfortable sharing that right now."

Haley Radke: Okay. All right. That's, I mean, I think that's totally a fair statement and I think so many of us feel like we do owe people the whole story or we–but we don't we can keep, choose to keep things private if we'd like to.

Lesli A. Johnson: Right. And I–none of these conversations aren't necessarily easy, but in my opinion, that doesn't mean we should avoid them. So it's, again, it's reminding ourselves that we're–that we get to kind of pick and choose now, and that we can be honest and we (again), we don't have to convince anyone to agree with us.

Makes me think of the episode that we did on boundaries. It's just starting to establish boundaries and people don't… people that we're establishing boundaries around may not care for that. May not care for that at all.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Well, so here's a question in that same vein:

"Normally my family goes out of state to spend time with my family at Christmas. This year, I want to make that visit shorter in order to also spend time with my biological mother and her family. How can I explain this to my adoptive parents so they don't get upset?"

Oh, there's the key line right at the end there. "We don't want them to be upset."

Lesli A. Johnson: Right. And that's again, to my point, is there may not be an explanation that this person can give his or her parents that won't make them upset. But it's being able also to, you know, "This year, I've chosen to spend some time with my birth mother and her family," and his parents (his adoptive parents) get to feel however they want to feel.

They can feel disappointed, they can feel angry, they can… Again, it's–we can't change how they're gonna react. But when it's explained in a way of, "This is what I need to do this holiday." That it can–it's again, we're not…

Haley Radke: You can't keep everyone happy all the time. It's just not possible.

Lesli A. Johnson: Right, right. That's absolutely true. A lot of times the holidays is sort of the one time of year that maybe we do see family in person. And so, I think that lots of people save up their hard conversations for in-person, because they don't want to do it over text or email (which is–that's a good idea).

However, maybe doing it during the holidays, when things are a little bit charged as it is–I don't know if that's the best idea. Okay. Here's a question from a listener:

"I've determined that I'm never going to have a non-hurtful talk with my adoptive mom about my feelings as an adoptee. I'm pretty 'out' [in quotation marks] with most other people, but I have set this boundary with my mom. I also don't want to hide my feelings anymore, but how do I navigate this?"

Lesli A. Johnson: Yeah, so I think that's really wise. So again, it's practicing all these other skills to maintain, like self-regulation. So it sounds like she's already aware that she's probably gonna get activated while she's in the holiday, the midst of the holidays.

So, what are some things she can do? She can give herself permission to take a break, right? Whether that means go outside, have a support person on speed dial that she can call and connect with (someone who really understands her).

She mentioned that she had friends that understood her. Remind herself that this is temporary, that this period (and I think it's a good one for all of us to remember), that this is the period of the year, and it's temporary. It's gonna have a beginning and an end. And again, she can maybe make (if she's gonna be visiting her parents), maybe she can make arrangements to see other people. I don't know what the exact circumstances, but kind of balance it out and using the tools that she has in her toolbox.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you. Let's keep going. Okay. This is sort of a question about language, but there… Boy, there's a whole lot here. So let's see. Okay, let's see what we get to.

"I find myself using language like 'my family' [in quotation marks] when talking about my adopted family to my bios and 'this family' or 'your family' [in quotation marks] when referring to biological family. I think it kind of hurts them."

Okay, so this adoptee is saying, "my family" for adoptive family and "your family," or "this family," when talking about bio family. And then she asks, "Is this something I need to work on? It feels like I'm in between families, so any I give to one side, the other isn't satisfied. I need to figure out a way forward if I'm going to be spending more time with my biological family."

And then she's got a few more questions, which I'll get to. First, let's talk about this language thing. So I think she's feeling like saying "my family" is like the higher level of family, maybe? It's almost like a ranking? Maybe that's what the bio family feels like.

Lesli A. Johnson: Yeah. I think those are conversations to have with everyone involved. Right? So I think language is important, and at the same time, if we can talk about it in an open way… I guess I'm just thinking about–I've worked with a lot of people when adoptive parents, when their child maybe refers to their birth mother as "mom," rather than, forgetting to say "birth mother." And talking to parents and explaining, that they get to call whoever whatever they want, whether it's a first name, or if they forget to say "birth" before mother, then it doesn't have to have that much meaning.

Haley Radke: Or if they choose that. You're choosing to say "Mom."

Lesli A. Johnson: I would encourage this person to talk to everyone involved and find a language that maybe feels comfortable for her, but also maybe she can put herself at ease by expressing just what she did in that question. Does she–is there something there she can maybe unpack, too? What does it mean, "my family"? What does that mean to her? What does it mean "your family"?

And, again, she's saying feels like she's balancing. Well, that is exactly what it is, right? When you're in reunion, you're navigating two kind of worlds. But I think there's no–I think that it would be a conversation that she could have both with her adoptive family and her birth family and just say, "I'm not really sure what's happening here, and I'm still working on the language that feels right to me."

Haley Radke: So she says, "I need to figure out a way forward if I'm going to be spending more time with my biological family. Love is limitless, but finances are not. How do you decide who to visit and when? How do you be secure in your decision and not apologize for it?"

Gee, how do you decide that, Lesli?

Lesli A. Johnson: I don't know. I don't know if even if we talked for the rest of the time about that, if I could answer it. I mean, my first thought is approaching it in a very kind of mindful way of just sort of moment-to-moment, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month.

And not making a big decision about how she's gonna spend…how she's going to spend future holidays or future time, but looking at it at each visit or each phone call. You know, checking in, like, How does this feel? Does this feel good? Do I wanna keep going and pursuing this relationship?

I guess by the tone of the question, it sounds like it's a newer relationship, so (like all relationships), just checking in and What does this feel like? And being aware of times when she might be making decisions based on someone else's expectation of her.

Haley Radke: I totally–this is what I was thinking. I was like, You know what? It's only been in my thirties (true story) that I have taken into account what I want. And so many of us, I think, have (just as you said before), right? We're trying to please our adoptive families. We don't wanna rock the boat, and yet you get to decide what feels good for you, and of course we have the obligations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

However, we get to choose. And I like that idea of more "in the moment" decisions like you don't have to sit down today and be like, "Oh, let's make our 10 year plan and what is the most fair to everyone and this year it's this family…" and that it doesn't have to be like that.

Lesli A. Johnson: No, and I think it can, I think relationships can evolve naturally when there is that application of kind of just like more of a moment-to-moment awareness.

Haley Radke: And I think you've already addressed a little bit about this, but "How do you be secure in your decision and not apologize?" I think that's really, some of the boundaries piece you were just kind of speaking to and some of the other questions and just having that honest conversation.

And you don't have to explain yourself, right?

Lesli A. Johnson: You don't have to explain yourself. And I think part of it is also being able to sit with some of the discomfort. So, if I decide I'm not gonna spend Christmas Eve with the people that I normally spend it with.

And I let them know that in a clear way, and they're angry, I have to then use my tools to sit with that anger, or that disappointment, and (again), it's not my job to convince someone to agree with me. And I'm saying I don't– it could be you, it could be anyone, but it's learning to sit with the discomfort of someone else not agreeing with us or (again), being disappointed.

Haley Radke: All right. Next question. "This is my first year in reunion. I've done my best to reach out to everyone and keep lines of communication open because that's the standard I want to set. But where is the line between setting a standard and bending over backward for people who aren't putting in the same amount of effort?"

Oh boy. I think we've all been there.

Lesli A. Johnson: That speaks, I think, to what I mentioned earlier about the idea of expectation. So, we're all responsible for doing our work, and we can't make (or even necessarily expect) others to do their work. So I think it's, again, it's taking, it's practicing self-care and then hoping that other people will eventually do their work or will get up to speed, but not having that be the expectation, necessarily.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And you know what I'm kind of reading into this question a little bit is, talking about bending over backward for people who aren't putting in the same amount of effort.

Don't you picture that honeymoon stage where you're, oh my goodness, you're so invested, and you're connecting with all these different people. And this could be maybe siblings, or cousins, or aunts and uncles, and you're figuring out all these different relationships and it's a lot to juggle.

And yet for some people they're like, "Oh, there's a new person. Okay." And it's not as big of a deal as it is for us. And how do you kind of like "right-size" that in yourself without taking it as a rejection?

Lesli A. Johnson: Well, I think (again), it's managing those expectations, and recognizing that reunion means, I think, different things for different people.

And if this particular person is saying that she's all in and she's being truthful and transparent. And bending over backwards for people who aren't doing their work. I might say, maybe look at that. Where can you put your energy?

Where else can you put your energy where that allows you to feel a little bit more fulfilled? Maybe she can stop, or cut back on bending over backwards if it's not reciprocal. Right?

Haley Radke: Yeah, I think, I mean, there's gotta be a point, right? Where you realize it's not reciprocal and then make that decision like, "Okay, well maybe they're not as into it" or, whatever, like that's okay, right? Okay. Interesting. All

All right, let's shift the tone a little bit. Here we go. Oprah's gift guide. No. What is it called? Oprah's favorite things. Yeah, Oprah's favorite things. Here we go. We have a couple questions. Lesli, here we go.

"What gifts should I send my birth father and his family? Do you have any ideas?”

Lesli A. Johnson: Oh, I thought I did not see this coming.

Haley Radke: Okay. Here's one other question. No, I, oh, just wait. It's related. Gift giving with newly found bio relatives. Yea or nay, help. Lesli's quick. She's quickly like looking at Amazon. She's…

Lesli A. Johnson: I'm guessing there's not…The search isn't gonna have “best gifts to give to biological dad.”

Well, I mean, I could easily use some help in this one, Haley, but I would say what I mean…I don't know, books? A journal-like journal that they can document the progress of their reunion? I'm really trying here.

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. You're actually giving gift ideas. I don't know what I've–I pictured you being like, “Well, what's your budget? And think about what (sort of) you want to do going forward and what's your normal family tradition?” I thought that's where we were gonna go and you're gonna give us a list. This is perfect.

Lesli A. Johnson: I don't know. I would probably think, you know, something…It could be a book. You don't–let's say, You Don't Look Adopted. That'd be a great book, right? Then maybe a journal. What would you–what's your suggestion?

Haley Radke: I was trying to think what I gave my first….Well, I'll tell you, I have had some gift giving misadventures. So I feel like this is a little bit tricky. What I think is, it's okay to have a conversation about it. And say, "Oh, is your family–do you guys give gifts at Christmas? Do you do that? What's usually your price range?" I think it's okay to say some of those things. Because, as I said, I myself had some misadventures in that area, so I think it's okay to talk about it.

Another thing I did with my bio siblings–we've been in reunion almost nine years now. We started, we actually–I had the conversation with them and we started doing a gift exchange where we draw names and so… I mean, do it however you want, but having the conversation about it to set up, "What does this look like? We've never done this before. Do you guys give gifts or are you more an experience family? Do you just call each other on Christmas or whatever? Any holiday that you celebrate, do you (I don't know), exchange Christmas cards?"

This is another question: "Do I send my birth mother my Christmas card this year? She's never responded to me, ever." I mean, those traditions (including gift giving)... I'm gonna go default on Lesli, what Lesli always says: have the conversation about it.

Lesli A. Johnson: I think it's that you have a…I had that conversation with my biological family (which is my birth mother, Candace, and then her brother, and her brother's wife), and we just decided they're not big on gifts. That was pretty easy. But I think if you don't have the conversation and make assumptions, that's not a great way to go either. But the conversation, and then a monetary limit, and… I mean, it would be really hard to give something to someone that if, especially if you just are getting to know them, right?

Haley Radke: Well, okay, I'm picturing this: you are like, Oh my gosh, it's our first union reunion. Here's my chance. And I am a gift giver. So I-– gifts is my love language. And you plan it all out, and you have this thoughtful gift, and you send this journal that you can write back and forth and you send… And then you don't get anything. Right? Think about just how devastated that could make someone, so if you don't have the conversation, or even just be like, "Oh, I'm dropping your parcel in the mail today." Letting them know something's coming so that they know, Oh, this is a gift giving situation.

Lesli A. Johnson: Right, right. Yeah. And all that could be avoided if you have that initial conversation, right?

Haley Radke: Yep. And Lesli is gonna drop her 10 things list of: Things to Give Your Dad.

Lesli A. Johnson: No. A little bit. That's a little bit more thorough.

Haley Radke: Okay. All right. Well, I think that was our most lighthearted question. We have just a couple more, some heavy stuff coming up.

"I have the worst time with holidays. Growing up, I never wanted to go to family gatherings because I obviously didn't fit in, and I felt uncomfortable in my adoptive family. I no longer associate with them, but now I feel the same way gathering with my fiancé's family. It's uncomfortable and a huge trigger for me to drink. I'm a recovering alcoholic. How can I help myself feel more comfortable in family gatherings, when I've never fit into a family and my main goal is to be accepted?"

Lesli A. Johnson: I guess I'm thinking about again, ways this person can take care of themselves in the midst of feeling uncomfortable. So, my first thought was, Where can she get the support that she needs?

So again, maybe she has a friend, or a support her go-to person on speed dial that she can kind of touch base with. Does she, has she shared with her fiancé what her earlier experiences were growing up? The holidays that she had with her family growing up, and why they were painful? And can she let him in on that, so that he's a part of that so that he has an awareness.

And then what can she do while she's there? Again, some of these just very practical grounding techniques can be really helpful when she gets triggered. This may sound really silly, but just even breathing. And if you're sitting at the dinner table and you're starting to feel uncomfortable, but you don't want to get up and walk away, just start taking breaths. And it doesn't have to be obvious, but there's a little trick, where if you exhale a little bit longer than you inhale. So if you breathe in for a couple counts, and you exhale for–breathe in for two or three counts and exhale for four counts, that activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the "breaks" of our nervous system.

So it calms us down. Nobody has to see you do that. Maybe she can, maybe, if it's possible, she can attend a meeting before something that she knows is going to be really triggering. And again, having a person that she can reach out to. If it's not, if it's a friend or someone–that sponsor, someone that she can contact if things get really uncomfortable for her.

Haley Radke: I have a couple questions about that, I guess. I don't really know too much about recovery, or if people like, share that–if people would know that she's a recovering alcoholic? What are your thoughts on making sure there's no alcohol at the event? Is that something people do? Do they, like, reach out and say, "Oh, can we keep this a dry event? Because I know someone's coming that's in recovery." Is that something…? I don't know.

Lesli A. Johnson: Yeah, I think it differs for everyone. I mean, I certainly know people who are in recovery that being around alcohol isn't an issue for them– isn't a trigger for them and others who it is. And so I guess that again, would be a conversation for she and her fiancé to have, well before they go to the holiday events, right? And if that's something that is–if having that around maybe it would automatically mean she wouldn't be able to attend if that was a trigger for her. But again, having this conversation prior with her fiancé.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And then the other thing is I was thinking like, do you have to go to things like this? There's always that choice as well, right? Have the conversation, yes. And say, "You know what? I'm just really not comfortable at big family gatherings. Is there one or two people in your family that you really want to connect with over the holidays? Can we have them over here for supper?"

Like an alternate way that she can still be involved with the family, but it doesn't have to be on such a mass scale. I don't know. I think that's a hard thing to ask for, but I think that might be a healthy thing to do. What do you think?

Lesli A. Johnson: Yep. I think that's a great idea and I think just even the wording of this question, “How can I help myself feel more comfortable in family gatherings? Gatherings when I've never fit in, and the main goal is to be accepted?” So I think that is a theme for a lot of people who are adopted. This idea of fitting in and I don't fit in. I would say now as an adult, finding places where you do fit in. So rather than trying to fit into places that you don't feel comfortable, find places where you really do feel comfortable and let that, let those places, and those experiences be your guide.

I think that's what we strive to do. I think in your work, and certainly in my work, is helping people find community. And whether that's an online community or in-person community. But those are places where adopted people feel like they fit in and don't have to make accommodations or, kind of change, or turn into shape shifters so that they fit in. They just are ultimately–they're accepted, just as they are.

Haley Radke: Right. And you can choose what things you want to participate in and what things aren't…I think I've said this a few times today, that there's this obligation and then there's all these events and things like…we don't have to do any of those things. Like we don't have to.

Lesli A. Johnson: It's true. I think though, and I absolutely agree with you… I think that has to be a real intentional thought process, though, because for many adopted people, they've had to go along. They've had to try to fit into their adoptive family. And so that's kind of a conditioning.

And so this idea that as an adult, Hey, you're right, I don't have to try to fit in. I can find places where I already know I fit in and I can say no, and I can… I think your idea of talking to a partner and saying, "I don't feel comfortable in big family events. Let's have a couple people over to the house." Or you could say, "I don't feel comfortable, but I really know it's important for you. So is it okay if you go by yourself?" I mean, some people might think that's horrific, but actually, no. It's okay.

Haley Radke: It's okay. I love that. Okay, this question is from a late discovery adoptee. She has a lot of hurt feelings towards her adoptive sisters who are older than her, and they knew she was adopted and they helped to keep the secret.

"My sisters have always been around me and never told me the truth out of respect for my adoptive mom. Eleven years ago, my adoptive mom wanted to tell me that I was adopted before she died of lung cancer, but I was four months pregnant and she didn't want me to be affected in any way. I know they love me and they wanted to protect me, but I'm still so hurt. How do I get over this?"

And so I imagine she's going to be seeing her sisters in the holidays and oh my goodness, this is like– Late discovery adoptee, this is like a life-changing thing. And this has just–she's just found out in this year that she was adopted.

Lesli A. Johnson: I think… and that sounds so difficult. And I think we could apply what we've been talking about this, for this whole episode is: perhaps (this year), a holiday gathering isn't something that she wants to attend. Making that… Checking in and deciding, is it something that is in her best interest this year? Or does she need a little more time?

If she's processing her anger. And it's not about, I don't think, getting over feelings. It's about moving through them, right? So she just may need more time to process what she's going through, and giving herself permission not to attend. If she decides to attend, all the other things that we've talked about: taking breaks, if she normally stays in the family home, maybe she'll decide to stay somewhere else at a more neutral place. Or if it's going to be…normally it's a week-long visit, maybe it's cut short to a couple days? Again, just permission to take care of herself.

Haley Radke: Can you give us some ways to say, "I don't want to talk about that right now?"

Right, because I think at events like this, there–especially when there's something like simmering under the surface, right? I think, sometimes conversations can veer into territory that we don't want to go there, because we're worried that something's going to erupt, right? So how can you say, "I don't wanna talk about that right now" in a polite way?

Lesli A. Johnson: Well, I think you could say, "You know what? I'm not comfortable talking about that right now." And you could just keep repeating that. And if someone doesn't respect that, you can put some distance between that person and yourself. I mean, there's, I think that's, "I'm not comfortable talking about that right now and I…" That can be adoption related stuff, family related stuff, politics, any… Imagining this year there's going to be a lot of people saying, "I'm not comfortable talking about that right now."

Haley Radke: Okay. That's great. There's another podcast I listen to and one of their favorite ways (it's kind of become a joke now), one of the favorite ways they just say, "Oh that's interesting. Can you pass the bean dip?" That's been, like, the way of getting out of those uncomfortable topics.

Lesli A. Johnson: That's interesting. That's interesting. Like that.

Haley Radke: I've never had an event that had bean dip at it, but I mean, I guess…? Okay. And even when I asked you the question, I was like, Ooh, how do you ask this while being polite?

You don't have to be polite. And even I–your answer is polite, I do think. But you also don't necessarily need to be, like, protecting yourself from getting triggered, protecting yourself from perhaps exploding, or crying, or whatever things that you might not want to do publicly. Like you'd rather run to the bathroom to have a good cry, or whatever. I think it's totally fair to just be like, "Nope, we're not going there right now."

Lesli A. Johnson: Right. Right. And again, the goal isn't the goal is not having everyone like us, agree with us, or be okay. It–that might make someone angry that we're unwilling to talk about something that makes us uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean we have to do it.

We don't– it's perfectly okay to say, "You know what, I'm really not comfortable talking about that right now," or, "I'm really not comfortable talking about that. Period." Not saying, “period,” but you know, not even inviting the conversation for another time.

Haley Radke: Right. Okay. That's a really good point. That's a really good point. The other thing I just wanted to go back to this late discovery adoptee that's asking a question. I think if you're able to, I think it'd be really important for you to start processing some of this with a therapist and if you want to (or if possible), you could also do that with your sisters if you're hoping to repair the relationship.

How do you think about that, Lesli? Having a mediated conversation with a therapist? I know. I know what you're gonna say.

Lesli A. Johnson: Absolutely, in any of these conversations… So any of these questions that people have asked, having that extra support of working with a therapist that gets adoption, that gets reunion, that gets–that understands family would just be an added benefit for sure.

And if her–it sounds like she cares about her sisters and if the sisters are willing to be a part of that healing journey–yes, absolutely. Great idea.

Haley Radke: All right, here is our last question.

"I was adopted around this time of year at a young age. My mother's Christmas gift was actually a paper stating my name had been officially changed."

Oof. Can I just say, yikes? Maybe this person loved this. I don't know. That for me is a yikes. Okay. Back to the question. Naturally, this time of year is more emotionally charged.

"I'm thinking about sitting my mom down and asking more questions about my story. I'm informed, but there are questions I've been scared to ask, but I don't really know how to go about it or even if I should, lest it trigger things."

Oooh. Okay. Now this question is one that I was sort of alluding to earlier when I was like, "Is now the best time to have these big conversations?"

Lesli A. Johnson: Right. Right. And that's a–I mean, that's a good question for the person to ask themselves: if already this time of year is activating for this person, maybe wait until after the holidays to ask more questions.

But certainly, if the questions are important and wanting to have more information, I think it certainly is a great conversation to have. But I agree with you. Maybe this time of year (around the holidays) isn't the best time.

Haley Radke: I mean, I think–I said this much earlier, when I was saying how this might be the only time we're in person with people. And so we feel like there's this extra sense of importance and Okay, now we can finally do this thing.

Lesli A. Johnson: Okay. So that's, yeah… If that's the case, I might suggest this person talking to (maybe to) her mom now and saying, "We're gonna be together over the holidays and can we schedule a time where we could go (just the two of us can go) and have tea, or have coffee? And there's some things I wanna talk about."

So kind of like laying the foundation for that conversation, and then be intentional about following up once they're together.

Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. I love that. That's so good. I didn't even think of that because it's…I don't know. I think sometimes when we–when this has been building and building, right?

And then you're at Christmas dinner or whatever, and you're like, Okay, now that it's out there, let's have this conversation when we're all three drinks in. And in front of everyone. Yeah. I mean, there's a time and place. Okay. That's so good. That's so good, Lesli. Okay. Thank you so much for such thoughtful answers, good advice.

I love so many takeaways. Is there anything else you want to just leave us with as we go into this season? Knowing that some things are gonna be challenging, we might be balancing a couple different things. Any tools or any last thoughts before we wrap up?

Lesli A. Johnson: Sure. I think it's just important to manage expectations, remind ourselves that this time is temporary. Enjoy the parts that can be enjoyed–put a lot of focus on those parts. Make sure we have our support systems intact, so we need to connect with them. And also just, I think, reminding ourselves that we can't please everyone and not everyone's gonna agree with the decisions that we make when it comes to taking care of ourselves and–but that's okay.

Haley Radke: And my two cents–You guys, I'm not a therapist. I podcast in my basement. My two cents is, we also get to decide what our celebrations look like or what our traditions…all of those things. We can start new any year and make our own traditions, our own celebrations. And giving some thought ahead of time to what we want things to look like, I think, is for… And what is within our own power to do. I think that's really been a healthy thing for me to do with my immediate family, especially. And I don't know, I think having those thoughtfully planned out things is, like, great. And there's also the spur of the moment, celebratory things we can do with friends. I think there's a lot of ways we can build in some nice things for ourselves during a season that can be so stressful.

Lesli A. Johnson: Absolutely. I completely agree with that. Yeah, we can't change others' reactions, but we can really take care of ourselves and it, like you said, there's–it's always okay to start new traditions.

Haley Radke: Awesome. All right. Wow, thank you so much. I loved that conversation. It was so fun, and I look forward to seeing your "Top 10 List" of things you should buy your new family for Christmas. Newly-found family, I should say.

Lesli A. Johnson: Perfect. I'm gonna start on that right now.

Haley Radke: Okay. And so we don't miss that. Where can we connect with you online?

Lesli A. Johnson: You can connect with me at my website, askadoption.com, Instagram at Ask Adoption, and Facebook at Ask Adoption, and Twitter @LesliAJohnson.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thanks so much, Lesli.

Oh my gosh. I love talking with Lesli, and I love teasing her. I don't think she's actually gonna write us a list of 10 key things we should gift, but that would be awesome if she did. Anyway, I hope that this was helpful for you, that you had some good takeaways of things that you can do to navigate this season, which is often a fraught time.

Anyway, I want to say a huge thank you to people who have been giving me something amazing, and that is their monthly support. Thank you. Without you, I literally could not keep doing this podcast, so thank you. I'm just so grateful. I've said thank you a million times. I'm gonna keep saying it. If you want to join them, go to adopteeson.com/partner.

It has the details of what you get as bonuses for your monthly support. There's even a whole other podcast I do. You guys, you're really missing out if you haven't heard Adoptees Off-script. There are some very candid conversations happening over there that are just too private to share on this main feed.

So adopteeson.com/partner has the details for that. I also want to thank those of you who share the show on social media. Those of you who have shared with your adoptees' support groups, those of you that have told one friend about an episode of the show that was meaningful for you. And that just means so much to me.

Adoptees On only grows when you share the show, and I'm so thankful when you do. And I can't respond to every tag, every DM, every email. It's just not in my capacity. But I do read as many as I can, and I'm so thankful for those of you who have sent thoughtful, lovely emails thanking me for the show. And you know who you are.

I'm just so grateful for your kind words. It sounds like I'm wrapping up. I'm not. We are gonna have a few more new episodes before the end of the year. I will let you know when our wrap-up date is, and then when you can expect new episodes back. I'm gonna guess mid-January. So thanks so much for listening.

Let's talk again, next Friday.

123 [Healing Series] Examining Reunion

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/123

---

Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This show is listener supported. You can join us and help our show grow to support more adoptees by going to adoptees on.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm your host, Haley Radke. 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 are talking about reunion. Let's listen in.

I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On Lesli Johnson. Hi, Lesli.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Hi. Thank you.

Haley Radke: So excited to talk to you. I know you've got tons of stuff going on, and in your practice you are seeing so many different things come into your [00:01:00] office every day. Mostly connected to adoption. I'm assuming at this point

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: a lot of adoption, lots of trauma, trauma stuff, but yes a good portion of my work now is with the adoption and foster care community.

Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. So you sent me a note a little while ago saying that you were seeing something pretty regularly and wanted to kinda talk us through a little bit. Why don't you go ahead and tell us the thing that you keep seeing pop up and why you think it's important for us to talk about it.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Okay, sure. So it's something that I've thought about quite regularly and in the last several months, maybe even a year or two, but it's become more frequent and it came up in the last teen group that I facilitate. So it's a teen group of adoptees, and they were talking about who knew their biological parents or knew some of their biological relatives and who didn't, and age kept coming up, and one, one participant [00:02:00] said, what's this? What's with this 18? My parents keep saying at 18 we'll help you search. And I think that's that a lot of us have even heard that, even my parents didn't say that, but I know a lot of other adoptees whose parents said, “Oh, when you're 18 we'll help you search”.

And it got me to thinking more and more, who did? Who did decide on that number? And you and I were talking before we started recording, it, it feels like another one of those bits of information that someone at some point wrote down and that everyone has adhered to and really as adoptees, what we're trying to do now, I think, is break down some of these this arbitrary information and look at it on an individual basis and see, see where we can fill in some information so that kids don't have to be sitting in math class wondering, “huh, I wonder if my birth mom would recognize me if she saw me. I wonder if I have siblings. I wonder if my birth parents are even alive”. [00:03:00] So it just got me to thinking about why 18 and and. I certainly have families in my practice that I'm working with who are helping their kids find information much at a much earlier age.

Haley Radke: So this is interesting to me because, if you look at what the cultural view of adoption right now, it's like, well adoption. It's it's either international or it's open. What is there, what's search, what's reunion? What are you talking about for young people? Are you talking about cases that's like still closed adoptions or…

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I am! because I believe that we, that as a society we are moving towards more openness in adoption and we've definitely You and I've talked before the varying degrees of openness, but there are still a lot of parents who, I wouldn't call them completely closed adoptions. They're sharing information on paper with their kids. But there are a lot of young kids who want to meet their siblings, meet their biological relatives and [00:04:00] adoptive parents are often filled with a lot of different questions, a lot of their own anxieties about that and wanting to know how to navigate that process.

Haley Radke: Okay. This is interesting. Before we talk about actually should we do this, should we not, You see adoptive parents as clients? Yeah?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I do. I see.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah,

Haley Radke: so you can tell us, like pull back the curtain.

An adoptive parent comes to see you and says, “my child is asking questions and this is making me feel…” Like what ?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: so what's the concern?

Haley Radke: Yeah. The adoptive parent, 'cause as adult adoptees, a lot of us are looking at the situation and thinking, of course we want connection with our family of origin and we want, genetic mirroring sooner and all of those kinds of things.

So what's in an adoptive parent's head when we're bringing that question to [00:05:00] them?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think it's a lot of anxiety. I think it's a lot of what I'm not good enough or what aren't I doing or saying that they need more. I think a lot of their, it depends too on how much work adoptive parents have done how much of their own personal work that they've done related as it relates to adoption.

And I think the threat threatened that that they're gonna lose their child somehow, or that their child's gonna like their biological relatives more. I think a lot of, yeah, a lot of insecurity and wondering how it's gonna relate, how it's gonna affect their relationship with their child.

Haley Radke: Okay. Thank you. So, a kid is asking these questions and the adoptive parent comes to you either in their own session or, you're having this conversation with the family. What goes through your mind? Are you? Like we've already said, 18 is this arbitrary number. What should, this is a big question. What should [00:06:00] Reunion like, when should it happen?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I just don't even think I really don't think there's, I think it's an individual case by case. Situation. And again, reunion can look like a lot of different things too. I think that if we're always looking at it from the adopted person's or child's perspective and what's in the best interest for the child.

I encourage parents, once I normalize, that their child's curiosity and questions and desires. That's a real normal thing and. I really try to help parent adoptive parents be their child's best advocate. With all the information kids can get, even young kids, can get on social media, and I've seen this all too often in my office, where kids will find out a lot of things about their biology.

They'll find out that they have brothers, sisters, cousins, and they're getting that information from, Instagram or Facebook, rather than getting it from their parents who could actually help them. [00:07:00] Process some of the information. So once I normalize that their child's curiosities, we, I suggest, what can you share and what do you know?

And I'm working with a family right now that they have a 7-year-old and. She wants to meet her biological siblings and her biological mom, and it's gonna be a slow process and it's, we're gonna make sure that it's safe. And I don't even mean physically safe, but of course that's something to take into consideration.

But psychologically safe, because is this person going to, is this person able to maintain a relationship? Is this a pers is the biological parent or the biological family, are they gonna be reliable to, to stay in their. Their child's life. So it's different for everyone, but it's, again, it frees up a lot of, can free up a lot of head space for a child or a teenager who's thinking about this all of the time.

Haley Radke: And this is like peak identity formation [00:08:00] time, right? So you're already thinking about that. Exactly. So say I am the teenage adoptee. What is something that I could say to my adoptive parents that to open the door say, to let them know, I kinda wanna know more information, I might wanna search, I need your help with this versus, looking through file folders when they're away and doing your own Instagram stalking,

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: which has happened. I spoke, I was recently invited to speak at a school here in Los Angeles, and they. It's an exceptional school and that they have a large population of adoptees and they started a group two, two teen adoptees, started a group where they meet every week at lunchtime and they screen movies and all this really cool stuff around supporting each other.[00:09:00]

With regard to adoption, and they told their advisor, “we would like our parents to have some kind of group like this”. And so the advisor, who was also coincidentally adopt, was adopted, invited me to come to speak to this group of parents. And I talked about this. I talked about openness and sharing information.

And one of the parents. She was really, she had told her child that the a the, again, the age 18. And I think it, what happened was that it made the child go behind, just like what you said, go behind the parents' back. And so I guess to answer your question of what can a, what can an adopted person say to their parents, I still wish it would be

Why is the onus on the adoptee? Why? but that's the way it is. So I guess it would be just approaching their parent and say, “I think about this all the time. It would really be helpful if you could help me search, search before [00:10:00] I go to college. Search. I can get your support when I'm still in, when I'm your emotional support and have you help me navigate this while I'm still living at home”.

Haley Radke: When you say that the onus feels, still feels like it's on the adoptee because it often is even in asking that question, I'm thinking like, okay, and we still have to like, protect their feelings and, you gave us that insight what does it look like when the adoptive parent comes to see you?

Yeah. And what are their fears? And this is all just really tricky conversations.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: It's tricky and I guess when you were just saying that I thought to myself, okay, how can I word this, it exactly what you're saying? Like, how can I word this in the right way so that they know I'm not, that I love them.

I love them, but I really want, I'm really curious about this, and that's. That's where there's still has to be so much work done.

Haley Radke: I appreciate having this conversation with you. 'cause I think back to, I was born in the eighties, right? And we weren't really [00:11:00] having these conversations with our adoptive parents.

Like our, I think a lot of our adoptive parents were trained to just be like. Just pretend like they're totally yours and this is not really a thing. And then, like they won't need to look and it was all swept under the rug. So just the fact that there's already, people coming to see you, not necessarily 'cause their child is in crisis of some sort, but just to get tools and like I think that's such a big deal that already these conversations are opening up more.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yes.I agree with you. I agree with you and I mean that I feel like that's the way we're progressing in terms of just more openness in general and whether that be openness in the family, talking about it, openness in helping kids find out their information. Yeah. That and that adoptive parents can be so useful when they act as their child's [00:12:00] advocates.

Haley Radke: So one thing that I really appreciate about being in reunion with my dad right now is that it happened before I had children of my own. So my kids just have always had my bio dad in their life. They just don't even know any different. And so looking at it from, my kid's frame of mind and then looking at, a young adopted person. Okay, of course, safety is number one. I'm putting that on the list, but what are your ideas about is sooner better? I know that's all individual to tailored to each situation, but if you had some kind of sweeping themes you could give us about like pros of reunion. As a younger adopted person.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I do think it's a case by case and exploring what, what's happening presently. [00:13:00] That's, that the adopted person or the adopted child is wanting to know and is it related to, something that's not just I just that I just wanna know this information or I'm just curious about it.

And again, just exploring that, and sharing, what would it be like? I don't know if you could answer this, but I think to myself, what would it have been like for me if I didn't, think that my lunch lady could be my birth mother or think that my mom's best friend might have been, because she had a lot of kids and maybe she knew that my mom couldn't have biological children, so she maybe just gave one of her kids to my mom. What would it have been like to not have to think about that or not, wonder if my birth parents were going to return and take, take me home with them. So again it's openness and in some cases that means reunion.

Haley Radke: And it also though can just be having a name, to take them out of the, Betty [00:14:00] Jean Lifton and start like out of the ghost kingdom into reality.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Exactly. And that was something I emphasize when I worked with adoptive parents is, and I've been saying birth mother or the birth mother, first mother, first parents, but use their name.

Make, when you're talking about your child's biological parent or relative or sibling, use their name, make them a real person. I think that also helps parents contextualize and, I don't know, be more accepting that it's not “that person” or “her” or “the birth mother”, to me, that feels so, I don't know what the, I don't know what the word is. It feels so, inhumane maybe.

Haley Radke: I'm trying to think. I can't help you. It's depersonalizing, it's like they're the historic, the fairy. Like it's fairy, right?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Right. Yeah. It's depersonalizing. A couple years ago was working with a [00:15:00] teenager and his family, and he. He found that he had many, several siblings, he found 'em on social media and his parents were very open.

They knew that he was looking and they were helping him look. And, because they had done their own work, they weren't threatened. When he said, “I wanna meet them”. They contacted some of the, in particular, he wanted to meet two of his brothers or his half brothers. And, the parents contacted their parents and made sure that it was, again, in everyone's best interest and set up the meetings and drove, a couple states away to have their kids meet each other. And the result of that was profound on my client. It was profound. Because he didn't have to, he didn't have to imagine this, these people anymore.

He didn't have to imagine his siblings. He was able to see them and talk to them and see someone that looked like him.

Haley Radke: Going back to the idea [00:16:00] that reunion looks like a lot of different ways and I recently had Dr. Sue Green on the podcast and she was talking about how they don't call it search and reunion through the organization she's a part of Vanish. They call it “search and contact” because you don't know what. Is gonna happen at that point of contact. You don't know if there's actually gonna be a reunion.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yes.

Haley Radke: So do you have any other thoughts on that? Like not necessarily looking for a reunion, perhaps, when you're taking it slow, as you said with this other client of yours.

What does a slow reunion, what does contact, like slow contact look like? What is a, like a really healthy look at this for a young person to be going through?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think part of it is, it can even just be conversation. So if a young child is talking about wanting [00:17:00] to meet, when is he gonna be able to meet his biological mom. And parents might just be able to open the conversation. “what would you like her to know about you? What would you like, what would you like to share? What would you like to ask her?” So it might just start there. So is that a search? No, it, but it's expressing, it's parents expressing a curiosity about their child's experience.

If parents have information, and again they've done their work and deem that it maybe isn't a bad idea or is maybe even a good idea. It might start with writing letters back and forth, or writing emails back and forth, and that might go on. Again, short, just get to know you and again, progressing.

Progressing if, again, the child is continuously asking for that it's really using the child as the barometer, I think.

Haley Radke: Any [00:18:00] other sort of best practices when you're looking at a younger person asking for information from their adoptive parents versus having them seek it out on their own?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think as a general rule, like I said it's sharing what parents know in an age appropriate way. So we're not gonna talk about concepts that, we're not gonna talk about different concepts that a 7-year-old might not understand. And if after parents assess, is this feasible, let's maybe start, let's have them contact biological family first.

Get to know them a little bit, then start very slowly and again parents are making sure that members of the biological family are gonna be able to show up. Are they gonna be reliable? Are they gonna be consistent? Because again, we know as adoptees that's what we need in our lives. And if we've already endured one separation or in some [00:19:00] cases more than one if we've been in foster care, we need our parents to, to help make sure that doesn't happen again, especially when we're young.

But if it's okay to do so start to, start slow, exchange letters. Sometimes that's all younger kids need is just to know that their first parents are okay. Or that their biological relatives are okay.

Haley Radke: That's interesting. Yeah that's a good thought. Okay, as we wrap up, I'm sitting here as an adult adoptee and listening to this and thinking, “man I don't think I ever would've even thought to bring these questions up” 'cause I just literally did not think it was possible to have a reunion.

Like I was just the daydreaming, imagining kid about picturing what my mother might've been like, who she was, when was she gonna come take me away from the parents that would ground me, but now as an adult and thinking about maybe some of these conversations could have been possible, and [00:20:00] what would you say to someone like me who maybe, do I wanna go back and have a conversation with my adoptive parents and say, “gee, I wish we could have talked about this”, or, I don't know. Is there anything like I'm the word that keeps coming to my mind is like the loose ends, like these loose ends that kind of come apart when I hear a conversation like this. To go back and maybe heal up some of these things that we weren't able to have when we were, pre-teen or teenagers thinking about searching or just thinking about reunion.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: No, and I grew up in a very similar way that you did. I would've never, ever thought to bring up the idea of searching or information, giving me information. “Do you have information?” It just, it wouldn't. I can only imagine it would've gone more poorly when I was young than when I actually did bring it up when I was in my thirties and it didn't go well. But I guess what I think about [00:21:00] is I imagine what would it have been like, what, and again, we're not, it can't go back in time and change things, but I think it maybe can provide some, what we're talking about now is maybe it could provide some validation to all of the adoptees out there who were thinking, thinking about their circumstances of their relinquishment or their separation from their biological family while they were trying to study for a history test, and it was, interfering in their ability to retain information or that they were, wondering while they're, walking around in a crowd if one of their siblings might recognize them or if their birth parents were alive or dead. I think maybe it can just provide some validation that all of that is really really normal and that it can be different for young adoptees today.

Haley Radke: And I want to give credit especially to listeners that have been outspoken in their experiences as an adopted person.

[00:22:00] Because without people like you speaking up and saying, “we wish we would've had these things” and saying we needed therapy and, saying our true feelings about our adoption experience. Yeah. Without that, this door wouldn't have been opened for adopted children right now to be having these conversations. So. High fives to those of you who have been putting it up there.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: And high fives to you, as I always say, when I talk with you, I'm just, I'm so amazed by your work and the, just the awareness, support and information that you're providing just through the podcast.

Haley Radke: Thank you so much. I don't wanna let you go without giving you an opportunity to share, 'cause I know you've got lots of support for adult adoptees and teen adoptees and as we said, supporting other members of the adoption constellation.

Do you wanna tell us a little bit about what you've got coming up?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Sure. Thank you. I recently launched a new website [00:23:00] slash program, it's called, it's www.askadoption.com, and I am offering virtual support groups for adult adoptees, teen adoptees, adoptive parents, and first parents. I'm currently in a series right now of groups.

So new ones will begin in early January. There are, there's also an opportunity to, I'm gonna be adding some courses that parents can take, adult adoptees can take, one-on-one coaching sessions. Lots of stuff.

Haley Radke: That's so exciting. And you said virtual, so it doesn't matter where you are

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Doesn’t matter where you are.

Haley Radke: I love that. That's cool. Up in Canada it's a little bit far away from all the very, very fun adoptee stuff that's happening down there. Okay. Thank you so much, Lesli, for your time today. And can you just remind us one more time where we can connect with you online?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Absolutely. [00:24:00] So the site I just mentioned is AskAdoption.com.

My other website is YourMindfulBrain.com. I'm on Instagram at Ask Adoption and Your Mindful Brain and Twitter at Leslie A Johnson.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Thank you.

I am so thankful I keep saying this. I'm so thankful for the adoptee therapists that come on the show and share their expertise with us. Truly, what greater resource can we have than people that actually know what it feels like to be adopted and who are working with other adoptees and actually doing this therapy work, the hard work, digging in with them. I just, my goodness, I just find it such a goldmine. I [00:25:00] hope that no matter what your circumstances are, that you found something interesting and helpful from today's episode. I always love talking with Leslie. She is just a real gem and I'm just so thankful for the adoptees who have signed up to become therapists because man, do we need them, hey.

Something else I'm thankful for of course is my monthly supporters. You guys, I wouldn't be able to do the show without you, so thank you so much. If you wanna join them and make sure AdopteesOn keeps going and keeps growing and keeps helping adoptees around the world, go to adopteeson.com/partner and a totally free way you can help support the show is just by telling one person about it. Just one person. Tell them your favorite episode, how it's helped you, or tell them the episode that made you [00:26:00] mad and you really just wanna talk about it and get it all out. Or tell them about the episode you thought was really funny. Is there a funny episode? I don't know.

Anyway, I think sharing the show is just one of the best ways you can help independent podcasters. I'm never gonna chart on iTunes. Your reviews there are kind and they give other listeners validation that this show is worth listening to, but it's not gonna help me hit number one 'cause I'm too niche for that.

But sharing the show with just one person, that is a huge bonus. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.