170 Alice Stephens

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/170

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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 adopteeson.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Episode 170, Alice. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Alice Stephens, author of Famous Adopted People, joins us today. I was honored to hear her describe her childhood, which included years in Botswana.

Of course, we talk about writing in her book reviews. If you ever need a book recommendation for an adoptee-focused look at adoption, Alice is an expert. She even shares a piece of her story I didn't know about her search in Korea for biological family. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. [00:01:00]

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Alice Stephens. Welcome, Alice.

Alice Stephens: Thank you, Haley. I'm so pleased to be here.

Haley Radke:* I can't wait. Would you mind sharing a bit of your story with us?

Alice Stephens: Sure. So I was born in 1967 in South Korea. My mother was Korean and my father was an American soldier in Korea. I feel like I was adopted at a very crucial point in adoption history because it was the sixties, late sixties, and it was in the era where adoption was coming out of the closet, so to speak. People were becoming more and more aware that adoption is not something that happens in every family. And in the sixties, the Korean adoption movement that began in the fifties, right after the Korean War, was growing. And we were the first big group of transnational adoptees into the United States. [00:02:00] And when you have a transracial adoptee–somebody who does not look like her family–then everybody in the world knows you're adopted. And again, it cannot be hidden. So a lot of people were becoming more aware of adoption. They were seeing these Korean adoptees or other transracial adoptees and gears were going off in their heads. And so the narrative of adoption was slowly changing. I actually had a newspaper article written about me, and I know I'm not the only one, the only Korean adoptee, who had newspaper articles written about them. The whole emphasis is on how do-gooder it is to adopt these children. How it is a benevolent thing, a self-sacrificing thing even, that they say about my parents. They were [00:03:00] healthy, young, and successful. They had their own children but they selflessly decided to adopt another child. And if you just look at the language in this article that was written in 1969, it is just a fascinating document about the language that surrounded adoption at that time and the way that they were changing the whole concept of adoption. Okay, so I'm getting off track here.

So I was adopted into my family in 1968. I arrived at nine months old. My adoptive family is white. I have three siblings who are the biological children of my parents. I am the youngest. We were this family of three blonde-headed children and me, and we attracted interest pretty much everywhere we went. We lived in Philadelphia for four years. And then after that we moved to Gaborone, Botswana, which is in Southern Africa. And that was a [00:04:00] wonderful experience for me because childhood: it was a land without any TV, without any stoplights. We lived in one of the only two-storey houses in the city. It was a city, it's the capital of Botswana, but at the time it was actually 15,000 people. So it was a small town. I had a really golden childhood just running free. But, in Botswana there were probably about five East Asians, five people who looked like me in the whole town. And so I never saw people who looked like me. And the natives, the people who lived in Botswana, they hadn't seen people who looked like me either. So there would be people who pointed at me and talked about me, pulled their eyes, all that sort of thing. So even though I belonged, I always also knew that I didn't belong and that there was something about me that was really different.

Then we moved back to America when I was in fifth grade. [00:05:00] We moved to the suburbs of Washington, DC, which is actually where I live now. I went to public school, fifth grade. Again, I was the only Asian kid in my class. Another thing about the time that I was adopted was in 1965 immigration laws had changed. Before that basically black and brown people were kept out of America, and it was only the “desirable” European immigrants that were allowed in. They changed that in 1965 and so up until then there were Asians in America but most of them had come before the laws, which for the Chinese were established in, like, 1880 and for the rest of the Asians it was, like, 1925. So for that long period of time, there were no Asian immigrants into America. So when I came to the suburb, [00:06:00] there was hardly any sign of Asian cultural life even though I lived in the nation's capital, which has all sorts of cultures that come there as part of the seat of government. So I grew up really divorced from my genetic cultural background.

My parents are very progressive, very liberal. Of course, they always told me that I was adopted. I always knew my story. I always had access to my adoption file. They had some books about Asian people for young children. One was called The Chinese Next Door, written by Pearl S. Buck. And the way that they depicted Asian people was really as a very different other. And so that kind of affected me, too, as I was growing up, but, like many adoptees, I just didn't realize it. That conflict in my mind was something that I [00:07:00] ignored, but it also affected me terribly. I hated to be singled out as an Asian. I hated the prejudice that I got. It made me really angry. The older I got, the less self-confidence I would have because people would pull their eyes at me, make fun of me. And I grew up in a white world and I thought I was white. And when you get this sort of pushback, “No, you're not white,” it's called cognitive dissonance. And it is a pretty big problem for a lot of transracial adoptees, and it manifests itself, I think, most in adolescence when you're exploring your place in the world, other people are exploring their places in the world, and people like to tell you don't belong in your place. So my teenage years were pretty rough. I had very low self-confidence and I just [00:08:00] basically became a juvenile delinquent and defied everything. Defied the stereotypes about Asian people, defied the stereotypes about adopted people. I was just a bad kid, but I had a very strong family structure around me and I had all that love and I had a lot of information about the world, education, reading, all those things. They gave me all those tools to build my own identity. The only thing they didn't give me was the understanding that it was okay to feel different things about being adopted.

We never talked about adoption as like, how do you feel about it? What do you know? How does it affect you? What's it like for you to be the only Asian person ever in a room? We never talked about it, and even my mother says today, “I don't think of you as Asian.” [00:09:00] And this is very common for transracial adoptees. Your parents tell you, “We don't see your race.” Which is a beautiful sentiment, but it doesn't work in the real world because everybody else does see a race and everybody else tells you about it. And in America, in the Western world, race is one of the biggest defining characteristics, right or wrong. And the more tools that you have to deal with that, the better. And as an adoptee, I didn't have any of those tools.

I did have tools from my parents about getting in touch with my Asian side. My mother majored in Chinese in college. She had a big interest in China. And so in high school I started to study Chinese and I started to get more interested in Asian culture. At the time, there was really [00:10:00] no evidence of Korean culture, and I'm talking about the late eighties now. So the dominant cultures were Chinese and Japanese, and those are the ones that I started to explore. I went to study in China when I was in college. I lived in Japan. But I didn't really think very much about how I was Korean. I thought about how I was Asian because that's what Americans told me: I was Asian or Chinese or Japanese. But I didn't really think about the Korean part. I got married, had kids, still thinking about adoption, but really more like thinking about it in order to ignore it than thinking about it in order to think about it.

And my mom said, “Why don't you look for your Korean mother?”, when I was in my mid-twenties. And I said, “Oh, okay.” And more for her, I wrote a letter off to the agency and they said, “Oh, we can maybe help you for $500.” [00:11:00] And I said, “No. I'm not gonna do that.” And then I moved on. Also, in those years, I really had to find out who I was and I had to be comfortable with the person that I was. I had to break the bad habit of the person that I was when I was younger and become a better person. I had to look at myself and ask why was I not kind of a good person when I was younger, and I just had to figure my shit out, and so I did. It took me a long time. I think a lot of adoptees are slow bloomers. I think a lot of us come to things late. So it took me a long time. I had my own kids, first time I ever saw my flesh and blood was with my son, and that was like wow. And so I was just concentrating on my kids, myself, my family, my career, just life. And then [00:12:00] when my kids were in high school, I had a lovely job and then the 2008 recession came and I was fired. I picked up some other work around that, but I thought to myself, what I really want to do is be a writer and now is the time to start doing it. And so I started to get serious about writing. I'd always been serious about writing, but serious about being a published writer and growing that persona of a writer, being a writer, living as a writer, which means writing. A lot of people don't realize that writing is you actually have to sit down eight hours a day, or whatever, and write.

Haley Radke: Yes. I'm sorry, I'm laughing because there's so many of us that are like, “Oh my gosh, wouldn't it be great to have a book? But we don't really wanna sit down and write.”

Alice Stephens: Yeah, it's like any, anything. You have to practice, practice, practice. You can't just [00:13:00] sit down and write this magnum opus. It takes a lot of time. So I was really fortunate and I had that time, I had that support, and so I started writing. I started with book reviews and I got a column about writing.

Actually, I have to go back. I did start a novel when I was living in Japan, and I wrote this novel. It's a really good novel. When I got fired, I was like halfway through it, so I finished it. After that, I got an agent. I got another agent. It never got picked up. And then I said, “Why don't you write what you know?” That's what they tell you to do. Write what you know. And I said, “Okay. I know adoption.” There are no adoption books–fiction books–out there that I could find. There were very, very few authentic adoption fiction books. There are a lot of novels written about adoption that are not written by adoptees and that mishandled the whole subject of adoption. [00:14:00] So I said, “This is what I'm gonna do.” I wrote the book very quickly. Like nine months, which is very quick for a book. And then I tried to sell it and nobody would pick it up. So it took five years to sell the book. Five years. And I got more than 60 rejections

Haley Radke: For Famous Adopted People?

Alice Stephens: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wow.

Alice Stephens: Yeah, so it was a really big wake-up call and a really big eye-opener about how the publishing business works.

Haley Radke: Can I ask you a personal question about that?

Alice Stephens: Yes.

Haley Radke: When you said 60 rejections, my stomach flipped. For me, and I know lots of adoptees, rejection–our beginnings start with a rejection. So how was it getting those? Were you taking it very personally because this is the thing you know, you're writing about adoption. What was that like? [00:15:00]

Alice Stephens: Yeah, well, rejection is a huge part of writing, which yes, as adoptees, we hate rejection. And the biggest irony is that I'm in one of those businesses where you have got to have a really tough, thick skin because rejection is the norm. Acceptance is not the norm. Rejection, rejection, rejection. How did I deal with the rejection from the publishers? Actually, they made it easy because the things that they said were so ridiculous. They'd say, “Oh, this is a good story.” Or, it was, “Yeah, I read it. I read it in one night.” But then they'd say things like, “Americans don't like to read about foreign countries.” “Americans don't like characters with foreign names.” “Americans don't like dialogue.” It was all about the foreign and all about how people [00:16:00] couldn't connect and, to me, it spoke of them being afraid, like of them. Nobody said, “This is a pile of crap. You can't write. Give it up. Go home.” They were–not all–but most of them were what we call “good” rejections. There was encouragement in there. There was “This is a good book, but it's not for me.”

The thing about being an editor is you have to totally fall in love with a book. You have to know it. You have to understand it in order to champion it. Who are the people who work in publishing? They're not generally people who are going to look at adoption from a critical point of view. My idea is that the people in adoption are the type of people who adopt children, or the type of people who know people who have adopted children or have adopted transracial children. And that makes them like, “Well, she's trying to tell a different kind of a story. And we can't tell a different kind of story. [00:17:00] America knows one story and why are we gonna try and change the subject? People aren't gonna buy it. There's no market.” So that's what they told me. So I didn't take the rejection personally, and I kept on going. My agent left. My agent, she actually did a great job. She has an adopted, Chinese-born child. She actually did a really good job in representing me. She went over and above, but eventually she said, “Nobody's touching it. I've done everything I can.” So then I went out on my own, and I was sending out cold, and a miracle happened. It's really a miracle that I sent my cold slush file without an agent to The Unnamed Press, which is this amazing indie press in LA, and they picked it up and it was just like, wow.

So anyway, while writing the book [00:18:00] and then in preparing to publish it, I began to get more aware of the adoption community out there. Up until then, I had no idea that there were all these people like you who have been going on for years and years making this community, these communities, and actually organizing on the ground and getting adoptees together. And it's really been so wonderful for me to find out that there are all of these adoptee organizations out there.

Haley Radke: I'm curious because you were saying that you had written part of your novel and then after you got laid off you finished the rest of it and you had this thread of “Oh, maybe I'll look for my mother because my mother said I should.” Where's coming out of the fog in that process for you? Because there's lots of things in the book. When the Adoptees On Patreon group read it as a Book Club book [00:19:00], we found so many themes in it. We were like, “Oh, this is like that.” We were picking all these things out that I would identify as being metaphors for being out of the fog, understanding the adoptee experience at a deeper level. So how about that? Can you talk a little bit about that, like your mindset and things about adoption, while writing?

Alice Stephens: As I said before, I wanted to write a book that refuted the other books that had come out about adoption that were written by non-adoptees, and there are a lot of them out there. I've reviewed some of them. So I wanted to turn those tropes upside down. And I think when I was writing Famous Adopted People, I was writing out all the things that I'd been thinking about for all these years but that I just didn't have an opportunity to articulate because I wasn't sitting down to write a formal book or essay or anything about adoption. [00:20:00] Previous to that, the book that I wrote when I was fired was actually a historical fiction novel. So it didn't really occur to me to write an adoption novel until it did, and then I just sat down and everything that came out of me was things that had been churning around in my mind. And by getting it down on paper, I was able to figure out all those different threads. Writing is about revision, revision, revision. So it wasn't like I just put it all down there and then it all made sense. I put it down there, it was a big ugly mess, and then slowly started unbraiding it and then re-braiding it and making it into a coherent hole. I was also very lucky with my editor, Chris Heiser, at Unnamed Press. The manuscript that I submitted to him was different. He gave me a lot of good pointers about how to make the story more exciting. Like [00:21:00] he said, “You have to have Lisa, the protagonist, at least try to get out.” In my first manuscript, she didn't try to get out of her imprisonment. So anyway, he just helped me make a better manuscript. And then while I was revising and revising, ideas are congealing in my mind. Like I'm being able to see things more clearly.

I think that a lot of adoptees are creative and that by using their creative whatever, whatever that impulse is inside them, they are working out all those emotional and mental things that are within them. By using that creative expression, they're able to articulate their feelings in a way that they might not be able to just sitting down with their friends, or whatever. And by doing it through their art form, that then helps them to be able to articulate with their friends and their family those more basic expressions. [00:22:00]

Haley Radke: There's so much processing that we do throughout our lifetimes. So I love how you're talking about getting this all out and, really, you're probably discovering some more things about yourself and your true opinions by writing. I love that. That's so fascinating.

So you do book reviews for the Washington Independent. I was reading through multiple of your reviews in preparation for our conversation today, and this line stuck out to me and I would love for you to talk about this in your work–you've already addressed it–but now talking about it from a reviewer point of view. You say, “As an adoptee and book reviewer, I greet each new book about adoption with trepidation and hope.” That is gold. What a good line, Alice.

Alice Stephens: Thank you. Well, if [00:23:00] it's an adoptee-written book, then I'm all open. All for it. But if it's a book that is not written by an adoptee, chances are good that they are taking this subject in a predatory manner because it's a subject that can be milked for lots of human drama and it goes down to the very basics of our civilization: the family union and genetic tribes and that sort of thing. I think for maybe, I don't know, the last 30 years, the adoption narrative has been dominated by non-adopted people. You see that in a lot of the books that are offered. And so, as a book reviewer, I started to review whatever books that I found that were about adoption. One of them is The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, or [00:24:00] Good People by J.D.? I don't remember her last name. But they were both using adoption as a vehicle instead of as the theme. They were riding the vehicle rather than trying to be the vehicle. I don't know if that makes sense. They were just not invested in adoption as a real story. They were using it for their own purposes and making a narrative that, for one, follows a pattern that is the same in many of the same books which is the adoptee gets rescued, and does not rescue herself, and the adoptee is just lost and waiting for somebody to come. Whether it's the adoptive parent to come and take them to their forever home, or whether it's their birth mother or father coming to show them who they really are. [00:25:00] The adoptee, I say, is the object of the story rather than the subject. And what the adoption story should be about is the adoptee and her journey and not about somebody else, the savior who comes to save the adoptee. So many books are the adoptee is the object and not the subject of the story. And whenever I see a book by a non-adopted person, I say it is most likely that person is using the adoptee as the object and not the subject. The object to be acted upon, not the subject who saves herself.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I think it's really only in the last few years I've been hearing that term “own voices” and to apply it to adoptee authors as an own voice, I think is important. And you're sharing mostly with adoptee listeners right now. [00:26:00] What would you say to us about our reading habits or the ways we consume or give reviews or any of those kinds of things? How can we influence publishing to hear more from adoptee authors like yourself and read the kind of stories that we do want told to be mainstream?

Alice Stephens: Yeah, I think it's just by raising your voices and being heard. I mean, by writing book reviews yourself. It is so important that adoptees write book reviews about adoption books. But again, it's like there's this big sort of barrier to it. I've tried to get into the New York Times or the Washington Post to review books about adoption, but it's hard. They don't answer my call and they don't seem to feel like there's a need to have [00:27:00] adoptees review books about adoption. Whereas there is now a movement to have people who write black books be reviewed by black writers and that sort of thing. But the adoptee thing, and I think it's because maybe, I don't know. My mission is to have more adoptees write. I try to encourage adoptees to become writers because I think that's really the way. Adoptees are writing; adoptees are speaking up. And it's got to grow. The movement has to coalesce and grow and become a little more unified maybe. But definitely, adoption is becoming a lot more of a topic of concern, a lot more of a fashionable topic, and not just from the adoptive parents’ (view), but they're starting to listen to adoptees more. [00:28:00] It is slow. But anyway, what can you do? I think that adoptees can write reviews like on Good Reads, Amazon and that sort of thing. Saying: I'm an adoptee and this is adoptee-approved and articulating why this is a good book or this is a bad book. Especially, bad reviews, I think, are pretty important too: I'm an adoptee. This book is harmful to adoptees. This book is [censored] and don't read it. So I think that just being more vocal and letting people know what we think.

Haley Radke: [00:29:00] Okay. I have always encouraged people to make sure they're doing the reviews for adoptee authors, but I love that idea, too, of making sure we're giving critical feedback to the books that are making us into tropes. And I wanted to just circle back just to talk about your reviews and how you've pitched to some bigger publications and they don't want to hear from adoptee voices. I was just talking with one of my friends and comparing and contrasting your review of American Baby by Gabriel Glaser from an adoptee perspective versus the New York Times review. And we were like, “We need to hear Alice's. That's what people need to hear.” And so I'm cheering you on. We are going to hear more from you. More from you about adoption-related books in future, I'm sure.

Alice Stephens: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is from another one of your articles. You were writing about the original cancel culture. I've heard you express before that publishing is so white and it's very hard for people of color to really break in. And one of the lines where you were talking about this [00:30:00] is “White gatekeepers favoring white voices that cater to a white audience.” Can you speak to that, please? I think it's very important for us to understand that.

Alice Stephens: So, as we said before, most of the people who are in high places in publishing are white, and there's been a lot written about it. Just recently, some changes have been made, I'm talking about just the last few months, and some people of color have been put in charge of a few publishing houses or have been made into editors with power. But it's a very slow process and there is incredible resistance to it in the publishing industry because culture has always been white in America. That's always been the way that culture has been defined, and the people who tell you what culture is have always been white. [00:31:00] That's the way it's always been and it's very resistant to change. I work at a bookstore and I work in outside events where we do events that are outside the bookstore. And I am one of maybe 18 people who work on that staff. We all work there because we love books. I'm the only one who's a person of color and there are only two men. So they're basically older, white women. And I see the way that they read, what they read, what they're told to read. They read what the book reviews tell them to read. “Oh, did you see that Ron Charles loved this book? I'm gonna read it.” And they put it on their list. “Oh, the New York Times said this book's lovely.” And so they're going to read it. All those people, they read what the publishing industry tells them is the biggest, latest book. And while there are a lot of writers of color out there who are making it onto those lists, they're basically, I think, still [00:32:00] dominated by what I would call a lot of mediocre white writing. And it's just a group-think of what you're going to read next, which is dictated to you by the book reviewer who gets it dictated to them by the publishing company.

So I think we've heard about American Dirt, which was a novel that was published, I think, by Grand Central. It was given like a million-dollar publicity budget and the cultural purveyor said, this book is a great immigration novel. And it turned out to be written by a white woman who has a grandmother who's Puerto Rican. But there was a lot of controversy about it because she totally wrote it from a white person's point of view even though it was supposed to be about a Mexican woman and her son. In [00:33:00] reaction to the pushback that people of color gave to this author, you see white cultural critics come out and defend, they get very defensive about it. And people literally said, “I'm just gonna go out and buy this book because people tell me not to.” And I see that as tribalism. I see that as people getting very scared that the white viewpoint is no longer the dominant viewpoint. When they're told that maybe a book that they loved as a child, like Little House on the Prairie, has lots of racist things in it, they get defensive. They don't want to hear that. It just seems to me like there's such a white mindset that, even when it is liberal and open, is actually very closed and very defensive and very self-centered, very privileged. I don't know how to break that. But I [00:34:00] think the best way, really, is to stop having people who write reviews be white people talking to white people, and just be people talking to readers.

Haley Radke: Thank you. I keep bringing out some of my old childhood books to read to my kids at bedtime, and I'm really shocked by some of the things. I've had to skip entire chapters because I don't reread it before I start reading to them. And I think, “Oh my gosh, this is what was filling my head as a child.” And I'm in my late thirties so it wasn't all that long ago. And so yeah, we haven't come very far. But I appreciate that the challenges for us is we need to be reading with our eyes open, as well, and choosing and not just having the [00:35:00] so-called gatekeepers being the ones to tell us what to read. And I think you very much challenged us as well, not necessarily just in this interview, but with your work as a book reviewer. Reading so many great reviews you've done, I'm like, “Oh, I think that book would really stretch me.” So I really appreciate that. I think it's really important.

Alice Stephens: Oh, thank you. If I could just add one thing about book reviews. I make it my mission to review the lesser-known books. When I first started out, I wanted to review all the big books, but now I don't have much interest. There are many people who are going to review those books. Those books are going to get all the publicity they want. I want to bring attention to the smaller books, maybe the more challenging books, or the off-kilter books, to let people know that they're out there too.

Haley Radke: That's perfect. I think some people have [00:36:00] looked at who I interview on the podcast and been like, “Oh, we really wanna hear from this famous person or this famous person.” And I'm like, “Well, they're already famous, I wanna highlight adoptees with all different stories. We wanna hear all the real stories.” And I don't know about you, but sometimes I think, what if I did land a big interview, Alice with some big name, who knows? Are they really going to come on and tell us their real feelings about adoption? I don't know. Probably not. Anyway, that's just my aside if you're ever wondering why I haven't tried to get some super famous person on–just because the name of your book keeps staring at me, Famous Adopted People.

Before we recommend resources, is there anything else you want to share with us about your story or about your work? I just really want adoptees to hear from your heart so is there anything I missed asking you about that you want to get to? [00:37:00]

Alice Stephens: You didn't miss asking about it. I just didn't get to it. I just want to say that I am looking for my Korean mother. I went back to Korea with a group called Me & Korea and I went back on the Hapa tour. So we were all mixed-race Korean adoptees. And the woman who runs it, a lovely woman–Minyoung Kim– has nothing to do with adoption, but she's made it her life mission to get Korean adoptees reacquainted with Korea and she runs these tours. She took me and my husband one day just to search the neighborhood where I was born. We had a picture of my birth mother, my birth father, and we went to this neighborhood where older Korean women who used to live around the army camps lived. We knocked on their doors. We showed them the photo. None of them knew, but pretty soon we were like a [00:38:00] little parade of people going door to door, and all of them hoping for me. That just really, really touched me. We did find where I was born, which, for me, that's like my only connection to that time in my life. So it was very, very moving.

Also, I have found my half-brother through DNA. I found my birth father’s family through Ancestry. I got the results back that said: this person's your first cousin. It took me about six months to decide to contact her because I was very nervous about it, and once you open that box, you can't close it back up. But I did, and she right away knew who my birth father was. He is now deceased. But I have a half-brother. I have two half-siblings, and the half-brother and I are in close contact. He's a nice guy and we text a lot. And so that's been [00:39:00] great. And someday I hope to go to California where his family is from. And, it turns out that I'm a total mutt besides my half-Korean part. My birth father was Mexican-American. So I am like 15% Native American, 25% Spanish, Portuguese. I have some Northern European, I have 2% Ashkenazi Jew, 2% Congolese African blood. Oh, and I have 2% Neanderthal genes! So I'm just like all over the place.

Haley Radke: Who are they matching up with the Neanderthal genes? Sorry. We just did an episode about DNA testing a couple months ago. It's all very fascinating. Thank you for sharing that. I wish I could ask you more about it, but we have to do our resources now. Maybe next time. [00:40:00]

No one will be surprised that I will recommend your novel, Famous Adopted People. What a page-turner. It was a wild ride. There are some very uncomfortable things that happen. And when we, as a book club, dug in and were looking at all the symbolism and things, it was just very mind-opening. And I have this note to myself to remind me to mention this: There are some really stirring passages about adoptee rights and advocacy topics. I just felt it very comforting when I came across those because I'm always like, “Okay, if a normal (I don't know why I call 'em that) someone who's not connected to adoption, so not an adoptee, reads some of those things, I'm like, “Okay, hopefully they'll get it.” [00:41:00] So anyway, I really appreciated that and it is, like I said, a wild ride. I really enjoyed it. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it because, as you said, there's not too much adoptee fiction and so I literally had no idea going in what it was going to be like. And it was really great. I loved it. There was one part–I don't want to spoil anything. I'm not going to spoil it, but we did do a Book Club on it and if you're on the Adoptees On Patreon, you can go and hear that. It's so good. Loved it. And, I said I spent all this time reading your book reviews on the Washington Independent. I think people should go check those out too, because their reading list is just going to get filled right up. So thanks for that.

Alice Stephens: Thank you.

Haley Radke: Is there anything you want to tell us about your book? Or you can just go ahead and recommend your resource?

Alice Stephens: Okay, I thank you very much for that lovely talk-up of my book. I think you said everything that I'd want to say. I'm so glad that you liked it and I was so glad to be part of that Book Club. I've done a lot of book clubs before but I've never done an Adoptee Book Club, and it was just amazing to be able to [00:42:00] talk to people and not have to explain everything and not have to be the spokesperson for adoption. And I think one problem with my book is that people, adoptees and non-adoptees, approach it like this is going to be The fiction book about adoption. It's just one book. There's so much more to be said and it's such a huge topic, so complex. I just hope that a lot more adoptee writers can get published. I know there are a lot of them out there. One thing I want to quickly mention: this is very preliminary, but I'm hoping to start an adoption literary festival with Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello. We are in the preliminary stages of trying to organize an adoption literary festival for adoptee authors only. So hopefully we're going to do that and you'll be the first to know if we do.

Haley Radke: You let us know because we'll tell [00:43:00] everyone all about it. Alright, watch for that. Okay, what did you want to share with us today?

Alice Stephens: My resource is called Side by Side. You can find it at sidebysideproject (dot) com. And it is the project of Glenn and Julie Morey. Glenn Morey is a Korean adoptee and a filmmaker. He has this project where he interviewed a hundred Korean adoptees. It just so perfectly showcases how we are all so different and all the same. It's just a subsection of adoptees, Korean adoptees. Even within that subsection there is this huge array of stories. He interviews Korean orphans who never got adopted, and so everybody from Korean orphans to [00:44:00] people who got adopted, and just the stories are amazing. It's just the interview and the person speaking; it goes from maybe 10 minutes to an hour. And I am fascinated by every single minute. I'm going through it slowly because I can't just sit down and watch a hundred at a time. And I also like to have time in between to think about the stories and to also differentiate the people. But there is every adoption story there from the most horrific to the most fairytale. And there's every emotion, but every single person has that pain, that adoption knot that they had to either work through or that's still sitting there really tight in their chest. And so it's just amazing to see. And the validation that it's okay to [00:45:00] feel that way. It's okay that I felt this way my whole life. They did too. It is really great.

Haley Radke: That power of not feeling alone. Holy-moly, that's huge. It's so huge for us. The other thing I just wanted to mention, because most of us love listening to podcasts, Side by Side is also available on Audible, if you want to hear the stories. I think they announced that towards the end of last year. And it's now an Audible Original.

Alice Stephens: Oh, that's great.

Haley Radke: Yes. Very cool.

Alice Stephens: One thing about watching it, though, is that a lot of the adoptees are from other countries so another great thing is that you don't just get the American adoption story. The adoptees are from Denmark and France and so you get all of these adoption stories and different cultural approaches to the adoption. Though, they're all pretty much the same [00:46:00]. All the approaches to adoption are pretty much like: “You're adopted into this family, and that's it.” But yeah, it's just a fascinating document and I'm so glad that they did it.

Haley Radke: Awesome. I'm sure lots of people will be heading over there to check that out, and we will link it in the show notes. Speaking of, where can we connect with you online, Alice?

Alice Stephens: I have a website which is very convenient and easy to remember. It's famousadoptedpeople (dot) com.

Haley Radke: Perfect. And all of Alice's links will be in our show notes so you can follow her and all the places and the links to that are on her website as well. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I so enjoyed our conversation.

Alice Stephens: Thank you, Haley. Thank you so much for everything that you do for the adoptee community. I'm just so impressed by people like you who've been out there, and you getting your voice out there and gathering up all the other adoptees and giving us a place to come and feel like [00:47:00] a part of a community and feel like we're not weird and strange and unlovable and all those things. I really appreciate it and really admire you guys for doing this.

Haley Radke: My honor. Thanks so much.

Alice sent me one more link she wants you to know about. It's her piece recommending four novels that get adoption right. I've got it linked in the show notes for you. It'll help you find your next read after you finish Famous Adopted People.

As I mentioned briefly in my chat with Alice, she joined me and some of my Patreon supporters for a Book Club conversation about Famous Adopted People, which was stunningly insightful. I enjoyed it so much. If you'd like to access that or any of the other bonuses, I have for Patreon supporters, head to adopteeson.com/partner for more details. Without supporters like you, I can't sustainably make the show. I'm so grateful for those of you that are able to help keep it going. [00:48:00] One free way to help the show is to share this episode with just one person. Perhaps you have a friend that's a voracious reader and they may like to get a few suggestions from Alice.

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

169 [Estrangement Seires] Leigh Bailey

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/169

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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 adopteeson.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Episode 169, Leigh. I'm your host, Haley Radke. Today I get to introduce you to Leigh Bailey. This is another episode of our Estrangement Series. Leigh shares about her reunion and how it started to be about her adoptive family's experience instead of her own.

We talk about how trying to put up safe boundaries can be exhausting and how you decide if estrangement is called for in the situation. Spoiler alert: we can't tell you what's right for you. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.

Let's listen in. [00:01:00]

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Leigh Bailey.

Leigh Bailey: Hi. Hey Haley. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: Okay. Your accent, I just have to say it, it's just, it's delicious to listen to. I've told you that before and I'm really excited to hear even hard things from your lovely accent.

Leigh Bailey: Thank you. You're so sweet.

Haley Radke: Well, would you start in by sharing a bit of your story with us?

Leigh Bailey: Yes, I would love to. Thank you. So I was born in January of 1975 in a small town in southwest Georgia. And I was given up for adoption at birth, and three days later I was placed with my adoptive family. My birth mother actually lived in the area where I lived and grew up in. It was a private adoption. Four years after I was born, my parents who had struggled to have their own children ended up getting [00:02:00] pregnant with my sister. And so I have a sister who is biological to them who's four years younger than me. She and my mother are twins. She and my adoptive mother are twins. And I think that was always hard for me growing up because I just felt this disconnect. I was just different. I was just a different person than they were. And my daddy was so sweet. We were outside folks, my daddy and me. And my sister and my mom, they were like shoppers. And I would rather take a beating than be shopping. But growing up I spent a lot of time outside with my dad, and I think he recognized how much alike they were. And just kind of tried to keep me with him.

And so anyways, we never really discussed my adoption. I remember two times where it was discussed: once my mother told me that the doctor who had delivered me told her my birth mother had moved away from our area. I just really [00:03:00] always thought that I came from folks that were lesser than my adopted family. Just having that in the back of my head affected my confidence. I just really always felt like I wasn't up to the same level. I wasn't at par with my adoptive family. I was in the fog until probably about five or six years ago. My youngest daughter is so sweet and she was curious about my adoption. Every now and then she would mention things about my adoption. And then one day I was sitting on the sofa in our den and she came and sat next to me and she said, “Mama, I bet your parents are really sweet, your real parents.” And I said, “That's sweet of you to say.” And I said, “What makes you say that? I'm curious.” And she said, “Because you're sweet.” And I said, “Thank you.” And she goes, “And it's okay if your real daddy's in jail.” And [00:04:00] I thought to myself, “I had that same thought myself; you know, good people don't give kids away. He probably is in jail.” But then I said, “That's really sweet of you to say. I appreciate that.” But then it occurred to me my being adopted and not knowing my biology is about more than just me. It's about my girls, as well, because my biology is their biology.

So I got my husband to do the dirty work. I got him to call the person who would know my biological mother's name, and he made that call and he came back to report what he had learned, and it was not at all the narrative I had had in my head my whole life. My birth mother was actually married and in her early twenties when I was born, and I just could not wrap my mind around a [00:05:00] married couple in their early twenties giving their kid away. I thought maybe she had to have been like 16 or 17. And the parents didn't want her stuck being a parent at that young of an age. That scenario was in my head. And I really just couldn't get my mind around that. So I searched and searched for her, and I finally figured out who she was and realized that she lived, at the current time, real close to where I grew up. She had apparently moved back.

So I took the Ancestry DNA test to see what I could learn about my genealogy and my biology, and I was blown away at what I found. It actually paired me from the very beginning with my birth father, but I couldn't figure out who he was, though. His name is pretty generic. There's a ton of names. It's not like John Smith, but once you Google it, there's like a bazillion of them. So a really good friend [00:06:00] of mine, who's an adoptee as well, her name's Ann Rickert, and she's a friend of the show. She listens to your show and she doesn't mind me saying her name. She helped me figure out who he was, and the reason I couldn't figure him out is because he goes by a nickname. So I had to stalk him on Facebook and Instagram and get a feeling like I felt like these were good people and I wasn't entering into a psychoville type situation. And I reached out to him and it took a while for him to respond. In my mind, since he'd already done the test, I thought maybe he was looking for me. He had no idea I was in this world. He had no prior knowledge of me. So he had lots of processing to do. He was in shock. Fast forward, we speak on the phone for the first time and he asks if he can meet me? And I was elated. I thought, probably, he was going to talk to me on the phone and realized it was too much. He couldn't handle this. Nobody knew about me. How was he going to tell everybody? So he came to visit, [00:07:00] and, Haley, when I tell you, it was like somebody unfogged the mirror for the first time. It was literally like looking at a one-foot-taller-than-me, male version of myself. It was like looking in my own eyes and at my own hands. Our mannerisms were the same and our sense of humor was the same. And for him to have not had any handle in raising me and for us to have such similarities. So my husband asked him during his visit, he said, “I need to know that you're not gonna hurt her. I need to know that you're not gonna go away.” And he said, I remember exactly how he said it, he said, “My wife doesn't know about this and my kids don't know about this, and I can't tell you how they're gonna respond, but I am my own man and I will have a relationship with Leigh.”

Anyways, the last person we ended up telling [00:08:00] about this birth father situation was my adoptive mother. I had shared this whole situation with my adoptive sister the whole time. And she and I, both, just knew that my mother wouldn't handle it very well. My adoptive father was in a memory loss unit with Alzheimer's, and she had a lot going on with his situation, but we really knew, Haley, that there would never be a good time for me to tell her I'd found my birth father.

Haley Radke: How old was she at the time? Because you said your dad was in a memory loss unit.

Leigh Bailey: Yes, my adoptive mom would have been 73 at the time. So I tell her, and she seems to be okay with it. I told her that my birth father was coming for a visit and she said, “Okay, so I would like to have a little get-together at my house for my friends to meet him.” [00:09:00] And I said, “Okay.” That felt like acceptance so I was excited about that. And so he spent the weekend with us and then we all drove down to my mother's house. And it felt like a sip and see, like when you get married and you have all your wedding gifts on display and everybody comes and looks at them, eats some hors d'oeuvres and has some drinks. I remember standing in her place: the men are in one group, the ladies are in another group. My birth father is talking to all the men, and I'm kind of on the periphery of them, and I'm looking over in the den at my mother and her friends and, Haley, it was almost reminiscent of the after the funeral gathering, like when everybody comes back to your house and they're supporting and surrounding you with love. And I thought to myself, “I don't really know how much of this is about me right now. I don't need this. I don't need this stare-at-my-dad party. [00:10:00] This is for her. And that's when I think I started losing control of the reunion, and it started being about how it affected others and not me.

Then about a month or so later, he invited my family and I to come down to his house down in Florida where he lived and meet his family: my birth father, sister, and brother. We had a lovely time. It was a lovely weekend, and he had a little gathering at his house, too. He had some friends over and he had some family over. And I remember one of his siblings walking in with a balloon that said, “It’s a girl!” I really wasn't sure how I felt about that. I think she was trying to be funny and light. [00:11:00] I don't think there was any malintent, but I just remember not knowing. I just was very ambivalent about how that felt for me. The one thing I do remember that struck me is that I'd spent 43 years knowing I was adopted and I thought, I have thought of everything about how adoption feels. There's no way there's anything else left for me to feel or think about, until I started looking around their house and seeing pictures of the four of them together. On trips, holidays, just family gatherings, the beach. And I just remember this huge sadness coming over me, thinking I missed this. I never thought about feeling like this. These people just went on with their life and I was given away and he went on to.

I need to tell this part about it. When I talked to my birth father for the first time, he explained to me that he had been married before I was born. His wife died six months to the date of their marriage, their wedding, very unexpectedly. [00:12:00] And the next three or so years after that he just lived life like that day was his last day. He just had a really wild time. And so I was a product of a one-night stand during that time period. And then he went on after. And then, in this meantime, I'm born. He knows nothing about it. He meets his second wife, marries her, and has two kids. And I'm just looking around at all these pictures and thinking, how did this happen? It just felt tragic and I never ever anticipated that. So we left and went home and as we drove home, it was almost like my adoptive sister, who has a seizure disorder, and there's the progression of a seizure. There's this [00:13:00] buildup at the beginning before the seizure. Then there's the actual seizure, and then there's this postictal state afterwards where you're catatonic and your body's kind of gearing down. I felt like I was in a postictal state on the way home. I was just gearing down from what had just happened that weekend, trying to process it all, take it all in.

After that, I felt like the most popular family member around. All of a sudden, my adoptive sister wants me to be at everything she's got going on, and she lives almost four hours away from me. And then of course, I'm getting invited to do things with my birth family, and I'm trying so hard to keep the playing field level and give everybody their appropriate time. The last thing I wanted was for anybody to say, “Okay, great, here he's in the picture and now we're getting slighted.” So I'm spreading myself thin and running myself ragged, trying to keep everybody happy. [00:14:00] And I'm at my sister's–I can't remember what the occasion was, but I went for something–and somehow my birth family came up and one of her friends said to me, “Just make sure that you don't forget about your family that raised you.” And when I tell you I thought I was going to scream, that's putting it mildly. I thought to myself, “You have no idea what it's like to be adopted. You have no idea what it's like to finally get this chance to know your birth family, and you're gonna throw that in my face?” It's like telling somebody with cancer how they should feel when you've never had cancer. You just don't do that.

So then, I decided I would invite my birth father and his wife to Grandparents' Day for my daughter's Grandparents' Day celebration at her school. And of course my adoptive mother was coming. I'd invited them all to stay at my house. I had it all planned; it was going to be great.

Everybody was going to get to spend some low-key, casual time together in a very relaxed setting at my house. And my adoptive mother said, “I'm not staying in the house with them. They're gonna have to get a hotel.” And in an effort to accommodate her and keep her happy, I had to uninvite them to my house and ask them to pay for a hotel. [00:15:00]

And I remember another time being at the beach, and my husband and I were in the parking lot with my sister discussing my birth family and my sister said, “But you're my sister.” It was like that Steel Magnolias moment where they're just having that meltdown after the funeral. She was having the Steel Magnolias meltdown in the parking lot at the beach. And my husband tried to explain to her, as did I: “Look, you have always known your biology. You have never not had a mirror to look into when you look at your parents. Leigh has never had that. And she has been everything y'all want her to be all these years, and this is her chance to know her biology. This is her time.” And she just responded with, “But she's my sister.” [00:16:00] And I knew right then and there, they weren't going to ever hear it. They were never going to hear it. It was always going to be about how it affected them. They could never pause and have empathy for the situation or to just stop and say, “You know, it must have really been difficult going through life not looking like us and playing along with the narrative that we are her people, going to family reunions, holidays, and aunt so-and-so’s.” There was none of that. There was just no way. And I thought to myself, “I just think there are some people that can't do this. They just can't hear these things.” Maybe it's a predisposition. Maybe they're narcissistic. I don't know what it is.

So I entered into therapy not long after–there were multiple [00:17:00] blowups of that same type–and it just was very clear to me that this was about how it made them feel. Nobody wanted to hear my side. So I entered into therapy, and my therapist immediately identified that I bore guilt for everything. She said, “You just feel guilty for all this stuff that you have nothing to do with, Leigh.” But it was all I knew. And I didn't even realize that it stemmed from originally feeling guilty for wanting to know who I was my entire life. You know, ever since I've been in reunion with my birth father, my mother loves to tell people, “I always told Leigh that we would help her find her real parents if she wanted to.” However, I have not one memory of her saying that to me. And my husband says that in the 22 years he's known me, in the 21 years we've been married, he has never heard her say that, never heard me say that. I think sometimes–and we are all guilty of it–we tend to rewrite history in a way that makes us be able to sleep at night. [00:18:00]

So I entered into therapy and I began discussing do I want to figure out how to set healthy boundaries with them? Or do I want to talk about becoming estranged from them? And I'm all about family preservation. I am, even in my adoptive family’s situation. But when in every encounter I have in person with them or on the phone with them, I have to remember my keywords and I have to remember to set the boundaries, respond with a question. It is exhausting. This is as exhausting as it was for me to go around as a child: every time I enter into public, I look around to see who looks like me. And so I thought to myself, “I just don't know that I can keep this up.” And then I found myself celebrating when my biological father and my adoptive mother would be around each other at the same time. [00:19:00] And she would leave and we would celebrate that she didn't act too bad. It's like, what a thing to celebrate, you know? And you make all these concessions. You don't talk about this, and you try to keep it light and casual, and nobody discusses adoption. There's never been one time when my adoptive mother has thanked my birth father for having me, or my birth father has thanked my adopted mother for raising me. We've never had that conversation. I don't think we ever will. So then, I just felt like she really just wanted the whole thing to fall apart and she was just waiting on the reunion to go south.

So then fast forward to about a year and a half ago, my birth father and his wife decided to divorce. I felt like somebody was divorcing me. I wanted them to stay together so badly. [00:20:00] I don't think I slept the entire summer during that time. He gave me all these reasons why they were divorcing, and I knew that there had been issues when I first met him, but I couldn't help but think, had I not entered the picture, this wouldn't happen. And I thought, “God, why couldn't y'all have just gotten this outta the way before I met you?” But I remember where I was standing when my mother and I were on the phone one night, I was in my driveway and she said to me–and she got this really sweet tone in her voice and I knew something was coming–”Let me just ask you this one question and then I'll leave you alone. Does his wife blame you for the divorce?” I thought my head was going to blow off my shoulders into the stratosphere. I thought to myself, “There is no way under the sun I would want either of my two girls that I love so much to assume that level of guilt.” [00:21:00] And a couple of days later, I called my sister and I told her about it and she said, “I know, she told me she said that to you.” And I said, “Why would she do that? Why?” And she said, “I don't know. I said the same thing to her. I said, ‘I would've never said that to her. I can't believe you said that to Leigh’” and she said “Maybe I shouldn't have.” But she didn't feel sorry enough about it to apologize and she never has. And since then, for some reason, whenever I'm around her in person, she has this line of questioning that feels like it's designed to lead me down a road of this is why you should have never pursued a relationship with your biological family. If you'd have just stayed ours; this wouldn't have happened. [00:22:00] I've just never understood why it's so hard for them to understand my wanting to know my biology, that it seems like the only thing that they can feel or think is that I'm supposed to be grateful that I was pulled from the fire of those who are unfit to care for me. No matter how I say things, no matter how I write things. I've tried writing. I've tried catching everybody at a good time. It just falls on deaf ears.

So my adoptive father passed away of Alzheimer's. He actually ended up with COVID and had to be in the hospital in restraints for 25 days, which you can only imagine caused a tremendous amount of atrophy to his body. And about three weeks after he was released from the hospital, he passed away. A couple weeks after his funeral, I was down at my mother's helping her sort through some stuff and my oldest daughter calls me and says, “Mama, so-and-so just told me that her mother just told her out of the blue that she was adopted.” [00:23:00] And I was like, “What? Who tells a 15-year-old! What?” And she said, “Mama, she wanted to FaceTime us and tell us that on FaceTime.” And I thought, “Thank you, Lord, that that didn't happen.” Because I know my jaw dropped and my face would not have been the face to be looking at. And so I hang up the phone and I tell my mama that. And I'm like, “Can you believe that?” I said, “Y'all did it so right. I always knew I was adopted.” There was never that sit down. You're not who you think you are. There was never that moment. And she said to me–this is the first time she's ever asked me this–she said, “Did being adopted bother you?” [00:24:00]

Just a little bit.

Haley Radke: Sorry, I can't get over that. What is that? Is it really not understanding whatsoever? Is it just completely ignoring any of those little mentions you made here and there? What is that?

Leigh Bailey: Yes, that's exactly how it felt. It felt like, “Have you been so disconnected from me my entire life?” And so I said, “Yes.” I said, “Mama, it embarrassed me that I was adopted. I wanted to be yours. I wanted to be the same thing my sister was. I didn't wanna be adopted. I didn't wanna know I was given away and not wanted.” I went on and on to talk about how I had joined these Facebook groups and I had a community now, and that I was in therapy and I was trying to repair a lot of the damage that had been done as a child. [00:25:00] And I thought she was really hearing me, right up until she wasn't. And she said, “Was there anything positive about being adopted?” I wanna just grab my person and leave. And I said, “That's not the point. That's not what I'm telling you.” It's like they could only love and accept me in the form of the person they wanted me to be. It's like buying something you have expectations of working a certain way. And you're all happy with it when it does, and then one day it stops working that way and you're not happy with it anymore. It's, “Wait a minute, I don't really want that anymore. We need to go back to when it was working this way.” [00:26:00] And I thought to myself, adoption trauma is such an easy concept. It really makes more sense that it would affect us and affect our brains than for it not to affect us. It's just not rocket science. It's really that simple. And if you are in my life and you love me and you're empathetic towards my feelings, how can you not ever just take a minute and say, “You know, we didn't make her, someone else did, and so maybe we should celebrate that her dark hair came from her birth family and not try to pretend that it came from one of us, and maybe we should celebrate her talents and interests that differentiate from ours, and say, golly, it'd be really neat to know who that came from. [00:27:00] And I think it's great that you are who you are.” But, you know, I was just theirs.

And, my friend that I referenced earlier, she's been so amazing during my journey. She had a totally different situation. She had an adoptive mother that actually saved a little piece of paper that had her birth mother's name on it and held it for her until she knew the time would come when she would ask who she was. And she showed it to her and she shared the journey with her and helped her find her biological mother. So while we're both adoptees, we feel very differently about adoption because of that very difference, those different scenarios.

One of the hardest things for me in reunion–other than like constantly having to battle [00:28:00] everybody that really wanted it to fall apart–is that the only way, at 43, I can have a relationship with my biological father is as an adult. I will never know what it's like to be held in his arms as a baby or put in time-out as a 3-year-old. He will never see me graduate high school. He will never walk me down the aisle to get married, and he didn't know me during the times of my two daughters’ births. And the only relationship I can have with him is that an of an adult. And I think that threatens all the preexisting folks, all the people that exist. And I have had to learn to try to separate myself from that guilt-ridden pleaser. To say unto myself, “You know what? This is a [00:29:00] gift from God, and I'm sorry if it bothers all these people and they feel uncomfortable and they feel threatened, but I'm not because he's my dad and I'm not going to not know him and not have whatever relationship that's healthiest for us to have just because all these other people don't want it or don't like it or it doesn't make them feel a certain way.” I heard Lesli Johnson say on your show one time, we have to learn to sit with the discomfort of those who disagree with us. I don't need you to agree or like my decisions. This is not open to a vote from you.

But I think as adoptees, so many of us have a hard time managing reunion because of those that we have to sort of battle. And I hate to say “battle,” but those who can't hold space for us. [00:30:00] My oldest daughter is 16, she was 13 or 14 at the time I met my birth father, and she said, “Mama, I don't know why everybody's acting so ugly. You'll never have 43 years with him. He's 69 years old. You'll never have 43 years with him. Think about what they've had with you and they need to step back and let you have your time. You've been their time.” It was a very profound thing for someone that age to say. I thought, “Golly that's a movie line, but you'll never have 43 years of him.

I have contemplated estrangement many a time, and it ain't ever yet. It ain't over yet.

Haley Radke: Okay. Wow. I need to get myself together. [00:31:00] I've been crying quietly here as you've shared the last few minutes. I identify so much with your story. Even your daughter, it is so profound, missing 43 years. And it's like I'm not going to get the next 43, so give me what I can have now. And I don't know about you, but I have certainly felt this need to make up for lost time. And it's really mind-boggling to me that other people can't understand that when we've said yes to them for so long and then, now, you're choosing to say yes to yourself and that's so painful for them. And yeah, wow.

Leigh Bailey: Yeah, it feels very selfish.

Haley Radke: It does. So you talked about going to therapy to suss [00:32:00] this out, like do I just need stronger boundaries? Do I need estrangement? Can you talk about that? What makes you choose to stay in relationship? What makes you think, okay, is this it? What's that like for you navigating?

Leigh Bailey: So for me, during the thick of it, my father was still alive and every day was a different problem with him and his memory loss unit. And I was constantly helping my mother with that. And I felt like I can't leave her now. I can't do this to her now with him and I can't do it to him either. So then when he passes away, she's older now. She's 76, I think, and she's not in the best of health. And when I see her, Haley, it's so hard because when I go down there and I visit her and I see her feeble-looking, I just feel sorry for her. [00:33:00] And I have empathy for her situation and that she's alone now. But then I drive away and that 3% of the time that I actually feel that way about her goes away. And that 97% of the time that I feel the total opposite for her comes back. And, literally, I feel like I talk about the same things over and over in therapy. I rehash things over and I make progress, and then I digress and we have to go back to where we were. And then I make some progress, and then something else happens and I digress. My problem is that I just don't live very far away; I live about an hour and a half from her. And I'm very much still a part of the community and her friends, and I feel like if I become estranged from them that I'll become estranged from all these other people. And I don't know if I'm okay with all of that yet. [00:34:00]

I listened to a podcast–and I can't recall the podcast–and they talked about narcissistic parents and estrangement, and the lady was a doctor so-and-so on the podcast, and she said, “The question you have to ask yourself is: If I walk away from these people today and never see, never hear from them again, never interact with them ever again, how does that make me feel?” How do I feel about that? And there are times when I'm so disappointed in them that I just want to do that. But then I just feel sorry for her because, I guess, that's how my daddy raised me to be, to have empathy. He used to preach “the least of these” to us all the time. That which you have done to the least of these. And when I see her in her home, falling and [00:35:00] having health issues I just think, “Gosh, if she's the least of these and I'm not getting over myself to just ride it out, then maybe that's shame on me. I don't know.

Haley Radke: And what about your relationship with your sister?

Leigh Bailey: It's definitely been strained. She's been a lot better about my reunion with my birth father than my mother was. But we've had some very strained moments over the last six months. We text and send pictures of the kids but I'm just very guarded. I'm very guarded. And I know that they know the Leigh from before I did all my work, all my therapy. Like my therapist said to me one day, she said, “Leigh, here's the deal. You're doing all this work. You're here. You're toughing it out every week. So now you're in this circle over here, and all [00:36:00] these people who aren't doing their work, they're over here in this circle. And your supporters, your husband, your birth father, your kids–everybody that supports you–they're in this circle over here with you.” And it made a lot of sense. That's who I need to focus on. So right now where I am is: I'm focusing on the supporters, dealing with the non-supporters, and I'm trying to keep my boundaries set in a manner that makes things healthy for me.

You have to set boundaries with those who aren't on board with you. This would be my advice. Only discuss things as you wish. Even when you enter into reunion, you get excited. You've learned all this stuff, and you do, Haley, you said it right when you find your birth father and he's 69 years old, you're like, “Oh my God, he's old. I gotta pack this in.” And you jump the clutch on the reunion. You're just like full-steam ahead 'cause, Lord, his family is going to be like, “Okay, I don't think we like her so much anymore. We're gonna have to cut this off.” Or somebody may die. You don't know. [00:37:00] And it's just, “We gotta get this weekend planned and this weekend planned.” You get excited and you start sharing it with everybody. And then, all of a sudden, they're like, “Wait, I don't know how this makes me feel.” So then it becomes about how they feel. So you have to hang on to your reins. Don't lose your reins. You let go of your reigns and everybody starts slowly but surely making it about how they feel. You have to go back to the nucleus of the story. And in the middle of the story, it's the baby that was given away and the birth father that made her. And that's the basis of reunion. Reunion doesn't occur because of all these side people. And you can't let the jealousy of others alter how you enjoy your reunion. It would be awfully easy for you to find yourself making concessions because so-and-so's not real comfortable with this, and “We didn't realize you were going to know him this well. We just thought you were going to talk to him every so often. I don't know how we feel about that.” Here's the deal: It doesn't matter [00:38:00] because it's not your dad. It's mine.

Haley Radke: One of the last things that put me over the edge–I don't know if I've shared this before–but I got asked: “When is this gonna go back to normal?”

Leigh Bailey: Yeah. This is the new norm.

Haley Radke: Exactly. This is it.

Leigh Bailey: So you're going to need to get on board. This is the new car. This is the new ride around.

Haley Radke: I'm curious how you feel choosing yourself.

Leigh Bailey: I struggled with it at first. I just kept digressing in my choice of myself. I would choose myself and I'd feel all high and mighty. I'd use my words, I'd set my boundaries, and then I would start feeling guilty, but, “Gosh, how does it make them feel?” And then you just really have to stop and say, “How did I feel 43 years separated from my [00:39:00] biology? How did that make me feel?” I have spent my whole life being theirs. It's like there were all those boxes that they needed checking. I had boxes that needed checking; they had boxes that needed checking. They needed a child. I needed a home. Check. Check. Wipe the slate clean and move forward. I think that's how they think it works. The fact that there's a lifetime of residual trauma and pain, it's lost on them, completely lost on them.

Haley Radke: Oh, I keep going back to that. You are having this huge conversation with your adoptive mom, you're explaining all the impacts that adoption has had on you. And then at the end it's: “Wasn't there anything good about it?” It's like talking to a wall. Nothing's getting through. There's a tiny window and the only thing that fits through it are the nice things. “Tell me the nice things I did for you.” [00:40:00] Yeah, that's tough.

**Leigh Bailey:**Yeah.

Haley Radke: Wow. I thank you so much for sharing the hard stuff with us. I think a lot of us can relate to reunion putting a great deal of pressure on our current relationships. And, as you said, there's pressure on your biological father's relationships. Like reunion exposes the cracks everywhere, I think. In my experience that's what it's been. I am so impressed when people persevere and really look for help and support and choose themselves. That is so impressive to me because a lot of adoptees–I won't say all–but we've just bent to the will of others our whole life. That was like our purpose, yeah? [00:41:00] And so to be like, “No, I'm choosing me, choosing my family.” I found so much of your story interesting because I've experienced similar things and my psychologist sounds very much like your therapist. So I feel okay. I think we're getting good advice. I think we're learning good things. Choosing yourself.

Is there anything else you want to say before we do recommended resources? Say to someone else who's like you. Do I keep this up? Can I manage just being the boundary enforcer? Or do I need to take a break and say that to someone who is in your same imposition?

Leigh Bailey: When I would dread calling my adoptive mother just to check in with her and I would get this right below in the middle of my stomach. I would get this feeling in my stomach [00:42:00] like, “Oh, please, just don't even mention my birth father. Please just don't bring anything up. Please, let's just talk about something benign.” That's when this isn't healthy. This isn't good for me. And if I'm not healthy, I'm not good for my husband and I'm not good for my kids. And I have the most supportive husband in the world when I tell you he is a rockstar about reunion and adoption and all the mess I've been through in the last few years. He is a rockstar. If you can set those boundaries in a way where you can pick that phone up and answer the phone or have that visit in person. Not have your stomach in knots and it be so painful and you're just dreading the conversation and like looking at your notes before you walk in the door: “Remember, say this.” You know, when it doesn't consume you like that, I think you can carry on as long as it feels healthy to you. But when it affects you, it affects those around you. And that's no good. [00:43:00] That's no good.

Haley Radke: Well said. Okay, my recommended resource is along those lines, so I'm going to go first. I had a friend recommend this book to me very recently. I'm not even finished reading it. And it's so good that I wanted to bring it to you all because she and I both have had some extremely challenging relationships going on, and when she told me the title of the book, I immediately ordered it. It's called Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries and Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy and it's by Lindsay C. Gibson. And she is a psychologist. It's so good, and you mentioned the word narcissism in our conversation, and I think lots of adoptees will be like, “Oh yeah, there's a narcissistic parent ….. [00:44:00] And, we're technically not supposed to go around diagnosing people with a personality disorder. But this is so interesting because it's not necessarily talking about narcissism, but emotional immaturity. Dr. Gibson's little abbreviation for that is “EI.” So want to read that? That's Emotionally Immature. Okay. I'm going to read from the back: “This guide offers powerful tools to help you heal and break free from the coercive control of EI parents and other EI people. You'll learn practical ways to set boundaries, validate your feelings and gain emotional autonomy in all your relationships.” And I was like, “Yes, please.” So far, I haven't seen anything necessarily about adoption, but when she describes case studies of how parents are interacting with their adult children and just the really unhealthy things, I'm like, “Oh boy, have I seen that?” And I'm not necessarily just talking about my own situation, but, you know, how many adoptees I've talked to. [00:45:00] And the really neat thing in this book that I really like is she gives lots of tips on setting boundaries and things and you can find that all over the place. But at the back, she has a bill of rights for adult children of emotionally immature parents. I feel like for adoptees, I think this is a really helpful thing. The right to set limits. And she goes through more specifically what that means. The right to choose relationships. The right to put my own health and wellbeing first. And there's a whole list. There's 10 of them. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have to put up with these things, just as you were saying, Leigh.

And the other thing I was on her website, it's drlindsaygibson(dot)com. I was just checking it right before we hopped on, and she has a Q&A from readers. And the very last question–when we're recording this anyway-was: “Dear Dr. Gibson, How do I know if it's best to cut off contact with emotionally immature parents?” [00:46:00] And her short answer is: “It's best to cut contact when you feel like you've had all you can take. No. It's “all you want to take,” not “all you can take.” All you want to take and that's very different. So anyway, I recommend reading that little article on her website. I'll link to it. If you're where Leigh is, you might want to talk to a therapist about that and guide you through making that decision or whatever. And this book is so good. It's Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. And also, thank you to my friend for sharing that with me. She knows who she is.

What do you want to recommend to us today, Leigh?

Leigh Bailey: Okay, so I know everybody mentions Anne Heffron, but Anne is my writing coach, and I'm in the process of writing my book. Just writing my story, even if it's only for me to read. Getting it out of my head and into print. [00:47:00] Sometimes I'll write a ton of stuff and I'll go back and reread it, and I'll say, “Okay, so I got it out. I said it. I don't have to have that on there anymore, and I'll keep this part.” But just reading Anne's book and seeing that this is our truth. Feeling like you identify with people. Sarah Easterly, I know, I'm not going to go through a litany of all the adoptee books. There are so many good ones out there. Sarah Easterly’s Searching for Mom was a great read, too. It was really nice to connect with people like that and to know they've been there, they've walked in your shoes. Because really, that’s the rub we have with those that don't get us. They've never walked in our shoes.

Haley Radke: Well, when you talk about your story and when we're on this journey of what does it look like when we're interacting with the other people in our lives who maybe have not behaved–what's the line about writing a memoir? [00:48:00] About if they didn't want me to write about them in this way, they should have behaved better. I'm butchering that phrase, but it's like if you're feeling guilty, if you have cut off contact or whatever, you can go back to what you've written and also remind yourself, “Oh yeah, remember they did this really challenging thing. I don't really wanna revisit that.” So you also have a little bit of proof for yourself.

Leigh Bailey: You hate to think about taking your kids away from their grandparents. But you just have to look at the situation as a whole. And right now, I'm fine with them, I'm handling it well. But there's been a time when, like I said, I thought, “I can't do this anymore. Cannot do this anymore. It's no good.”

Haley Radke: Sorry I cut you off there. Did you have a last thought on your writing?

Leigh Bailey: No. Just how cathartic it is and it is for me. And I think it could be for everybody too. Anne always says we cannot die with our stories inside of [00:49:00] us. That's my approach.

Haley Radke: That's a pretty good job. Anne's getting a real workout on this show the last couple weeks!

Leigh Bailey: I know. I know.

Haley Radke: No shame. I think when you read another adoptee's memoir, just like you and I just had this conversation, it's very real. We're not trying to sugarcoat anything for anybody. It's freeing. You're like, “Whoa. She could say that? Maybe I could too.” And like you said, if it's just for you and maybe no one else will see it. Or maybe it'll be a best-seller. You don't know.

Leigh Bailey: And I was literally listening to your podcast the first time I ever heard of her book, Haley. And I remember when, I think it may have been Lesli Johnson, said the name of her book. I think it was that episode. And she said, “You don't look adopted.” I erupted in laughter. I laughed so hard out loud. I thought, “Oh my gosh. Who does?”

Haley Radke: Yes. It was a good title. Thank you so much. [00:50:00] I would love for you to share where we can connect with you online.

Leigh Bailey: I'm on Facebook. I have my whole name on there: Leigh Willis Bailey. I am on Instagram (at)LeighB75, and then I have a blog: alwayslooking(dot)blog. I named it that because I've always been looking. I've always been looking for familiar faces in the last five, six years I've been searching for biological family. I get a high from looking for my family. I don't ever want the search to end. I never want not to search. I always want there to be some more folks to be looking for.

Haley Radke: That's a good title too. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Leigh. I really appreciate it and I know that there'll be lots of people listening that feel very connected to your story and will be like, “Oh, I'm so glad someone else said it out loud, so maybe I can too.”

Leigh Bailey: Thank you so much for having me, Haley. I've so enjoyed this. [00:55:00]

Haley Radke: Guys, this stuff is so hard. I thank you for listening and honoring Leigh's story and my other guests’ stories. I just want to encourage you if you are feeling lonely or confused or trying to navigate some of these really, really challenging relationships to seek out support. I know therapy is not always accessible but if it is, I would encourage you to find an adoptee-competent therapist. And there's lots of lists online where you can find those. There's advice for interviewing your therapist. I have a Healing Series episode way back on that. And I just encourage you to seek out support and community. And, I want to thank my community for supporting the show and keeping it going. There's been some ups and downs lately, if you know what I'm talking about. But if you don't, that's fine. I really [00:52:00] appreciate your financial support. It pays for editing and hosting and all kinds of things.

And, if you want extra bonuses, there's Patreon. I have an Adoptees Off Script podcast that's weekly. We're doing a Book Club right now with adoptee-authored books, which is really wonderful, and we'd love to have you join us. So adopteeson.com/partner has details. And a free way to help support the show is just to share this episode with one friend who you think would either relate or another episode that you think they would benefit from.

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

168 [Estrangement Series] Kirsten Weatherford

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/168

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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 adopteeson.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Episode 168, Kirsten. I'm your host, Haley Radke.

We are starting a short series on the topic of estrangement. I think some of you know that I'm experiencing this myself and it's something I've wanted to talk about and learn about, but it's just been too close to home. So I want to acknowledge that just as many of our conversations here on the podcast are deeply personal, emotion-filled, could be activating or challenging for both you and me to hear, this again will be hard. It's really interesting to me that even after this conversation with Kirsten, I felt heavy and sad with my own grief and also the knowledge that there are so many of us who have dealt with the same and way worse, way worse. [00:01:00] This series isn't meant to be a how to undo estrangement or how to break up with your family. It's once again in the space of hoping to let you know you aren't alone. I see you. I acknowledge how hard and lonely this can be. With that, let me share what you're going to hear from our guest, Kirsten Weatherford.

We talk about how a memorable trip, a pilgrimage, helped Kirsten come out of the fog, how reunion with her first mother likely accelerated her estrangement from her adoptive parents. And we also wrestle with what it would take to even broach the subject of reunification if that was ever on the table. We wrap up with some recommended resources, and, as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com. [00:02:00]

Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Kirsten Weatherford. Welcome, Kirsten.

Kirsten Weatherford: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

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

Kirsten Weatherford: All right. I was born in Pennsylvania to a single mother and immediately relinquished in January of 1971. I spent three months in a private foster home before being placed with my adoptive parents. I was raised an only child, center of the world at all times.

Haley Radke: Me too. You just said “center of the world” and already I was like, oh my goodness, I hear you.

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah. It's a thing, isn't it? It's a big deal. We moved across the country from Pennsylvania to Oregon when I was four. We moved again from Oregon [00:03:00] to Colorado when I was five. I spent most of my childhood in Colorado and I kind of grew up there. We moved to Montana when I was a freshman in high school. And other than one year of college back in Colorado. I have been here ever since then. I have been married for 30 years. My husband and I have five children together, ranging in age from 10 to nearly 30.

As far as my adoption journey, I started coming out of the fog in January of 2010. I took a pilgrimage trip with my husband and some other folks from our church in April of 2013. That was a big deal. That's where I found the pit of my soul and my journey really took off from there. I came home from Scotland knowing I had to search and try and find my birth mom. [00:04:00] We found each other. I found her. It took until February of 2017. And we started communicating. She was actually located about six months prior to that, but it took us until February of 2017 to start communicating. I traveled to Pennsylvania that summer, July of 2017. We met for the first time in person. Six weeks later they came to Montana to visit my family on our turf, and we have been in reunion, continue to be ever since then. My last exchange with my adoptive parents was about a year after the reunion with my first mom. In June of 2018 there were some letters exchanged between us. And the last face-to-face conversation was in August of 2018 when I walked out of their home for the last [00:05:00] time.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. There's a lot of different ways we could go. So you've been in reunion with your first mother for a few years. And you lit up when you were talking about her and so I get the sense that is going well. I'll let you say.

Kirsten Weatherford: It is more than I ever expected. I have a very large first family on my maternal side and I was welcomed home by all of them with open arms, and they are amazing and incredible and gracious, wonderful people that helped me find my way back home to myself, not just to them, but to the center of myself as well.

Haley Radke: That's profound. Oh my goodness, I got goosebumps. Okay, so I asked you to come on because we're going to have this really hard conversation talking about estrangement [00:06:00] and so I'm sad that we're not going to dive into your beautiful reunion and how you did it and all those things. But I think you mentioned this before we got on and I've experienced the same. I've heard from so many people, so many adoptees who are estranged from their adoptive families. And it's wild. It's wild. It's something I never thought was going to happen to me either, and I'm experiencing that with you as well. So I'm curious, as you've talked to other adoptees and as you look at your own situation, yours happened during the beginning of your reunion, and do you think that had an impact or what have you unpacked there?

Kirsten Weatherford: I think if you asked my adoptive parents, they would lay blame on the reunion as a defining event that broke our relationship. [00:07:00] In all honesty, it had been probably 30 years in the making. We really struggled as I became an adult and tried to establish some independence as my own person with my own family; those boundaries were not honored. It took me a long time to even place any boundaries with them. I received unsolicited advice, not really advice, meddling and directives as to how we were raising our family and choices we were making. There was little to no autonomy in our relationship but, as I mentioned, I think they would blame the reunion. I would credit the reunion with giving me enough strength in myself to place those boundaries. [00:08:00] I had spoken to you about that. That allowed me to say, “No.”

I even placed some boundaries as I was in reunion. I didn't even tell them that I was searching. When I was actively searching for my first mom, I didn't even tell them because, for me, it felt like it was my story and my journey, and I didn't want them to invade that–that was mine. It was something I had ownership over and I suspected they would twist things to make it about them and how violated and hurt they were. Which eventually is what it came around to, was that I had hurt them and I was no longer grateful for all they had done for me.

Haley Radke: Oh dear. Okay, so I want to frame these questions and just say, we are not just going to bash our parents the whole time. [00:09:00] That's not what this conversation is about. I'm not saying that to you, I'm talking to our listeners so you guys know, we're not just going to complain about all the things our parents had wrong. But I'm curious for you, when you talk about this was 30 years in the making, and you had tried to become your own autonomous person as an adult and build your own family and make your own decisions, do you remember some things along the way? Things that they did or a certain event or anything like that, that you were like, “Whoa, like you are really stepping over the line.” Or is it more like you're looking back on it now and seeing that, “Oh, that was really over the line.”

Kirsten Weatherford: I think that there was some ability at the time to recognize it. Certainly now in a more reflective state I see it much more clearly. [00:10:00] In preparation for recording this, I went back and read those last letters that were exchanged between us and I'm seeing them even differently now than at the time I received them. So yeah, there were definitely moments where, specifically – and this doesn't necessarily speak to a gun/non-gun issue. I am in Montana. We hunt here; we're outdoors people. My husband grew up hunting. I was raised around guns just as a target practice–those types of things–but I did know how to use firearms. I'm not an anti-gun person by any means, but I'm also not gun-toting; I try and walk in the middle. I guess that is where I'm at. But my parents had asked if they could give our oldest son, who was six at the time, a .22 and we said, no. [00:11:00]

Haley Radke: For those people that don't know what a .22 is, can you just explain it to us like we're six?

Kirsten Weatherford: It's kind of the initiation into a small rifle. It's easy to handle, a first gun for a kid, so to speak, beyond a BB gun, a step into a first actual firearm. They asked if they could get him one. We said no and assumed that would be honored. It was not. Our son received a .22 from my parents with a gleam in their eyes and almost a “Ha, ha, now what are you gonna do?” kind of attitude, which left especially my husband in a position to take away something that had been gifted by grandparents. [00:12:00] It left us to be the bad guys, which is often how it felt, like we were put in the us versus them, what are you gonna do about it now? kind of situation.

Haley Radke: Oh boy. You don't want to be the bad guy but, yikes, that's total overstepping: to ask ahead of time and then completely not respect that. That's shocking to me.

Kirsten Weatherford: It happened a lot.

Haley Radke: So okay, when those things happened, did you have conversations with them about it after? Were there fights?

Kirsten Weatherford: No. I wasn't in a place to have those conversations at the time. Again, a lot of what I can talk about now was not what I could talk about in that time and in that space. I was not comfortable enough in myself that I could say, “Absolutely not.” Especially in the moment I couldn't stand up and say, “No.” We said no, you can take this back.” It just wasn't possible. [00:13:00]

Haley Radke: I understand so much because just having the conflict and having to try and stand up for yourself. And especially in the moment – goodness, yikes. I don't think I would be able to do that.

Kirsten Weatherford: Especially when it involves your kids.

Haley Radke: Oh yeah.

Kirsten Weatherford: That just made it feel exceptionally violating.

Haley Radke: So did there come a time prior to the reunion and just the last few years where this all kind of came to a head? Did there come a time earlier than that where you were like, “Okay, I'm seeing some bad patterns of me not being listened to. I really have to start doing X, Y, Z with them to make sure my family and my feelings are respected.” Like where you set out some boundaries whether or not you told them but just had them in your mind. Did there come a time like that?

Kirsten Weatherford: Oh, absolutely. It was probably mid 2013-ish. So I was back from our trip to Scotland. [00:14:00]

Haley Radke: And you would call that a pilgrimage?

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah, definitely. The island of Iona, Scotland, is often regarded as a holy place. It's a very small island in the Outer Hebrides. It's credited with being the birthplace of Christianity for Scotland. It's this incredible, quiet, small place that really gives you the opportunity to do some reflection. And yeah, it was honestly an experience I still, this many years later, can't appropriately give words to. It's where I found the pit of my soul. It's where I really began to understand what being a child of adoption meant for me. I broke down. [00:15:00] I just recently was able to put some phrasing to it and say that I tried to call, crawl into the loneliest part of myself while I was there, and, like I said, came home.

So we had been home from Scotland, not even actively searching really yet. 2013, we would've still had four kids at home. We had gone out to dinner with my parents and as had often taken place when we would go out to dinner something would go wrong. Somebody's food wouldn't be right, or the service wasn't appropriate, or something of that nature. And that night in particular, my dad unleashed a personal assault on the server who really had no control over the situation and he was doing the best he could. They were quite busy. He was the only guy on that side that was working. [00:16:00] Things were taking a while but, you know, we try and be understanding people. However, my father was not understanding and just verbally assaulted this poor waiter. And I was seated there. It was a large table because it was my husband, myself, our four kids: at least one plus one, and my parents. So it was a pretty big table and my husband and I were at opposite ends of the table. And I know I physically slumped over and I just had this sickening feeling in my gut. My husband at the other end, I think we were telepathically communicating with each other. Had we been able to make eye contact or had I chosen to do that, I believe in that moment we would've gotten up and left. It was embarrassing. I did not want to ever, I never did. That was a defining moment. I never subjected my kids to going out to dinner with them again. I don't believe that service workers [00:17:00] are at all deserving of the treatment they often get. And that was such a personal attack on a stranger who was just trying to do his job. That was a pretty defining moment though. So that was a big boundary; we decided then and there that we would never go out to dinner again with them.

Haley Radke: So what happened the next time they asked you? Did you just say no? Did you always just put it off and say no, or did you tell them?

Kirsten Weatherford: I think they knew. That was so bad. There was very little conversation the rest of that meal. And as was the typical pattern after my dad would blow up and make a scene, the following day my mother called and wanted to apologize and gloss things over and smooth the waters in the hopes that we would forgive and forget, and there just was not any going back from it that time. We were done. [00:18:00]

Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. So going back to this experience you had in Scotland, which sounds incredibly profound to repeat the word I said before, but then you decide to search and things but you said you were keeping that to yourself because it wasn't maybe safe to share with them. Probably wasn't safe to share with them.

Kirsten Weatherford: No, it was not something I even considered mentioning to them. I had no hope that they would understand that it was something that I needed. It was no reflection on the difficulties of my relationship with them. It was very much about me and what I needed, and what I felt very deeply as something I needed to try and solve. Maybe not solve, but find peace with and find answers to. It was just this deep longing [00:19:00] for the unknown. And, I also came to a place where I really wanted to know and have a different story that maybe I could tell myself versus what I had believed to be true fundamentally about myself. I wanted to be able to get to a place where I could understand myself and accept myself as a more positive entity in the world versus something somebody had discarded.

Haley Radke: Oh, I feel that too. Okay so, I don't know, are you okay with this? Do you want to walk us through what happened? Did you try and set up some boundaries and they weren't respected? What were the last kind of things that happened before it was like, “Hey, the letters and we're done.”

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah. One of the last defining moments: My husband and oldest [00:20:00] son and son-in-law were coaching the youngest son's baseball team. So, you know, these are little kids–they're like six, seven years old at the time. So it's an entertaining free-for-all for the spectators to be watching these kids. It's a happy environment. My oldest son had brought his dog with him, as he often did, and the dog was sitting near my father-in-law and was perfectly content. She was a real sweet, gentle dog. And, my mother came up and made a comment and coddled over the dog about how she couldn't get anywhere and everybody was being mean, and she very much believes that she's the only one that treats animals well enough. Nobody else does it [00:21:00] well enough. She's the only one that cares for them enough. And so the comment of “Oh poor Jazz, you just aren't being taken care of.” My oldest son was there and he said, “Why don't you just take care of it? Nobody else ever does it right.” And that made her angry. That made my father angry. My father-in-law, the poor guy, just sat there dumbfounded, didn't say anything. I also didn't say anything. I let it happen. It was a boundary that was put up via my oldest son, who at that point is an independent adult himself as well. So I let it happen, and they went and watched the rest of the youngest son's baseball game from their car and didn't talk to anybody else after that. They stopped coming to the games. [00:22:00] They didn't interact with us near as much after that. There was one phone call about what had taken place. I was put in a position to maybe defend myself and my lack of reaction And I wasn't willing to give in. I wasn't willing to back down into the sheepish role of still being their small child.

And that was the last defining thing that then led to the letters that were exchanged. After the baseball thing probably took place in like April or May, I had placed a phone call to them to invite them to the Mother's Day brunch that we were going to be going to with husband and I and our five kids and my in-laws, we all live in the same town. [00:23:00] We're all here. It's all very local, and I called to invite them to that as well. And I received, I think, what I've called a verbal assault and a go-to-hell message from my dad on that phone call. And it's really the last time I've spoken to him directly. There was never any other conversation between the two of us after that.

Haley Radke: First of all, I'm sorry that happened. That sounds really painful. And just when you're describing it, just the event, at the baseball field or whatever, it doesn't feel like that kind of big of a deal. And yet from the stories I've heard from other people, and something from me too, it's: that's the last straw, you know?

Kirsten Weatherford: Oh, for sure. Yeah. The event with the [00:24:00] dog was in the grand scheme of things minor, but it was like the last time we wanted to be diminished.

Haley Radke: Can you talk about having your son be the one to be giving his grandma a little sass? What did that feel like for you as a parent because you know he's grown up with her?

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah. And I was actually proud of him. Honestly. He grew up with the most influence from them for the longest period of time of all of our children. He has spent time in therapy as well, and he created those hard boundaries before I could. And so I really have to say that I was proud and I learned a lesson from him in that healthy boundaries are [00:25:00] necessary and need to be respected. And when they're not, when those boundaries are violated, that's a clear message.

Haley Radke: Yeah, it definitely sounded like, especially just his words, he was just like really calling her out on something

Kirsten Weatherford: I cleaned it up for broadcast here, there were some choice words, some colorful words that were exchanged. It was pretty clear.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's too bad. My editor loves beeping things.

Okay, I wonder how you're feeling now. You just said you reread the letters that you exchanged, and you even have a different perspective on it now, and you're a few years out from these events and having contact with them. What does it feel like for you?

Kirsten Weatherford: I don't miss them. I don't miss them. I don't miss the constant [00:26:00] turmoil that it caused in my own household. I miss the idea of them, but them specifically, I don't miss. I'm saddened by the fact that for them it became an either/or they couldn't do both/and. They met my first mom the first time she came here and it was cordial. My dad was able to have some conversation with my stepdad. Everybody's from this small little community back in Pennsylvania and so there are common people they know, some of the same people, and those conversations were good. And what could have bonded my adoptive dad and I in a deeper way because [00:27:00] once I had visited, we could have conversation about these locations and it's where he had grown up as well. And so we could have had this deeper connection over place that we were both from. And instead of that we now have basically no connection. It didn't have to be an either/or. That was their choice, and I think it was their inability to see it from my perspective and see it as what I needed that had little to no reflection on them at the time.

Haley Radke: As an adopted person, how hard has it been to even know what you needed?

Kirsten Weatherford: [00:28:00] Well, let's see. I started coming out of the fog in 2010, and I have much clearer vision now. But at the same time, things will catch me off guard in a moment. It's right below the surface. Being an adopted person is always brewing right below the surface, and sometimes it catches me off guard. And so yeah, to know what I needed or what I wanted or even being able to communicate maybe what that was for me was something I struggled for a long time. And I'm still a work in progress. I think I always will be.

Haley Radke: You said, “I don't miss them.” And when you hear me say that back to you, what is that? Do you feel anything inside? Are you like, “Oh boy, what if they hear that?” Do you have [00:29:00] any of that stuff, or can you confidently say, “No, you know what, I know what I feel now and I don't miss them and I've reflected on this.”

Kirsten Weatherford: I can confidently say that I don't miss them. I don't miss the constant – yeah, it's a repeat of what I said earlier. It was just such a constant state of turmoil for my own household that it's much more peaceful without them in our lives. And, as I said, they live less than two miles away from me. I had somebody asking me the other day like, “Aren't you worried you're gonna see them at the store?” And I used to be. I haven't seen them out and about, which is okay. I did probably two weeks ago. I am pretty sure I saw my dad in Walmart, but he didn't see me. I kept on walking. He was in line checking out and [00:30:00] I just kept on a walkin’ because I'm not willing to go there.

Haley Radke: So correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like you both are just like, “Yeah, I'm not gonna reach out.” Seems like they're very angry, too. It was like a big blow up. You're nodding your head. Okay. So, where am I going with this? As I said, this is my first conversation about estrangement and we're going to do a little series on it, but what are your thoughts on reconnection and reconciliation and if that's even something you would want? What would need to happen for you to even consider that? Or is that something that you're like, “Nope, I'm not even gonna go down that road. I don't even wanna talk about it.” And even just asking the question, I feel a little bit like I don't want to bring it up like we're having this conversation and the point of it is, at some point, we all just want to be reconnected and fix the relationship and that's the goal. I'm not saying that. I'm curious about your thoughts. [00:31:00]

Kirsten Weatherford: I am not willing to reengage with them unless and until they're willing to do some work on their part. I would like them to have some ownership of how we got to where we are today instead of it being a bunch of finger-pointing. I would love to see them have some openness, an ability to see their part in how things ended up. Realistically, we're talking about people who are in their late seventies, early eighties, and my 50 years of experience tell me that they're not going to do anything differently. It's not in their makeup of who they are. [00:32:00] So I think I've gotten to a place, for me, where I can say it wasn't about me personally. Whoever landed in their home as the kid who won the lottery and ended up placed with them, it would've been the same. It was about who they were. It wasn't about who I was. It was who they wanted or needed or expected me to be. When I tried to live out my own person as my own person, instead of the reflection of who they hoped I could be for their sake, that's when things fell apart. And so I just don't know that they have it in them to see it any other way. They have no other lens other than their own.

Haley Radke: I think. I don't know. [00:33:00] Here's my two cents, and it's just the same as what this podcast cost you to listen to: it's free. I love how you express that so beautifully. So many of us work to discover who we are. A lot of you that are listening especially, we have been going through therapy and finding our identity and just becoming. A lot of the times that includes just becoming a better human. And what I see just in the grand scheme of things in the world, when you have a human who's going through therapy and improving themselves and you're moving further and further away from the people that are just staying stagnant and aren't willing to change and improve, the tension just keeps building as you find more of yourself.

So I'm really happy for you, Kirsten, that you are able to see things that way. [00:34:00] I feel like it sounds like you're coming from such an empowered place in that decision, in that you don't have to feel like, “Oh shoot, what if I would've said this, but this would've held us on a little longer.” Or those kinds of little regrets that some of us have.

Kirsten Weatherford: Sure, yeah. Of course, leading up to this, my husband and I had been talking about defining events in that relationship and he reminded me of the first and last time he saw me really stand up and defend my position as a mother and our position as parents in relation to our middle daughter who we struggled with tremendously. But we worked through a really difficult situation, not just in our relationship with her. We were trying to help our own kids navigate their relationships with each other, but we tried to do it in a [00:35:00] respectful way and allowed them to navigate that space, and we wanted to have our ability to navigate that space, and everything's good now. At the time that I stood up, my mother was insistent that I should do this and I should do that, saying “you should make him talk to her and here's what you need to do.” And I just said, “No, let us do this. Let us figure this out. If we're not doing it the same way you are, that doesn't mean it's wrong. Respect us enough.” I don't know. I'd like to say at this point that we weren't navigating things wrong because it's all come back together and we're all in good space with each other. But her interference was unwelcomed, unnecessary, and it was damaging at the time. Keith looked at me and he said, “Wow, she might wish that she was dealing with her husband instead of dealing with me.” [00:36:00] Because it was the first time that I really stood up to her. And he had corked off a few times before with her as well. But it was really the first time that I unleashed and opened the file and verbally vomited all over.

Haley Radke: I don't know. How does it feel? Like even thinking back you look like you sat up a little bit, like you just looked empowered and it's like, “I'm an adult now.” Because I think so many of us are still stuck in powerlessness because of our adoption. We had no choice in it. And then we didn't get to pick the people who took us and all that. It's like, “Okay, I'm an adult now, so what are you going to do?”

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah. It was about no longer being that kid who was afraid in the corner and standing on my own two feet as [00:37:00] an independent autonomous adult and making choices for myself and for my own family. Right or wrong, give me the space to do it and figure it out. I don't know if it was like this preventive mode, that she was going to protect us from everything or try and prevent bad things from happening. Let me figure that out. And we've tried really hard to do that with our kids, too. Respect, respect each other enough to allow autonomy and space.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Okay. Before we do recommended resources, I just want to give you a little space to give us advice or say what you'd like to say to other people who might be in a similar situation. And I don't know what that looks like. Do you want to talk about it? You had mentioned to me, I don't know if it was in the recording or in a different conversation we had, but you said, “It was a long time coming, maybe this should have happened sooner.” [00:38:00] Is there something like warning signs of things like “If I had set up these boundaries earlier,” or “If I had done this or that.” I mean hindsight, whatever. I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to ask, but I want to help other adoptees stand up for themselves, but I don't want to have things break down either. It's like this really confusing kind of space talking about estrangement.

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah, I wish I'd had the ability to create those boundaries sooner. Truth be told, it couldn't have happened any sooner. I can say that, in reflection, I wish it had happened sooner. I can say that because of where I'm at today, but there's no way it could have happened any sooner because I was not confident enough in myself and my space and the ownership of who I am to be able to do it any sooner. [00:39:00] I know it's a huge balance. There's this whole societal messaging of being the good adoptee or the ungrateful adoptee–one I hate even more–or that the only adoptees who search are those who have had a bad experience with their adoptive parents. I don't think that's fair messaging, but it's the reality of the world we live in as adopted people. We're usually the last ones thought of.

As I said, I don't miss them. I have no regrets other than I wish it could have happened sooner. I wish I could have come into myself sooner and had more time to live into this person I feel like I am now. I wish it could have happened sooner, but, you know, midlife is what it is. And I had a friend tell me that 40 was a magical number and I thought [00:40:00] she was talking crazy talk, but now at 50, I can tell her, “Oh man, you were so spot on.” There were so many things that happened in my forties that really brought me to where I am now. And I just don't think I had the strength or the ability to do it any sooner. It's not an easy space to walk, but for me, it's been so worth it.

Haley Radke: I am so happy for you.

Kirsten Weatherford: Thank you.

Haley Radke: I want to just interject a little thing before we do recommended resources. So, Kristen and I said the word “boundaries” like 30 times, and I could have asked her what she meant by that or her specific things, but I didn't on purpose because boundaries can be any sort of line that is personal to you. Maybe we don't want input on [00:41:00] how we parent or on my personal appearance or physical health or any of those kinds of things. I don't want any input or conversations on my search or reunion or lack thereof, et cetera. It can be anything that's not safe for you to engage with them about. So insert as needed as you look at your own relationship and think about boundaries, not just with your adoptive parents, but with anybody in your life. They're so personal to you and what's safe for Kirsten might not be for me, et cetera. So anyway, that's my little insertion.

Do you have thoughts on that before we do recommendations?

Kirsten Weatherford: Boundaries are important, and creating and establishing those boundaries, for me, was empowering and it helped me believe that I have value. [00:42:00]

Haley Radke: Yes, that's so good. So good. Okay, we're going to do recommended resources. And I told Kirsten ahead of time that I was going to make fun of her because when we do this guest application process and all the things, I'm like, “OK, make sure you pick something new.” And she didn't. So she's going to talk about something she loves and she wants to talk about it so much. We've talked about it before on the show, but now you're going to hear why Kirsten thinks that you should check this out. Okay. Go ahead.

Kirsten Weatherford: Well, shout-out to my now friend Anne Heffron and her book You Don't Look Adopted. I had her book for quite a while and was honestly afraid to pick it up. I wasn't sure. What I was going to find.

Haley Radke: Really?

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah. I had it and it sat on my shelf because I just wasn't sure what was going to be in there. I was trying to do some of my own writing at the time, and [00:43:00] I didn't want somebody else's voice to come through in what I was working on, and I just had to get to a space where I felt comfortable picking it up. It was one of the best windows into my own soul as well that I could have read. I would sit there and just shake my head and, “Oh man, me too.” And I was in awe of finding words that I had struggled to find. They were right there on those pages. So, very recommended. I know a lot of people do that, but for me that book is self-love.

Haley Radke: Oh, that's so good. That's so good. I love Anne. I talk about her a lot too, so that's okay. I'm so glad you did that. The other thing I'll plug is Anne and Pam Cordano–who's a therapist who's been on the show before as well–they are doing some weekly classes called “Flourish” and they're live. [00:44:00] You might see Kirsten in there, I don't know. They're live; they're not recorded, so you have to be there. And they do some writing prompts. There's some discussion. I was able to attend one. I really enjoyed it. And if you follow Anne or Pam on Instagram or Facebook, you can find out how to sign up for those. But I am going to take us in a totally different direction because like last year was a whole thing and we're not going to go down that rabbit trail. But I very much enjoyed on Off Script, which is the Adoptees On Patreon podcast. And Kirsten's been a supporter for a long time. Thank you. So many of you listening are and I really appreciate it. That's how the show continues and. My co-host on that, Carrie Cahill Mulligan, and I were reading all these adoptee-authored books last year and I really tried to find [00:45:00] more books from people that aren't like me so that I can learn, especially from people of color, because I really wanted to learn more about racial injustice and how I can be an ally and I was very challenged and it's good. It's really good for me to be challenged.

So I want to just recommend to you an author that I loved reading. Oh my goodness, you have to follow her on Twitter. Her name is Shannon Gibney. Her Twitter handle is (at)gibneyshannon. I read two of her books. The first one is See No Color, and it is about a transracial adoptee and it's a YA novel. I really loved it. It's got baseball and race and there's siblings and it's not your typical adoptee reunion kind of a story. I really loved it. It's so good. And I also love Shannon's novel that has nothing to [00:46:00] do with adoption: Dream Country.

I don't know if you've read either of these, Kirsten, but when I read Dream Country, I learned so much about Liberia. I had no idea. I'm Canadian so I don't really know a lot about United States history. I know Canada. But I learned so much. It's this huge epic story of different families, different time periods, and she just weaves everything together so beautifully. I loved it. So Shannon Gibney. She's a fellow adoptee and a wonderful author and I really recommend you follow her. And gosh, this book, it's not about adoption, but it's great. The title is Dream Country. Check out that cover! It's so beautiful.

Kirsten Weatherford: That is beautiful. We have a “book problem” in our house, so I'm going to add, well, some people would say it's a problem. We have books all the time and they're coming in almost daily sometimes. So I will add those to my list for sure.

Haley Radke: Yeah. [00:47:00] I'm describing the cover for the audiobook, that's great. But if you color code your bookshelf and you need more red books, it’s got a red spine with some blue on it. That's very, I don't know, that felt like a 2020 reference, like when you were bored in quarantine, you color code your bookshelf, I dunno.

Kirsten Weatherford: Yeah.

Haley Radke: Anyway, where can we connect with you online, Kirsten?

Kirsten Weatherford: I am on Facebook as Kirsten Weatherford. I'm also on Instagram as No More Misfit, that is from my blog page by the same name, No More Misfit. There is one blog entry entitled “Misfit” that kind of explains where the no more misfit handle came from. So yeah, I would love to have people reach out, connect with me wherever they're comfortable.

Haley Radke: I really enjoyed reading your blog. I especially like the one entry that's called “Claimed.” [00:48:00] And you wrote, and it was especially meaningful to me to read this before we talked about estrangement. There's a line in here: “Our adoptive families certainly made every attempt to claim us, make us 100% theirs. The problem with that is we adoptees know better.” And you go on from there. But yeah, if you want to hear more about Kirsten's story, I definitely recommend you check out her blog: nomoremisfit(dot)com.

All right. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I just had such a great time talking with you even about such hard things and thanks for being willing to talk about the hard stuff, the real stuff.

Kirsten Weatherford: Thank you, I really appreciate you giving adoptees the space to speak and have voice. It's been a lifesaver for me, so thank you. I appreciate you as well. [00:51:00]

Haley Radke: This is heavy stuff, you guys. It's just heavy, heavy stuff. So thanks for hanging in with me and listening to Kirsten's story. This is a first: I actually cried before we did the interview instead of during. So I was pretty proud of Kirsten and me for holding it together and just trying to talk facts. So just know, if you're like, “Oh, Haley wasn't super emotional.” I was very emotional before and after, but managed to hold it together for you during.

Anyway, I'm thankful that you're here. If you're experiencing estrangement or some other really challenging things, I hope that you are able to get connected into community–whatever that looks like, even if it's your in-real-life friends and not adoptee-specific. It's really important for us to be talking about this and getting support about it. I know from personal experience what stuffing all that stuff down does to you. So I'm really good at it. And that's not anything to brag about. Yeah, it's heavy. [00:50:00]

I want to thank Kristen again. She's one of my Patreon supporters, as I mentioned, and without her and my other supporters, I wouldn't be able to keep podcasting. So I'm so excited that I get to make the show for you every week and that it's free, you can listen wherever, whenever and feel like you're with other adoptees as you listen and feel supported in that way. But I can't do it without people like Kirsten that are willing to financially support the show.

So if you want to join Kirsten and some other really incredible people, you can go to adopteeson.com/partner to find details of what you get when you support the show. There is a weekly podcast that's called Adoptees Off Script, and we're in the middle of doing a Book Club. Middle? We're starting Book Club this year. We just had a really fantastic chat with one of our Book Club authors, which was really fun. [00:51:00] And so there'll be more of those throughout the year. If you want to join us, again: adopteeson.com/partner for the details. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.

166 [Healing Series] Navigating the Holidays

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/166

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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 adopteeson.com/partner.

You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I am 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 all about navigating the holiday season. Let's listen in.

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

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Hi Haley. How are you?

Haley Radke: Good. I feel like I should have a chart up on the wall and every time you come on, we'll just make another tick mark. I feel like you're our most requested adoptee therapist, so-

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Oh, that's [00:01:00] really nice to hear. I love being on the podcast and talking with you. And even though nobody else can see our faces, I can see yours and I always enjoy that.

Haley Radke: Me too. Sorry guys, it's not a video. I am so glad you're here. We are entering a holiday season again, and this has become a tradition that you answer some of our listener questions and steer us through some tricky conversations with boundaries and literally give us some language to bring to our hard conversations. But I'm going to start off with a general question for you because we are in unprecedented times, as they like to say. When we're recording this, we are almost a year into living this pandemic life. And what goes along with that is we have listeners who are all over the world who have different restrictions imposed on them, and it [00:02:00] follows that some of our listeners have family in different areas who may be taking this seriously or who may not be. Maybe their state has restrictions and some countries have none and so they're navigating those boundaries. And in holiday time we're talking a lot about visiting and do we travel there or not. So I'm curious how have you been advising some of your clients on how to navigate these things in pandemic times and do you have some conversation starters for us to say, Hey, we're not gonna be there for this holiday dinner this year because of COVID.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Right, we definitely are. And that phrase “unprecedented times,” it's definitely that. I'm talking a lot with my clients, and in the groups that I have, it seems to be the thing we're talking about right now. And in terms of [00:03:00] adoptees, I'm trying to help my clients gain their voice and try things differently and give themselves permission to do things differently. And I think that some of the restrictions that different states have and different countries have are helping reinforce that, helping reinforce boundaries if people are deciding that they don't want to travel, if they don't want to split their time between their adoptive family or their birth family. So I think in some ways, if people are struggling with that, the guidelines are offering kind of a cushion there.

Haley Radke: Wait a second. Wait a second. Are you saying we can blame the pandemic for the reason we don't want to go to our: insert whichever family there.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I don't think I’d use the word blame, but it can offer a little bit more reinforcement around that decision. But then there's also people who are, I have a lot of clients who are new in reunion and were really planning to travel this year [00:04:00] and see birth relatives. And so this pandemic situation is really creating a lot of grief and loss for those plans and those visits and those connections.

Haley Radke: Yes. I have spoken to a couple of different listeners who had planned a reunion visit and that's been canceled and postponed and postponed, and the disappointment is so real. It's so real.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: It is.

Haley Radke: All right. We had a whole bunch of questions submitted. Here's a question from Lauren: “I'm in Reunion and realize that my biological family and my adoptive family have very different expectations around the holidays. I need help finding my way.”

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: That's a good question. I need help finding my way. Yeah, so again, the word conditioning comes to mind or just living with this belief that we have to go along, right? The adaptive adoptee, the good adoptee. [00:05:00] We can't disappoint people. And I think as adults and coming into our own, coming out of the fog and recognizing, wow we can actually make decisions that feel right to us. So finding that balance. So how does she make her way? I would ask Lauren, what do you want to do? What feels best for you and your family? And can you give yourself permission to maybe do something different this year? Create a new tradition that feels congruent with what she wants to do. And again, I said congruent, so creating something new that feels right for her. And that's not to say that's not going to feel uncomfortable, but just because something feels uncomfortable doesn't mean it's wrong. I think people mistake if they set a boundary and then they get some pushback from family, they might be quick to think, oh wow, this isn't right. But that's not necessarily true. Creating change and creating [00:06:00] healthy boundaries doesn't always feel comfortable. In fact, it rarely does, but that doesn't mean it's not healthy.

Haley Radke: It's so interesting that you were like what do you want? Because that sounds so simple, but Lesli, how many of us have literally never thought about that or have shoved it down and have just bent to the will of anyone around us to make them feel comfortable.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yep. That's so true. I was talking to someone yesterday and we were talking about that exact same thing. You know, what do you want? Like how the person is someone who just goes along and has a hard time even identifying what he wants to eat for dinner, right? So practicing finding small things. What do you want? I want this for dinner. And it sounds silly, but that's where we start. We start identifying what we like, what we don't like, and then expand on that.

Haley Radke: This question really goes along with it. It's from Chris: “We talk a lot about finding our authentic voice. [00:07:00] How can I begin to be more comfortable asking for what I need, especially during the holiday season?”

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah. And again, starting small, right? So really tapping into do I actually like this, or is it just something that I'm used to doing? Is this tradition something that I really enjoy? Or is it just something I'm used to doing because my family has done it our whole life? So questioning some of those things that have just been obligatory go-alongs and seeing if they still fit.

Haley Radke: I've seen a lot of families do this pandemic-wise. Towards the end of November, people were writing out okay, what do you really want to make sure we do this holiday season? Because many of our things that we rely on, maybe having that big family meal is not an option for us where we live right now. And I see the moms asking their kids like, okay, what's two or three things you really want to do? And that could be like, [00:08:00] oh, we really want to watch this movie and we really want to make this Christmas treat and we really want to go walk this street to see these Christmas lights or things. Are you suggesting that maybe adoptees could do that? Like it's pre-planning out to make sure you have your special holiday thing that actually is important to you and you maybe didn't realize it?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think that's a great idea. Why not? So again, if we use this, and you and I have talked about this on an earlier podcast, but this idea of coming out of the fog and recognizing what's working, what's not? How have I gone along or adapted into my adoptive family that isn't healthy or wise for me anymore, and how can I make these small changes that suit me? And a lot of times people say that sounds so selfish, or that I could never do that. Okay, but that's where the work is right? To stretch some of these things where you think, oh, I can't, I could never do that. I'm going to hurt my adoptive parents or [00:09:00] that's just not how we do it in our family. And I guess that's how I really work with my clients. Is that still working for you? So part of coming out of the fog is understanding and uncovering which adaptations or coping skills or coping behaviors were necessary during childhood and adolescence, but which ones are outdated, that are no longer serving the person and maybe they're actually interfering with relationships and them living their most healthy life.

Haley Radke: Okay. I have another question that's really a challenging one. Some of these are anonymous, just so you know. I wanted to honor people's privacy, especially when we're talking about really hard things-

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Of course-

Haley Radke: “As if 2020 weren't hard enough, I have fully stepped out of the fog this year. I'm 41 and it's been a long time coming. Along with the other issues we're all facing, I'm drowning in uncertainty it seems on every front. My anxiety is sky high all the [00:10:00] time. And now with the holidays here, all I want to do is hide from everyone and everything. Things I loved to do in years past hold no interest for me now. And I definitely don't want to plan or lead these family traditions. How do I take a step back but not withdraw completely?” And so that's the end of the question, but I just want to let you know that I did message this person a little bit just to make sure they had some supports in place. Some of the language in there, again, I'm not a psychologist, it sounded a little bit like depression, some of those kinds of things happening, which are really serious. And what I was really impressed by is that they recognized it and acknowledged it. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and let you share your thoughts and answer her question.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah, I agree with you and I appreciate you reaching out to this person and checking in. It shows your thoughtfulness and concern. And I think the holidays are often difficult for adoptees and non-adoptees too, right? So there are all these expectations of [00:11:00] how we should feel or what we should be doing and when that isn't our felt experience, that can even add to more despair. So I would say to this person, again, can you give yourself permission to, not necessarily, she or he says they don't want to withdraw completely, but can they lower their expectations of themselves? Can they give themselves permission to take a few steps back and let this year be different, right? It's already going to be different, likely anyway, but can they let it be different than years past as they're coming fully stepped out of the fog. And that's a difficult process in itself, right? Recognizing these both/ands of adoption, right? That grief and the loss that's inherent in separating a child from their biology and all the other things that come along with it. So I would say be gentle with yourself and give yourself permission to do something different and step away from those [00:12:00] things that are creating pain and anxiety,

Haley Radke: What advice would you give to someone who mentions she doesn't want to plan or lead these specific family traditions? It sounds like a heavy weight. Do you have advice about that? I know it often will fall on the mom or whatever traditional kind of family/gender-norm kind of things. And if that's just too much, how do you ask for help and what are the steps you could do to pass off some of this stuff?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah. Part of the question doesn't talk about this person's support system and does she have family and friends that she could be really honest with. I'm struggling. I've come out of the fog this year and I'm doing some really hard work and I just am not up to leading the holidays this year. And that could change, right? That could change as things settle, but I would encourage this [00:13:00] person to reach out to the support system that she has. And a lot of people, I'll mention this too, don't have a good support system, right? So I'm constantly encouraging people in our community to seek the support of our community. Adoptees On has a great support network around it. Adoptees Connect, other support groups, where they can really find people who are struggling as well, or it doesn't always have to be connecting around struggle. But in this case it sounds like that could be a really helpful support for this person.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And I think, I'm going back to the mom thing when Yeah, everything kind of lands on you. I think there's a lot of things we can do to be like, you know what? We're not doing it this year. And again, you mentioned there's a lot of things we're not doing this year. And so if you are asking the members of your family, like what's really the most important to you? There's some things that we do every year, Lesli, that nobody likes and nobody even [00:14:00] wants to keep doing. But we don't know that until we ask them. Like one of the things that's really changed in my family is holiday baking stuff. I used to make Christmas cookies. I used to do all kinds of things and believe me, the importance of sweet foods for my family has not changed. However, now I've diagnosed celiac and Christmas baking is not the same. It's a lot more challenging baking gluten-free. I'm still learning all that. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm just ordering from the gluten-free bakery and I'm not spending all that time and all that. And what is important to my kids is they love decorating something at some point. So if I buy a store-bought gluten gingerbread house kit, that's fine. They can make it in the basement with their dad and they can have that experience without me.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah. So then I would say to you, so that's exactly it, right? You gave yourself permission to do [00:15:00] something differently and then what do you get from that? Time to do something different, something else, something that fuels you or connects you with someone else. But I think that's exactly it. That giving yourself permission to do something differently.

Haley Radke: The other thing I wanted to say is gift giving will often fall on one family member to gather it up for everyone. And that really could do with a conversation about community support, I think.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Exactly. And it's just funny how we learn these things. So baking was also a huge deal in my family growing up and it's something I really enjoyed and something I still do enjoy, but I'm much more deliberate about what I'm making. It doesn't have to be the 17 different kinds of cookies and where it's not even enjoyable. It's like I would just be on autopilot. Oh, I have to get these done. I have to get these done. Why? For who? I think that another [00:16:00] suggestion is to maybe allow this season to be one where you allow yourself to come off autopilot and really be intentional about the things that you want to do, which is exactly what you're saying, intentional about what you're going to bake, what dishes you're going to make, what traditions you want to continue, which new traditions you want to implement, who you want to see.

Haley Radke: I love that. Come off autopilot. Yes. Yes. And again, the pandemic, I guess we can thank that to really make us make these choices.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Coming off autopilot and really slowing down. I think that the pandemic has definitely caused or created the opportunity to be more intentional and be more deliberate and slow down.

Haley Radke: All right, here's our next question: “I have a very difficult relationship with my adoptive mother. She's elderly and relies solely on me to remain [00:17:00] living independently. Yet I feel I've always been a disappointment to her and don't measure up to the biological daughter she should have had. So I often try to disassociate and perform the home healthcare worker role, but it hurts and I find myself not wanting to be around her. With the holidays coming, she will join just my immediate family for those days, and I'm dreading it. How do I make it through without ruining the holidays for me and my family?” Ooh, that's really heavy.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah, that is really heavy. And it sounds like this person has done a lot of work around recognizing the relationship with her adoptive mom. And she says she feels like she's always been a disappointment, doesn't measure up, and yet it sounds also like there's an obligation to have her mom come be there for the holidays with the family. So I guess my first thought is recognizing [00:18:00] there's going to be a beginning and a middle and an end to the visit, and what can she do during the visit to really take care of herself. Can she also enlist the support of her immediate family members, not her adoptive mom, but the other people in her family that maybe also recognize that she struggles here and how can they also be there to support her? But I would just really stress the importance of taking care of herself during this time.

Haley Radke: And there's another question that came in from Cindy that says, “I find myself sabotaging the holidays. Almost like I don't deserve to be joyful or happy. Why?” Woo. Self-sabotage. That's not a thing we do, is it? I don't-

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Again, if this was someone I was having a long conversation with, I would want to know, is this a theme in other parts of your life? But I think the self-sabotage or sabotaging the holidays, I wonder if that comes [00:19:00] from the core sense of self I think that some adoptees have, or many adoptees have, that just I don't deserve good, or there's something wrong with me. Again, those beliefs that develop from the early separation loss, early separation trauma of adoptees. Many adoptees share the core beliefs of I'm not lovable, I'm not worth it, good things can’t happen to me, it's not safe to trust. And how do those bleed into our lives, right? So if that's what's happening, if there's that core sense of I don't deserve to be happy, or I don't deserve to have fun over the holidays, that would be something to explore further if the sabotage is not just around the holidays, but around just life in general.

Haley Radke: Is there something that you do see adoptees doing or just people in general, around big moments like this? [00:20:00] For someone to recognize like, oh my gosh, you know what, I just always feel terrible at Christmas because everybody wants everything from me. And you go in having that attitude, and then it is awful and you just dread it. And every day sucks and it's all on you. And it's almost like the self-fulfilling prophecy kind of a situation. So how do you unhook that? How do you stop that from happening?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think that it's similar. If that's the lens that you're looking at something through, right? That it's just, ugh, the holidays suck, or, everyone wants something from me. If that is the lens that you're looking at the holidays through, Yeah, more likely your focus of attention is going to be on those things that don't go wrong. Are there also things that are more neutral or positive? And can you bring your attention to those things? That can work with the brain in creating new experiences, right? Noticing I have these beliefs, but are there any parts of the holidays that have a more [00:21:00] neutral or positive feel? And can I bring my attention to those? It's really hard for the brain to hold something really negative and something positive or neutral to the same degree at the same time. So it's not about playing the GLAD game, it's just about noticing that our brain has a negativity bias. That doesn't mean that a person is negative. It's just based on our ancestors who had to constantly remember which animals were predators, which berries were poisoned, and they had to have that stick in their mind. And we don't have to do that anymore, but our brains don't quite know that yet, so we have to really work hard to notice that there are also a lot of positive and neutral things in our environment as well and intentionally bring our focus to them.

Haley Radke: Can you do that ahead of time or is that more like an in the moment kind of thing? Like you're, in the day and you're like, oh man, and you notice oh no, I'm being negative. Or is it more a plan ahead of [00:22:00] time?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I think there are ways to promote resilience in the brain ahead of time that allow for that flexible adaptive ability to notice when that negativity bias is present and then be able to shift attention. It's not about everything is rainbows and unicorns. It's just about working with our brains and so the thing that you could do ahead of time to promote resilience is, I'm a big fan of mindful awareness. Either formal practices or informal practices of intentional focused attention to promote the resilience and that flexible adaptive way of thinking and being.

Haley Radke: So could you plan ahead then either by setting a timer and being like, okay, when that timer goes off, I'm going to make sure to go out for a walk and have a recharge. Or if you're in the moment and you're like, oh I remember Lesli said something about focusing in on the moment and like [00:23:00] enjoying whatever. If you're at the meal and you're enjoying a certain food and you've coached us through some mindful things before. It sounds like there's a couple of different ways we can bring that in by planning ahead and maybe scheduling a couple of reminders or, oh yeah, I remember I listened to that podcast and Lesli said to do this-

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah. I think also going back to the coming off autopilot, so sometimes if I'm expecting that, oh, this holiday, it's going to be this and that. And our brain is just looping in that sort of mindset of looking at it through the lens of this is, ugh, people are going to expect things from me. It's not going to go well. We're too far ahead in the future, planning what might happen. Or thinking about past years, yeah, that happened and so we miss any opportunities in the present where things might be a little bit different. So recognizing when we're too far in the future, lamenting the past, and can we bring our [00:24:00] attention just to something that's maybe neutral, just right in the present. And it doesn't have to be super positive, it can just be, oh, right now I'm really enjoying this cup of coffee, but right now I'm really enjoying my conversation with Haley.

Haley Radke: I like that you said it could also be just neutral. Especially because sometimes we are talking about someone who is really experiencing depression and having a really hard time and sometimes that's what we can summon up in ourselves. Okay. So this one, it's a short question, but it is a big one, and I think we're just hitting the tip of the iceberg on this one. So this person is a late discovery adoptee, and they're asking, “How does a late discovery adoptee even begin to get over the anger of being a kept secret?”

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: That is a very big question. A very important question. [00:25:00] And I would go back to, I guess the first thing I would offer would be to find community. Find other late discovery adoptees that can validate your experience, that can validate and share how they've navigated their experience. There's so many themes for late discovery adoptees that are similar to other people who were adopted, who grew up knowing they were adopted. But there are so many different themes as well. So I would say work with a therapist and also find community. You just did a great interview with Bernie who discovered very late in life that he was adopted and I think that conversation is going to be helpful to a lot of late discovery adoptees.

Haley Radke: Yeah, that was episode 161 and I've had several late discovery adoptees really connect with that. And they're really finding themselves online, building a community of [00:26:00] LDAs who, I don't get it, right? Like as adoptees, we kinda get a piece of it, you and I, Lesli, but there's a whole other realm to that.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah, just the sense of betrayal and trust and yeah it's so multi-layered.

Haley Radke: And then, now this wasn’t asked, but I'm just going to make some inferences that a few late discovery adoptees I follow on Twitter especially have been talking about lately. Leading up to the holidays, and this has come out maybe a year, maybe a few years ago, and there's still this feeling of this kept secret and some anger underneath. And then there's probably still some expectations of connecting with family at the holidays where you may have some resentment of, rightfully so in my opinion, that they have kept this from you. So what do you think about that? Do you still go to those functions or do you still connect with people [00:27:00] out of obligation? I don't know, but I feel like navigating that is really challenging.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah, of course, with awareness comes clarity. As you connect the dots of your story and you start to have more awareness and this clarity, this coming out of the fog, then you can decide. This is going to be uncomfortable, right? I really don't want to go to this gathering. Weighing the pros and the cons and maybe sometimes people will say they'll make the decision, they'll give themselves permission to not attend. But other times people will go knowing, yeah, this is going to be uncomfortable, but I'm doing it intentionally. So I know why I am doing this. I know why I'm going. It is going to be uncomfortable, but I'm doing it off autopilot. I'm doing it. I don't necessarily want to go, but I'm going to do it. I know I may feel A, B, or C, but right now this is a decision [00:28:00] I'm making. So it's not always deciding I'm not going to go because sometimes we do have to do things that are uncomfortable. And I think that's life, but it's doing it in a way like, I know I'm doing this because I feel obligated. It doesn't feel right. I'm still working on this. I'm still a work in progress. But that's what I've decided to do this year. So it's not always not doing something, but it's just doing something with clarity and awareness.

Haley Radke: Alright, the next question I have is: “My question is about extended adoptive family members. I'm just not very close with any of them, and my adoptive, paternal grandma's health has been declining over the last couple of years. How do I explain to my adoptive parents that large family events, they are online right now, but in person when we're not in a Pandemic, the large family events are triggering for me and that I don't have much of a connection with my extended family in general, so I likely [00:29:00] won't be attending any events in the future post pandemic?”

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: So when you read that question, I was thinking that this person wants, almost is asking permission it sounds like. So how do I explain to my adoptive parents that these events are triggering and that I don't have much of a connection and I won't be attending events in the future? I think this person is saying it very clearly right there and this person doesn't need permission, right? This person doesn't need permission from their adoptive parents. And this may be an uncomfortable conversation. They may ask questions why, but this is very clear to me, this is a very clear stance.

Haley Radke: Can we do something a little bit unconventional?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Yeah, of course.

Haley Radke: Okay. So you pretend to be the letter writer and you're telling me, I'll be the matriarch who's not really impressed with what you're going to ask me, because I think the letter writer really [00:30:00] would love some language around this. And isn't the fear that the mom's going to come back and is going to say, What do you mean you're not coming to family events in the future? You can't just make this blanket statement like, you're not going to be coming. What? You can't do that.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: I don't know this family but that's why I said it sounds like this person wants permission that it's okay to say this to his or her adoptive family. And I'm saying of course it is. And again, we're talking about that setting a boundary isn't necessarily going to be comfortable, but doing something different sometimes means we have to sit with that discomfort. So there might not be an easier way to say this. And I think also what just came to my mind is oftentimes when we say things to, let's just say our adoptive family or our birth family, and we don't get the feedback or the validation [00:31:00] that we're hoping for, we think that we've said it wrong or we haven't said it clearly, or we need to say it differently. So it's because we're not getting that validation like, oh, okay, that makes sense. I understand that you feel you don't have much of a connection with your extended family, so that makes sense that you wouldn't want to continue. That would be soothing and reassuring, right? That we said this the right way? But when we don't get it, I think it's a mistake to believe that we need to say it a different way or we aren't being clear. That's something I hear so often. I must not have said it right, I must not have explained it right, or I need to figure out a different way to say it. And I don't think it's the message or the messenger. I just think that it's the person who's receiving the message doesn't want to hear that.

Haley Radke: So what would you say then in that moment? You've expressed your feelings, they are not having it, and then you [00:32:00] say, I appreciate that's how you feel. This is the decision I've made or what is the language? If we were role playing, what would you say to that? Just to stand firm and not go down some argument rabbit trail, but-

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: And again, I think that there's so much we don't know in terms of the family dynamic, but I think, I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sorry that you feel that way, which is not an apology, by the way. It's, I'm sorry you feel that way, but this is the decision I've made. This is what is going to work for me moving forward. I can't keep going along with the expectations that don't feel right for me.

Haley Radke: Okay, that's good.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Again, I'm making this sound really easy and, believe me, I wholeheartedly know these conversations are really difficult.

Haley Radke: And then at some point during those, I'm assuming lots of these are happening by phone or I don't know, God forbid, another zoom [00:33:00] call, but you don't have to stay in the conversation. You've expressed yourself and especially if there's disrespectful things coming back or things that really are hurtful for you, you can be like, you know what, I'm all done now. You don't have to stay and keep having the fight when you've expressed what you need to. And I think there's a lot of fear in hanging up or saying, okay, I'm all done talking about this, but you are worth not being abused.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: And I always tell people there's no good information that's exchanged when people are at a 7, 8, 9, or 10. When they've flipped their lid, no good or positive information is going to be exchanged then. So yes, of course it's okay to say, I've said what I need to say and I'm going to go outside now, or I'm going to hang up now. And that's taking care of yourself. None of what we're talking about is easy or seamless or one size fits [00:34:00] all, but I think that the main theme is recognizing the places where adoptees, because of their early trauma, have just gone along and been conditioned to go along, to not create waves. And again, where there is that awareness of that tendency or that theme and the clarity around that and then being able to try things differently so that they're creating a different future for themselves.

Haley Radke: Well said. I really keep thinking about what you said, “With awareness comes clarity. The question to ask ourselves is, is that still working for you?” All of those things I think, answer a lot of the questions. And maybe you have some questions for Lesli, and they weren't necessarily represented here, but I think with some of the advice that she's given, you can really drill down to those questions and is that still working for you? And what do you want your holiday season to look like? I think it's okay for you to spend 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be [00:35:00] like this whole big thing and get out your journal. Just 10 minutes. What do I want to do this year? And then implement as you can during the pandemic year. Thank you so much for your wisdom, Lesli. I really appreciate it. And I know there's a lot of people going through challenging times in general and especially in our community right now. You have some really cool things coming up. So do you want to share with us a little bit about where we can connect with you and this really neat thing I'm taking part in starting in January?

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: Sure. And I just want to thank you for your wisdom and for your wonderful support and what you bring to our community. I think I've told you this before, but so many of my clients, the first thing they say is, oh, I heard you on Adoptees On, and Haley is so amazing and I've listened. I have someone I know that has listened to every single [00:36:00] podcast, and more than once, she's like on round three, which I think just speaks to what you're doing for our community. And I'm so grateful for you. And I always like talking to you. So I'm so excited that you're going to be part of, during the pandemic I was trying to think of ways that I could connect with more people than just one-on-one, and what I created was a virtual healing course for adults who are adopted, and it's called Come Out of the Fog: Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Joy. And it's a six week virtual course that is a combination of self-study with opportunities to meet on a weekly live Zoom call, and also connect in a private online, not Facebook, but a private online community. And I launched the first course in September and it was just a really incredible experience for me to see, primarily the community that was [00:37:00] formed. So that's a passion project for me right now. And our next course will begin Monday, January 18th, 2021. And you can find that information on my website, which is www.askadoption.com. So that's a great way to connect with me. Instagram: @askadoption and Facebook: Ask Adoption and Twitter: LesliAJohnson.

Haley Radke: Wonderful. I look forward to connecting there in January and thank you so much, Lesli. I get chill bumps sometimes when I talk to you because I'm like, wow, that is so smart. I’ve got to remember that forever.

Lesli A. Johnson, MFT: You don't have to remember it forever. You can just reach out.

Haley Radke: Perfect. Perfect. Thank you.

All right my friend. This is our very last episode for 2020. I want to thank you for [00:38:00] listening to adoptee voices along with me. It is a pleasure to do the show for you. I'm so honored that you want to hang out with me every Friday morning or whenever you're listening. I know I always say, Let's talk again next Friday, but I know you're listening on different days. But I have so many of you that do choose to hang out with me Friday morning. It's part of your routine and I'm so grateful for that. I want to let you know we are back with brand new episodes starting January 22nd, so we'll have about a month break and I am just honored that I get to do that and spend that time with my family. But in the meantime, if you are feeling like you might need a little more holiday support, I would encourage you to go and find the other couple of episodes I did with Lesli around the holidays. We have episode 126, and all the way back, you're gonna scroll back a long way to find episode 14, and both of those have some really helpful [00:39:00] tips for navigating the holidays. I especially love Episode 14, she gives us some very practical strategies of ways to take care of ourselves during some stressful situations, and so I'd really recommend that you check that out.

Okay. I want to let you know a couple ways you can continue to keep in touch with me. I am active in the Adoptees On Facebook group, which is accessible for Patreon supporters. So if you go to adopteeson.com/partner, there are details of which level gets the Off Script podcast and then the Facebook group and then a call with me. There's a bunch of different things you can access so you can check that out at adopteeson.com/partner. And I am on social media sometimes, and so if you look for me @Haley Radke or @adopteeson, you can find me there. Also, if you're holiday shopping, you can go to adopteeson.com/shop and find Adoptees On [00:40:00] merch, which is brand new and I'm really excited about it and proud of it. And I used a really amazing adoptee artist to make our winter graphic which has this beautiful bird on it, and I'm really pleased with how that turned out. So that's what I'll be drinking my coffee out of this holiday season. I again want to extend my thanks to all of you who have supported the show in many ways, whether it is by finances or by literally just telling one other person about the podcast. I appreciate that so much. It's a free way to help share the show. And if you want to give me a holiday gift this year, I would love it if you would leave a review for me in Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. You can even leave a review for me on my Facebook page if that is helpful for you. That just helps other people find the show and yeah, it's a gift to me to read your words. I read all of them, nice or not. I read all of them and I appreciate so much your kind words. [00:41:00] Alright, so 2020 is a wrap. Thank you so much for connecting with me, listening to me, listening to my guests. I’m just honored to come into your ears and hang out with you. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

165 [DNA] The Search Maven - Janet Weinreich-Keall

Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/165

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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 adopteeson.com/partner.

You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is episode 165, The Search Maven. I'm your host, Haley Radke. I am so glad to share this interview with you today. My guest shared her notes with me ahead of time, and I asked, are you sure you wanna share this on my show? It's a gold mine of information. She could teach an entire class on this. Janet Weinreich-Keall is back and when you hear her story, you'll know exactly why she is a pro at searching. Janet walks us through how we should prepare to search. Then we dive into what DNA testing looks like and how far the tech has come, making it easy and accessible for us to do our own searches. [00:01:00] We also talk about the ramifications of having your DNA in a database. Is your information really kept private? We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Janet Weinreich-Keall. Hi Janet.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Hi Haley. How are you?

Haley Radke: I'm doing well. I'm so thrilled that you're back and we'll talk a little bit more about your story, I'm sure, throughout. But for those listeners who maybe haven't heard your two episodes that you were on the show, would you give us a little taste of your story please?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: My name is Janet, and I was abandoned shortly after my birth on a doorstep in Prince Rupert, BC, in the fall of 1977. I began my search at the age of 18. Honestly, I would have to say it would be like any naive young [00:02:00] girl. I thought, okay, I'm doing traditional media, newspapers, radio, tv. Oh, she's gonna come forward. No problem. Clearly I had a lot to learn about my life. In the end, I uncovered that my biological mother is, and again, it's as far as I know today, the world's largest serial abandoner. I am one of five babies abandoned. Now, however, there might be an additional one, and I'm still currently searching for another possible half sibling. A great part of my search though, is that I have found my biological father. He lives down the street from me, and we're in year three of our reunion.

Haley Radke: And Emil was a guest on the show with you-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes. He was.

Haley Radke: That was such a really special conversation.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah. He, I would have to say he's quite a remarkable man. And my father, although he is quite understated, he has no problem, I would have to say, really telling it how it is. He's just got an [00:03:00] amazing, honest quality, very authentic. So that's certainly helped our reunion, a great deal.

Haley Radke: Absolutely. I was honored that I got the chance to speak to him for even such a short time. So it is clear that Janet is, I've dubbed you a search maven, okay. Because she tracked down so much information, and when you talk about a search, when you're thinking of a foundling who has literally no information, Janet has done it all. And so she has been so generous to offer us what she's learned to date. And so we're gonna talk about search, and especially through using DNA testing. And I'm really excited to learn from you because I've admitted this before to you and to others. I've never done DNA testing. I've never spit in a tube.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah. Yeah. And [00:04:00] the reality is even though I had searched for 21 years, and most of that was through traditional searching, which I have to say, in the end, piecing everything together, put probably a good 70% of my story together. The other 30% was by DNA, which one would argue would be also the largest piece, my biological mother, who abandoned me, yeah.

Haley Radke: You are saying that you got all of these different pieces of information. And then when you got DNA, was it confirming to you or were you putting those pieces both together? Like, okay, I have this piece of DNA and information and now, okay, I think then this leads me here.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: So through traditional searching which really was radio, TV, newspaper, I actually had already found two half siblings who were abandoned, one before me and [00:05:00] one right after me. And I'll go into how I confirmed those relationships. It was actually outside of a commercial DNA test. It was through private testing and then I would honestly say the biggest moment was being matched with a first cousin on a commercial DNA product. And then from there, that led me to find my biological mother. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Incredible. It's incredible to me how far the technology has come and accessibility. Okay, so let's start there. DNA tests. I already know there's more than just one.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes. Now I have to tell you just before our call today, because there's just so many popping up, there are clearly three major players. But I went on Amazon this morning and I just typed in DNA kit. There's DNA kits for dogs. There's DNA kits for everything. And quite honestly, I just very quickly counted about 40 that you can just buy [00:06:00] and figure out oh, hey, am I? And again, I don't recommend these, I think you need to get proper physician care, but it's everything from diabetes to cancer markers to, again, finding family or celiac. It's certainly a buyer beware, but for finding a family, there are three major players, and I think most people know them: 23andMe, Ancestry, and Family Tree DNA. Now, the growth of commercial DNA products, it's been explosive. I've been tracking numbers for years. I've been so intrigued by it all. For example, 23andMe in 2015 only had 900,000 registered kits. Today they have 10 million. So just do the math on that in five years. So Ancestry in 2015 had 2.2 million. Today they have 18 million. Now, Family Tree DNA, they had 700,000 and they have currently over 1 million. [00:07:00] So those are the three top: Family Tree DNA, Ancestry, 23andMe. Now, one of the biggest things that I always want people to really understand is that these are all private companies. So what are they in the business of? Profiting, right? So Ancestry to date has actually earned over 1 billion in revenue. Now, again you're gonna hear me say a lot of great things and then a lot of other things that might not sound so great, because yes, they do find family, but the biggest piece is you have to consider their messaging and how they market. Really interesting.

I read an article a few years ago written by Nicole Karlis, it’s on salon.com, and she was really diving into the correlation of loneliness and the uptick of these DNA kit purchases. All of a sudden she noticed that, wow, within these few years, there's all these people buying DNA kits. The interesting piece is really what this one psychologist states is she says that the rise in [00:08:00] popularity of genetic testing sites is a reflection of our collective sense of loneliness. As a society, our dependence on technology has deeply affected the quality of our relationships. Now, that's really ironic because really it's a way to combat loneliness, but then people are turning to technology that's the most major source of distress in the first place. But again, if you think of how we use technology in our lives: How people date, right? How people find family, how people order groceries. It's all technology. So clearly there are so many reasons why people are going to these three top major DNA sites and purchasing.

Haley Radke: And at the time we're recording this, we're almost a year into having this worldwide pandemic-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I know, I know-

Haley Radke: Which has increased our loneliness. So, yikes. Those numbers might skyrocket-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And zoom. Have you ever [00:09:00] heard of that word so much in your life? Oh my goodness.

Haley Radke: Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: But I always say to any person who's thinking about doing DNA kits, there's a lot of points that I like to cover with them. But one of the biggest pieces that I always like to say to them is, look at their marketing. And again, it's no different than assessing how other companies market their product, but what is it all about? When you look at their commercials, when you look at their channels, everything is happy, happy, joy, joy. And everybody looks so healthy and glowing and everybody's hugging. They are not sharing the real stories. Interesting to note, and I'm not gonna say which one, but I had gotten quite deep into one of these top 3 DNA companies on their marketing side. They wanted to share my story and have me be an ambassador and whatever. In the end, they went, oh, wait a minute, huh? We can't say that. Oh, wait a minute. [00:10:00] We can't say serial abandonment. Oh, wait a minute. We can't say that your mother wasn't well and this and that, and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I just don't think we can do your story. And of course I'm thinking, but wait a minute it's not that I'm even showing up going, woe is me. I've done my work. I think I'm a very healthy, stable individual. But yes, I will certainly tell the good story that yes, if you want to find your family, you might find everything and anything. So certainly buyer beware, they have not shared that message, I feel, to date with any person's story in an accurate way. Simply said, it's a Pandora's box. So the minute you spit in that tube, you are responsible for uncovering family secrets, for hidden infidelities. You name it, you just don't know what you're going to find.

Haley Radke: And we're talking as adopted people. There's all these new [00:11:00] terms coming up because of those secrets being revealed. You get your kit for Christmas and you spit and then you find out you're a late discovery adoptee. Or not parented expected. So there's lots of people finding out the dad they grew up with their whole life is not their biological dad-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Or again, even donor conceived. So many of those are lies.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And all of a sudden, say Joe goes on there and he’s like what? I've got 30 half siblings. Hey, mom?

Haley Radke: Yeah. Talk about a Pandora's box. You're so right.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: It really is.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Okay. So I know you've talked to a lot of people before they start the search. Is there anything else that you want to make sure people know before we get into the nitty gritty of what it actually looks like?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: No, I don't think so, because I think I've got it all covered in my notes-

Haley Radke: All right, all right-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I'm organized.

Haley Radke: I know you are. You have to be in a search like yours.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And that's the whole thing. I feel like what I do in terms of a [00:12:00] profession, I'm already an organizer, but I also feel like when I was sitting down to put this out, on this talk with you today and to share with all the listeners, I'm like, oh my goodness. Like I can't leave that out. Oh. But then I can't leave that out. And it's just, I get very excited about this topic. So yeah-

Haley Radke: All right. Well, teach us. Teach us.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes. So the biggest thing that I always say to people, I get phone calls from people and I also help people in their searches. I'm very selective on who I help for lots of different reasons. The biggest thing I always say to people is, have you assessed your life? And people go to me, what does that mean? And I actually really mean it. I'm like, but are you ready? Are you in the throes of a divorce? Is this some kind of emotional response? Do you have an infant? Did you just move or are you moving? Do you have a new job? Like all those big life moments, are you getting married in two months? But you just have to know who your people are. Like it's just not the right timing because again, you do not know what you're going to find. [00:13:00] For some people, I have seen what they have found to be very short and sweet, and it's very simple, and for the most part it's just neutral or harmonious. And at the same time, those people may have done a lot of psychological work on themselves with their therapists, but then I've seen other people where all of a sudden these secrets that lay dormant for 30 years come to the surface. And then how does that impact these new families? So there's just so much that comes with it. Not only that, but if you are the person that is searching, I find that then you are the person that does all the work. You are the person that is making the phone calls and archiving, or creating a family tree for the first time ever. There's just so much data coming at you. Make sure you are in the right time of your life that you can actually do it well. So then if you have decided that, yes, I am. I always say this, make sure that you get [00:14:00] therapy before you spit in the tube. I always say it, and I have to say to you, in my family and community, most do not do it at all. They actually say, no, I'm good. I'm strong. And then about three months later they have a full mental breakdown. So it's just, it's incredibly important to do that. Unfortunately, the top DNA companies don't actually encourage that. Again, with that one company I had talked to years ago, I did say that to them. I said, “Why do you not provide some type of psychological guidance or support? You know this is what people are finding. Anything from a how-to or recommended this or anything.” And their response to me was very simple, “We are not in that business.” And I thought, really? Is this candid camera? Who's looking? I honestly was so shocked, right? But again, I come off as this, oh, troubled adoptee that kind of knows it all or whatever, and I'm [00:15:00] thinking, no. You need necessary resources because this is what you are doing to people in society. But hey, I tell you this, if someone listens to this in five years, it might be very different. So-

Haley Radke: What? Corporations taking social responsibility?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I know.

Haley Radke: Come on Janet. That seems outrageous.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Darn it. Darn it. No. Silly me. So once you have done all that work, you've done your therapy, you've got a good therapist behind you as well, you know you're ready in life. The process of getting the kit is super simple. You go online, you pay with your credit card, you create a user account, you wait for it to arrive. Honestly, it's gross. You spit all up in the tube, it can be a little messy, and then you send it back in the mail. Now, depending on the company, they turn results around anywhere from probably three to five weeks. And then essentially you get an email that says, yeah, your results are ready. Now, one thing I also always suggest is if you are [00:16:00] serious about searching, I always say, cast your net wide. Don't just buy 23andMe. Don't just buy Ancestry. Buy the top three because just trust me. You'll regret it when you get your 23andMe and you're like, huh, I've got 300 sixth cousins. Fantastic. I'll get into that later too, but I'm telling you, there's not a whole lot you can do with that. So then what I find people doing is going, oh geez, I regret I've wasted all this time and now I'm gonna buy Ancestry and now I'm gonna buy Family Tree. I will say as time goes on the kits do get more and more affordable, but there are also other societies out there that give them away for free. I know that I have some biological family that got theirs for free because they're in the low income bracket. So there's lots of different options out there.

Now, in addition to finding family, there are DNA kits out there too that talk about health issues and give you health reports. [00:17:00] I kind of wanted to share a story. Now, me being a foundling, and again, I had searched for so long. It was in 2014, through some connections with work, I went ahead and I got my entire genome sequenced through a private firm. Now, to give you an idea how fast science has also moved forward, that test back in the day was about three thousand dollars. Today, I think they're about 500. Now, really, essentially, my biggest question, and I hate for this to sound so dark, was I'm looking at myself going, I'm probably never gonna find family. It just seemed so impossible at the time, and I'm in a family and I know nothing about my life. And Haley, I really wanted to know how will I die? I know that sounds… Okay, I know, but you have to understand and this isn't in an obsessive way at all. But I had already done so much work [00:18:00] really trying to understand where I came from and who I was. And I had been in therapy since I was 15 and here I am, looking at my children going, wait a minute, I feel so responsible. What if I have cancer markers or what if I have this or that? Is there something I can do today that can stop that? So interesting. I'll share with you two pieces that it came back with. So in one of the tests it showed a dopamine d2 receptor gene. And so essentially what it showed in my results is I was very unlikely to develop unhealthy eating or addictive behaviors. So that was one. And then another one, which I actually found really interesting is they tested a specific gene that was found in a 2010 study of Rwanden genocide survivors. So this gene type is rs4680. Essentially what it's [00:19:00] associated with is a person that can go through trauma, PTSD, see the most horrible things ever in the world, but almost quickly, and I don't want to say automatically, because that sounds a little psychotic, but can quickly come to a very quick resolve, can quickly come to a very fast kind of repair and overall balanced personality in the end. And the reason why they know that is they went back to this one village that saw the worst of the worst, and they all have this gene. I have the exact same gene. So then when I look at myself, my resiliency within my story, how I handled it, the way that I have made certain decisions to do therapy and to try to be a very healthy person, I just go, wow. Interesting. Now, I'll tell you, I “found out” how I will die. Do you wanna know? I know.

Haley Radke: Do you [00:20:00] wanna tell us?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I'm open. I really am. Because again, I'm going to get into this. You don't just spit in a tube and think that nobody's gonna have access to your private data. Which by the way, I'm gonna argue isn't all that private. Okay, so I'm gonna go for it. So it showed me that I will likely die of late onset heart disease. Now, interesting, as I look at my maternal family, again, most of them who have died, for the most part, the last three generations in Canada, none of them live past 60 because of everything from alcoholism, smoking, stress, severe mental health issues. But then you look at my father's side, they're all very healthy, slim, trim, whatnot, late onset heart disease. So it was very interesting. And knowing my biological father, Emil, I told him that and he's but that's true. And I'm like, yes-

Haley Radke: That's interesting. And I know that for people who are like, I don't wanna know that [00:21:00] information, those are things you can choose to look at if you've added that on but you don't have to.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I will say, when I did that specific test, I actually received genetic counseling, which I will argue again, companies like 23andMe that give those health reports, they do not do that. So in effect, the physician that actually, and it was a blood test, the one that I did in 2014, which was private versus the one with 23andMe, which was spit. But I had to go through two appointments because essentially what the doctor said to me is, look, we are going to give you information, and we do not all of a sudden want you to be like, oh my gosh, that's it. I'm changing my entire family's diet and I'm changing this and I'm quitting this job and I'm divorcing my husband, or whatever it could be because they see it as they're playing God. So they really had to go through it with me. And from what I understood [00:22:00] is they would not give that type of test to any person that has any kind of anxiety or say depression or knows that they're prone to it or struggles with any of that kind of stuff. Any kind of glimpse of a person who just can't handle that kind of information because they just don't wanna play God and ruin lives. So I passed the test. And I found out how I would likely die even before I found family. And I also don't recommend it for everybody but again, Haley, put yourself in my shoes. You're a foundling, you know absolutely nothing. And at that moment in 2014, I really, I just thought hey, this is probably how it's going to just be. Again, even though I was searching, right? But I just thought, what are the chances of finding answers?

So now getting on with the 23andMe stuff, I pulled out some sort of funny things. So 23andMe has a few different tasks that [00:23:00] people will see on their website. You can only do, for example, if you just wanna match with family, you can just pay for that. That is the cheapest kit out there. And then they've got a few different levels of the health and wellness reports that they do provide. So for myself, of course I've got that. So I looked at it today because they're always changing it. So again, this is the one thing I really have to stress to people is that everything's always being recalibrated. And I'll certainly speak on this with ethnicity as well. So I went on there this morning and I'm like, okay, what do they say about me? I'll also say, when you look under the fine print of all of these companies, there's a key word that they always put in there because they have to, and it's novelty. So it's fun. This is lighthearted. But then now, of course, if you just go on 23andMe, you certainly say that they are putting a fair bit of time and a fair bit of medicine, science really, [00:24:00] into their health reports. So they’re certainly amping it up. And I would also estimate that within a decade, maybe, yeah, it's true, you will probably get the same kind of test that I did, and you can go, wow, I'm gonna die of this, or wow of this. But again, it's one of these pieces where it's like, who's playing God here and who is really ready and able to live with that kind of information, right? So on mine, I went on there on the traits, and so it showed me this morning that I have a 77% chance that I've never had dandruff. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Haley, we're getting really personal, and I will tell you that is true. I've never had that. Okay. Then it says, I have a 52% chance of having blue eyes. Now you know me, my eyes are blue. They are like glowing blue. So it's okay, yes, they got it. Yeah. Then it went on to say, I have a 39% of very fair skin. Yes, I am so [00:25:00] fair. You can see blue in my arms. I'm that fair.

Haley Radke: I probably have the same result for you there.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Oh, I tell you. So that's true. And then actually one of the funniest ones that they have on there: I have a 67% chance of not having a unibrow. Woo. Woo.

Haley Radke: That's lucky.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I know. Woohoo. Thanks mom and dad. Now I'll get into the stuff that's not so accurate. It says that I am likely to wake up at 7:58 AM. I do not know how they come to 7:58 AM. Why not 7:34? Why not 8:05? Haley, I am not a morning person. Okay. I am not likely to wake up at 7:58 AM. It also says that I am more than likely to experience motion sickness. No way. Put me on a rollercoaster. Get me in a car for 12 hours. I just love it. It's fantastic.

Haley Radke: Okay, huh?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: [00:26:00] Then it also tells me that I prefer salty food. No. I love my sweets. Actually, I have a bag of candy in front of me right now, so you have to go, okay, that's interesting and okay, that's not really right. They're just estimating. So now I'll get back to the family matchings. You've got your DNA sent in and then you wait. Some people get fairly good results right away, which I would have to say would be a first cousin, a second cousin. Third cousins aren't so great, but you can still work with that. That'll certainly require more work in the family tree. And so you will be related to hundreds of people and they will be fifth cousins, sixth cousins. So again, I logged in this morning to Ancestry and it showed me I have 288 4th-6th cousins on there. To be really blunt, I just wouldn't even touch those in a search. It's just far too much. So [00:27:00] to give you an idea, a sixth cousin, that's a person who shares my great, great, great, great, great grandparent with me. So to then build up a tree working that way up, it's just too arduous. Like you just really can't do it. Now, sure, fine, technically of course you can, but then you are relying on a lot of other people. You are relying on hoping that their records are correct and on it goes, right?

Haley Radke: So what's the magic if you have this one it's easy and-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: I would say the first cousin and the second cousin are really okay. Of course, can you get on there and be matched with a parent or a half sibling or a full sibling? Yes you can, but for the most part I find that doesn't really work that way. It's more in the cousin realm. At least that's what I've seen. And again, it says that too. The biggest piece that you want to look at is you want to look at the percentage of DNA [00:28:00] shared. And so I'll get into that as well. And what you need to do with that, with every passing year. Again, these companies are all about profit and further developing their product. So it's always getting easier and easier to use their site. I said to you earlier, a fifth grader could do it and I actually mean it. I really do. It really isn't that complicated. So another piece that I want to speak of as well is once you have your data done in Ancestry, 23andMe, and Family Tree, also upload it to a company called GEDMatch. Now GEDMatch is a US-based service company and they compare DNA data files all across the different testing companies. So you might have heard of them. They were part of solving the Golden State Killer case in California. So essentially that database was used by law enforcement [00:29:00] and they did solve a very serious case on GEDMatch. They have over about 1.4 million DNA profiles. I'm gonna get into my story a little bit just because it gives a very simple example of why people go on DNA sites and why others do. So for myself, I was on two years on one of those sites and I just waited. I had no good matches, like nothing. I was sitting in like the fourth to sixth realm and it's are you kidding me? And especially for a foundling too. Here I am, even if I wanted to try knocking on the door, hey, does anybody know about an abandoned baby? Guess what? People who have women like my mother or any woman that abandons her baby, they don't know. No one in their family knows. It is a secret they take to their grave, right? So I already had known that. So finally, I waited two years and I got a first cousin [00:30:00] maternal match. Haley, that was gold, okay? Now, the reason why she was on there is because she had a boyfriend at the time who was very close with his family, and he was just like, I can't believe you don't know your family. She was actually somewhat ambivalent. It's not that she didn't want to find family, but she was like, yeah, okay, sure. No big deal. So a very different personality from someone like me who again, had been looking, at that time, for 21 years and oh my gosh, I just can't believe it. Now, if she didn't take that test, I would've been matched with a second cousin on my dad's side around the spring of 2018. He took the test because he and his wife saw some special deal. I don't know if it was like a two for one. She wanted confirmation on her bio father. He was curious about health information, but he also wanted to know more information on his ethnicity in connection to the Faroe Islands. [00:31:00] Because on my dad's side, I'm Faroese-Danish and Norwegian. So for him it was health, it was ethnicity. Her, it was, hey, I wanna know more about my dad. For my first cousin it was, why not? And again, I hear all these stories all the time. Some people just do it because they're sitting on the couch and they're like, hey, that looks like fun. And they press all their information in and the DNA kit comes and they go, hey, why not? I don't know. But the main thing that you always have to remember is when you are matched with a person, it will show you on there, like first cousin, it always says estimated. And I cannot stress that enough. And this is really where I say to people, this is where you have to do your own work. What I see quite often and people are not wrong to do it because they look at a word, but they take out “estimated". I don't know why, maybe because they get so excited and they wanna belong to a family and oh yes, this is who you are. But people do get attached to [00:32:00] the estimated labels, as in yes, you had estimated first cousin, estimated sibling, and in the end that causes so much anxiety and distress because often actually it's wrong. So for example, again, this morning-

Haley Radke: Totally wrong.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Totally wrong. Yeah. For example, in Ancestry I logged in this morning, it shows that a confirmed half sibling of mine is a first cousin, and I can go on for hours and hours on exactly how I know: the private DNA test, the family tree, the this and the that. I can do that, but it's wrong. However, on 23andMe, it shows we are in fact half siblings. So again, it's definitely, it's a wild west. It's buyer beware, 23andMe analyzes their data very differently than Ancestry. And also they're only leaning that against the data pools that they currently have. So I would actually estimate again, in five years, if I log into Ancestry, it wouldn't [00:33:00] show that my half sibling is a first cousin. It would show she's a half sibling. So again, buyer beware. Really look at the words they're saying. They're saying estimated.

Haley Radke: And just as you're describing these things, it's amazing to me that it could be literally any day, you can log in and there's a new person who's tested because they got it as a birthday gift or whatever, right? Those new matches could come anytime.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Anytime. So that's the other piece. They've got a lot of different ways in how you want to be informed. Their systems are very intuitive and easy. You can click on there that you want to be private. You can click off and say, nope, this isn't my time right now in my life. You can click on there and say, I want to be emailed every single notification known to man. Wonderful. You can click on hey, I only wanna know when I get a match. You can click on, hey, I want no notifications. And again, I will log on when I'm ready and present and able. So there's so many ways that you [00:34:00] can receive the information. And again, I really say to people, if you do your work in advance, you know what you want out of this experience. So incredibly key. One of the pieces that people ask about a fair bit is, okay, great, so I've spent a hundred bucks here on Ancestry and I spent this money here, there, and whatever. Oh, and it's an estimated relationship. I really caution people and just say, okay, just take a step for a moment and say, do I need further relationship testing? So what I'm actually seeing in families is a little bit more of a savvy reaction to these estimated relationships, and they want more proof. Instantly, people are going into reunion with doubt where families are going, yeah, but you know now, sure, fine. That's for the families to discern the information and maybe the adoptee to say, hey, I have this paperwork too, or this or that. But for a family, [00:35:00] we really get into this issue because in foundling cases, there's no biological mothers that really admit what they do. I mean, are you kidding me? They're outed to their entire family, maybe even their current husband has no idea that they've done it. Everything in their family has shifted. They're not going to admit they've done it. Now what I have done myself personally, because again, I like my facts and I like my organization and I don't like estimated. So what I did even before I got my first cousin, wonderful match on 23andMe, is I had to confirm those relationships anyway because I found them through traditional media, through newspapers, through radio. And so I went through a private sibling-ship test that also does private paternity tests. And sure enough, those came back with absolute accuracy, without a doubt.

Haley Radke: So just to pause there, so the private [00:36:00] test, I'm sure there's lots of companies that do that too.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes.

Haley Radke: That means they're not uploading it to a database and-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: They're not.

Haley Radke: It's private. Just for you guys. Yeah. Okay.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah. It's only between the parties who sign the documentation. They're also more money as well, so you have to really be sure that hey, at, say, $300 a pop for a sibling-ship test, and for $700 for a legal paternity test. It's hey, you really have your ducks in the row. And this is just to fully confirm, so I did this with my biological father. He's very much of the same mind. I am too. Although I will say that he did say, Janet, I know you're my daughter. And of course I'm like, yes, I know, but I need this. You have to realize I've lived my whole life without it. I don't know what to trust. I don't know who to trust. Sure enough, it came back 99.999% he's my biological father. Now again, with that, [00:37:00] I had to go into a nurse, like a sort of a physician's office. They checked my ID, they did the same with my dad, so that it is actually court admissible. Not that's what I was looking for, but people should educate themselves to know that, hey, is everybody around me? Are all the parties comfortable with an estimated relationship, or do we really have to go further and spend the money and get it officially done right and signed off. Now in regards to understanding your results, you're gonna get a whole breakdown of everybody and they always show who you're closest related to and all they're showing is a percentage of DNA shared. That's just how they analyze your relationships, right? Now, I will also say this in recommended resources, but there is one place that I go to. It is issog.org, and it [00:38:00] is a wealth of information on there. In fact, every time when I'm searching for others as well, they've got a great chart that breaks down all of the range of DNA shared within your family members. So it's super visual, super easy to understand. Really simple to decipher. All right. Is this person really a first cousin? It just gives you a better idea of where you're going with that specific person. From that point, it really is, hey, honestly, the minute you get a good match, you'll be jumping up and down at your kitchen table. You'll be shouting it outside your window. People will think, what in the world is wrong with this person? But it's just human nature, especially for anybody who has searched for a long time.

Haley Radke: Yeah,

Janet Weinreich-Keall: But this is what I always say to everybody. Pause. Just collect your thoughts. You do not have to respond right away. I always ask, what is [00:39:00] your game plan? Have you done your work? And I mean psychologically? Do you have a therapist? Do you really understand what you want out of this experience? And what are your expectations? And I believe that is so key to say because the minute you press send on a message, because you can message people within the 23andMe platform, and say with Ancestry and Family Tree, the minute you press send, you could get a response in minutes or it could take months. You've gotta be prepared,

Haley Radke: Right? Because you said you can set up all your notifications, so if someone else has set it so-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah-

Haley Radke: Don't send me anything. It might be six months before they're like, oh, I wonder if I have any new matches.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And that's the other thing is there's a lot of people on there who aren't checking all the time. One of the things I always recommend to everybody, and again, I do not believe this is being untoward or real sleuthy or slimy, but here's the thing, [00:40:00] if that person has their name as their username, take that name, screenshot it. Screenshot everything you can find. Some people have their family trees open. Screenshot them, then research them to the nth degree. Screenshot their Facebook friends, screenshot just anything you can find on them. Online obituaries are also really great to get information. Before I actually contacted my biological father, I already had a full family tree done. It really is so simple. The amount of data that people share in today's world is astonishing. And I say you do all of that work before you send the message, because unfortunately, not everybody who's on the site is searching or wants to be found. Some people are on there because, hey, I just wanna know what my ethnicity is. Or, hey, I've always wondered if [00:41:00] I can grow a unibrow. I don't know Haley. It's just like whatever people go on there for, it's not necessarily for the reasons that we are.

Haley Radke: Yes.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And what I have found unfortunately is that the older generations will get spooked, scared off, and they will then set their profile to private and you can never contact them again. So it's really important to go, okay, I've got the name. Screenshot, screenshot. Just anything you can find, save it, and then back up your savings. Like really be vigilant and organized. So then if all of a sudden you go in the next day and you go, oh, that person's gone. You know what you do? You find somebody in the younger generation. You message them through Facebook. You have a lot of different ways of contacting people. Don't just sit in the land of DNA. You do not have to find people just through that portal. If their name is put out there, you can find people. I guarantee you.

Haley Radke: Wow. I [00:42:00] think that's really good advice. Really good. I wonder how many people have had the match, sent a message, and then lost that information?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: So much. Absolutely. Incredibly. Yeah it's just so much. But again, I hate to say it, if you are not organized, if you don't have a system, but again, think of why people don't have a system, Haley, and I really believe this. It's because they haven't done the pre-work. They haven't done the work that they needed to do. For myself as a foundling, I put myself into therapy at 15. I understood implicitly how it impacted me and changed me as a human being, and essentially I did not want to grow up and to not have a good life and have that hinder me. I can tell you the amount of foundlings, or rather the majority of foundlings, they are in addiction, poverty, three, four [00:43:00] marriages, bankruptcy, no career. It just goes on and on. They're recreating almost what happened to them. Children up the yin yang, even, almost abandoning their own children with poor relationships. And they're not going to be organized in a DNA search if you bring so much emotion that's just oozing, it's just oozing.

Haley Radke: It's almost like what I'm hearing you say is we have to mentally prepare and make sure we're ready before we start searching. But then when you're searching, you're like, okay, now I'm putting my Sherlock Holmes hat on. I'm not Haley the adoptee looking for answers. I'm Sherlock and everything you are going to do is detective work. We're not bringing emotion into it, whatever. And then when you're like, okay, I have my answer, and now I take it off and then I can process the feelings and things. It's almost like two separate streams.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: So in fact, I actually learned that quite early on in my search. [00:44:00] In the early days of my search, I was very emotional. Again, I was young. I started at 18. By the time I was about 25, I was like, yep, I get it. She doesn't wanna be found. Yep, I get it. I started understanding the harsher realities. Then as I started building my career in business, one day it came to me and I'm like, okay, Janet, this is a project. Yes, I can always be very in tune to my emotions, my needs, who I am, my triggers, what I know needs to be healed, on it goes. But when I'm searching, I'm going to have files and a computer system and even a server to back up my files and paper files for each person. So I really separated the two. I did. And honestly, that is actually how in the end, which I will also argue, if you don't do it in that manner and have it really rigid and organized, in the end, [00:45:00] you yourself won't have the truth. And what I mean by that is you're gonna be on the phone call with an aunt here, an uncle there, an ex-husband here or there, whatever. They all have a story, right? But then your job as almost-detective is interesting. I've heard the exact same story three times, said three different ways. You almost have to say that one is true, right? And you go, okay, that one's almost validated. Then you go, okay, I have facts here. I have some files, I have paperwork. That is true. Maybe you wanna throw in a margin of error, I don't know, for whatever reason. But then of course, then you've got the other stuff, which I would consider, again, a lot of adoptees I found in families, they come from families that are not well. They are not healed. There's a pattern of relinquishment and trauma. So then you get into this whole gossip, and maybe even in my case, there was a lot of backstabbing [00:46:00] and slander and really vicious behavior because these people were not healed. You have to go, that's not true. That's not true. So that's the other piece too. Even outside of DNA work, but the problem with the DNA work is when you get a match, it's like instant. And it's here you go, load up and giddy up. You are going. You have to be ready. And so many people are not ready.

Haley Radke: Okay with all the caveats and we're ready, and we've, okay, now maybe we take our Sherlock Holmes hat off. So you get the match, you've got all the screenshots and you've gone all the way for screenshots, Facebook, obituaries, whatever, all the way. Then you send a message. But what do you send in a message?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Honestly, I always say to people, you've got to think about you are using a product that is being marketed like happy, happy, joy, joy. Everything's just wonderful and sunshine and rainbows, right? So I always [00:47:00] say to people, look, you don't know who you're messaging because any person can spit in a tube and put any name to it, Haley. Think about that for a minute.

Haley Radke: Ohhhh.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And I've actually uncovered, not for myself, but other people that I have helped find family, children having their parents' DNA on there, because maybe they're older or they don't know how to use a computer, but they put their name as a child, or this account is used for my great aunt and she's actually now passed away. So there are just so many variables. It's not done like a legal paternity test where IDs are checked and everything's done in a row. So what I always say to people is keep it light. I always write something like, hi, isn't it so neat that we are related and we are estimated first cousins? Isn't that so neat? Hey, I'd love to talk with you sometime. [00:48:00] Instantly I want to take it offline. Offline. I want a phone call. Because verbal gives so many cues to people. That's just how we are as humans. We're listening to this today and it evokes so much, doesn't it? Instantly I like to get the people offline. I hope that I can hook 'em and say, wow, that's so great. Isn't it wonderful that we're related? Keep it very positive. Hey, let's talk on the phone. I'm available anytime. Let me know, blah, blah, blah. That type of thing.

Haley Radke: Okay. And you're so right about the verbal being different, the tone.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: It is, and I also feel, and some people might not agree with me, but that's how we are in this world. We can have different opinions. I think that you don't say you're adopted. I think that you don't say you're a foundling, depending on the generation. It can scare people off. So I say that no, you just [00:49:00] keep it light and airy. You don't know what they've been through. You don't know what they're hiding. You don't know anything. You are pure strangers sharing DNA. Wonderful. And I always say, get off as quick as you can. Have a verbal. Then the minute you're on the phone with them, hopefully they respond. For the most part, I find people do. Sometimes it might take a while. That's why I say sometimes. People then go now I've got their name. I'll just go on Facebook and message them. Or, ooh, I'll try somebody else who's related to them. So there's a lot of different ways of contacting people. And then from there, I do say that you are adopted. Now, for the founding community, I don't personally believe you say you're a foundling in the first call. Abandoning a child is a serious offense. In Canada, it's a criminal offense. It scares people off. It's not to hide and be coercive, but you just have to play the temperament. You don't know these people, so don't [00:50:00] start telling everybody everything in the first call. You might scare someone off. So then essentially from there, just good old, fashion detective work. It's pulling out family trees. It's pulling out that one, I'll say again in the recommended resource of the chart, showing the shared DNA and just getting, hey, who's your mother and who's your sister and who's this person? And all about pen and paper. I think you get a huge monster piece of paper and you just start making your family tree as you talk.

Haley Radke: And that's it. Like basically you've solved the mystery and we'll put a pin in that because we've had so many shows on Reunion and all the other things that come with it. But you make it sound so simplified and it's amazing what DNA has really unlocked for us.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And that's my biggest concern, Haley. It's just like our instant gratification kind of culture that we have. When it comes to [00:51:00] this subject it's just not that healthy. That is why I always say you have to do your work in advance. You just have to. I want to speak a little bit about ethnicity and I'll do it pretty fast. I just want to tell people it's an estimate, right? So in all the DNA kits, they all have the same type of estimated ethnicity. Now they're always changing though. So what I always say to people is you're so excited. Suddenly, you're 40% Norwegian. When you say that you should say something like this, as of today, as it shows on this platform, I am blah, blah, blah. Because I guarantee you, a year later it'll be completely recalibrated. I want to share with you my journey to figure out who I was, whatever you want to call that. So in the very, very early days, I was probably one of the first pioneers of trying one of these kits in 2005. [00:52:00] That feels like forever ago, and I think it was like $500 at the time. But again, Haley, I was so hungry to know where am I from? Who am I? It was a pretty basic result. I will say that this company who did it was later purchased by Family Tree DNA, right? Because of course they have all the machines and stuff. So in 2005 it said that I was 89% European. I was 8% Native American, 2% East Asian, and 1% Sub-Saharan African. Okay. Guess what all the three tell me today? 23andMe today tells me I am 46.9% Scandinavian. Ancestry says I'm 84% Scandinavian, and Family Tree says I'm 66% Scandinavian.

Haley Radke: Whoa.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: So that's a range of 46.9 [00:53:00] to 84%.

Haley Radke: Yeah.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Okay. Then 23andMe tells me I am 26.9% British Irish. There's a lot of different ways they just categorize the zones. But that's just the way I'll simplify it for today, Ancestry says I'm 13% British Irish and Family Tree DNA says I'm 3% British Irish. So you're going from 26.9% to 3%. Then for West Central Europe, Ancestry says I am 0%. On 23andMe I am 8.5%, but on Family Tree DNA, I'm 29%. Now, I'll tell you just my last one because this is quite interesting. 23andMe and Ancestry show markers for Ashkenazi Jew. So 23andMe shows I'm 1.9% and Ancestry [00:54:00] says I'm 3%. Family Tree DNA doesn't even do it. So again, what I'm trying to show you is every company is just siloed. They have their own data pools that they draw from, and that just gives you your estimated ethnicity. Now, of course for me, I've done my work and I can say to you that none of them are actually really all that accurate. But the Ashkenazi Jew is, that's pretty accurate. So I don't know. I don't know, girl. So again, it's a novelty. You take it with a little bit of a grain of salt. And it gives you a general feel.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And going back so you were saying just that the companies are siloed, so they're not talking to each other about the ethnicity estimates or likely the medical things. But when you can take your DNA and put it to GEDMatch, GEDMatch would just be the Family Tree side of things, right?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah, it is.

Haley Radke: Yeah. Okay. Huh.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: And now one of the other biggest [00:55:00] pieces that I always say to people, and it's funny because for whatever reason people don't like to hear this, and trust me, Haley, I'm not trying to get into like conspiracy theory. This is not my type of thing.

Haley Radke: Okay, wait. Just so you know, there is a reason I haven't spit in a tube. Okay. Okay. There's a reason. So tell us, why are people nervous about it?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: The thing that I always say to people is all these companies boast that once your data is on their system, it's private. I am going to say no. The minute you spit in that tube, you just have to succumb to the fact that private data is public data. And the reason why I say that is for a few big reasons. These private companies are not moderated by any government body. And even if they were Haley, what are we looking at? We're looking at technology and human beings. Look at our world, look at the [00:56:00] headlines. There's constant hacks. There's constant mistakes. These companies are continually recalibrating and making their product better. That's actually really fantastic. But what happens when they do that? What happens when they relaunch their new websites and then they move their data over to that server and to this server? So what I always say to people is look, you have to know when you are spitting in a tube, it can be used for anything, right? It's almost to say, if you have something to hide, then don't then don't do it, because now I will also tell you serious crimes are being solved because of people like me on these systems. I will tell you that every company, major company, they've got all their terms and conditions and they've got all of that type of stuff. Oh, blah blah, blah, whatever. But I will tell you, I'm [00:57:00] just looking here right now because I actually took out a little paragraph, essentially what 23andMe, and I'm not trying to out 23andMe, all the companies have to abide. But essentially what they say is, oh no, we will never release your information. But however, the minute they get a court order, think about it, a police officer here or there or whatever goes, hey, wait a minute. We gotta throw this in the kitty and see what happens. Then yes, it is true. These companies have to abide by the court orders-

Haley Radke: Right.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: So they don't give it freely, but they have to abide by law.

Haley Radke: And when you mentioned the Golden State Killer earlier and when you said, they're using my information to solve these crimes, it's true because not that you yourself committed a crime, but you're the link in the chain to go backwards and find that tree or find the person via the family tree.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: But that's exactly it. And in fact, in 2019, [00:58:00] Family Tree DNA has reported, because this is the other thing, you can find this online. All of these three major companies have to be transparent on who is requesting user information. And Family Tree DNA reported that 50 law enforcement agencies submitted DNA samples for matching. And that almost 150 cases had been submitted by Spring 2020. So by, in effect, Family Tree DNA helped solve 27 violent cases in the USA and we're talking serial killers and violent crimes.

Haley Radke: And law enforcement are the ones uploading the DNA sample. Wow, okay. Okay. I didn't know they could do that. See, that's-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Uh-huh.

Haley Radke: Very interesting.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: But again, that's the whole thing. People go on there and these companies are selling a product. Oh [00:59:00] no, we'll never do this. We'll never do that. But actually if you dig on there, even 23andMe has a full page called Transparency Report and they update that on a quarterly basis. They're very transparent to say, hey, actually yes, it is true. Now I actually read it today. Fascinating. They break it down by country and who is requesting this information? Only today the USA has requested information. This is a thing, my DNA is on that system. So if a half sibling of mine committed a serious offense and in five years Canada starts leaning on DNA, they're going to contact me. So now do I comply? Do I ignore? They'll find me. So you just have to be comfortable knowing that, hey, I'm in the system. I have to be part of the greater good. Whatever's gonna come out is gonna come out. And don't get too swept up in the, [01:00:00] oh, we protect this, we protect that because at the end of the day, these companies can only do so much. And you throw in technology and you throw in human beings, mistakes happen all the time. We're human, right? Just saying.

Haley Radke: Yeah. And we know a few fellow adoptees who have found their first families via mistakes, requesting their records and names aren't redacted or that “should be”. Yes, it's true. They happen just on paper and also technology. When you're talking about how many millions of records these people are keeping, the chance for error is much higher.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah. Yeah. No, I know.

Haley Radke: Any last thoughts that you really wanna give us? I really appreciate the cautions you've given so far, and anything else that we really need to keep in mind when we're thinking of doing DNA testing?

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yeah, I've just got a few notes as like my 2 cents. I would have to say the biggest piece [01:01:00] is that searching through DNA is far more psychologically taxing than it's made out to be. The biggest reason is because these companies are selling a product and it's happy and it's wonderful, and everybody is healthy and hugging. That does have implications because it gives a sense of how easy it is and how easy it should always be, and I've seen this continually in reunion. Reunions are tricky on their own. I don't know about you, Haley, but I almost guess that reunions are maybe 50-50, but when you take it to a foundling group, reunion on the maternal side of the family, it's almost zero every time. So again, don't confuse the ease of information coming at you with the ease of what you are going through as a human being. It's incredibly difficult to go through a reunion and you have to get psychological support and take care of yourself. One of the biggest things [01:02:00] is that you have to understand your intentions, and you have to understand your expectations. For myself, in my reunion, I always said that to every person I met. I told everybody my intention upfront, and I told everybody my expectation, which by the way, was just very low. It wasn't very heavy. It was very gentle and casual. I can tell you, Haley, not one person could tell me the same thing back because nobody had done their work. Nobody had done their work.

The other biggest thing that I want to talk about is privacy. So we get on this site and there's just this instant feeling that, hey, all this information that I've come into, I can do anything with it. For example, in the foundling community, or again in the adoption community, where babies are kept secret. I am not a supporter of keeping secrets. Look at my story, Haley. But I am a [01:03:00] supporter of human decency and respect, and I have never to this day released my biological mother's name. Now, I will tell you, this is where it gets tricky when you start finding biological family. And again, it's so easy. It's through a portal, through DNA, there is this common mindset that, oh, I own this information too. I own this information too. So what I did very early on is I had talked to every single person in my family to stress the importance of why my biological mother's name should remain a secret. For so many reasons I can go into, she had a very hard life. She actually passed as the result of me searching. You can piece that together however you want. Not only that, but she had no relationship with any of her family members. But again, these people go, oh, this story is so public. And oh, Janet's this sort of half kind of [01:04:00] Rupert famous person. Oh no, I'm just gonna say it. I'm gonna give her name out there. Who cares what Janet wants? So I have to tell you, it was incredibly traumatic for me. Later on, as a result of that, I ended those relationships and then a major campaign was put against me. Slanderous lies attacking only because I wanted her name kept private. I only say that so much, Haley, because I want to say to the listeners, you have to ask yourself, who owns this information? Again, I am not saying that it should be kept a secret, but I think there is a beautiful fine line of having respect, having comfort levels of everybody being met, and still having your needs met. You don't have to plaster it out because, oh, look at this, what I found on 23andMe and throw it all over [01:05:00] Facebook. You don't have to do that. But again, I have seen it so much because the information is so available and any person can go on their 23andMe and go, hey, look at this. Look at this. This is true. Who has a say? Who owns the privacy? So that's something that's very near and dear to my heart. It's been incredibly traumatic. Incredibly. Yeah.

Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. That it's a caution, it's a warning. I'll skip ahead and I always give a recommended resource and I felt immense pressure to do that again today on the theme. But, what has really come out from our conversation, and I didn't expect myself to say this, but you really wanna be in charge of your own search. I think it's-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes, absolutely.

Haley Radke: When you're talking about who's getting to share the information and those kinds of private things, [01:06:00] I just recently heard someone share their story and I'll keep it private, except for that they were using a search angel. And the search angel is the one that was getting in touch and being the first one to open up some of those conversations and shared some information that they didn't have a right to, and so from what I've heard, I feel like it's really empowering for you to do your own search.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes, it is. And I've seen that as well. In fact, a half sibling of mine had somebody help her find her biological father and to be really blunt, that search “angel” was a bully and she actually had it completely wrong. In fact, the man she was accusing to be the father, and I would almost say terrorized his family for a good week with this knowledge, was actually the uncle. So again, it just [01:07:00] shows you that you really do want to be in charge of your own search. And not only that, but even from my own perspective, as soon as I saw that people on my maternal side were not trustworthy, I started holding back almost everything. But I could, because I was the one receiving the files. I was the one putting the data together. So I said, nope, that's not for them to know. So it is really difficult because then you also get into, say even legalities of a minor. There are many foundling stories where the biological was a minor. But the newspapers have no problem publicizing that. That's actually against the law. So but again, like I said, my concern with DNA and everything I want to talk about DNA is this overshadowing feel of how easy it is, so then because it's so easy, it's almost as though everyone's entitled to it. [01:08:00] Everyone's involved, everyone can talk about it, and that's just simply not the case. So you really have to know what you're doing. You really have to do your own pre-work in advance, and yeah, you've really got to have a strong, organized head to yourself without a doubt. And like I've been saying all along, understand it's a product. You are buying a product a company is profiting from. So buyer beware.

Haley Radke: Thank you for the cautions and I also thank you for letting people feel empowered, like they can be in charge of their own search and the timing of the things. And once you've done your work ahead of time I really appreciate those. So one more thing I want to recommend is that you do go back and listen to Janet's story. It's episode 87 and 88 and Janet [01:09:00] shares her story. And then we have a really special episode where we talk to her biological father and her adoptive father about their relationship. And it was the season finale of our relationship series, season four. And it's really special. But, okay, now I want you to share what your recommended resources are for us, and I'm assuming they're on theme.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Oh, they are on theme. Haley. I am organized, so when I searched and when I help people search as well, there is a website by the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, and you can find that at www.isogg.org. It is a wealth of information and again, like I said, it is really easy to understand your DNA as soon as you get on the portal. This here gives some [01:10:00] really great charts, really great how-to, it's very simple to understand. The other recommended resource is all the YouTube channels for Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe. They've got some really great how-to videos and they're in really small sort of tidbits of two or three minutes, and they're just really invaluable when you first start your DNA journey.

Haley Radke: They want you to be able to figure out their systems and now they obviously have a billion dollar in resources, so-

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Oh boy, do they ever. That's the whole truth though. I would have to say in the earlier years it was a little bit more convoluted and a bit more confusing. Today it is just so simple to use it, and that's why I say you don't need a search angel. You just don't-

Haley Radke: Take your own power in your own search, in your own hands. Okay.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Absolutely.

Haley Radke: [01:11:00] Gosh, I am so grateful for your wisdom. I feel like I've learned a lot about things I had no idea about. So thank you Janet. And where can we find you online and follow your story as you continue to search? And I know you are working on lots of things.

Janet Weinreich-Keall: Yes, definitely. Yeah, so you can just find me under my name, Janet Weinreich-Keall. I know that's a real big name, but I earned it. And I'm on Facebook, Instagram, I also have a website that also refers me there as well. And I'm just continually sharing my story. Just like you Haley. I really want to highlight the honesty and the real authentic adoptee journey. So that's what I do. I know I'm a foundling, but again, I think I share all the same things as an adoptee as well, so yes-

Haley Radke: Absolutely. Thank you so much.[01:12:00]

Can you believe she just gave us a masterclass in DNA searching? Amazing. So generous. I'm so thankful for Janet. I want to tell you about something really fun. I just launched the Adoptees On merch store and I am seeing everyone get their orders in, their mugs and t-shirts and journals. I've seen people order stickers and pens, like there's a ton of different things. You can get masks even. So there's the traditional Adoptees On logo and then we have an autumn one and a winter one out right now, and so you can get that on basically anything. I love seeing your beautiful faces with your Adoptees On merch. It's amazing and it's just like this physical manifestation of the community kind of building and building and building. I don't know, something about it is just really special to [01:13:00] me. I know I talked about this last week with Carrie, but it's been one of my absolute favorite things so far in 2020, seeing you guys with the stuff with the logo on it, which is just so cool. I wish I had done it sooner. That's my one regret. I wish I had done it sooner. So if you want to grab some Adoptees On merch, it's adopteeson.com/shop and you are taken over to a Tee Public store and they make everything as you order it and they send it off to you. I'm so pleased with how everything is looking when you guys are getting your shirts and everything, and Tee Public makes it really easy for you to find the right fit and the right swag for you.

I'm thankful too for my patrons. So many of you signed up during the month of November. I had a sale on, and it's amazing to see how the community is building around the show and helping to keep it sustainable for me to be able to do this full-time for you, and I'm really grateful. [01:14:00] So thank you. If you wanna join us, it's not too late. You can go to adopteeson.com/partner and find the details of how to join Patreon, all the different benefits. There is a weekly podcast, Adoptees Off Script, with me, and most of the time, Carrie Cahill Mulligan. There is a Facebook group. There is an opportunity to have a call with me, and yeah, I'm so thankful for everyone who has signed up for that. Thank you. Adopteeson.com/partner if you wanna join Patreon or adopteeson.com/shop if you want to support the show by buying some merch. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.